Nintendo partners with Playboy to promote Bayonetta. Twitch bans sexualized clothing and a lack of clothing from its broadcasters. Critics call out sex scenes in games as unacceptable. The list goes on and on. Outside of violence, sexual content in video games is arguably one of the form of entertainment’s most criticized features. Is there any hope of reaching a consensus on sexual standards in gaming?
Based on one narratively fitting ending in Mass Effect 3, Prothean squadmate Javik is highly unlikely to return in the next Mass Effect game.
He was one of my least favorite characters. I wish they would have done the Proths different.
GF365: "If you’re a reader, this list of great games for avid readers is for you. Games are a form of art, and some have written literature in them."
This Canada Day, explore our homeland with the best video games that have adapted or reimagined the Great White North in digital form.
I like to think of the grown men who sat there and posed the character models into the sex-scenes.
It's a case-by-case basis. People will find a way to be offended by anything sexual. It's pretty pathetic, actually, as if sexual content is some sort of forsaken taboo. Sure, there are cases of downright stupid amounts of sexual content, but those are usually called out by the gaming community long before the mainstream media goes after them. The ones the mainstream finds first are usually reaching.
Sexuality in games is not inherently bad: that's a fact. Bayonetta is not a negative depiction of sexuality; she's a powerful heroine who uses her sexuality as a weapon. She's empowered. Mass Effect might have had romance scenes, but I don't think they were in any way "offensive." They did more to develop the player's involvement in the story, letting them have romantic or sexual relationships with the different characters and defining their own version of Shepard. The lack of restrictions on sexual orientation was even better. These scenes were for developing "your Shepard."
Twitch is a different situation because folks are being called out not because of the game they're playing, but because of how they present themselves. Being nude on camera has nothing to do with the video game you're streaming. That's not relevant to this argument.
Overall, sexuality in games should be under similar scrutiny as it is in film (too much in some situations can be tacky, I assure you), but treating it like some sort of evil bit of debauchery is only reinforcing the mainstream opinion that these things can't be art, when we as gamers know full well that they can. It's okay to be a bit uncomfortable with sexuality, because as The Dilinger Escape Plan's Ben Weinman said: "no good art came from comfort."
not even going to click this article, why does there need to be a standard. whatever happened to freedom of choice and artistic license.
I don't see why every game would need to adhere to a standard, on any aspect.
You can say the same thing about books, movies, music etc, its all art and no one should be afraid to put sex into it.