“How to do it?” is a question that is, perhaps, at its most literal when talking about sex, and it’s a question that has long troubled game development. Should sex be shown in-game at all? If so, how? Will it be framed as a bonus or a reward? Integral to the story? Will it feature a same-sex couple? All this comes before the litany of technical questions about coding, naturally.
But a larger issue remains: are video games saying or doing anything interesting with sex? I would argue that, by and large, especially in the triple-A industry they are not, and it stems from a perspective issue of sorts: games have long portrayed sex as an external affair, to be seen and consumed rather than an internal one to be experienced. They’ve shown sex as something external, but with no inside to speak of. It makes a world of difference.
***
Sex is often something to project. “Sexy” can be something you wear, a way in which you carry yourself. It is adornment for the eyes of another--or several others; ritual design and dance that communicates in sensual tones. To whatever extent videogames capture this, they do so by showing something or someone coded as “sexy” on screen. To say that our industry has mastered this, in one form at least, is something of an understatement. To observe that we are oversaturated with supermodel avatars and scantily clad women is, by now, a cliché (albeit one that still bears repeating).
The complex language of adornment has arguably been ignored by games that keep banging the same dissonant note over and over again with portrayals of sexy women. Meanwhile, male sensuality in its external form is often not explored at all. There are glimmers to be found in the way that characters like Bayonetta or Dragon Age 2’s Isabella carry themselves with a profound sexual confidence. They’re not merely designed avatars but women whose characters are capable of projecting sexuality in a more complicated register that bespeaks a certain amount of agency.
"If you were to describe what it was like to have sex with someone, you would likely emphasize how it felt, in a way only you could adequately describe."
But both are undermined by the use of the camera, especially in Bayonetta’s case, to pornographically possess the characters, reducing them entirely to posed sex objects that neither speak nor act independently of that camera’s orientation. In those scenes they don't express character; any avatar with the "right" proportions could take their place. The point is to look, not to interact or experience; after all, one interacts with human beings, one merely looks at objects.
But some objects can be interacted with. Vending machines or computers, for instance, designed to unquestioningly respond to our inputs and desires. It is, to the detriment of games, the model most game developers seem to use when coding romance and sexuality into their games. It reduces sex to the transactional, to say the least. Put enough gifts and positive dialog options into the romantic vending machine and out comes a sex scene around the second act.
But this approach is, ultimately, in service to that external dimension of sex. Showing the player a kind of forbidden, lusting beauty. You are treated to the characters’ nudity, awkward kisses, a roving camera that tastefully drinks in the blending curves of PC and NPC bodies. The cutscene is the primary expression of video game sex; the sexy avatar's moment. In Bayonetta 2 the cutscenes give us crotch shots, Bayonetta being cut out of her white dress while fighting angels on a jet, sexualised acrobatics that make full use of her skintight outfits, and so on. In Bioware-style RPGs, the sex scenes are similarly there to be passively consumed, more openly framed as a reward for appropriate inputs.
This is not to dismiss the hard work and often superb writing (in the case of Dragon Age) that frames all of this, of course, nor is it to deny the technical limitations that often force developers into these tried and true models. Like violence as an idiom of progress, vending machine romance is just easier to design for.
But there are other vistas we can begin exploring.
***
Sex has an outside, yes, which is ideal for the norm of consumption that imbues so many games. A hot avatar to be ogled, a hot sex scene that serves as both salacious reward and Fox News fodder, et cetera. But it also has an interior.
In an S.EXE column by games journalist Cara Ellison, I and other queer women were asked for our thoughts on the supposed lesbian sex simulator Girlvania: Summer Lust. I was unimpressed, and argued:
“The game is hamstrung, I think, by its clear desire to provide visual stimulation to the player, which is entirely at crosspurposes with being a sex simulator. An as-yet-underexplored area of gameplay is how to actually simulate the feeling of being involved in sex rather than the mere voyeurism of watching someone acting for the sake of an audience, a long tradition that Girlvania continues.”
In other words, the game, like so many other, less-explicit titles before it, fails to explore the interior of sex. One can be performatively sexy, of course; as a dominatrix, putting on an appealing visual performance is all part of the fun for me and my partner/s. But the experience of having sex is something that often looks rather visceral and less put-together from the outside. At best, even if it is visually stimulating (which is by no means guaranteed), that image is only telling part of the story. If you were to describe what it was like to have sex with someone, you would likely emphasize how it felt, in a way only you could adequately describe. How your body was being touched and stimulated, what you were thinking about, how the other person’s body felt against yours and so on.
No tags.
