Sex in Games: Representing and Desiring the Virtual

Abstract

No sooner is a visual medium invented than it becomes used for pornographic representation - games are no exception. This paper chronicles depictions of sexual intercourse within game content and the presence of pornographic imagery that utilizes the game aesthetic whilst attempting to examine some of the motivation behind its creation and use. Unlike historical accounts of the stimulating effects of art, such as men’s arousal at the realism of Sansorino’s nude Venus, or Pliny’s account of a man’s infatuation with the sculpture of Aphrodite of Caridos, sex in games exists within a cyber-culture that offers access to a broad range of erotic, graphic and specialized pornographic materials. The authenticity of digitally mediated experiences – desire- driven assemblages of the social and technological – is given consideration in terms of whether the perceptual nature of sexuality is undergoing a transformation, allowing for wider patterns of variation in erotic sub-cultures. This paper recognizes how these sub- cultures remain focused upon, and constructed around phallocentric fantasies and desires, but begins to reflect on how the substance of the body and the sexual object is continuing to shift and diversify.