History of Sex in Games

of Sex in Gaming the History 1975 In 1978, Roy Irubshaw started working on a multi-user adventure game. He named the game MUD (Multi-User Dungeon). This game format would eventually become the venue of choice for many seeking cybersex – also re- ferred to as mudsex, netsex, and TinySex. 1976 1977 1978 O One of the earliest examples of sex in gaming came about with Custer's Revenge, a game that contained a lot of ob- jectionable content. Atari ultimately sued the game's devel- oper, Mystique, in an effort to publiclų distance the Atari console from the game's negative media attention. The game was first released on October 13, 1982, and received significant criticism due to its crude simulation of an a Native American woman being raped. 1979 1980 1981 1982 O MOLENCE NONUDITY Although Nintendo allowed graphic violence in its video games, nudity and sexuality were strictly prohibited. Former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi believed that if the company allowed the licensing of porno- graphic games, the company's image would be forever tarnished. 1983 1984 1985 The earliest first person sex simulator was a black-and-white title for the Mac called MacPlaymate. A hand-drawn animation of a naked woman laid on a bed. The object of the game was to arouse her by touching her with the cursor and moving the mouse around. There were other things you could do as well – the cursor wasn't always a hand. 1986 1987 OO 1988 Leisure Suit Larry is a series of adventure games published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009. In general, the games follow Larry's escapades as he attempts to convince a variety of young nubile 1989 1990 women to have sex with him. The raunchier moments were usually hidden as Easter eggs. Things began to become racier toward the end of the series, particularly in Leisure Suit Larry: 1991 Love for Sail! 1992 The video game censorship battle, while continuous, hit the mainstream 1993 nearly two decades ago with 1992's Mortal Kombat. 1994 Sociolotron is an MMORPG that, aside from standard fare associated with the genre, features sex as an integrated part of the world. The sex isn't user-created, it's ac- 1995 1996 tually built into the game from the moment you start. 1997 Ridnean HOT COFFEE Sow 1998 In June 2005, a portion of unused code for an inter- active sex minigame was found within the main script of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The fact that the scene was left on the disc and could be ac- cessed by altering a few bytes of the game's code via a hex editor prompted the ESRB to change the rating of San Andreas to Adults Only. The game was pulled from many stores, and Rockstar Games posted a loss of $280.8 million that quarter. 1999 2000 2001 Brew 2002 In 2006, Illusion released RapeLay, a game in which a rapist stalks a mother and her two underage daugh- ters. It featured a realistic sexual simulator which allows the player to grope and undress the charac- ters on a crowded train. Later, the player could rape all three women at the protagonist's leisure. The game has been subject to recent controversy in 2009 when feminist group Equality Now put it under public scrutiny. 2003 2004 2005 2006 Mass Effect has an optional romantic subplot. Shepard can develop a relationship with a human party member of the opposite sex, or with a blue-skinned alien. The couple can sleep together close to the end of the game; a cutscene then shows a series of fast cuts of a sexual encoun- 2007 O 2008 ter (although no specific sex act is clearly shown). A New York Times article compared the contents to U.S. evening network television. 2009 2010 http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/11/lets-talk-about-sex-in-video-games.ars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy#SexuaLthemes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer's_Revenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD http://www.designersnotebook.com/Columns/034_Sex_Part_2/body_034_sex_part_2.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_minigame_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Effect#Media_coverage_of_the_sex_scene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_(series) Sources