Seeking True Marriage of Sex and the Xbox Factor

I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week for two main reasons: to speak on a panel about next-generation gaming and to see if Sony would say anything substantive about the PlayStation 3.

The panel was over by the end of my first morning in town. By the end of the second morning -- after Sony's news conference and a speech by Sir Howard Stringer, its chairman -- it was clear that the company was intent on saying absolutely nothing significant about the PS3. (So by default, the prevailing assumption for now has to be that North American gamers won't see the machine before November; Japan will get first dibs.)

The rest of the show didn't have a lot of video-game content. And so, faced with two more days before my flight out, I went looking for what so many have sought in Sin City: sex.

And that's because gadget geeks aren't the only folks who have their major annual get-together in Las Vegas during the first week of January. Quite symbiotically, it seems, the multibillion-dollar sex entertainment industry stages the flashy Adult Video News Adult Entertainment Expo at the same time.

That got me thinking about the debate that erupted last year when it was discovered that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas included hidden scenes, playable only with special software, that used relatively low-resolution graphics to depict mostly clothed digital figures rubbing against each other in sexlike poses. That revelation not only made news across the country, but also propelled Democratic senators, led by Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, to introduce legislation that would have the Federal Trade Commission regulate video game sales.

With sex in video games such a hot topic, I figured that the professional pornographers must be working on some pretty-far-out game projects. And so, with the full consent of my girlfriend, I went in search of the latest video games with sexual content.

The first thing I realized was that there still aren't any true "adult" video games, as the industry calls them. By that I mean that I have never seen a product that worked primarily as an engaging video game while also incorporating X-rated content in an interesting way. Even as far back as the 1980's, the really good games with risqué themes, like the Leisure Suit Larry series and the text-only Infocom classic Leather Goddesses of Phobos, had very little actual sex in them. Instead, they relied on humor and innuendo.

On the other hand, almost all sex-oriented games have just been straight-up pornography strung together with a veneer of interactivity. As far back as junior high school in the 80's, I can remember strip poker games for my Commodore computers that amounted to barely decipherable digital pictures of topless women with a few card-flipping animations thrown in. Twenty years later, the graphics and presentation are a lot better, but the idea is still mostly the same. For example, one of the highest-profile interactive products in Las Vegas last week was a DVD called Virtual Blackjack with Gina Lynn, due out this month. Evan Brimstone, the project's producer, said he worked for 18 months trying to shoehorn a playable blackjack system onto a DVD. As the player wins hands, Ms. Lynn performs various explicit scenes.

The challenge facing the industry is that for any video game to break through, it really has to deliver on the game part. Otherwise, the player might as well go straight for the hardcore stuff readily available all over the Internet.

Ms. Lynn seemed to perfectly grasp that the play, not the sex, is the thing.

"With a movie they don't have to work for it," she said, stepping away from an autograph session with fans. "But in the game you don't get to see anything unless you win. With a game they feel like they accomplished something and they win a prize, and the prize is me. They can watch any movie just to see sex. But with a game they get to feel like they've won, and hopefully that keeps them playing."

In the end, though, most of the games out there with sexual content are still just a matter of picking a path to follow. It is a problem familiar to Joone, founder of Digital Playground, a leader in interactive pornography since the early 1990's. Digital Playground started the popular Virtual Sex DVD series, which has included big-name porn stars like Jenna Jameson, Tera Patrick and Jill Kelly, and is now beginning to stream explicit clips to video iPod users.

"When the DVD came out it actually became harder to achieve the interactivity because with the DVD you couldn't save," said Joone, who uses only one name. "You could switch camera angles and you could switch positions, but you couldn't save your experience and play it back."

Now, with high-definition movie formats like HD-DVD and Blu-ray on the way, Joone said he hoped that the industry could create new interactive features that allowed users both to create and to save their preferred path through a film or scene.

But why no real video games with sexual content on real video game systems? In the end, it is mostly because the big-name console makers are afraid of the potential backlash. While anyone can make and sell a PC game, selling a game for a living-room console requires approval from the system's manufacturer.

"We thought we would be building bigger, more sophisticated games by now like you see on PlayStation and Xbox," Joone said, "but the problem is that Sony and Microsoft are the gatekeepers and they don't want it. Also, we know a lot of users would like our content on a PSP, but Sony controls that and they say that if it's hard core it's not going on the PSP. You can do soft core only."

But despite all the warmed-over concepts, there were a few flashes of real creativity. The most interesting project I saw was a demonstration of a massively multiplayer online game called Naughty America: The Game. The graphics, which looked a lot like the Sims game, were nothing special, but the concept was fascinating: to bring together gaming and online dating.

Dusty Lillo, a Naughty America spokesman, said the game was not meant for immediate sexual gratification. "This is for people who want to form relationships," he said. "This is for people who want to explore their fantasies."

"In World of Warcraft, you go up in levels, gain power and add equipment," he added. "In our game, you add prestige by having sex with more people. But you can't tell other people who you had sex with unless both parties agree to share that information publicly."

Mr. Lillo said the game, which is scheduled to go into online beta testing this spring, will include a strong identity-verification system. And he joined the politicians and others who have denounced Grand Theft Auto.

"Grand Theft Auto is marketed to children, and in that game you can beat women without their consent and that is unacceptable," he said. "In our game you can't have sex with someone unless it's consensual. In our game, if someone doesn't like what you're doing, they can tell you to stop."

"Previous games with sex involved artificial intelligence, but who wants to have sex with an artificial intelligence, with a machine?" Mr. Lillo added. "People don't want to play games anymore unless they know there are real people on the other end. What we're doing is using a game system as the bridge to online dating. Most online dating now is on Web sites, and Web sites are so static. This is an interactive environment with a game component that lets people, men and women, actually meet each other and explore their fantasies consensually before exchanging any personal information."

Don't be surprised if the idea works. Sex sells. Online gaming sells. Online dating sells. If Naughty America can meld the three into a workable system, perhaps then there will be an "adult" video game.

As usual, responses are invited to [email protected].