Nudity and sexual explicitness in video games

By Chongchen Saelee

Most adults would still consider video games a children's toy.  But it's not like developers aren't adapting to their aging audience.  With mature titles like Heavy Rain and the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever, the explicitness is there, but does it make the game any more mature in nature and not just something still targeted at juveniles?
 The stigma hasn't changed.  Video games with nudity are like the newer American Pie straight-to-video movies:  supposedly adult characters in adult situations involving sex, drugs, alcohol, but nudity is used to sell it to teenagers.  One tell-tale sign is the lack of pubic hair on adult women, but that's a topic for another day.

I haven't played the full version of Heavy Rain, only the demo, but I have to give the developers Quantic Dream credit for creating such a beautiful looking game.  The demo doesn't come with the nude scenes, but there are videos on the Internet for those who are curious.  Within the context of how the game's narrative plays out, imitating film, the main character takes a shower nude and later does a striptease as an undercover stripper.

So given those two scenes, does it make the game more mature?  In my opinion, how it's presented is really mature, maybe even classy.  The context of the shower scene is not sexual, although gratuitous, but does help to sexualize the character in an otherwise incredibly gloomy setting.  Otherwise, when she later becomes an undercover stripper, the player won't find it credible that she could seduce the bad guy.  Ultimately, does Heavy Rain's usage of nudity change the stigma for video games?  Can we truly reference it as a "mature" game worthy of discussion?  Or is it merely used to sell itself as a mature game but still only target to teenagers?

If nudity and sex are the main focus, then there is a market for that.  Sex games exist.  It just doesn't have the same production value as the big-budget, commercially marketed ones.  Granted, sex games are definitely not marketed towards teenagers.  Although, sometimes I question Japanese animated sex games.

There was controversy with a hidden sex game in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas called Hot Coffee.  Of course, it was used in a satirical/comedic context, on homage to urban films.

The Leisure Suit Larry games are well-known for its sexuality and nudity.  But the games are also very humorous.

So does putting sex and nudity into video games make it any more mature?  It's possible.  In doing so from a retrospective, adult-like way, it might be mature.  However, that's on the developer's end, not the player.

Ultimately, if video games want to be respected as serious adult media, there are many factors that still need to be worked on.  One, of course, is the introduction of sex and nudity but presented in a way that it's not exploitative.   That's not to say it's even needed at all.

The day filmmakers start making references to video games on how to do sex and nudity is the day video games get their deserved recognition.  But first, let's see video games with anatomically correct modeling, and we'll see where it goes from there.