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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon In Mass Effect I thought it was quite well done, considering. A bit too 'Don Johnson in Miami Vice,' but a hell of a lot better than the quite frankly ludicrous sex scene in Farenheit. I agree, i thought it was very well done, it certainly never brothered me, i seen worse things in a game.
(To anyone who hasnt seen fox news take on this, heres a link, i find it funny in their cluelessness, espically as both reporters say instantly they never played it and their discussions after)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0kdm7fg804&feature=related The press need back off and let the games industry grow into a more mature forms of story telling. Other forms of entertainment are easly excepted as having a child/adult seperation. Books, films and tv all have various forms of violence and relationship issues (sexual or not) aimed at various age groups but are easily seperated in to sections or schedule times. Games should be allowed the same freedom.
Maybe game stores should seperate the games not just on format but on content as well. They do it with film. Small steps. The stupid stupid media furore surrounding mass effects sex scenes was ridiculous. I can't believe you've even bothered to print this story.
Have you played Mass Effect? Its an epic science fiction space opera. You go and read an epic science fiction space opera (like an actual book with words) and see how integral sex and sexuality is. Read a Richard Morgan book, thats filthy, even Iain M. Banks has some pretty naughty sex included.
Mass Effect is a fantastic story and the love affair was natural. It wasn't graphic in any way. There are adverts that are more revealing (of actual women too, not freaky Aliens) than this game. Let alone films. This is a mature, adult experience and should be treated no differently from cinema or television, its story telling.
What I don't understand is how there could be that much fuss about this game and less so about the extremely revealing clothing in most fighting games over the years. Like video nasties and Lady Chatterley's Lover before it, video games are just going through the natural stages of judgement all media go through. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's going to happen for a while yet.
The only thing video games has against it compared to books and films it that for many it is beheld as solely something children play or children SHOULD be playing... It will take another 50+ years before we see the generation that didn't grow up with video games (and subsequently watched video games "grow-up") in their lives die out.
And of course you'll always have the Daily Mail brigade to contend with... I think they added the sex scene for publicity as bad publicity is good publicity.
Just my two cents... I'm not so sure... I remember on seeing it thinking it was no different from something you would see in the James Bond films. I think they were just picked on for no good reason. If they wanted to create some real contreversy then they would of let you have a sexual relationship with Kaiden if you played as a male Shepard... Imagine the furore over that...
(although after reading some forums after the largely innocent announcment of "The Ballad of Gay Tony" I should imagine they'd have a firebombing to look forward to...) Just watched that video. The Spike guy is the only one who knows what he's talking about and has changed my opinion.
Videogame sex FTW! The only problem I have with sex in films (And games) after that vid painting a clearer picture for me is how awkward it is too watch these sex scenes with friends. The Wrestler comes too mind *shivers*, not like it was a good movie anyway... Seriously, whats the point of a sex scene in a game? I think FF7 would've been destroyed by it had the leads took part in such a scene.
If it becomes acceptable then there'll be no limitations and we'll end up with endless Leisure Suite Larry games and an endless void of cheap (and probably disgusting) scenes to sell the game.
Like those bargain bin DVDs which feature the most inappropriate scenes unexpectedly cropping up just to add extra "value for money", no thanks, keep games and sex apart. »
Movies to a degree I will agree with you... but games? Yeah, if they put a random sex scene in the middle of a Left 4 Dead level then I would agree, but I can't think of anytime where I've played a single player game and had an audience watching me for a protracted period (apart from the missus who is usually doing something else, or a random friend wanting to see a particular game in action for all of five minutes....), so if it makes sense to the story then so be it.
I have a friend who tried to pursue the sex scene in Mass Effect (largely for the achievement I imagine) but was frightened to do it in case his girlfriend found out/worked out that's what he was doing, so only tried it when she was out of the room or had gone out and even then he was scared that it was something that was referenced largely afterwards. Which is different to my missus who, after playing Fable II, more often than not orders me to try and shag anything that moves in an RPG. It was only after explaining to her that it's not a usual occurence in games that she stopped.
People have different feelings toward portrayals of sex, and I say fair play to Bioware for sticking it in there (chortle, chortle), especially as it is something that is completely optional. Sex is a normal thing for most adults, and it's vilification over something like shooting an innocent stranger in the face (a la GTA) is wrong.
Let's be fair though, the minute a game that features hardcore sex images is released or has sex as it's over riding theme, it will be derided as much as porn is today compared to mainstream films...
(but people will still have a copy of the game under their bed/behind their normal games etc...) From a gamers "prospective" I think such scenes would only add to the immersive experience. so when will we see Mario and Luigi 'spit-roasting' Princess Daisy then? :lol:
In all seriousness though there should be a place for sex scene's in games where it is appropriate. If games want to be more like real life then sex is a part of it.
Has anyone read this months Edge where the Japanese columnist is talking about a rape game that's caused some controversy in Japan? Now I do think that's innapropriate. Suffice to say there were no screenshots! it is quite sad in games and is no turn on - which is the purpose in it, in films. I guess it's time for cliche no.27,546
Isn't it odd that you can cut people up with knives, beat people to a bloody pulp, commit violent crimes, blow people up with explosives and arbitrarily run women and kids over in a stolen tank but as soon as a couple of people perform a physical expression of love in a computer game, the world and it's mother have a sh1t fit. Finding the appropriate material for any game scene is a challange. When writing a story it's all about relevance. Asking to keep sex out of games is unrealistic when we are crying out to be taken seriously. When it's done right it's right and when it's done wrong we will notice. We judge games on all of there content not just the sex(most of us)and will lambast them like we do films when we know they have thrown it in just to please the test audience. Though rightly pointed out companies like Namco and Team Ninja have been throwing boobs at us for sometime now but if they started shagging as a finishing move then they would have crossed that line of relevance.
When Sony release 'Rachet and Clank: Rub my Nuts' I'll maybe change my stance. :lol: To a certain extent I agree and disagree about this idea. I like the idea of allowing intimate relationships to happen in games, I've enjoyed it in titles like Jade Empire and KOTOR II. Do I actually want to see a PG-13 enactment of my characters getting it on? Not really. A kiss-fade-to-black and then some intimations that they spent the night together after are really as far as they need to go to give that feeling of a consummated relationship. Sex scenes make sense?
No they don't.
Think about it. In the story of your life, how many times have you had to watch other people have sex, in order to understand your friends, do your job, have empathy for others, live life in general? Probably never.
Pretending that digital voyeurism is necessary to understanding the story or the characters - is just a flat out lie. It could be worse though, what if Mass Effect 2 incorperates project Natal and you actually have to speak dirty whilst doing some realtime 'cupage' followed by mating actions with you hips - now that would be embarassing. The justification for that is that you are placed within the characters life in alot of games. The whole experience is a kind of voyeurism sometimes. Just because the topic is sex doesn't exclude it from other parts of story telling.
That said this debate also questions how people view sex generally, just because you think one way about it shouldn't put a black mark over it as a tool for story telling. The act plays a very important part in the way we interact as adults and can change the dynamics of 2 friends or entire groups so why should story tellers overlook its impact as a narrative tool. Surprisingly, this is probably the most well-behaved and intellectually argumented article thread I've seen on CVG this year.
Good work, people. Oh dear god, dont say that...you're asking for it all to go pete tong.
As for the argument itself;
I thought in mass effect it was done relatively tastefully, though did it add to the story? No not really. I wouldn't have minded if it wasn't in there.
Questions over whether it should have been in the original MGS with Snake and Meryl are more interesting to my mind...there was a lot of emotional attachment to those characters..not so much in Mass Effect (at least for me)
Another one, perhaps a bit left field, would be the Persona series. I'll admit they are a wee bit young, but the relationships forged in that game in some cases would naturally lead to sex but don't.
Sex should be there if it furthers the emotional involvement of the player with the character, or it is a natural extension. Personally in Mass Effect, however i much i enjoyed it, i found it unnecessary. I think the key here for the future of sex in games is that it stays optional. From Mass Effect, Fable II and the prostitutes/Girlfriends of GTA (some of which cut to black), these things were only possible if actively pursued.
When having sex in a game becomes integral to progression, that is when it will start to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Therefore, sex as just another "thing to do" will really find it's place in RPG, open world and sandbox games. "Do you have to?" no. But you can if you want to. And that sort of gameplay freedom is always going to have a big future in those types of games.
However, shoe horning a sex scene into a "Gears of War" type of game would feel tacky and pointless, and I think most developers are smart enough to realise that that sort of thing is best left to the weird "fan fiction" crowd... Some very repressed attitudes towards sex in games here, personally if a game is labelled appropriately I do not see what the problem is, we play games filled with violence and swearing, but people seem to think nudity and sexual depictions are like the work of the devil, I'd much rather be splitting a person in two with the chainsaw attached to my gun.
Sex scenes, for the sake of them would be bad, just like they are in films, but when done correctly and are appropriate to the content of the game, and development of the characters, go for it.
The only other game I can think of, which I don't seem to remember getting pulled up for was Fahrenheit, and that one was a far more graphic depiction of the physical act of lurv... But personally I think it worked well in the context of the story, from what I can remember. | 
