Ask Erik: Episode Forty-One

Here at Ask Erik we've spent a lot of time reading novels and comic books, playing video games, and watching television and movies in order to amass a deep vault of pop culture knowledge.  While constantly trying to still gather new information, it only seems prudent to share some of what we learned to help solve some of the world's greatest questions.

Will the current talks with Iran ease tensions between us and that part of the world?  Will the Smithsonian's new efforts to scan all of their exhibits into 3D mean people will prefer a digital museum experience to seeing things live?  What the heck is Indian Pudding and why is today it's "national day?"

Once a week Erik tackles a question asked to him and tries to answer it in a method that handles the topic with the respect and attention it deserves.  Failing that, he'll at least try to make it funny so you don't regret reading it.




To Erik: What do you think about sex in video games?  Does having mature relationships with other characters mean that games are growing up?

A while ago I lightly touched upon the topic of romance in video games but looking back at the article I really don't think I gave the topic the justice it deserves.  Thankfully, with this question, I think I can make up for it by saying something I don't think a lot of players really think about.

Putting sex into a game does not, by itself, make a game more mature.  In fact, depending on how it's presented, it can make a game even more immature, and I'm not sure video game developers have really recognized how that works yet.

I'll freely admit, since I've already done so once before, for a short time I dabbled in the "visual novel" style of game play in Japanese games.  I was a shy, awkward teenager (a major surprise to all of you, I'm sure), and being able to pick just the right thing to say or just the right decision to make to get a representation of the opposite sex to express approval for me was pathetic a poor second to real human interaction, but with many fewer personal risks.  If a real person rejected me, I had to live with any consequences of that.  A virtual person rejects me, I just reboot the game and try again or move on to something else.

Sex, however, was never really the major selling point for me.  Yes, the games did include them sometimes, but I often found myself simply skipping the scenes because they were often very poorly drawn a distraction from what I was interested in: the story.

Over in American games, we had some rather immature presentations of sex in "adult" games, a major symbol of these being the Leisure Suit Larry franchise in which a guy who never learned the 70s were over attempts to sleep with as many women as possible.

And with graphics as dazzling as that, who wouldn't get turned on?

Now, the graphics of the games did improve as technology improved, but the immature humor that eventually moved on to teen sex movies of the 2000s remained the same.

"Lt. Lake...you're...almost out of uniform."

Sex has been introduced to other video games trying to prove how "mature" they are such as the Grand Theft Auto series, Heavy Rain, Alpha Protocol, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect.  You can probably expect any future games by Bioware to have at least some kind of "romance option" in it from now on because people simply expect them to be there.

But there's still a problem to these games, and it's that they don't treat sex as something that would occur naturally in a relationship or something that symbolizes two people really caring about each other.  They treat it the same way a teenage boy trying to smuggle Playboy magazines out of the attic looks at it: sex is the prize if they play the game.  It's simply another step for "you win" as opposed to having any real meaning.  You aren't sincere when you give the girl a present or say nice things to the guy to earn "points," you're simply hoping that at some point in the future they'll strip down and rut with your character like two weasels in a sack.

Congratulations, you played the game and won the prize.

Looking through forums, faqs, and Youtube videos, you'll find guides for all kinds of games to get characters in games to want to hook up with you.  There's no purpose to the actions, and there's no meaning to them, they just have the sex there for the sake of sex, something to entice players to try to make the right choices to "win" a short cut-scene or "sexy" image.  There are forums devoted to trying to find out how to have sex with more than one character in the Mass Effect games because hey, why would you want to play the game twice?  There's also people who complain about the fact that they said one wrong thing to a character and the character refused to sleep with them later, which I guess is the video game equivalent of complaining about being in "the friend zone."

You know, the "friend zone," that place immature guys get stuck in when their attempts to be nice to women and give them presents doesn't end in the woman spreading her legs with a great fanfare and letting the guy do what he wants.  Because why else would you be nice to someone of the opposite sex if you didn't think you'd get to hook up?

As long as games leave "sex" to simply be the "prize" (or as Bioware developers call it, the "culmination") of short mini game-like scenes within the game, it's not really any more mature than turning on a cheap movie on late-night Cinemax.  There's nothing that really happens, story-wise whether you sleep with another character, as near as I can tell.  I haven't seen a game yet where you romance a character and then hook up with them halfway through the game and then are forced to maintain the relationship through the rest of it otherwise really bad stuff happens to you.  Either that, or maybe you can actually care about the character without having to resort to sex all the time.

In the Mass Effect series my character wound up seeing (and eventually sleeping with) Liara.  I played through, I got the saucy "flashes of bare skin" moment towards the end, and moved on with the game.  I later played the second game after the DLC content already came out, so I was able to meet back up with Liara rather quickly and tell her that, even though we had been apart for some time, I still wanted to continue the relationship.  Suddenly I still had most of the game to get through, but the game (wisely, I think) stripped out all other romance options (except for your secretary, strangely enough, because having your direct underling dress up in leather and do erotic dances for you doesn't count as "cheating," I guess).  During difficult moments in the game, I found myself simply going back to visit Liara to catch up and have it act like a breather, thinking that it's what a sane person would want to do: be around someone they care about for comfort.  

"No, I don't want to have sex, I just want to talk.  We never even read the newspaper together anymore, Shepard."

When I started playing the third game (which I really should complete some day), I once again continued the romance with Liara, but the idea of even trying to romance another character didn't even enter my head.  The idea of trying to get Liara into bed wasn't even in my mind (though I can't yet say that isn't the programmer's goal), it's just that this was someone I had developed this long-term bond with, and even just talking to them or being in the same room was a nice break from saving the universe.  I think I was finding more value in the purpose of the relationship than the developers intended, because instead of simply using Liara as a resource to help complete the game, I turned her into my character's rock, the one thing she could turn to when pressures got too great or tough decisions had to be made.  Every time Liara wouldn't even look away from her monitors and simply gave me a "I'm busy now, Shepard" comment, it'd jerk be back and remind me that I was putting more value on a "relationship" with a character than the developers had.

Hey, Liara, maybe I just wanted to talk to you about how what you had for dinner lately, or just curl up together to watch some dumb movie, like the 30th re-envisioning of She's All  That.

Here's the issue, though: while it felt like something my character would do, it didn't affect the game much at all.  If I had slept with someone else in the second game, I don't think the game would have necessarily given me the option to "order" them to stay behind before I went through the relay, because I wouldn't want anything to happen to them.  I'm yet to see a game where, if I use another character for sex and then ignore them, they don't get so angry they try to murder me later or simply refuse to help me.  I also don't think Liara would necessarily have even been hurt or confronted me about it later, or tried to sabotage things between me and my new "goal."

If a game wants to tackle a mature topic, they need to get into how real adults have relationships, and not just have the entire point be getting to finally use that Barry White album the character buys in the first part of the game.  Have the character and their significant other get into arguments about something one character or the other does, then have them try to figure out how to make things right.  Have them acknowledge that the relationship isn't perfect, but make the player want to get it to work.  Maybe include marriage, but don't do it how Fable does it where the only point is getting bonuses or presents and, if you get tired of the relationship, just "slap her around" until she divorces you or "get her killed" so you're a widower.  That's just terrible.

Though not as terrible as how God of War treats sex.  "Press X to cause orgasmic pleasure."  I've seen more mature approaches to sex in late-night Cinemax movies.

Games are doing better jobs at building relationships between characters.  The father/daughter relationship you have with Clementine in The Walking Dead is one of the best I've seen, though after playing Bioshock Infinite and The Last Of Us I find it odd that two girls who are strong and powerful by themselves still have such "daddy" complexes that they need you to fill.  There are steps in the right direction, but it still needs a bit more work there.  I think mastering the "equal partners in a relationship" deal is going to take even more time, because what player is going to want to call home to find out their special someone has a cold and wants them to pick up a frozen dinner and some grape juice for them to have in bed?  And not just because they'll later hop in the shower with you when they're feeling better, but because you just want to be nice.