Relatively recently Grand Theft Auto news made waves by showing a full frontal male nudity scene. Now, this is hardly the first time a human being, male or female, has been shown nekkid in a game. You can at least go back as far as the reprehensible Custer's Revenge for the Atari to find a digital representation of male genitals. The question is, do we really need this sort of thing in a video game?
Amber's Take: Now, anyone who knows me also knows I'm a bit of a prude. I really am not interested in having certain pieces of anatomy on public display. That said, I don't have a problem with sex or the related bits in video games. What I take issue with is how it's used. I think the full exposure in the GTA scene serves no purpose other than to shout out "Hey, we did this because we could!"
For most of the scene, the camera teases around the main character and very strongly gets the message across that this guy has no shame. As a way of portraying a character trait, it's incredibly effective. There is no question the character is a slime ball. The final bit that shows his bits adds nothing other than a superfluous ick factor (all the more repulsive due to the character already sliding down the side of the Uncanny Valley).
Another thing I take issue with is when sex is used to trivialize people, usually women, in games. I think the force of my sneer actually radiated heat when I learned about the sex mini games that have been popping up in certain titles already drowning in their own testosterone.
Like violence, sex and basic human anatomy can be used to shock people. This in and of itself isn't necessarily a negative. Unfortunately, it's far too easy to use these elements in a cheap and base way, rather than as effective story telling tools or ways to drive messages home. If you want to shock my sensibilities, fine, more power to you. I only have a problem with games that insult my intelligence and use the medium to degrade and dehumanize.
Cole's Take: I cannot think of a single instance in which sexual content has improved a game. I talked about this recently when I discussed God of War. I think that sex is used so often in media because creative types and business people operate under the false assumption that sex sells. I won't get into it here, but I took a class back in college that put the theory to rest. Yes, in some cases, steamy content will increase awareness about a particular movie, game, or whatever, but all things being equal, sexual content rarely has a measurable effect on sales. Which is why I find it so bizarre that developers, like the GoW guys, think that they absolutely have to have sex minigames, lest they disappoint fans.
I feel about sexual content the same way I feel about excessive, gory violence. It's cheap. I'd just as soon go back and play Starsiege: Tribes, which had no blood or gore, than a Controversial M-Rated Shooter. Game mechanics are what excites my senses, not titillating imagery. If one really wanted to be turned on, there are many, many superior alternatives outside of gaming that can be used to exercise that unsavory impulse, if you know what I mean and I think that you do.
Joe's Take: I'm going to play a bit of devil's advocate here and say that for now, pushing the envelope just for the sake of pushing the envelope is a-okay. Videogaming is still a medium in adolescence, particularly in terms of how it is perceived by the public on a whole. In order to get on even footing with other mediums it has to do everything those mediums do, and has to do it in a way that gets attention. This actually makes "Hey, we did this because we could!" a valid reason to put in shocking content.
Of course the fact that this course of action is necessary for the overall health of medium doesn't defend certain crass, base implementations of shocking content, which of course can be horrendous and cause short-term damage to the perception of games on a whole. This is a sort of collateral damage, though. If you want to be able to expand the visual language of games to include the same taboo bits as cinema or HBO you have to let everyone (or rather, everyone willing to get an M or AO-rating) use the taboo bits, and not everyone will use them in a way that is within reasonable societal norms. The overall impact will still be positive, as it will create a genuinely mature way for games to discuss genuinely mature themes.
Note that I'm not defending any of Amber's examples. I've not seen the Lost and Damned content, and God of War's minigame, though maybe justifiable as a characterization device in the first game, did not need to be in the later games. Custer's Revenge was the most deplorable part of a thankfully failed experiment to create an adult games industry similar to the adult film industry--that sort of effort will always be consigned to the gutters, and isn't really relevant to games as a medium.
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