| I logged on to Second Life looking for some kinky fun.
From everything I’d heard about the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), it was a virtual world whose 200,000 inhabitants were not only busy getting to other levels, they were just plain getting busy. Let’s see, how did one article describe it? A "gender-bending, fetish fantasy free-for-all," I believe it was.
Half an hour after I downloaded my free version, I was still trying to shorten the sleeves on my avatar’s (that’s what the virtual people in these games are called) T-shirt and get her hair right.
Frustrated, I decided to press on and headed out into the virtual world with bad bangs and a bad outfit to find me some bad behaviour.
I spent the next half hour walking into walls or flying around trying to figure out what the hell to do. I tried to go shopping at the "fetish boutique" in the marketplace (when in doubt, go shopping!), but kept being teleported into another dimension.
I never got to the sex, but I’ve been assured it’s there.
"These online games are enormous social spaces," says Brenda Braithwaite, a game designer known as the "Sex in Games Lady" and chair of this weekend’s Sex in Games conference in San Francisco (June 8 and 9). "And just as when you get any group of humans together in a social space – be it a bar, a dance hall or even a library – they start to flirt."
And next thing you know, your SIMS characters are humping under the sheets.
Not being much of a "gamer" (Donkey Kong is about where I got out), the last sexy video game I played was probably MacPlaymate –that early ’90s Mac game in which you used a "hand" icon to try and "stimulate" a hand-drawn Playmate to orgasm. Remember, it turned into a spreadsheet at the click of a button if your boss suddenly walked in?
3D graphics and faster computers and Internet connections have made virtual worlds – and subsequently, virtual sex – more and more realistic and explicit.
And while "emergent" sex – that is, when people turn a perfectly innocent little video game into a potential pick-up joint – has shown up in most RPGs like Second Life and World of Warcraft, some game makers are ready to let go of the pretence and just get to the sex already.
Naughty America: The Game is scheduled for release this summer and Spend the Night is set to come out later this year. Both games are like a graphic version of a chat room. An array of characters – from divas to surfer dudes –meet and interact in virtual environments – in a bar, on the street and, most importantly, in the bedroom. But unlike the SIMS – where all groping happened under the covers – you get full-frontal, hardcore pixelated action (in a screen-shot sample of Naughty America, you see a naked couple doing it doggy style).
Watching a couple of naked avatars go at it doesn’t exactly do it for me – in fact, I find it a little creepy looking – but from what I can tell (neither game is available for trial yet), the interface seems more user friendly than something like Second Life, which is designed for hardcore gamers.
And that’s the key if sex video games are to have a mass appeal, says Regina Lynn, the Sex Drive columnist at wired.com and author of the Sexual Revolution 2.0, who will be speaking about how to appeal to non-gamers at this weekend’s conference.
"People are intrigued, but if they decide to try a game and it’s too hard and they don’t have a first good experience, they won’t come back," she explains.
I certainly haven’t gone back to Second Life.
Sex games also need to appeal more to women, says Braithwaite, something both Naughty America and Spend the Night are trying to do. Naughty America allows players to set their own "raunch level" from "sexy" to full-on "freak," giving them more control over how far things go.
Just as women often need time to warm up in real life when it comes to sex, they don’t go from zero to 60 graphically either, she says.
"Women don’t necessarily respond to ‘Hi, my name’s Bob, let’s have sex,’" explains Braithwaite. "They might want to start by just talking and getting to know you."
It’s not that women aren’t into sex, she says ("Look at Harlequin’s steamier lines – women buy them like crazy!"), but game makers need to think about what turns women on and then facilitate this.
Braithwaite suggests game producers consult with sexologists, for example.
Unfortunately, given the number of mainstream porn industry players registered for the conference, the industry seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
And this makes Lynn nervous.
"The adult industry is looking at video games and realizing how big they are," says Lynn. "But I just worry that the entire industry will end up in the hands of the porn people, and they’ll stop consulting with the games people on how to keep it a game."
She hopes the many women in game development will get involved at the ground level to stop it from simply turning into another extension of the existing mainstream porn industry.
"I really want sex video games to be successful," says Lynn. "They have such potential to be a safe, eduational playground for sexual exploration that could help us in our real-life relationships and sex lives."
As for concerns that people will be spending too much time having "sex" online to even have real life sex lives, Braithwaite scoffs.
"Sexy books or movies don’t replace real life, but they’re sure fun for awhile." |
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