The “average” gamer is not a pimply-faced 14-year-old sitting in a dank dungeon of a room playing video games until exhaustion takes over.

The average is the 18- to 35-year-old crowd, consumers who buy games that interest that demographic. This group, for the most part, doesn’t want cutesy little games where they jump around as fat little plumbers while abusing a horde of turtles. They want adult-oriented fare with mature story-telling. They understand the value of their money and they want to receive that value in entertainment.  

So why is it that games have traditionally aimed a large part of their advertising towards that lonely 14-year-old pimple farm?

I’m talking, of course, about the amount of sex that has been sold as part of a video game. As graphics and resolutions acquired greater detail so did the depictions of the female form. As character models got less blocky and more defined, it became more and more obvious which parts of a female character model the gaming companies had chosen to emphasize.
    Though the graphics are poor compared to today’s offerings, Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft was amongst the first to cause a stir amongst “right-thinking” Americans. The graphics were good enough that you could easily tell that Lara had a very “top heavy” and shapely form. She became a fan favourite and a sex symbol overnight and has appeared in numerous sexy ads spread all across the internet. When it came time to make a Tomb Raider movie, Angelina Jolie, voted one of the sexiest women alive at that time, was chosen to play the role.

For my next example, consider The Guy Game. A Girls Gone Wild video thinly disguised as a trivia game, this offering rewarded the player with nudity and flashing from drunken college girls. It was rated “M” for mature, but most stores didn’t realize what the games content was. Let’s put it this way: despite the fact that M-rated games aren’t supposed to be rented to minors, it would be far easier for a 14 year old to rent a supposed video game off an inattentive clerk then it would be for them to rent an actual Girls Gone Wild video.

In Grand Theft Auto you got to pick up prostitutes, drive to a secluded location, and watch the car rock back and forth while your money slowly dwindled. There was no explicit sex shown, but the mere suggestion was enough to get people in an uproar. In the Dead or Alive video game series, you used to be able to adjust the amount of breast bounce the characters would have during the fights (I’m NOT making this one up!)

In Japan there is a whole market dedicated to adult-oriented, pornographic video games. The only reason why our games haven’t descended that far is that most major retailers refuse to carry “AO” (adult-oriented) video games. With games like GTA and The Guy Game pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed in an “M” rated title, one can only wonder how much longer it’ll be until AO titles become major releases in North America.    

About Rob Michael: Rob’s 30-year-old friends still, to this day, break down into giggles whenever the car starts a rockin’ in GTA. Now THAT’S maturity for you! E-mail Rob at rmichael2@sympatico.ca and let him know what titles you would like to see reviewed.