Disclaimer:
To begin, I would like to state that I am sorry for posting five videos, but it is hard to show what I will be talking about without using all five. The game series Mass Effect is based around the choices you make, and is pretty free in letting you make those choices. Thus, actions taken in these videos are only several of many possibilities that can occur in these games, but they are as graphic as they will ever get. Also, if you don’t want to watch them, you don’t have to, as they are “sexual” in nature. So enjoy the commentary and the videos. I highly suggest the games, they are fantastic.
Cheers,
Matthew Short
Actual Post:
As discussed in class, chapter 15 (Titllation) of How to do things with Videogames by Ian Bogost , sex and sexual themes are becoming a very strong force within the gaming culture. One of the genres of games at the forefront of this battle over sexuality is the RPG genre, and the ever-growing “epic story” branch of the genre. A game series that I have been addicted to since it first came out is the Mass Effect series, which just concluded with its third installment, released over spring break (so you can imagine that I did nothing more than waste hours of my life playing it, haha). In the game series there are over 3000 variables (if loading data from the first game to the last) that have a profound impact on gameplay and story as you play the game. While there is currently a debate going on right now about the game—the ending of the game has sparked a huge fight between developers and gamers that has cause the whole meaning of “games as art” into question again—the first round of controversy that Mass Effect causedhas been the “sex” scenes it shows throughout.
The first two videos are from Mass Effect (2007), with one having the player have sex with a female human and the other with a female alien (as a side note, the female alien’s whole race is female and they all look like her). Now when this game came out, as Bogost mentions, there was uproar over the second sex scene (the one involving the female alien). While both scenes show a surprising amount of nudity for a video game, they still follow the basic rules that one would expect for a PG-13 movie. Nudity is only shown for very few seconds and does not include frontal nudity. At the time, this was ground breaking, and caused uproar from the more conservative branches of the videogame culture. However, at the time, you could not have any homosexual relations in the game, and you could only have “sex” with the alien (which looks like a human female) only if you were male. This is despite the fact that there were major male alien characters in the game, and the player could be female.
We then come to the second game, Mass Effect 2 (2010), where I chose a scene with a different female human from the one in the first game. What I find interesting in this scene is that if you compare it to the first two from the first game, this is somewhat more conservative. The developer of the series, Bioware, seems to have been more conservative regarding what they allowed to be shown in the games during sex scenes. This might have been a response to the backlash they got for including the scenes in the first game; however, in Mass Effect 2, they add more aliens with which a character could have a “sex” scene (this included male aliens for female characters). So, if this was a response to the backlash, then why have more possibilities? In my opinion, it is that times and culture had changed since the first game came out. While one could argue that this was a reversal in how sex was portrayed in video games, the fact the player was given more options and the actual “sex” scene is longer and more provocative seems otherwise. While homosexual relations were still not allowed in this game, the leaning towards a more “liberal” outlook on sex in games seemed, to me at least, beginning to take hold in video game culture around the time of this game’s release.
Finally we arrive at the last two videos, one of a scene with the female human from the first game, and the other with a male player and a male human. Both of these videos are from the last game in the series, Mass Effect 3 (2012), which is the epic conclusion to the trilogy. I would like to start by comparing the first video from Mass Effect to the first video in this section. They both feature the same characters, and, as far as I can tell, with many of the same choices having been chosen throughout the game. Howeve, each has a difference in its sex scenes. Although we’re talking about two different games, this demonstrates how just a few years can change what is accepted in the game culture when it comes to sex. We moved from flashes of nudity here and there, to outright “undy tumbling” in the last game. That is a major shift, it shows us what is tolerated by us as a culture; however, the real proof in the argument is in what is shown/suggested in the second video from this game. Mass Effect 3 was the first widely publicized and world-renown game to allow and show homosexual relations in it. While the previous games in the series originally had plans in them to allow it (files can be found in the data to suggest it) they were never implemented in complete form. My reasoning is that we and the videogame culture were not ready for such a display. We needed maturing. We needed to be built up with normal to slightly alien sex scenes, to more and more “alien” (aliens that don’t look like blue women) sex scenes, and finally to the endless possibilities that can happen in the final game. By the time we reached the third game this year we were ready, because we had matured enough to see every side of the coin when it came to “sexual” relations.
In the end, what I am trying to show in this seeker post is that the Mass Effect series is not only ground breaking regarding its ability to make characters come alive and make one feel and experience every “relationship” he or she may have, but that it is a series that has helped us as a videogaming culture grow in what content we accept. In 2007, it would have been financial suicide to put homosexual relations into the game, as there would have been a major push back from the conservative side of the spectrum. Now we are ready, and Mass Effect 3 has opened the gateway to what I see as a new “norm” for sexual relations in video games. While all three had M (PG-13/R) ratings, I would not be surprised if in another few years games showing the exact same thing got T (PG/PG-13) ratings instead. Our culture is changing in what it will accept, and Mass Effect captured that change in sexual aspect perfectly.