Sex

Ahh, what a topic. I’m of course going to keep this firmly in the realms of video game sex, as if that makes it any better. People take multiple stances on video game sex; some don’t mind it, some find it utterly odd and some probably get a weird satisfaction from it. (*ahem* definitely not me.)

Video games are stories as well as interactive mediums. Sex, like violence, can be an important part of the story. But sadly, sometimes it’s just plain weird. I recently played Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins and, being a little bit of a sappy romantic, I liked the relationships that you could have amongst the members of your party. I played as a human mage the first time round and, like many others before me, was felled by the character Alistair’s ‘awkward-verging-on-mentally-handicapped’ personality. He was cute and made the odd witty comment so I decided to pursue him relentlessly until he finally resigned himself to his fate and followed me to my tent, just like the inappropriate pervert I am in real life. What happened next was something I can describe, at best, as awkward and at worst as necessitating some serious brain bleach.

Alistair reclined on the bed with an expression that led me to believe he was about to have a vasectomy sans anaesthetic and my character was suddenly in some god awful beige underwear, sidling up to him in a way that was meant to be channelling sexy but was really channelling zombie. The camera then cuts to multiple clips of them in varying suggestive embraces, woodenly moving from one ‘position’ to the other with dead eyes and hair that continuously refused to bend to the will of gravity. Their faces remain blank throughout; either it was entirely uninspiring for both parties involved or they were actually just playing chess from the waist down. Your guess is as good as mine. It was like being forced to watch two beavers engage in semi-romantic fisticuffs. Or the puppet sex scene in Team America. I literally had to watch through my hands. (Just in case I haven't already put you off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ay2L__RDsI (the ‘good stuff’ starts at 1.32)



This was my face throughout the scene



Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t because I wasn’t happy about finally getting to do the dirty with Alistair, it was entirely because the scene was so awkwardly animated that it just became hugely embarrassing to watch. There isn’t any fluidity or naturalness to their movements and so the scene is entirely unconvincing. And if a sex scene isn’t convincing, it can only be awkward; that’s a fact.

The Dragon Age sex scene lands firmly in the ‘badly executed, horribly uncomfortable’ column but it’s not always that awful. The one in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood was pretty good! Well, at least until the chick appeared because quite frankly, I was enjoying watching a shirtless Ezio have a bath. Jeez, the naked women just ruin it every time. But that one was much better because the animation was far superior, making it feel much more natural, ergo, less hideous. And it was also a scene that felt like it had a place, it was important to the story and helped it along. No one wants a random, poorly executed sex scene slotted in there to simply satisfy the hormonally over charged.

But that brings me to an important and mildly interesting point. A lot (if not the majority) of video games are made by dudes, or with a team that is largely composed by dudes. The problem with that is that sex scenes are going to be constructed and orchestrated from the male perspective, leading to far more naked ladies than men, because I think it’s largely accepted that men don’t want to see naked man crotch. This is all peachy for guys but it can leave the female gamers feeling a little weirded out. It’s not that we want some full frontal male nudity or anything; it just might be nice to have a scene that’s a little more balanced. The same goes for movies but that’s not what this blog is about!        

To sum up, video game sex scenes can be just dandy if they’re executed well but I think the developers *really* need to put in overtime to make sure that they’re as well animated and as natural as possible, otherwise it’s just god awful to watch. And no-one wants to be effectively forced to watch two pixel stick puppets bumping uglies. That’s just cruel.

Oh yeah, and give us girl gamers less boobies and more toned male torso please. That’d be spiffy.