Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer, professor, and IGDA member who has spoken publicly about sex in video games many times before, and has some predictions about playing porn in the game industry. Before she became a professor of game design at Savanna College of Art and Design, she worked on Playboy: The Mansion, a Sims-ish sex game that let you play as Hugh Hefner and run nude photo shoots. Sounds like it would be as fun as Sims to play, and Playboy even backed it, yet it was still cast into online obscurity receiving less than pleasing sales. The current day problem with trying to promote sex games is obvious:
"Console manufacturers won't allow Adults Only-rated games on their systems. This takes out a huge part of any potential market that your game has. . . If you decide to go PC-only, no EMA member stores will stock AO-rated material. So this leaves out most of the big box stores and smaller, but still powerful, chains."
So why is she still endorsing erotic games? She's made it clear in the past that she views games as an art medium, and finds it ridiculous that there's subjects in the industry that are still unacceptable to approach and explore:
"In any other medium, if they said 'you can't have sex,' artists would be outraged. They would stand up and say 'To hell with you ... don't tell me what I can do. This is my creative freedom.' If Brokeback Mountain went through video gaming's rating system, it would be two guys sitting on a bench talking about how they possibly liked each other and it would still be rated M (for Mature)."
Despite the average gamer age being late 20 and mid 30 year olds, the mainstream game industry games are rarely even R rated by movie industry standards. Brenda is confident this will change though, here's why:
"Our limitations will soon be our strengths. As sales of games become more and more digital, the pseudo-censorship of retail is losing its foothold."
That's a good point that I hadn't thought about much before. Give it ten years of GameFly subscriptions rising, and we might see Best Buy willing to ship games and electronics to our houses to compete against Newegg and other online stores. Once we don't have to worry about Sexaxis games appearing next to Ratchet and Clank titles on store shelves, it makes sense that a porn pilgrimage will occur. Little ol' blogs like my own will become more vital in the role of advertising for games on the online market, and porn game PR agencies will go cum-crazy sending out free sex games for us to play and review for readers. You won't not see the games in stores, so you might not be so quick to expect them to be a piece of crap. As soon as a few games hit it big, the heavy wallet investors will follow to the new markets where new fornication fortunes are waiting. We'll call it a fad just like elders once called video games as a whole, and by the time I'm dead they'll probably be more common than kids games.
The majority of the vocalist aren't deviant digital entertainers though, Manifesto Games' Greg Costikyan summed up the majority of their beliefs:
It’s not that we’re focused on sex games, but we’re happy to offer them. . . The whole idea behind Manifesto is to offer edgier products that address . . subject material that the conventional industry isn’t able to address. We offer exposure to an audience of people who might be interested in games of this type but who might not otherwise encounter them.
I won't call him Socrates, and MMOEG (Massively Multiplayer Online Erotic Games) can't be up to any good, but I still respect someone who's trying to positively expand the industry. If the ignorance of the outsiders causes simple games like Grand Theft Auto III to be cast as the equivalent of To Kill A Mockingbird, then so be it. Ban and bitch as long as you'd like. Eventually our parents will die out and the problem will be solved, or at least be handled sensibly by people who actually speak from experience.
