I had originally thought that there would be more discussion during Tuesday’s class about the chapter in Bogost’s book about titillation. Bogost gave numerous examples of graphic games that explicitly showed acts of intercourse. These examples perplexed me enough to search YouTube for them, and I was disturbed by what I saw. My initial reaction was something along the lines of, “Who on Earth would make games like these?” While video games are certainly not limited to a particular age group, they tend to be targeted more toward younger audiences. Sex is typically a very controversial topic to discuss among children and adolescents, and I was appalled that video games as graphic and uncensored as these would be made for anybody (young people in particular) to play.
I personally believe that sex should be censored to some extent in video games. Bogost mentions the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and how a hidden sex scene aroused much controversy. Having played that game, I never saw the scene in question but did see similar scenes, which were not nearly as vulgar as the gameplay of Custer’s Revenge or Beat ‘Em and Eat ‘Em. In fact, most of the sex was off-screen, with the only clear indication being the dialogue. This is the kind of censorship that I think makes sex scenes in video games acceptable for younger players. To be fair here, the game does have mature ratings for multiple reasons, including the sex scenes. However, that certainly doesn’t mean that younger players can’t get their hands on the game and play it.
A more appropriate (or what I think is appropriate, anyway) example of a sex scene in a video game is in one of my favorite games of all time, Assassin’s Creed 2. During a cutscene near the beginning of the game, the player character, a young and charismatic Italian male named Ezio Auditore, sneaks over to a girl’s house and climbs through her window. The game allows the player to mash a few buttons, which—if tapped quickly enough—will cause Ezio to kiss the girl, remove her shirt (at which point the point of view changes so that no cleavage is seen), and coax her into bed. Everything that happens thereafter is off-screen, but the player is well aware of what is happening. There is a time jump to the next morning, at which point the girl’s livid father chases Ezio out of the house. The entire cutscene lasts for approximately a minute, but the entire thing is censored in such a way that the player knows what is happening but yet is not suddenly presented with inappropriate visuals. The link to the video is provided below.