Double Take: Why is that Sexy?

by Daniel Bullard-Bates and C.T. Hutt

C.T.: In the beginning, the video game consumer market was mostly composed of boys, young men (ages 6-13) who wore denim jackets and sported mullets (oh, the eighties). It was an innocent time, a time of Paperboy and Punch-Out, a time when adult themes and weighty social considerations didn’t really factor in for developers any more than it did for us. Time marched on, as it does, and we (the key market) grew up (kind of). As our intellectual curiosity began to percolate so too did a volatile potion of hormones. Suddenly, we wanted more from our games. We wanted relevance, we wanted character, and we wanted the mysteries of our lives reflected on the screen in a dazzling display of high technology with controls at our fingertips. Above all, we wanted sex. The blossoming medium and an ever expanding base of developers were happy to respond to our demands. Just like the genie of Arabic lore our wishes were granted, but not without consequences.

Sex and other adult themes are now a part of video gaming. As an inherently complicated subject for many homo sapiens, it is no surprise that the portrayal of sex and sexuality in games gets into some pretty dicey territory. With this Double Take we are going to be discussing instances where the medium took the inclusion of sexuality in some confusing and occasionally misguided directions.

Unbewitchered

by C.T. Hutt

Those readers who have been watching the “Now Playing” section of our site can tell you that I have been hacking away at The Witcher by CD Projekt RED STUDIO for the better part of four months. The Witcher is a top down third person RPG with a unique storyline and an engaging combat system. Further, the voice acting is spot on, the environments are rich, and many of the characters are multi-dimensional. Beyond a regrettably small pallet used for NPCs and a long series of repetitive quests, I have very few complaints about this game, and yet, I’ve been playing this game on and off for four months. I’ve had more than enough time to bring this title to a close, so what’s the problem?

It comes down to this: even the most ardent reader can’t tackle an entire library, and the time we take to appreciate entertainment and the arts is regrettably finite. Simply put, while I want to play The Witcher, there are other games that have seduced my attentions more effectively. This is not to say that they are better games, but simply that they are more relevant to me at present. Even a great consumer of the arts cannot see every picture in the Louvre in a single day.

Accepting this premise, I am forced to examine my own motivations for sidelining this perfectly good title. A connoisseur of any medium must recognize that their interpretations of a given work of art are, ultimately, personal. Hence, while I may fancy myself a worthy and objective analyst of all things video game, faced with an apparent shortfall in my own level of interest in what ought to be an engaging title, I am forced to concede that my failure to finish The Witcher represents a defect in my own character, rather than the game. I think this title has a lot to offer, just not to me.

It is a curious distinction of the human experience that our interests and levels of enthusiasm are often fickle and random, but that does seem to be the state of things. Rather than fight against such bizarre forces in our own nature, I think it is better to embrace the things that we do find personally engaging with a full heart, rather than try to force ourselves to like things just because we think we ought to. It is said that the books we are meant to read choose us; I imagine this is true of video games as well. We can’t beat them all, fellow gamers, the medium has grown too large for that.