Top Selling Video Game Turns Pornographic, Includes Graphic Sex & Nudity
MARCH 1, 2017
What do the gaming industry and porn industry have in common? More than you might think.
Worth an estimated $99.6 billion, video games are big business, followed by the porn industry’s $97 billion global worth. But what else do they have in common, besides their huge net worths and growing popularities?
“Full Nudity” Rating In A Popular Game
This week, huge video game developer, BioWare, is being criticized for turning the latest addition to its hugely popular game series into “space porn” after its general manager bragged on Twitter about receiving a graphic nudity rating.
This massively popular video game series features alien and human-like characters, all placed in an outer space setting. It was announced that the latest installment in the series, to be released at the end of March, will have a “full nudity” rating and feature optional graphic sex scenes as a part of the game. Previous versions of the game had “partial nudity” ratings, but this new mature rating is a first for the series. One of the general managers of BioWare, Aaryn Flynn, announced that the upcoming release lost its “partial nudity” advisory in place of a “full nudity” warning, calling it “softcore space porn” and admitting that the pornographic features of the game will be pretty lifelike.
Flynn’s tweets go with what game producer Mike Gamble revealed about the game, also on Twitter, earlier this year. When asked about the game’s more “intimate” romance options, the BioWare employee told fans that there are a lot of sexual partners to choose from, both alien and human, and the sex scenes themselves would be pretty detailed and lengthy, too.
Another game producer said in an interview that players “can even have one night stands.”
The previous version of the game sold over 890,000 copies in the first twenty-four hours, with sales for this upcoming version expected to potentially go above and beyond that. Clearly, this game is rising in popularity, and the added sex scenes are only adding to the hype.
While the “romancing,” as they call it, is a feature of the game that players can “opt out” of, it should be concerning that it’s an option at all. Basically, this hugely popular video game is profiting from the same principle as the porn industry—graphic sex sells, and the more fantastical and explicit the scenario, the better. Of course, this isn’t the first time a video game has included detailed sex scenes due to the rising popularity of including “romantic” scenarios in gameplay, but it’s one of the more lifelike-looking games out there with the explicit feature.
And while there’s generally a lot more to a higher-quality video game than the sex scenes, it can’t be denied that the gaming industry might be trying to keep up with the porn industry with more graphic additions. It’s not hard to make the connection that porn culture has influenced gaming to include multiple sexually explicit conquests as just another aspect of the storyline. Porn is influencing our generation to think that sexually exploiting and degrading people in a fantasy world is just sexy entertainment, all part of a game. That casual sex isn’t a big deal, and commitment isn’t a factor, even if it isn’t reality. Where else would this type of behavior be celebrated? In the world of porn, where men and women are depicted as body parts to be used for personal pleasure and then discarded. There’s no doubt porn’s dehumanizing influence is having a negative effect on individuals, and society as a whole, and now, the gaming world.
Let’s face it. We are so surrounded by porn and porn culture in today’s society that it’s hard to recognize what we are actually hearing or seeing sometimes. Think about it. Look at today’s most popular TV shows, the lyrics of the most popular songs on iTunes, different video games based on the Playboy mansion or hooking up with strippers, and the content of some of the blockbuster movies in theaters. You’ll find one overarching theme:
Sex. Sex. And more graphic sex.
It’s so crazy to think that content that was once totally unheard of, is now widely accepted, embraced, and even promoted in our media daily. But this is what porn culture does—the status quo is constantly changing with the increasingly graphic, violent nature of what’s available online.
Why This Matters
The problem here lies in the blurring of the lines between entertainment and pornography. Porn is bleeding into every single aspect of our society, contributing to the objectification of the human body, rape culture, and basic desensitization to sexual material. Porn culture can be seen in gaming culture with the commodification of sex as entertainment, with no shortage of detailed sex scenes, and no “fade to black” or blurring out of graphic scenes.
This societal shift warps ideas and perceptions, such as the idea that fantasy is better than reality, and that the human body is an object, separate from thoughts, emotions, and personality. Porn treats humans as nothing more than discardable sex objects to be acted upon for selfish pleasure. We fight for real love because we are smarter than that, and we deserve better than that.
As the rise of porn continues, we can only expect for the explicit nature of video games to get worse—unless we do something about it. We don’t need to accept the pornification of our society, and we don’t have to accept that graphic sex is a part of today’s entertaining video games. Stopping porn culture means stopping the demand for it. Join us in fighting for real love.
What YOU Can Do
Raise awareness that the porn industry is affecting our culture, including the gaming industry. SHARE this article and shine a light on the fact that porn is anything but harmless entertainment.
https://fightthenewdrug.org/exposing-pornification-of-video-games/
Liz Woolley