How SHOULD sex scenes in games work?

[conflictofinterests]

You know, that could be turned into a pretty interesting game mechanic.

I mean, consider games like Morrowind and Fallout: New Vegas, where (during character creation) can take these kind of semi-psychological tests to determine what kinds of skills would best suit your character (like if you answer that you would steal something and sneak away from a situation, then the game would recommend that you start out with high stealing/sneaking skills).

Now what if a game had that kind of test at the beginning but more elaborate, and that the test governed not only YOUR digital avatars skills and proficiencies but also the way certain characters in the game world will look like as well as how they will act and react towards you?

For instance, the game might ask what sexual orientation you have, and you input that you're a male heterosexual. Then further down the game shows you two pictures of two different women and ask you which one of them you find more attractive (of course the game really wants to know a specific detail of the two pictures, like what hair colour in the opposite sex you prefer, or which one has the better looking nose, cleavage etc. but you aren't being told that specific detail during the test). And that information is then used by the game to shape and alter the physical exterior of certain in-game female characters that you (as a person in real life) would respond to in specific ways.

The same thing could be done could probably be used for mannerisms of in-game characters. For instance, if you know that you're a sucker for sexually aggressive and downright "slutty" women, then certain characters that the game expects you to respond to positively will act that way. But if you input that you feel more drawn towards shy/awkward behaviour in the opposite sex, then the in-game characters will act like that instead.

Of course, the stage where the game gathers all this information has to be cleverly constructed as to insure that the questions aren't too obvious (i.e if the game downright asks you if you prefer blondes or red-heads, then the sense of immersion or what the games expects you to do won't be as interesting when a sultry red-head or blond shows up making "just the right" propositions that you could see coming a mile away). So a more elaborate and subtle set of questions has to be posed and having a few psychology professors as consultants when trying to design that test would probably help a long way.

But if done properly, wouldn't the experience be kind of awesome and tremendously PERSONAl to each and every player? I mean, not only do you shape your own in-game character the way you want, but the in-game world itself actually changes according to who YOU (the player) are as a person and in ways that you yourself probably can't really guess.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that even if one had a machine with the processing power to manage a game that kept and applied all those user variables to all those models in that game, that the shear amount of coding that would go into that would make a game like that all but impossible. But I'm terrible at computers, so I could be so wrong it would make my head spin. It would be really nifty to have a game like that, though.

 

[joe the janitor]

Sex shouldn't be in games to begin with.

It's an embarrassment to society that needs to be corrected.

so mating and multiplying is an embarassment?

Yes.

Troll somewhere else.

 

[Venereus]

Sex shouldn't be in games to begin with.

It's an embarrassment to society that needs to be corrected.

so mating and multiplying is an embarassment?

Yes they are, but non-breeding sex is fine.

 

[Zyphonee]

The intelligent representation of sex in other forms of media doesn't normally come out of the canons of subtlety; and neither should it in games. Proper timing, characters and use of the scene to drive the story forward will always be able to capture something as charming as sexuality way more than the tongue-in-cheek pointless garbage we see in games like Splatterhouse and The Witcher.

Sex is a great topic to address; something that is so carnally primitive, yet still attributed such romantic and philosophical meaning has so much to be explored and so much to be in an artistic medium, other than an attempt to dilligently face moral taboos; from Arthur Miller to Blue Velvet, the instances of sex, love and urges are pictured in radically different ways, so why shouldn't games be able to make use something with so many layers with maturity and intellectuality? Kratos' harem, in God of War, I consider to be a great example of one of the instances sex can take: The only solace of a man who has everything.

I believe that, although sex appeal might seem like a decent driver, it really never gets anywhere beyond a few frivolous compliments, and doesn't do justice to the potential that such an impulse possesses

Spoiler: Smug

Tell me I am a loathsome austere, I love it when you do

 

[lord.jeff]

Implication works fine in most cases but not in all sometimes the awkwardness, gratuity, or romance can sell what the character feels or set a mood, look at "Midnight Cowboy" thats a great movie that would not have been as great without the sex scenes.

 

[joe the janitor]

Troll somewhere else.

I'm not trolling.

Then what? You think the reason the human race can multiply is an embarrassment to society?

 

[Ian Caronia]

2 types of scenes: Sex scenes and Love scenes

Spoiler: Clarification Between Sex and Love Scenes

The difference between them (Shut the hell up, Mr. Moore, I'm talking) is the context and content of said scene, or to put it more simply: Love and Lust.
_A love scene has passion, emotion, and a history behind it. That history is the build up to said scene.
Using ME1/2 as an example (and pretty good example too): Jack's Paragon scene...
_A sex scene is just sex. And damn can it get graphic. Of course there can be emotional impact, but it's often shown in a negative light (man sexes hooker, woman seduces man, etc). These scenes are either used just for stimulation, to further flesh out the personality of a character, or, more commonly, as a contrast to the love scenes.
Ex: Miranda's scene (just for stimulation) and *Jack's Renegade scene (for contrast to the Paragon scene)
Sex scenes can have a history behind them, a build up, but the build up is always in a lustful context.

--Now of course there are scenes with emotional impact that also include nudity and intercourse. Those are also called love scenes. Graphic or no, the emotion of love is there.
See the first Mass Effect.
[Thane, Garrus, etc. were not mentioned in love scene because, as beautiful as they are, they are more kisses than anything. Bioware kinda shafted the feminine players out of an actual love scene... As they did with Talimancers (though at least we saw Tali sexy-tackle Shep. I wanted some turian action too...(though that was a touching scene, wasn't it?))]

I believe that games need more love in their romance scenes. It can have tits bouncing, asses shaking, hip thrusting and so forth, but without the build up of actual emotion (and for this you need good writers) the love scene just becomes soft core porn. You want a sex scene then just do it, but don't try to say it's loving.
I also believe that, if you have to have a love scene, you better have human forms and real physics. As much as I love anime, a giganto-titted woman makes any love scene seem purely for stimulation since that's what she was designed for. Likewise, no matter how human a woman or man is, if their breasts are stiffer than a statue's or if they move in a very...odd fashion then the scene is broken because no one (without very good suspension of disbelief) can get over the odd gestures and lack of human physics.

...Though I'd also like some hardcore sex scene DLC for Soul Calibur characters. Over 18 to buy the game, over 18 to buy the scenes.

 

[Zyphonee]

Troll somewhere else.

I'm not trolling.

As a person that strongly disagrees with your views on sexuality, I can't help but ask; what drives you to think that sex is and embarrassment to society and should be condemned?

I don't mean to start a flame war, but I am legitimately curious

 

[Caligulove]

I agree with you that BioWare always has a penchant for keeping the romance 'payout' to near the end of the game or before some sort of event. I can understand the decision to do this, but it's not terribly realistic, since most bouts of romance that I've been glad to be a part of usually have more random sex and passion- instead of everything leading up to some predetermined point.

As for how 'love' scenes or whatever you call them should go in my eyes- I would just like there to actually be more of a sense of intimacy. They weren't the biggest draw in Mass Effect 2- but I had to admit that all of the 'romance' scenes seemed pretty tame compared to Shepard's first outing, or bedding in this case. There technically was nudity, but even without that it was still very, very obvious what was going on- came off as much more mature in it's approach- not too far into fan service or to make it 'hot' but had more of a "...well of course they're naked- they're having sex. What'd you expect?" approach to it.

All the controversy from that meant that they were handling it the way they were supposed to, I thought. In an adult manner. Not their fault so many people are sexually repressed and approach the subject of sex in such a juvenile way- as if no 'actually' has sex but just talk about it.

 

[conflictofinterests]

Quick time events. lol!

"Hold both shoulder buttons and gently lick the Home/XBox button in a gentle circular manner"

"Press X not to be premature."

Hahahaha

haha! "Rotate both thumbsticks in a circular fashion"

"...Opposite each other for double points."

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

That sounds . . . phenomenally interesting, actually. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to implement--you're basically just mixing-and-matching various physical traits and personality archetypes. The hard part, as you pointed out, would be gauging the player preference while maintaining immersion. If you could get that down . . . damn, I'd certainly play it.

I don't think maintaining immersion would be so hard. I mean, consider stuff like the Milgram Experiment and similar psychological studies. The applicants certainly believe that they are giving electrical shocks to a real human being, so that test has immersion nailed down pretty good.

So creating a test with subtle enough questions to measure the players preferences and gathering sufficient data to apply to the game world shouldn't be too hard.

Also, as to the immersion you could make sure that the game keeps the archetypes random as well.

For example, if we consider a more or less sandbox style game like Fallout: New Vegas. There are named characters in certain towns and locations but throughout the gameworld you basically have a bunch of "random" characters spawning here and there for you to stumble across (some are hostile, and some are not).

The thing is, these random characters faces are often randomly generated on the spot (much like how you can randomize a specific face for your own player character at the beginning of the game). There's no reason why the same thing couldn't be done with gathered data regarding mannerisms and behaviour as well.

This I believe would serve to heighten immersion due to the very fact that the player can't know on beforehand which randomly generated in-game character will prove to match his or her personal preferences (much like in real life where we can't really guess when the next "new friend" or "the love of our life" is going to bump into us by accident). So randomly spawning NPC's, who in turn randomly spawn both physical looks as well as behaviour, and the randomizer is also partially affected by gathereed data abou the players personal preferences.

Could lead to interesting scenarios, where you are jumped by a bunch of robbers in game and one of them just happens to look like what you envision your ideal partner to look like. It could also so happen that the behaviour of that particular robber is randomized as moderately aggressive so they don't attack right away but prefer to have you hand over your valuables and avoid a violent situation. What will you do? Shoot first and ask questions later? Or will the player become affected by the insidious game engine and hesitate? Perhaps becoming curious as to what could happen if the player just got a chance to explore that seemingly random spawned NPC is like?

Oh well, we all have our ideas...

 

[Dynex811]

Quick time events. lol!

Assassins Creed 2

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

They should be handled the way they are handled in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.

Look it up. It means something and is quite tasteful.

 

[conflictofinterests]

I agree with you that BioWare always has a penchant for keeping the romance 'payout' to near the end of the game or before some sort of event. I can understand the decision to do this, but it's not terribly realistic, since most bouts of romance that I've been glad to be a part of usually have more random sex and passion- instead of everything leading up to some predetermined point.

As for how 'love' scenes or whatever you call them should go in my eyes- I would just like there to actually be more of a sense of intimacy. They weren't the biggest draw in Mass Effect 2- but I had to admit that all of the 'romance' scenes seemed pretty tame compared to Shepard's first outing, or bedding in this case. There technically was nudity, but even without that it was still very, very obvious what was going on- came off as much more mature in it's approach- not too far into fan service or to make it 'hot' but had more of a "...well of course they're naked- they're having sex. What'd you expect?" approach to it.

All the controversy from that meant that they were handling it the way they were supposed to, I thought. In an adult manner. Not their fault so many people are sexually repressed and approach the subject of sex in such a juvenile way- as if no 'actually' has sex but just talk about it.

I would like to add that occasionally romance is semi-structured. It happens when one party seduces the other. This is typically frowned upon, however, and so should most likely be avoided.

 

[General BrEeZy]

i vote to keep sex in reality.

 

[conflictofinterests]

i vote to keep sex in reality.

I second this. It's too fun to get rid of!

 

[Shellsh0cker]

Could lead to interesting scenarios, where you are jumped by a bunch of robbers in game and one of them just happens to look like what you envision your ideal partner to look like. It could also so happen that the behaviour of that particular robber is randomized as moderately aggressive so they don't attack right away but prefer to have you hand over your valuables and avoid a violent situation. What will you do? Shoot first and ask questions later? Or will the player become affected by the insidious game engine and hesitate? Perhaps becoming curious as to what could happen if the player just got a chance to explore that seemingly random spawned NPC is like?

Oh well, we all have our ideas...

Damn, I didn't even think of that. Man, I really want to play this game now. Think of all the ways you could meet! Maybe she tries to rob you, like you said, or maybe vice versa. Perhaps she hires you for a job, or, again, vice versa. Maybe you run into each other while after the same objective. Maybe you're hired to kill her but opt to protect her instead. Maybe she's just a shopkeeper in town. Endless, the possibilities are.

 

[General BrEeZy]

i vote to keep sex in reality.

I second this. It's too fun to get rid of!

i haven't experienced it yet, but i already know its awesome.
and its video games...come on.
if we cant truly understand warfare in games to any realistic degree, then sex is definitely less feasable! xD

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

i vote to keep sex in reality.

I second this. It's too fun to get rid of!

i haven't experienced it yet, but i already know its awesome.
and its video games...come on.
if we cant truly understand warfare in games to any realistic degree, then sex is definitely less feasable! xD

Not trying to be contrary, but are you saying that sex is more complex an issue to comprehend than war? Just checking to see if I understand your post or if I misread it.