The movie “Gamer” tells a conventional story that follows the plot devices of “Death Race” and “The Running Man,” where prisoners fight in Slayers, a contest of death. The new spin on this one is that the inmates aren’t in control of their actions but rather are being played by another person, as if the entire experience were just a video game. As the violence runs rampant across the broken down arena, the camera spins and spirals wildly throughout the film, jumping from the spray of bullets to blood, from random destruction to topless women, to Gerard Butler’s face and back again. The film is a wild ride from an explosive beginning to a disappointing end, in which all loose ends miraculously tie themselves off in a manner that seems silly and contrived.
Slayers isn’t the only game being played in the movie, however. Slayers is described as the second game in a sequence of games in which players control people. In the story of the movie, Society came first, and at first glance Society gives the appearance of a large colorful chat room where women have sudden and fleeting desires to remove their tops. A second look into the overly colorful world of Society showcases a man and a woman flirting with each other. The film cuts between the male player and the male character as they speak their lines to the female character. It then cuts between a very large man eating chicken wings saying the female character’s lines, and then the female character repeating these lines.
The idea behind Society, and the interactive gender confusion that follows, isn’t entirely new. The setup of it all seems very close to an online program called “Second Life,” where users can create their own characters to travel through an entirely player made landscape. Now then, while you don’t have to be looking for animated online sex to use the program, it is still a fact that the scenario presented in Society is likely to happen a day to day basis in “Second Life.”
Between “Second Life” and Society it almost seems to easy to decry American entertainment as becoming too perverse. It’s at this point that someone cries out something related to protecting the children, and a lot of people start talking about getting something done only to realize the big game starts in five minutes and the salsa container still has its little plastic wrapper on. The reality of it all is that sex has always been a part of gaming, or at the very least a couple steaming cups of sexuality, ever since the Atari 2600.
It may be surprising to hear that the Atari has a small handful of sex games, released independently and without license in surprisingly sophisticated leather containers. With titles like “Custards Revenge” and “Beat ’em & Eat ’em,” these titles were just as dirty as they were strange. Throughout the games, everything from promiscuity to rape was awarded points, and a stir was raised back in the day. None of these games were licensed by Atari, but they couldn’t do anything to stop the people from making and distributing these games.
The upcoming Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo brought about a series of problems with pornographic video games. The first is that the cartridges became licensed products with modified circuit boards that required work to build separately. The second is that it required a signficantly higher amount of work to make a game on any more advanced system. The third is that the distribution for Atari porn was primarily through places like gas stations where they could be handled behind the counter. With the amount of work and time that would be required to make Nintendo or Genesis porn, such a distribution system would not see profit. Thus, sex died out on consoles, with violence and sexuality replacing it.
The Nintendo Entertainment system by itself was a fundamentally safe system. The graphics could never be good enough to demonstrate explicit violence, and games like “Doom” and “Splatterhouse” were long from being made. It was the 16-bit graphical powerhouses that were the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo that brought a rise to both bloody battles and girls in skimpy skirts. It was during this time that “Mortal Kombat” created the fatality. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) was created and categories were handed down. A game that would have had sex in it would have been assigned a rating of Adults Only, and would not have seen the light of day in most stores in America.
So, there was no sex in games. That didn’t stop game companies from dressing their female characters both appropriately and inappropriately, lavishing a strange wardrobe that ranged from revealing to more revealing. Developers still practice this, though mostly within the confines of fighting and role playing games, and it’s usually just the Japanese developers doing it.
Actual nudity didn’t show up again until “God of War” presented a bloody story of revenge where nearly every woman was topless. There was even a sex mini-game, in which the camera cut away while the pressing of proper buttons in order allowed Kratos to show a couple ladies a good time. Sex in this game was much like sex in the “Grand Theft Auto” series: something very silly.
From “Grand Theft Auto 3” to “Grand Theft Auto 4,” equating to a total of four games, sex has evolved. It began with picking up an under-dressed prostitute and taking her to a back alley where the car shook a few times and both the protagonist and the woman sat as they waited for the animation to finish. “Vice City” afterward added on a strip club, where strippers didn’t strip, and “San Andreas” added the ability to take women out on dates, which number four implemented as well. With “Grand Theft Auto 4,” a player would have to take a woman out on a date and upon returning her home, ask to be invited in. If she says no, he takes a hike. If she says yes, the camera cuts away to the sound of her screaming, “You’re special! Say interesting things to me!”
Outside of the “Grand Theft Auto” series there were even games that involved sexual relationships with the plot. “Indigo Prophecy,” titled “Fahrenheit” in Europe, featured a more dramatic scene that presented it with a similar artistic sense as any big budget film (though you’ll have to get the European version if you want it to be interactive). “Mass Effect” allowed the player to develop a relationship between the character of Shepard and one of the other characters. By the end of the game the pair would enjoy the kind of love making only a human marine Special Forces member can have with a genderless Asari archaeologist, prior to a last ditch effort to save the galaxy from certain doom.
Sex has slowly trickled back into gaming over the years. It’s still an unwanted thing, looked down upon by the ESRB and politicians alike. Should there be more? Less? None? It’s a debate that’s still ongoing, and as entertainment connects people closer together it raises different questions about how people can interact virtually. “Gamer” brings up issues of ethics with violence, but it also brings up issues with how people connect to each other, and certainly the ethics of it all won’t be figured out quickly.