New Book Digs Into the Past - and Future - of Sex in Video Games

While video games generally catch more heat for violence than sex, there have been a fair number of lust-fueled controversies in game land. Now, Playboy tech writer Damon Brown documents them in his new book, Porn & Pong: How 'Grand Theft Auto,' 'Tomb Raider' and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture.

Salon has a lengthy interview with Brown who starts with Custer's Revenge and touches (appropriately, we might add) on everything from Leisure Suit Larry to Hot Coffee and beyond. Not one to leave out the online crowd, Brown includes a section on game-related cybersex:

One of the things I write about is the first documented cyberspace rape in a text-only environment called LambdaMOO. A user found a loophole that allowed him to control the actions of other players. He could make one player hurt or have sex with another player and so on. The malicious user went rampant through the game universe, forcing players into sexual acts, and was repeatedly kicked off the game, but he always managed to come back under a different user name.

The Playboy writer also explains his theory of why most protagonists in sexually-oriented games are male:

Most of the creators of these games are straight, most are white and a portion of them are Asian. [Game designers] want to have a protagonist the player can identify with and, on a different level, the designer himself can identify with. People identify with Larry, because everyone's been desperate and had those moments where they can't pick up anyone, or they want to be Niko Bellic, this awesome tough guy who can maintain five girlfriends across the city of New York.

In the future, Brown sees erotically-charged games becoming much more, um... interactive:

Our grandchildren are going to have amazing sex lives -- I can't think of a better way to say it. Connecting vibrators and other types of tools to the computer and getting pleasured by a professional or a long-distance lover is a brilliant idea. It will connect people in a much deeper way than the Internet or a webcam that's going 15 frames per second...

 

From talking to people at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Vegas in January, I understand the basic idea is that teledildonics will take off in a mainstream way any moment now. I'd say within five years it's going to become standard equipment for a lot of people.

UPDATE: Over at Edge Online, editor Colin Campbell has an entertaining whinge at the entire subject of sex in games. Best line:

Words like teledildonics leave me dizzy with nausea.