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[Alec]

Also, this is pretty funny:

I like how the guy sounds like a young Eugene Levy.

[Ivan]

Also, this is pretty funny:

I like how the guy sounds like a young Eugene Levy.

Ahahaha, you just gave that video a whole new dimension.

[Renton]

I think there is one.

[Cheater‽]

Rinku: Furcadia?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'll have to google that, never heard of it.

[Valter]

To me the obvious reason that violent games are accepted more than sex games is because grabbing a battle axe and hacking the limbs off your coworkers is very difficult to pull off, whereas rape and sex are still large problems in society today.

Violent video games are more fantastic (less realistic), so there's less societal impact from playing them.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

That's the strangest idea I've heard called "obvious" in a while. That idea never even occurred to me before, and although I'm not saying it's false, it just seems like a pretty out-there idea. In particular, I think violent crime is far more common than rape. Even if you're female, you're far more likely to be robbed than you are to be raped.

Also, games with sexual elements usually are not about rape. There are plenty of murder games, but very few (if any) rape games. I'm not saying games should, instead of being about murdering people, be about raping people instead. Rape is still violence. Rape is more like the combination of violence and sex.

[team_q]

I wouldn't consider Sex a problem, and you should ask some people in Urban centers about how they feel about violence.

BUT, I am a major proponent of no institutionalized censorship.

[Alevice]

I think he meant it in the way that videogames do not influence the individuals under said crimes.

I am not saying I agree with the argument, for I do not believe that games could create more rapists.

[Valter]

That's the strangest idea I've heard called "obvious" in a while. That idea never even occurred to me before, and although I'm not saying it's false, it just seems like a pretty out-there idea. In particular, I think violent crime is far more common than rape. Even if you're female, you're far more likely to be robbed than you are to be raped.

Also, games with sexual elements usually are not about rape. There are plenty of murder games, but very few (if any) rape games. I'm not saying games should, instead of being about murdering people, be about raping people instead. Rape is still violence. Rape is more like the combination of violence and sex.

Right, but when a game tries to simulate sex, it usually tries to go for realism. On the other hand, when a game goes for violence, you're usually a spartan super-soldier who can lift trucks with one hand. Or you're a medieval knight in shining armor who casts magic to smite his enemies.

The realism is what makes the difference, to me. When you play realistic games and you like them, you might want to be a part of the real deal (There are probably studies that could show Call of Duty games increasing army membership). When you play fantastic games, you're not nearly so tempted, considering the infeasibility of attempting the acts performed in games.

That said, there are numerous games that attempt to depict crimes realistically (I believe Kane and Lynch featured a "bank job" multiplayer mode?). However, when we go back to the medium we were originally discussing, MMOs, you'll find that a vast majority of them are all epic fantasy Hack-and-Slash games. Orcs in shiny armor wielding improbably huge battle-axes and the like.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm not sure that's true. Games that deal with sex often aren't about realism. Have you played any dating sim games or Japanese hentai games? Those are not very realistic. Similarly, the sex in Second Life doesn't seem to be very realistic either.

Also, some violent games are very realistic, in particular, military FPSs are very realistic portrayals of violence. Even for online games, the main attraction of many FPS games is being able to play them online to kill other players, so in effect they are MMO games (just with small, episodic games rather than a persistent world, although the score charts are a form of persistence).

So I just think it's false to say that violence in games is less realistic than sex in games: for both, you have games that treat them realistically and (more often) games that treat them non-realistically.

[Cheater‽]

Also, Mass Effect. Alien Sex. Realism? Whatareyoutalkingabout?

[Valter]

I guess it just comes down to your own moral values. I've been totally desensitized to violent video games, but I guess sex is just a step over the line for me.

Besides, games like Second Life are more interested in themes of bondage and rape rather than just sex. I don't think that's acceptable at all.

And besides, why have games that just have sex in them? It's mostly just a simple way of bumping the ESRB rating up to AO. And unlike violence, sex is legal and (in most cases) relatively available. The purpose of video games is usually to allow you to do things that you can not normally do. When you start to simulate things that you can do easily, it becomes less interesting.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Certainly it comes down to moral values, but I'm just saying a lot of the time those moral values make little logical sense. For instance, in the US it's seen as more okay for a child to see someone's head explode in slow motion in a gory way than to see a woman's breasts. That's patently absurd to me.

My impression about Second Life is that you can't "rape" a player unless they acquiesce -- so it's play-rape, which is fine to me. Bondage, similarly, is fine to me as long as both parties agree to it.

I agree that just having sex in games wouldn't be that interesting unless it was used in an interesting way. But often it can be important to the story of a game. R-rated movies for instance often portray sex for purposes of story, but if a game tried what an R-rated movie tried, it'd get AO rather than M, which makes no sense.

I don't think it's just a simple way of bumping the ESRB rating up to AO, though -- why would a game company want to do that? They don't benefit from an AO rating. I was just remarking on how hypocritical it is that extreme violents gets an M rating whereas even a little bit of portrayal of sexual material gets it an AO rating.

[team_q]

An AO rating is in effect, a ban of a game. North Americans need to stop having such a juvenile approach to sexuality, but that's what you get when you build a society on puritanism. People have strange violent fantasies, people have strange sexual fantasies, who are you to tell them they can't express themselves in a non harmful way, and attempt to make money off of like minded individuals.

[Core Xii]

Interesting discussion, but if you're going to continue it, I propose it deserves its own thread.

A fantasy sex MMO? Now how the hell would that work?

For that matter, how would any game about sex work?

[increpare]

To me the obvious reason that violent games are accepted more than sex games is because grabbing a battle axe and hacking the limbs off your coworkers is very difficult to pull off, whereas rape and sex are still large problems in society today.

You don't consider rape to be an act of violence? 

Right, but when a game tries to simulate sex, it usually tries to go for realism.

Examples?

[Titch]

Interesting discussion, but if you're going to continue it, I propose it deserves its own thread.

A fantasy sex MMO? Now how the hell would that work?

For that matter, how would any game about sex work?

Boy, you guys aren't very well read on your adult games, are ya?

Red Light Center and Shaiya have both been around for a while, among others. I don't know how they work as such as they both made my computer stutter too much to try them. I was reading about BoneTown yesterday which has sex as a main theme of advancement in the game, which is a simple slider shifting mechanic. Successful 'encounters' make you level up and gain access to more attractive looking women.

Most sex simulations I've seen and played are rather unrealistic in all the worst ways. Simplifying the whole act to a some pleasure meter or similar takes so much fun out of it. As do binary reactions based on the state of the meter and simple choices. It looses all it's sexiness when it's 'insert tab into slot A, B or C'.

Anyway, I'll stop now, this is getting waay OT.

[Corpus]

grabbing a battle axe and hacking the limbs off your coworkers is very difficult to pull off

Do they not have knife crime where you live?

Also, I love that you called sex a problem in society.


EDIT: Titch, your argument could be applied equally well to violence. Including "loss of sexiness."

[mrfredman]

The problem with current sex MMOs is that they too realistic for us to easily project ourselves into the situation and use our imaginations to fill in the gaps but not realistic enough to convincingly simulate people in a way that we don't need to use our imaginations at all. I read an essay about it once, there is some scientific name to describe this situation, I think it was originally coined to describe robot evolution and the hypothetical problems that might arise with sex robots, but I can't remember the name of the theory for the life of me.

This same problem applies to Playstation Home and many other MMOs but it is nowhere as abundantly clear as in attempts to simulate sex online. Once we have the technology to depict people in a way that is convincing realistic, sex MMOs will most likely rise and flourish, but I'd say we are still a decade or two away from that at this point.