Zechnophobe said:
It also feels very modal. "This is the point where you may lay with this person in the game, so sayeth the Wise Allaundo." You never have something like "Man, that last fight with those darkspawn was terrible" or "My mom.. is dead. I need something to take my mind off it." That is, unless it is pre-programmed to work that way.
There also isn't much in the middle. If you really were having a romantic affair with a character you were adventuring with, wouldn't the occasional makeout session (even off camera) make sense? OMG, we killed a dragon... let's make-out!
All in all, I honestly don't want explicit. And I sure as heck don't want 'fake explicity' aka dry humping. But I would like to feel my character/avatar was in a PASSIONATE relationship.
Some interesting ideas here. I think part of the problem is that in games where sex is an
option, for many it becomes an
emphasis- so while a designer might create a game with the idea that characters might be inspired to passion realistically based upon aspects of their personalities and moments of tension or drama within the context of the story or action, many players would simply see that as a reason to bring about the circumstances necessary to have sex (or make out, as you put it) as many times as possible.
So instead of the
game's characters who have a weird, stilted, unrealistic and scripted attitude towards sex, it might become the
player's character who does so, which isn't necessarily much of an improvement.
I certainly think there's an awful lot of room for improvement in how video games depict sexuality and romantic relationships, but I think first we'd have to step back from the notion of sex as a reward- a depiction which is highly prevalent in a lot of movies (from which the "sex scene" originates), and often gets worse in the far more reward-driven medium of games. It would be interesting to see a game in which sex is a choice with its own rewards and consequences.
As far as the sex scene itself, I could imagine a game in which there was a real question of how the player's character approached sex: is this a one-time-stand, or the beginning of something the character hopes will be intimate and long-lasting? Are the characters out to punish themselves or each other- is this an act of lust, love, despair, or self-destruction? Is the other person important to the interaction, or just conveniently available to it? Is the act about pleasing the other person or just themselves?... But I would suggest keeping the actual interaction
within the scene itself to a minimum. The potential to go from the character-driven and erotic to the tasteless and the pornographic is all too easy an overstep to make.
P.S. To those who say "Why should there be sex in video games" or "We shouldn't have sex in video games at all": Sexuality is a
huge part of the experience of being human. More so, one would hope, for most, than the far more common video game element of violent conflict. Admittedly it's an area where the media displays its relative immaturity in broad strokes and flashing lights, but there's definitely an argument to be made for its inclusion and working towards improvement of how we make that inclusion, especially if we believe that video games can be more than an entertainment, and something meaningful.
