I speak for myself in saying that I would consider it awful and demeaning to see someone put time and energy into creating interactive porn. It is unnecessary and vulgar depreciation of the fine art that is making computer games.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

First, the films you mentioned as examples; Basic Instinct and Eyes Wide Shut couldn''t be further appart in thier treatment of ''adult material'' if they tried...

Basic Instict mainly deals with adult male sexual fantasies....while Eyes Wide Shut asks a moral question ("who is being more unfaithful?" the wife who actively fantasizes about sex with other men...or the husband who activeily seeks out sex with other women (but fails))....one film is basicly soft core porn...the other uses sex to make a point....

anyway...

Check out Gamasutra.com ...they ran some articals dealing with sex in games...

How about Lara Croft - that is a small step towards applying the same kind of sexappeal that film is exploiting to sell copies.

quote:Original post by HenryApe
I think you either need to restrict yourself to the American market or provide an explicit definition of ''adult material''.

i dunno, based on some of the anime i''ve seen, i think my new RPG Robot Alien Rape Quest will do better overseas then here in the USA.

--- krez (krezisback@aol.com)

The real question you want to ask yourself is WHY do you want such material in your game?

If it is just for the hell of it (or perhaps to make up for lousy gameplay or story), then I wouldn''t bother. You''ll end up wrestling with censors and publishers for ages, and ultimately you''ll fail, or at least lose a lot of blood over it.

A side note: the Larry series doesn''t actually have explicit visuals at all (if there are then I haven''t found them ;D), it merely deals with a juvenile subject (a loser trying to get lucky in a seedy game world), so there probably wasn''t that much trouble publishing it. It was also done as a joke, it was only meant to be funny.

Listen to MSW. If you want "serious" adult themes, not just lighthearted adulty jokes, you''d better have a good reason for it. Emphasising and enriching story, emotion, and character are all good reasons, and if argued correctly they can probably be justified to most publishers. Appealing to the porn business is not a good reason. (but they''ll probably buy it anyway, so you''ll still corner the market!)


"the difference between art and pornography is lighting"
-I forget who said that, but they were probably important.

Bear in mind, however, that unlike film or TV, there are very few age restrictions or classifications of computer games. Some games are "voluntarily rated", ie the designers themselves suggest a minimum age for playing. A very few actually have BBFC ratings (doom got a 15). But I have never, ever seen even the most reputable of shops enforce these. So just remember, if you put adult material in your games, there is absolutely nothing you can do to restrict or control it.

Is it ok to realistically portray violence in games but not sex? Violence is the biggest problem in our world, not sex.

Anger, terror and humour are all human emotions and are prevalent in many of the games we play, but why not sex?! The answer to this is that games are still perceived to be childrens toys and the people in governement and the people that vote them in (Baby Boomers aged 40-50) use games as a scapegoat to blame the worlds problems on. Any time a kid goes ballistic and kills someone ultimately computer games get blamed. What are the chances of getting sex in a game then?

Also to Symphonic...

How can you define the art of making computer games? What right do you have to include computer game violence as art but not sex?

"Make love not war, and the world will be a better place."

Adult material I believe is best kept out of good games if tasteless.
Games like Larry though and things like sleeping with hookers in Gta3 to get more energy and general use of adult themed material can be really good.
Sort of like a wink to the gamer,I want games too be more realistic in a way,with greater emphasis on charecters and interesting content.It''s nice if you can relate to the Charecter and sex and general adult themed material,are common interests.
Plus I think a lot of the game industry is only just starting too understand what women want from games,and more serious content is one.
Porn is stupid you just appeal to the l.C.D namely 13 year olds who can''t get online or buy mags. we''ve all been there.
Light hearted , insightful ,realistic and tasteful (for guys and girls.not too cheesy,not too shallow.) adult content is another matter all together.



"There''s so much too do, and a lot of you are wasting time.
This is ART dagnammit! get creative or get buried."