Fri 28 Oct 2005
Among all the top notch speakers/sessions on tap for next week’s Montreal International Game Summit, perhaps the most stimulating session will be the sex in games design challenge.
The abstract reads:
“Video games are emerging as the dominant form of art and entertainment of the 21st century, enjoyed by hundreds of millions of players worldwide. As a culturally potent and expressive medium, developers should be able to explore all aspects of the human condition - as we see in film, literature, etc.
However, the stigma that video games are simply “toys for children” is holding back the industry - both creatively and economically. The concerns over the hidden sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is just one indicator that industry critics cannot accept that a wide range of diverse content is played by a just as diverse audience.
That said, even if these barriers didn’t exist, could we even create a game with meaningful representations of sex? From cheap titillation to eroticism to more complex notions of sexuality, sexual tension and innuendo, if challenged, what could we design?”
And, the challengers are:
- Heather Kelley, Ubisoft
- Frank Lantz, area/code
- Pascal Luban, The Game Design Studio
- Eric Zimmerman, gamelab
Not sure how Frank and Pascal will fare, as both Heather (she’s a woman) and Eric (he created the format and runs similar sessions at GDC) seem to have a bit of an edge…
Coincidentally, Aleks put up a sex post at the Guardian about the action down in Austin and Brenda’s interview, hinting at how we’ve just not figured out how to convey meaningful sexual content.
Well, I certainly hope the challengers come up with some engaging concepts - implementation (and distribution!) issues aside ;)
October 28th, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Fascinating. I really wish I could be there for this one.
November 3rd, 2005 at 7:31 pm
I’m curious - why does this writer believe that being a woman gives Heather Kelley an edge in designing games about sex? In all seriousness, I would sincerely like to hear the logic behind that statement. I’m female, but I would be at a complete loss in this challenge because I simply don’t like representations of sex in *any* media. No matter what the artistic intent is, I feel media representations of sex are voyeuristic, not romantic. So, I’m honestly curious why someone would assume a woman will naturally be better at designing sexual representations in games. (Is it because “Brenda Brathwaite” is female?)
Personally, I would have assumed the men have an advantage because it is my experience that more men than women watch porn and other sex-explicit media. That leads me to wonder if the writer is a heterosexual male who is confusing his own personal association of sex->women, or if there is some other reasoning here that I am missing.
(My sincere apologies if this comes off as an insult, complaint, flame, or what have you – I’m simply, truly, intellectually curious.)
November 7th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
I really don’t pretend to have the answer to this question, but I do think it depends entirely on the path designers are willing to take. While more men seem to be attracted to porn and other explicit contents, women seems more intellectually involve toward sexuality. Let’s not forget that there are also exceptions to these two assumptions. So even by saying that, does that mean that a woman is better to do a sex game following a psychological path?
I personally don’t think it’s even a question of woman or man but more a matter of each individual perception. To me, we are all good candidates to do a game on sex as long as the game concept follows our personal believes on the subject. I think this is why analysing other designers work is so refreshing, because it follows a different set of ideals than our own…
November 7th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Well, Jason may have intuited an advantage re the female gender, as Heather won the contest with a Female Sexual Response trainer that looked like a Freudian Pokemon. (Every entry was enormously entertaining, I dont have time to detail them all, hope someone will.)
After all the lust dust had settled, I was surprised to note that in general, the games were single player with downloadable content. This would seem to be a natural cooperative mode gameplay? Or is that just my perspective? :)
Lets keep this inside the biz or our cyber porn obsessed nerd rep will come flying back and nobody wants THAT.