Video and computer games have always invited gamers into a world where they are free to experience, and perform, social taboos – shooting explosive weaponry, racing vehicles at top speed, picking up prostitutes and dealing drugs. It is therefore no surprise that one of modern society’s most prevalent taboos would eventually cement its place within the world of the video game.
Sex in games is nothing new, considering Grand Theft Auto hookers or the size of Lara Croft’s bra. A new generation of video games, however, departs from the simple (yet certainly questionable) portrayal of sexualized female characters and instead engages gamers in more direct contact with the ideas, the images and sometimes even the physical experience of sex.
The game Virtual Hottie 2, for instance, is touted on an official International Game Developers Association blog as “the first game to be able to interface with the Virtual Sex Machine, an interactive device designed to physically stimulate the user while watching … the Virtual Hottie Game.”
The original Virtual Hottie already provided users with the ability to position and direct the movements of a naked, digitally animated woman. I am under the impression that users are further able to create their own onscreen avatar to then interact with the woman. Using only his or her keyboard, a gamer can then engage in virtual sex. Apparently, with the technological
innovation of Virtual Hottie 2, users will not only interact with the screen, but the screen will physically interact with, and pleasure, the user.
The implications of receiving sexual pleasure from an inanimate device are hardly as questionable as the implications of what the gaming world deems sexual. The majority of games involving sex acts and arousal use point of view shots watching women; scouring the Internet while researching sex games,
I came upon not one single digital animation of a man within a game, much less with any kind of sexual appearance or outfit and certainly not fully nude as were most of the digital women.
I am obviously not pleased that the gaming world reverts to stereotypical pornographic images in order to entice gamers into sexual arousal; however, our culture of pornography is so pervasive (Internet pornography is a $12 billion per year industry in the United States alone) that it is no surprise that plastic, submissive women have becoming a sexually stimulating symbol for many an American man.
Indeed, the world of fantasy that includes pornographic images in some ways ought to be respected in its unrealism. Humans deserve the opportunity to depart from real life and enter a place of imagination wherein animated characters, situations, etc. are engaging and arousing; the virtual world provided by video games is so attractive to users for the very reason of a desire for fantasy.
The catch, however, is that when the fantastical world of video/computer games or other sources of virtual reality become muddled with the real world, humans seem to have a tendency to forget which is which. There is no conclusive evidence that video games lead to violence. However, studies have shown that onscreen violence does desensitize viewers to offscreen violence. Onscreen sex symbols produce real world changes in what is deemed sexually pleasing, as seen in the curves of Marilyn Monroe versus the ’90s coke addict look a la Courtney Love.
In the same manner that users of violent video games must be careful to reorient themselves when returning to a world where death means nothing more than pressing a green button, so must sex game users tread carefully in the transition from virtual sex to the real thing. Opening lines of communication about virtual sex, real sex and how the two will continue to interact is complicated by the fact that we live in a society where sex is talked about in euphemisms and approximately
70 percent of women never experience an orgasm during sexual intercourse. When at least one in three women will experience a sexual assault or harassment in her lifetime and when most men still can’t find the clitoris, clouding the act of sex within a plastic, virtual world where a computer can jack you off is problematic.
There is nothing inherently wrong with interactive virtual pornography; I had simply hoped that we humans would learn how to better sexually interact with one another before moving on to machines.
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