PORN

& PONG
How Grand Theft Auto,
Tomb Raider
and Other Sexy Games
Are Changing Our Culture

Feral House

Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy
Games Are Changing Our Culture 2008 by Damon Brown, All Rights
Reserved
Cover design by
Interior designed by Sean Tejaratchi
Feral House
1240 W. Sims Way Ste. 124
Port Townsend, WA 98368
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Pornography is the secret engine that drives the adoption of most modern
technology, videogames included. By connecting the dots (or rather, pixels)
between interactive media and that most interactive of human experiences,
Brown shows the pivotal role erotic content has played in the evolution of this
new medium, as well as the furor and controversy it inevitably stirs up.
Scott Alexander, Senior Editor, Playboy
A stimulating look at two of todays most controversial subjects Sure to
amaze and titillate anyone whos ever hoisted a videogame controller.
Scott Steinberg, CNN Tech Correspondent
and author of Videogame Marketing and PR
Damon Brown tells the tale of the marriage of pop culture, video games, and
porn with a geeks glee and a historians attention to detail.
Audacia Ray, Author of Naked on the Internet:
Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration
I have no idea why Damon Brown included Leisure Suit Larry in this book about
all those dirty games, but I must agree with the U.S. Supreme Court: I cant
define a good game, but I know one when I see one!
Al Lowe, Creator of Leisure Suit Larry, www.allowe.com
A thorough, meticulously researched history of video games and other adult
entertainment, providing much food for thought about a generation that grew up
taking all of it for granted. Just how many of todays best games do we owe to
sex, anyway?
Regina Lynn, Wired.com Sex Drive columnist
and author of The Sexual Revolution 2.0

TO MOM, MY SUPPORT
TO JANE, MY GUIDE
&
TO PARUL, MY LOVE

Contents
FOREWORD.......................................................................... 11
HISTORICAL SHORTHAND.................................................. 15

The Porn Era

(19721995)
SPACESHIPS........................................................................22
PROTECTION......................................................................35
OTAKU.................................................................................48

THE LARA CROFT ERA

(1996 2001)
VIRGINS..............................................................................xxx
WILDFLOWERS...................................................................xxx
CLOSETS............................................................................xxx

THE GRAND THEFT AUTO ERA

(2001 2007)
FRANKENSTEIN..................................................................xxx
BOYS...................................................................................xxx
ERUPTION..........................................................................xxx
AFTERWORD......................................................................xxx
FOR FURTHER READING...................................................xxx
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................................xxx
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................xxx
ABOUT THE AUTHOR.........................................................xxx

FOREPLAY
A FOREWORD
BY JON M. GIBSON

Growing up, I was sexually retarded.

The videogame industry now is about as stupid I was then about sex.
And I was really fucking stupid.
When I was eight, I was caught playing doctor with a girl across the
street. We were merely examining each others parts, but her younger
sister still ratted us out. That same year, I began forcefully sleeping on top of
my hardons, convinced that half-mast was the status quo and that my dick
pointing dead north was somehow freakish. As a ten year old, I waited until
my dad blacked out with an empty bottle of Jack in his hand, then hijacked
the remote to watch awkwardly scripted pay-per-view porn like Dinosaur
Island on the illegal black box in the living room. I always felt like God was
judging me when I jerked off its like he was mounted on my conscience,
tisk tisking me from above. In seventh grade, our sex ed teacher suggested
not wearing sweatpants anymore, because they make erections harder to
conceal. Jeans are much better. I thought blowjobs meant someone actually
blew into your peehole. My first kiss at 15 was an accident the result of my
friend Dobie saying, Why dont you two just make out already? So we did
awkwardly. I lost my virginity in a hot tub at 17. We broke into our apartment
complexs Recreation Building, started hooking up, got naked, and thought
it would be sexy, like in an R-rated movie.
It wasnt.
Since puberty, I had collected all these fragments of sexual knowledge.
I could have filled a dozen bookbags, but still, none of it made any sort of
sense. It was like a puzzle thats all sky, but no clouds.

Howard Hughes solved that one way back in 1928 filming Hells Angels.
After wasting a full year and spending millions to shoot forty-five biplanes
against a weather-less sky at Mines Field in Inglewood (now LAX) and
Caddo Field in Van Nuys, Hughes realized that without clouds, you couldnt
really tell how fast the planes were flying. The dogfights appeared almost
static. They were pathetic. So in October 1928, he bankrolled a move to
Oakland airfield near San Francisco in search of those much-important
cotton balls in the sky.
See, its these little details that are indispensable the shit you
never think about. Hells Angels grossed $8 million at the box office (the
equivalent of a movie now grossing about $100 mil). It was a hit, no thanks
to performances by stars like Jean Harlow, but because the aerial stunts were
so damn awesome.
The clouds were what made that badass ballet of dozens of bi-planes
swooping, diving, and dodging each other possible.
Hughes was an innovator the slickest of problem-solvers while
most filmmakers of the era were like I was during puberty: blind. The little
stuff (like clouds) is invisible to the audience when theyre focusing on the
cool shit (like planes) but the clouds are still essential. Other directors
would have settled for no clouds, just to save a buck.
This is incredibly nave.
Its like thinking that sex is all about boobs and ass the confused,
childish notions of a teenagers Sexpedia. (Hell, I used to firmly believe that
the vagina was located two inches above where it actually is.)
This is precisely how the videogame industry regards sex.
Like a stupid fucking teenager.
Lara Croft and her watermelon tits, BMX XXX and its barebacked riders,
and God of War with its thrusting mini-game all sky, no clouds.
The correct order is clouds, then sky. Then planes.
Until the game industry realizes this, itll forever be trapped in puberty.
Which, looking back now with the knowledge Ive gained since my sexual
awakening well, its incredibly embarrassing.
Humiliating, even.
But videogames are young (born: 1958) compared to literature, film,
fine art, music, and all sorts of other age-old media a proverbial drop in
the gigantic ocean of culture; amoebas, barely evolved. Gutenberg invented
the printing press in 1439; and the guitar came about some 5,000 years
before that. Hell, pictures painted with blood on cave walls used to be the
finest form of storytelling. And ever since that first smudge was made with
12

a thumb, one of the most commonly explored topics through these means
has been sexuality.
Clouds are the reason why burlesque is so impossibly hot, and why
strippers strip rather than just walk onto stage totally naked. Clouds are the
warm-up, the lead-in, the anticipation that propels the end product into a
completely different stratosphere.
Its the kissing of the neck, the tonguing of the nipple, the rubbing of the
clit with one finger then the insertion of two. Its all that sensuous touching,
the turning on of the whole body. Its the under-the-table thigh massages
while the waiter takes your order. Its the sly sexual banter over AIM while
youre plotting the date. Its the inaugural phone call with only subtle, but
all-too-telling innuendo. Its that very first glance when one of your several
attempts to make eye contact is finally received.
Its the foreplay that videogames lack.
They just skip straight to the fucking, on an express to orgasm. Evidenced
by horny-boy fluff like Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Playboy: The
Mansion and The Guy Game, boobs and booty the McDonalds drive-thru
version of sexy are the only things that seem to matter.
The anticipation the visual, verbal, and physical foreplay is just as
hot as the sex. Much like we get engrossed in the chase of Romeo & Juliet and
the courting in Jane Austen romances, the journey is just as important as the
climax. Hitchcock perfected this approach with his masterpieces of suspense;
Basic Instinct applied those same principles to the sexual thriller. We tuned
into Friends every week for countless seasons before Ross and Rachel ever
got together, and squealed when M*A*S*Hs Hawkeye and Hotlips Houlihan
eventually hooked up. From Here to Eternity, Mulder and Scully, Stairway
to Heaven, When Harry Met Sally, even Bohemian Rhapsody all were
legendary slow builds.
Sure, its all too easy to remember just the orgasm its tremendous.
However, its adolescent to forget how you got there, and especially foolish
to not take your time getting there.
Besides, its natural to only focus on the planes, forgetting about the
clouds entirely. Because, well, orgasms always feel spectacular. I couldnt
help but ogle Lara Crofts tits, search the internet for cheat codes to unlock
all the nudity in BMX XXX, or continuously bounce up and down for minutes
on end, just to watch Kasumis boobies jiggle in Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
Its enjoyable for a second but its worthless in the end.
My sexual awakening began when I realized that I wasnt thinking about
the clouds. Maybe someone clues you in, maybe it just clicks. I just didnt
13

consider their importance, not in the slightest. I was moron not to, because
each cloud is a building block, an essential stepping-stone on the path to
complete ecstasy.
Clouds are necessary, and should not be neglected.
They provide context, and without context its just a come shot.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas addresses this on a very basic, but
admirable, level. Your character in the game, Carl CJ Johnson, must take his
lady friend, Denise, on several dates before consummating their relationship.
He must endure many cut scenes and several nights of consecutive outings
before Denise finally gives it up. The culmination is the infamous Hot Coffee
mini-game that allows you to do the deed with her.
Quite simply, since it takes a while to get to the sex especially if youre
working extra-diligently for it its that much more satisfying.
The industry needs to recognize, and then harness, the power of clouds
(a.k.a. foreplay) before well see a major shift in the way sexuality is portrayed
in games.
Thats how I became good at sex.
I realized the might of clouds.
And I expect to only get better, and maybe eventually I will proudly
wear badges like great, spectacular or mind-blowing. Still, its entirely
subjective. At twenty five, I have absolutely no license to spout such things,
even if my partners would gladly gift me a gold star. Knowledge is progress
knowledge is innovation but only if you pay attention.
I know it can only get better.
Right now, though, the only adjective that comes to mind to describe
how the video game industry performs at sex well is something no one
ever wants to hear from their lover:
Awful.
Just plain awful.
Jon M. Gibson
March 2008
Los Angeles, CA

14

HISTORICAL
SHORTHAND
Porn and video games: Its an awkward subject for an entire book. I
admit it. When confronted with why I devoted so much time and effort to it,
I would retreat into the posture of academic objectivity and reply that there
is a pattern, a parallel, between video games and major shifts in pop culture.
After all, if we examined games as closely as their immense cultural impact
merited, and not dismissed them offhand, theres no question that wed
learn far more about ourselves than yet another field trip to the symphony
or the local art museum.
The big idea here is that there is nothing new under the sun. Extremist
like Fox mouthpiece Bill OReilly talk about Internet pornography corrupting
our society, the destructive power of sexy reality television and, of course,
the connection between youth sexual violence and a game of Grand Theft
Auto. While kids should be protected, it is also important to recognize that
erotic expression within pop culture is hardly new. Concerns were thrown
on comic books in the fifties, when artists were forced to cover their curvy
vixens up and not discuss adult situations. Brutally sexual or sexually
brutal grindhouse movies and bikini films from the likes of Russ Meyer
and Roger Corman fed a generations appetite for tempting villainesses and
pseudo-sadomasochistic antics, as did film noir, blaxploitation and other
film genres before and after. Today were watching Lara Crofts breast heave
in her too-tight tank top or a Grand Theft Auto prostitute giving our hero his
moneys worth. We still want dark sexual thrills through our entertainment.
The only thing that has changed is the medium. If the corruption of modern
society were only about sexual content, wouldnt previous generations, with
their filthy comic books, exploitation films and burlesque shows, be just as
dysfunctional as we are? I suspect thats the case.
15

This is a young subject. The modern pornography industry began just

thirty five years ago, near when I was born. Modern video games also started
around the same time, and the lasting impact of this cultural convergence
has yet to be analyzed. This book is live coverage of two moving targets. The
concepts of modern pornography and video games are evolving literally
every day. Modern history is not static. Porn & Pong is a Polaroid, not a final
assessment.
And while we wont completely understand the impact of, say, Lara Croft
on our pop culture landscape until much later, the earliness and immaturity
of video game eroticism makes it even more important to document this
right now. When my young Gen X generation was growing up, pornography
meant bootleg VCR tapes and softcore Cinemax. To the previous generation,
pornography meant Playboy magazine and, depending on their knowledge
and location, Times Square peep show booths. To their parents, it was Faster
Pussycat Kill Kill! and, if they were lucky, elicit 35-mm films watched on
expensive home projectors. Video games have had an even more explosive
evolution. My grandparents werent even exposed to modern pornography
or to video games until they were in their forties. The fact that we went
from Deep Throat and Pong to online prostitution and in-game virtual sex
partners in three decades shows how technology is pushing us into new
sexual mores as, as a result, more sexual quandaries than ever before. Does
the technology of sharing intimate words on a keyboard afford us a new
type of sexual connection as much as, say, phone sex lines did previously? Is
a virtual working girl, pleasuring men in an online fantasy game, as criminally
guilty of prostitution as the high-heeled woman walking the downtown
streets? Mature video games bring these philosophical, ethical questions to
the forefront, and while were dealing with the same shit sexual dynamics
the rapid growth of technology is creating a new world worth exploring, if
not actively building ourselves.
It is also important to notice the exponential rise of actual sex in video
games, and this is because of both the gaming audience and society in
general. According to the Electronic Software Association, the average gamer
is a thirty-five year old male, and, looking backwards, the average age has
increased by one year ever year in recent memory (thirty three in 2005, thirty
four in 2006, and so on). The eighties teenagers raised on Mario are now
sexually-active men around the peak of the average pornography consumer
16

 so, yeah, there is more sex in video games than ever before. Society as a
whole is also on the fast track to understanding and adjusting to new sexual
opportunities. Going back to the release of Deep Throat, the sexual world of
1972 had no herpes, VCRs, mainstream theater pornography, 1-900 numbers,
softcore cable, AIDS, Internet pornography, online dating, and virtual sex (or,
as it is now called, cybering). Wow, how much weve had to adapt! Therefore,
this book is bottom heavy: eras fall between 1972 and 1995, 1996 and 2001,
and 2001 and 2008, and each era has twice as many games as the previous
one. Its harder than ever to follow what is new in our sex-tech crazy world.
Video games are one of the few tangible mediums we can grab onto to
understand who we are, where weve been and where we might be going.
My aim is to connect disregarded and ignored video games to movies,
music, sex, technology and other pop culture barometers, so I picked a selection
of games that were most reflective of the times. (Not every sex-oriented game
is in this book. Veteran game designer Brenda Brathwaites Sex In Video Games,
released in 2006, gives a more thorough overview of the titles released.) I
focus on titles considered games in the colloquial sense. Grand Theft Auto and
Tomb Raider are discussed, but Virtual Jenna, a sex simulator based on porn
star Jenna Jameson, is not. The exceptions I recognize are Linden Labs Second
Life and a handful of other virtual worlds that have made an impact on video
game design as well as modern views of sex and technology. I would have
loved to have mentioned every single title I came across, as there are literally
hundreds, but to capture my broad idea, I had to focus my broad idea. Great
software titles have been mercilessly edited out my inquiry.
Ive done my best to keep a straight face while discussing digital poo,
jiggling virtual bosoms and other hapless attempts at being sexy. Why? Ive
found that, underneath these immature gestures, we can see how well our
society is evolving sexual dynamics in the new millennium. And lets be real: To
better understand this period of time, future generations will not be digging
out the latest Oprah book club selection, nor will they care about the art sold
yesterday at Christies or the Yo Yo Ma piece performed at the Met. Instead,
they will recover old Internet pages, rusty non-biodegradable cell phones, bad
Reality TV DVDs, and interactive digital entertainment. Video games will be
part of our historical shorthand. We may as well start looking at them now.
Damon Brown, July 2008, San Francisco

17

From the start, pornography named a battlefield, a

place where no assertion could be made without at once
summoning up its denial, where no one could distinguish
value from danger because they were the same.
WALTER KENDRICK
The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture

THe porn era: spaceships

THE
porn
ERA
(1972 1995)
The adage is that if you want to know where technology is going, follow
the porn. Note that the saying doesnt say porn sets the pace gracefully. The
early pornographic games are just bad movies grafted onto, at the time, an
ugly looking medium with block characters and audio bleeps. The interesting
part isnt that these games were made pornographers are nothing if not
capitalistsbut that people actually bought these sophomoric diversions.
Eighty thousand people paid fifty bucks for the first Atari 2600 porno game.
Think about that for a second.
People initially supported pornographic games not for their hollowed
gameplay, nor to get off on a Crayola-level representation of a woman,
but because the purchase and ownership itself was a deviant act. The pure
absurdity of having porn on what was then considered a kids medium
could make even the worst game attractive to the consumer. Video games
themselves remained a novelty well into the nineties. Throw sex in there and
youre getting some attention.
From 1972, with the launch of Deep Throat and Pong, to 1995, right
before the first digital sex symbol was created, we see pornography setting
the pace on how sexuality should be expressed and interpreted in video
games. There is no Lara Croft, there is no Grand Theft Auto, and there is no
great video game canon to lean on only a joystick, Pac-Man and years and
years of bad pornographic movies. No wonder so many of the early games
were atrocious.

Porn and Pong

SPACESHIPS
It is Summer 1972, and Linda Lovelace is giving fantastic blowjobs all
across America. By relaxing her throat muscles, Lovelace puts the length of
her lovers penis in her mouth and beyond, taking it all the way down to
her esophagus without choking. The movie Deep Throat caught her swordswallowing act on film, inspiring jokes on Johnny Carsons The Tonight Show
and helping drive pornography to the profitable stratosphere. Filmed for
forty thousand dollars, Deep Throat went on to make hundreds of millions in
box office receipts, home videos, sexual aids and other merchandise.
Deep Throat played more than seventy theaters coast-to-coast, a wide
release for porn. Its distributor hired couriers who would put the 35-mm film
reels in the trunk of their cars, drive to the porn theaters and hand deliver
the movie. The couriers would pick the reels up when the theaters finished
showcasing the film (more hastily if they received a tip that a FBI raid was
planned).
A century earlier United States Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock raided
bookstores carrying material he considered obscene. In 1873 Comstock Laws
made it illegal to mail any product deemed obscene, lewd and/or lascivious.
For Comstock, these ranged from contraceptive devices and medical
textbooks to the works of Voltaire and Walt Whitman. Huge public bonfires
were lit to destroy the obscene material. The same Comstock Laws were in
effect during the summer of 1972 hence Deep Throat being distributed
hand-to-hand, not by mail but lawmakers at the time were beginning to
question what was legally obscene. Hollywood itself had just replaced the
restrictive Hays Code of 1930, initially started by another former United
States Postal Inspector, Will H. Hays, with the Motion Picture Association of
22

THe porn era: spaceships

America rating system that would eventually rank movies as G, PG, PG-13, R
and NC-17. Filmmakers now had Tinseltowns blessing to explore more adult
topics, which made it easier to produce films like the gigolo-centric Midnight
Cowboy and the transgender fantasy Myra Breckinridge.
What was legal to publicly show, however, was a totally different
discussion. The Supreme Court, led by Justice Earl Warren, struggled to
replace Comstocks broad, vague concept of obscenity with a perspective
appropriate to postwar America. Though rarely achieving unanimity, the
Warren Court progressively contracted the domain of obscenity, in large part
by affirming the appropriateness of sex as a matter for public consumption
[It observed] that sex and obscenity are not synonymous, says the book
Intimate Matters: A History Of Sexuality In America. The Supreme Courts
viewpoint did not dissuade states from holding their own obscenity trials,
and in 1972 Deep Throat cases began in several courts nationwide, including
in New York. It has become a symbolic target in Mayor [John] Lindsays
attempt to rid the Times Square area of commercialized sex, the New York
Times wrote about Deep Throat. The Mayor and the legitimate theater owners
and other businessmen might like to wipe out the pornography industry,
but it nevertheless seems to be meeting a substantial public demand. Many
thousands of New Yorkers were going to Times Squares New Mature World
Theater each week to catch Deep Throat. The audiences included celebrities,
diplomats, critics, businessmen, women alone and dating couples, few of
whom, it might be presumed, would previously have gone to see a film of
sexual intercourse, fellatio and cunnilingus. Newspapers printed photos of
celebrity Deep Throat fans, including Jack Nicholson and Truman Capote.
When asked his opinion of the movie, Capote said, I thought the girl was
charming.
Beneath Manhattan, telecommunications specialist Charles Dolan
had spent years installing miles-long stretches of cable. The spider web of
wires connected to all the major New York City hotels. Dolans company,
Teleguide, Inc., fed information to the hotels that would help them with
customer service and checkout. Teleguide, Inc. expanded into Sterling
Manhattan Cable, the first urban cable network in America, and caught the
attention of Time-Life, Inc., which decided to buy a stake in the company.
Dolan then pitched a new idea to Time-Life: a national cable channel using
23

Porn and Pong

satellite beams, not cable wires. In 1972 Time-Life launched Home Box Office
network, or HBO, the first premium programming channel. Not under the
same FCC regulations or commercial constraints as ABC, CBS or NBC, Home
Box Office could broadcast unedited, uninterrupted sports events, theatrical
movies and original programming directly into subscribers homes. Midnight
Blue, a weekly cable program, showed porn clips and interviews with adult
movie stars. One of the first episodes featured the cast of Deep Throat.
On the opposite coast, California engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted
Dabney were also convinced entertainment technology was going to be the
next big thing. They pitched in $500 two hundred and fifty bucks apiece
and began Atari, the first major American video game company. (A disputed
history has Atari culling its concepts from military engineer Ralph Baer, a
man who is often called The Godfather of video games.) Atari was actually
named after a move made in the Japanese strategy game Go. Bushnell had
tried doing an arcade game before 1971s Computer Space, released
through coin-operated manufacturer Nutting Associates but it was too
complex for the average bar patron accustomed to pinball. He guessed that
people would need something simpler.
Shortly after starting Atari, Bushnell hired Al Alcorn, a former associate
of Dabneys, to create a table tennis video game. Two players would use their
paddles to smack a brick-shaped ball back and forth. The instructions were
only one sentence: AVOID MISSING BALL FOR HIGH SCORE. They would call
the black-and-white game Pong.
In Summer 1972 Alcorn set up a Pong prototype in Andy Capps Tavern, a
hole-in-the-wall bar in Sunnyvale, California. Two weeks later he got a call from
the manager. The game had stopped working. Alcorn got over as soon as he
could and opened up the coin box to give himself a free game. As he unlocked
the machine, a cascade of quarters spilled from the box. The Pong arcade
game stopped working because too many quarters jammed the system. In
its first year there were more orders for Pong than any other pinball machine
at the time. While other coin-operated machines brought in about fifty bucks
a week, Pong often brought in two hundred dollars. Atari was still collecting
quarters from its arcade route, which had grown considerably. Bushnell, a
sailing aficionado, was able to buy a yacht and multiple homes.
24

THe porn era: spaceships

Another entrepreneur, Reuben Sturman, distributed wooden boxes

all across America and Canada. Sturmans enclosed unit, just wide and tall
enough for someone to sit comfortably, had a wooden seat, a film projector
and a door. The user would deposit a token, close the door, and press a button
to pick one of several movie choices. An 8-mm pornographic movie would
play for about a minute, maybe less. You would then have to purchase more
tokens from the host up front to continue watching. Before inventing the
personal peep booth, Sturman already owned, according to Hustler publisher
Larry Flynt, twelve hundred adult bookstores across America. With the peep
booths, thats when my thing took off, Sturman said in an interview. Money
was coming in so fast I didnt know what to do with it. Guys come in with
bags of $50,000, $100,000. Sturman would funnel money through business
fronts, coerce porn shops into purchasing his products and live in several
different residencies to hide his whereabouts. If he went out, he would often
wear an elaborate disguise. The most public of rare Sturman photos has him
wearing a large fedora hat, a business suit one size too large and black-rim
glasses connected to a bulbous plastic nose and a wide, bushy mustache.
(It wasnt clear if the mustache was fake, too.) Sturman had many enemies,
but his most feared may have been the FBI. The agency spent more than
two decades trying to smoke the incognito porn magnate out of his hole.
Sturman probably took comfort when the FBI lost its obscenity-obsessed
leader, J. Edgar Hoover. The seventy-seven year old FBI director died of a
heart attack on May 2, 1972, three weeks before the Deep Throat premiere.

When considering the first fruits of motion picture technology, it is natural

to think about black-and-white slapstick comedies or epic masterpieces like
D. W. Griffiths racially-charged Birth of a Nation. Short, erotic movies, called
stag films, often as brief as a mere minute, were also an important part of
this initial group. It could show a couple making out, a woman fondling her
breasts or a shy young lady showing a little leg.. Stag films allowed America,
for the first time, to easily observe itself.
During the Second World War, the military used a machine called the
radio teletype, or RTTY, to transmit text messages. Creative men and women
could use the letters and symbols, comparable to those on a modern day
25

Porn and Pong

keyboard, to make exceptional replicas of pin-ups. By the sixties computers

still werent cheap enough for the average household, but became available
at major American college campuses. Dedicated nerds would spend hours
in the computer lab turning their favorite Playboy centerfolds into text form,
saving the images onto punch tape reels and printing them off to hang on
the wall. In one of these labs MIT engineering student Steve Russell created
Spacewar, considered the first video game ever made. The two-player
spaceship battle inspired Nolan Bushnell to create games.
Before launching Atari, Bushnell was hired by Ampex Corporation, a
California engineering company often credited with inventing the modern
videotape. The University of Utah grad had worked as a midway barker,
convincing passersby to throw baseballs at stacked milk bottles. Bushnells
job at Ampex was to work on a digital recording system, but, typical of his
restless personality, he got bored within a few months. He kept thinking
about Spacewar, the game he spent hours playing in the computer lab at
his alma mater, and he knew could make money on it if he brought it to
the masses. Ampex understood that engineers were happiest when doing
their own experiments, so it allowed Bushnell to take spare parts home
and tinker on what would become Spacewar, the coin operated version of
Computer Space. Bushnell turned his two-year-old daughters bedroom into
his workshop, and he left Ampex in 1972 to start Atari.
Atari entered the home market with 1974s Home Pong. Pongs
enduring popularity, along with a favorable distribution partnership with
Sears Roebuck, made Home Pong a holiday bestseller. By 1976, the toy
manufacturer Connecticut Leather Company, or Coleco, released a multigame system (with a Pong clone) that cost half as much as Home Pong.
Fairchild Camera and Instrument created the Channel F, the first video game
system to have interchangeable cartridges. Atari was already working on a
top-secret cartridge-based system, codenamed Stella (after a hot-looking
employee), but it needed more capital to get the system out and, in 1976,
a weak economy made going public not a viable option. In desperation,
Bushnell sold Atari to Warner Communications for $28 million. He would stay
on as chairman, but quickly became tired of the new corporate structure and
left. (He then founded Chuck E. Cheese pizza arcades, a venture that would
be worth billions.) Warner Communications invested an estimated $100
26

THe porn era: spaceships

million into the once-small company, and Atari finally released the Atari
2600 VCS (Video Cartridge System) in October 1977. The 2600 had more
features than the Channel F, such as selectable game difficulty, and a new
game controller, a chunky brick with a button and a long pole in the middle,
called a joystick. Still a considerable force in the arcade industry, Atari could
do home translations of its hottest coin-op titles like Breakout and sell them
on its 2600 system at a premium. Atari had another bestseller on its hands.
As Atari blossomed, Sony, Kodak and several other companies joined
Ampex in the race to create a reliable home video system. By the midseventies, the competition narrowed to Sony and JVC/Panasonic and its two
video cassette recorders, Betamax and VHS. Compared to VHS, Betamax had
faster playback and easier queuing to find specific parts of a movie. Betamax
didnt have any pornographic films, which Sony decided not to support.
Home movies took off, but the inferior VHS format, not Betamax, would
become the standard. As Eric Schlosser notes in his book Reefer Madness,
when videocassette players became widely available to American consumers,
adult film companies offered their titles on video, while the major Hollywood
studios resisted the new medium. As a result, by 1979, 75 percent of all the
videotapes sold in the United States were hard-core films.

In the early eighties, John Holmes was well known inside as well as
outside of the porn industry. Lanky and awkward, Holmes had a thirteeninch penis as wide as the average male wrist. Up until Deep Throat, Holmes
and others were usually seen in short movies called loops, modern X-rated
versions of stag films. The sixty-two minute Deep Throat, as well as Debbie
Does Dallas and Beyond The Green Door, extended the length of the average
porn, allowing audiences to get to know the people on the movie screen
and, later, the television. The popularity of the VCR made Holmes, as well
as Linda Lovelace, Vanessa Del Rio and Marilyn Chambers, pornographic
film superstars. Porn companies could now sell home versions of their
most popular movies. Holmes did dozens of loops for Caballero Control
Corporation, a movie company that released the highly-popular Swedish
Erotica series and would bring most of its theater productions to home video
by the eighties. Caballero and other companies with a strong movie catalog
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could make millions translating them cheaply for home consumption.

Between 1980 and 1983, Caballero released more than fifty Swedish Erotica
home movies alone.
The Atari 2600 was also awash in entertainment options. The vintage
Atari 2600 still led the pack, holding the market from new (and technically
superior) systems Intellivision and Colecovision. It had the biggest user base.
It had the most games. Unlike the home video market, all the video games
were made by the same folks that made the hardware. Only Atari created
2600 games, which would be the equivalent of Sony being the only company
making PlayStation 3 games. (Sony publishes only about twenty percent of
the PS3 game library.) This absolute control allowed Atari to make money
on both the system and the games, selling, as the old saying goes, both the
razor and the blades. It also didnt give designers credit: the cartridge would
just read Atari.
In 1980, four game creators, wanting more credit and more creative
control, left Atari and created Activision, the first third-party video game
company. Its first major hit was David Cranes Pitfall. Atari immediately
sued but could not stop Activision from making $65 million its first year
developing for both the 2600 and Intellevision. Atari and Activision settled
out of court and agreed that Activision could continue to make games, but
only if Atari received a royalty for each 2600 title sold. This established the
modern day royalty system. People watched this case very closely because
a lot of money could be made by marketing games for different systems;
especially the 2600, Leonard Hermann says in Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of
Home Videogames. Following the lead of Activision, many other companies
jumped on the bandwagon. By the summer of 1982, dozens of companies
announced that they were releasing 2600 compatible games. That year
Caballero Control Corporation linked with American Multiple Industries, a
manufacturer of video and audio cassette storage cases, and created the
Atari 2600 game company Mystique. It was named after one of Caballeros
movies.
Both video game and porn producers began to realize that home
audiences, not the arcade or theater audiences, were now the ones to target.
Creating an arcade game could be a heavily orchestrated event with art
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THe porn era: spaceships

designers, programmers and manual laborers to put together the 8 foot tall,
200 pound machine, while a home video game cartridge was usually done
by one guy who did all the programming, graphics and level design.
A straight-to-video movie had a fraction of the production cost a
traditional film carried, not to mention fewer distribution problems and less
film crew. A hit porn could be made by two guys, a woman and a camcorder. It
was no longer about translating products to the home, but making products
specifically for the home. The turning point came in 1982, when it finally
went all video, pornographer Ed Deroo said in Jennifer Osborne and Legs
McNeils The Other Hollywood. I missed film tremendously. Film had soul;
video has nothing. Videos just a way of making money. Cabelleros Swedish
Erotica compilation could go for $79.95, while Mystiques first title, Custers
Revenge, retailed for $49.95.
Released in 1982, Custers Revenge is named after the famous general
who took his last stand at Little Big Horn. After winning a battle in 1869,
Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer allegedly invited his officers
to avail themselves of the services of a captured squaw, while he selected
a Cheyenne woman named Monasetah for himself, according to the book
Intimate Matters. The image of the good Indian the beautiful, pure princess
who saved white men, as did Pocahontas gave way in the nineteenth
century to the image of the savage and promiscuous squaw. Cowboy lore
in particular elaborated on the theme of the Indian whore, who lays on her
back in a cowboy shack, and lets cowboys poke her in the crack.
In Custers Revenge, you move a pixelized cowboy from one end of the
screen to the other, avoiding deadly arrows falling from the sky, to reach a
submissive Native American woman tied to a cactus. If he makes it to the
woman, he grabs her and has sex until, after twenty or so strokes, the next
level begins and he starts over. Custers body is pink and nude, defined by
wiry appendages, a round belly and a penis as long as his arm. His only attire
is brown cowboy boots, which are more wide than tall, a sky blue 10-gallon
hat and a thin mauve bandanna wrapped around his neck. The bandanna
flips between two opposite frames of animation, flapping flatly in the
wind.

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The captive Native American woman has brown skin, thin long legs
and a body like a reversed eighth note. The maidens enormous chest
points out towards Custer like an arrow over her flat stomach, and her ass
protrudes nearly as much in the opposite direction. Her arms are akimbo
and her mouth and eyes are wide open, as if anticipating rapture. She only
wears a black headband with a dull brown feather sticking out. With an
overdeveloped top, skinny legs and the wire-like feather extending from her
head, she wouldnt be out of place in the movie Ants. The background is
decorated with brown mountains that recall meatloaf and immobile white
clouds above a mauve teepee, the same color as Custers scarf, shooting
chunky smoke signals. In the higher game levels green cacti, shaped like the
number 4, are placed randomly in the foreground and must be avoided to
reach the maiden. According to the game box cover, the Native American
woman herself is tied to a tall, straight cactus, but graphic limitations put
her game character in front of the cactus, hands behind her. If Custer reaches
the woman, he immediately lifts her up, puts her legs straight against his
hip, and begins having sex. The animation jumps between two jerky frames,
flotsam and jetsam. His hands are on her protruding nipples, not supporting
her behind, the balance of her body weight on his long penis. The Custers
Revenge instruction manual was broken down into sections like Foreplay
(the object of the game), Game Play and After Play (a message from the
company). Another section, Scoring, says what to do when you get to the
maiden. When Custer successfully reaches the maiden, repeatedly depress
the fire button. Do not hold it down. You receive one point for each time
you score. So press it over and over again as rapidly as you can. Watch how
the maiden smiles and kicks up her heels and Custer flips his lid. As Custer
scores a fanfare of Charge is played. You do not have to wait for the tune to
finish to score again. Just keep pressing the button over and over again.
Mystique announced Custers Revenge in October 1982, setting up
a preview for retailers and the press the same week in Manhattan. Twohundred and fifty protesters picketed in front of the New York Hilton. The
game features an enactment of a white male, General Custer, ravishing an
Indian Woman who is tied to a post, Women Against Pornography member
Kristen Reilly complained to the press. Her colleagues carried signs that said
Custers Revenge Says Rape Is Fun and Stop Making Fun Out of Womans
Pain. Once there was a lot of furor over the game, the company denied that
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it was rape. They claimed that it was mutually consenting visual images,
which is really asinine.
By the end of the week, Atari sued Mystique and American Multiple
Industries for distributing sex-themed material on its 2600 system. Atari,
like the general public, is outraged by this conduct and we are taking the
initiative by filing this suit, Michael Moone, president of Ataris consumer
electronics division, told the Associated Press. Ataris official comment was it
does not condone or approve this use of its home video game technology,
which was designed for wholesome family entertainment. Based on the
Activision court case, third-party companies didnt have to get Ataris content
approval only give a royalty on each game sold. Atari had no real power.
American Multiple Industries sued Suffolk County, New York for $11 million
for trying to prohibit the game from being sold. The county said the ban was
legitimate since it believed Custers Revenge was a danger to the health and
safety of Suffolk County residents. In Canada, custom authorities approved
Custers Revenge for importation after its October release, but within weeks
twenty groups protested. By December 1, Canadian customs reversed the
decision.
As veteran video game journalist Arnie Katz recalls in the book The
Ultimate History of Video Games, I remember talking to a representative of
[Women Against Pornography] and telling her that in my opinion, the best
way to keep the game from selling was to ignore it. These were games that
most people wouldnt touch with a ten-foot pole. They trained all their
energy on Custers Revenge and they succeeded in helping it sell twice as
many copies as the other adult games. It sold eighty thousand copies at fifty
bucks a pop.
Mystique released two follow-up games, Bachelor Party and Beat Em & Eat
Em. Bachelor Party is a clone of Ataris Breakout. In Breakout, you use a bat to hit
a ball against colored bricks, sort of a one-player version of Pong. In Bachelor
Party, the bricks are women built like Amazons and the ball resembles a wellendowed midget. Beat Em & Eat Em is a variant of Activisions Kaboom!. In
Activisions title you catch dropping bombs before they reach the bottom
of the screen. In Mystiques game, you control a busty, nude blonde with
her mouth wide open to the sky. A man with a penis longer than his torso
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drops his love down for the woman to catch. The game box, which features a
cartoon of a woman licking ice cream, reads You are a local leading-lady and
all the up-town boys are standing in line for a date, but a savvy soda-slinger
just around the corner is more down your alley and you just cant seem to get
enough of his famous fountain treats. These games would also sell for $49.95,
about twenty dollars higher than the average 2600 game.
Alan Roberts, another transplant from the porn industry, started the
company Universal Game-X after directing the hit Young Lady Chatterley.
The first game, 1983s X-Man, was a Pac-Man-inspired title with random
mazes. A small pale guy with a penis the size of his legs, X-Man runs towards
a door at the center of the screen while avoiding scissors, teeth and crabs,
the Freudian parallel to castration, oral sex and venereal diseases. The game
changes once you make it to the door. Two huge, block characters appear:
X-Man, standing in the buff, and a blonde with purple skin bent over in front
of him. X-Mans long penis is in the purple womans behind. Now you must
get the right rhythm, moving the joystick left and right, to make the woman
come. (It would be the first time in console game history the goal was to
pleasure the woman.) Her nipples enlarge based on your performance. A
whirly, flute-like sound effect repeats faster as she gets closer to coming.
When the round ends, points are tallied based on the number of orgasms
achieved. The response from players has been enthusiastic women and
men. We were anticipating terrific business, but it has been hindered as a
result of the Mystique line and the bad press that came from it, Roberts said
in a magazine interview at the time. Certain stores think that because Custer
was a bad game, all adult games are bad games. Thats not true at all. X-Man
flopped, sinking Universal Game-X shortly after its release. As the Custers
Revenge controversy died down, Mystique also experienced a drop in sales.
Custers Revenge was the only title not based on another popular game, and
sales of Bachelor Party and Beat Em & Eat Em were relatively poor. Caballero
Control Corporation closed Mystique. Alan Roberts went back to movies,
directing Young Lady Chatterley II and The Happy Hooker Goes To Hollywood.
The rights to Custers Revenge and the other Mystique games were sold to
Game Source, a California-based company. Under the moniker Playaround,
Game Source re-released Custers Revenge, Beat Em & Eat Em and Bachelor
Party with two key differences. Playaround created what it called the double
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ender, a two-in-one cartridge that sounded like it was a two-headed dildo.

Playarounds long cartridges allowed players to buy two of its games for one
low price, a marketing ploy imitated by other companies. Playaround also
created female versions of the Mystique games, the first time that sexual
games were made for women. Bachelor Party became Bachelorette Party,
Beat Em & Eat Em became Philly Flasher (replacing cumshots with breast
milk), and Custers Revenge was renamed Westward Ho. Playaround simply
modified the titles and switched the main characters from male to female.
New games were the medieval romp Lady In Waiting/Knight On The Town,
the maze title Gigolo/Cathouse Blues and the flying game Jungle Fever/
Burning Desire. (The latter wasnt another game about interracial sex.) Similar
to Mystique, all of Playarounds new games were clones of its competitors
titles. Demand for Playarounds games werent enough to encourage stores
to carry its products, so gamers who actually wanted Philly Flasher could
rarely find it at the store. Playaround closed shop as quickly as it opened.
Toy stores shelves sagged under the weight of the hundreds of Atari
2600 games being released every year. Ataris open market system offered
no checks and balances. The Kool-Aid Man had a game, as did the movie
Porkys. Atari itself shipped an estimated four million copies of Pac-Man, even
though there were only 10 million Atari 2600 owners. Milton Bradley, Quaker
Oats and countless other companies jumped into the industry, often with
their own systems, dividing the flagging video game market even further.
Overstocked and underselling, Toys R Us and other retailers began having
bargain bins filled with five dollar titles that were $29.95 a week earlier.
Those that invested the most in the video game business ended 1983 in
debt. Coleco posted record losses for its fifty year history. Atari lost $583
million in one year.
As the year closed Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, two
feminist theorists against pornography, organized a Minneapolis City Council
meeting called the Public Hearings on Ordinance to Add Pornography as
Discrimination Against Women. It consisted of testimony from women who
felt their lives were destroyed by pornography.
One participant, a woman who went by Ms. U. for anonymity purposes,
discussed her sexual assault. I was attacked by two white men. From the
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beginning they let me know they hated my people, even though it was
obvious from their remarks that they knew very little about us. And they let
me know that the rape of a squaw by white men was practically honored
by white society. In fact, it has been made into a video game called Custers
[Revenge]. And thats what they screamed in my face as they threw me to the
ground, This is more fun than Custers [Revenge]! They held me down, and as
one was running the tip of the knife across my face and throat, he said, Do
you want to play Custers [Revenge]? Its great. You lose, but you dont care,
do you? You like a little pain, dont you, squaw? They both laughed and then
he said, There is a lot of cock in Custers [Revenge]. You should be grateful,
squaw, that all-American boys like us want you. Maybe we will tie you to a
tree and start a fire around you.
Defending Custers Revenge the year before, American Multiple Industries
President Stuart Kesten explained why AMI and Mystique made the game.
We just couldnt see adults playing with spaceships anymore.

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PROTECTION
The White House Press Secretary seems confused, though hes the one
holding court on this October 1982 day. A reporter asks Press Secretary Larry
Speakes, Does the President have any reaction to the announcement the
Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has that AIDS is now an epidemic and
has over 600 cases? Whats AIDS, Speakes asks. Over a third of them have
died. Its known as gay plague the reporter says. The group laughs. No, it
is. I mean, its a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that gets
this has died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it? I dont have it,
Speakes says. Do you? Laughter fills the room and the question disappears
into oblivion.
634 Americans had been stricken with AIDS by October 5, 1982. Of
these, 260 were dead, Randy Shilts later wrote in And The Band Played On.
There was no rush to spend money, mobilize public health officials, or issue
regulations that might save lives. Four years later, President Ronald Reagan
would go on live TV to discuss the so-called gay plague. Addressing Congress
about the disease now known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,
he said, An unprecedented research effort is underway to deal with this
major epidemic public health threat. Based on the research of the French
Institut Pasteur and, later, the National Cancer Institute, citizens learned
AIDS was a blood-based disease transmitted through sharing needles,
blood transfusions and oral, vaginal and anal sex. Nearly everyone who was
sexually active was at risk. Some Christian conservatives looked at AIDS as a
holy backlash to the open-minded sex culture of the seventies. AIDS is not
just Gods punishment for homosexuals, said Pastor Jerry Falwell. It is Gods
punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals. A popular, later
parodied commercial suggested that if you sleep with a woman, youre also
sleeping with her previous partners, and her partners previous partners,
and so on, and so on and the television screen would fill up with faces
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in squares like a The Brady Bunch credit sequence gone mad. In the 1960s,
when the birth control pill and IUD became readily available, the condom
was practically rendered obsolete. Good girls just did it, and penicillin
prevailed, notes Sexpert Dr. Ava Candell. It wasnt until the AIDS epidemic
in the 1980s that condom use regained its prominence. A report in the
American Journal of Public Health found that condom sales rose from 240
million in 1986 to nearly 300 million in 1988, the biggest jump happening
after Surgeon General C. Everett Koops 1987 report on AIDS. Trojan, Durex
and other manufacturers used machines, robotic arms and detached metal
phalli, to stretch test condoms for durability and leaks.
New technology allowed people to connect physically as well as by
the bits and bytes in the computer. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, two
University of Essex students, created a computer program called Multi-User
Dungeon, or MUD. A text-only adventure, MUD would give you a description
of the room you are in, the objects in it and the fellow players around. The
British undergrads were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the American penand-paper fantasy game where players would go on elaborate journeys.
In D & D, an appointed leader, called the Dungeon Master, would establish
the rules and direct the heroes. Bartle and Trubshaw wanted the Dungeon
Masters to be MUD players, too. Thousands of individual gamers used their
university computers to play together, sometimes calling or even traveling
to meet each other in person. One player, Sue the Witch, became one of the
most popular MUD adventurers, spending up to six hours online a night and
racking up a 1,000 British pound phone bill every month. She also stood
out as one of the few female players. Despite requests and her obvious
commitment to the game, Sue refused to meet with others. She said she
was agoraphobic, but would mail pictures of herself and talk with her MUD
friends on the phone. One day, Sue sent a terse message saying that she
was going to take a break for a while. According to the book Dungeons
and Dreamers, a group of players discovered Sues address in England and
decided to surprise her with a visit. A woman answered their knock at the
door and gave them the bad news: Sues real name was actually Steve. Hed
been playing as a woman since the beginning, letting his wife whose real
name was Sue answer the phone calls. Steve announced his break just
before he was sent away to prison for defrauding a government agency.

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Another MUD alumnus, Neil Newell, created the computer game Shades.
Newell wanted a world larger than MUD. (Shades would have more than 500
rooms.) He also wanted players to have privacy. In MUD and other games,
the admin, short for administrator, would be privy to every action. Confide
with an online friend about your marriage problems and the admin would
hear the whole conversation. For Shades, Newell made safe areasneutral
zones where there would be no fighting and complete privacy for the people
inside. Id say the cybersex emerged on Shades simply because it was the
first game that gave players a guaranteed private area, Newell says in Sex in
Video Games. Naively, I figured people were hanging out in the safe areas
for private chats. Cybering [hooking up with people online] wasnt a wellknown phenomenon back then. There were other channels for intimate
conversations. Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSs, allowed users to have private
chats. Youd call a certain number with your computer modem and exchange
messages, not unlike an early form of email. (You could also download files,
which made BBSs a precursor to Internet pornography.) Since it was a game,
Shades was more user-friendly than the average BBS. It was one of the first
titles, if not the first title to allow cyber sex within its boundaries. Journalist
Julian Dibbell later discussed the unique MUD dynamics in his Village Voice
article A Rape In Cyberspace, observing players reactions to a virtual public
sexual assault in the game LambdaMOO. And then there were what Ill call
the techno-libertarians. For them, MUD rapists were of course assholes, but
the presence of assholes on the system was a technical inevitability, like
noise on a phone line Like MUD and Shades, LambdaMOO was a text-only
game.
Game players and programmers had to have university connections
to use expensive computers, but advances in technology brought systems
like the Apple ][, the IBM PC and the Atari 800 into peoples homes. Two
thousand dollars got you a computer almost as powerful as yesterdays bulky
university mainframe. Unlike the Atari 2600 and other video game consoles,
you could tell the computer what to do: learn a programming language and
teach it to do a balance spreadsheet, play a musical note or display a picture.
It also democratized who could make games, the equivalent of affordable
camcorders unleashing more independent filmmakers. For instance, a
teenager named Richard Garriott programmed a homemade adventure
game, Akalabeth: World of Doom, stuffed copies into Ziploc bags and sold
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them, with the help of a small local distributor, to other Apple ][ users. In
the first year he made $150,000. He started Origin, one of the first major
computer game companies, and later sold it to Electronic Arts for thirty
million dollars. Origin was one of several small gaming companies that
would become heavyweights in the future.
Another game creator, IBM engineer Arthur Walsh, learned
programming when his manager started writing for the popular computer
magazine Byte. Walsh tried teaching his computer to play bridge. It
worked, and the success got Walsh hooked on making games. Wanting
to one-up Walsh, his supervisor decided to make a flight simulator, which
also became a decent game. After a few homemade projects, the two
employees decided to leave IBM and start a game company. Walsh had
been with IBM for more than twenty five years. Shortly after leaving, the
two colleagues had a disagreement over the direction of the company and
Walsh decided to start his own venture, Artworx. The new three person
team acquired a few different Atari 800 games, including Walshs bridge
title and a solid, but somewhat boring poker game programmed by an
outside contractor. There were more poker players than bridge players
out there, so we thought Why dont we push poker? One of my associates
said, making a joke, I bet if it was strip poker, it would sell. I was like Youre
right! Why cant we do that? That was the birth of the idea, Walsh said in an
interview. He decided Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance wasnt going to
be an erotic game, but instead feature funny cartoon-inspired characters
so it wouldnt offend purchasers of other Artworx software. The company
artist, however, vehemently disagreed, as did the third employee, and
convinced Walsh that they should make the game as realistic as possible.
The Atari 800 had a resolution of 320 pixels across x 192 pixels down, less
than half of the pocket sized iPod Nano, and was capable of four colors
at a time. Artworxs artist would obtain real photographs, develop them
onto slides and project them onto the outside of the computer monitor.
The third employee created a drawing program especially for Strip Poker.
Guided by the slides, they would copy each image into the game pixel by
pixel. The one aspect Artworx didnt handle was the photography itself,
which was done by an outside contractor. Our photographer wasnt a
fashion one, but he was good at photographic women. He would find a
good place, a hotel or something, and take pictures of them in the bed
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or in the bathroom. Later he would make sure the hotel had a Jacuzzi,
because in the final nude scene, the modesty scene we call it, the woman
would be completely nude except for some bubbles, Walsh said.
In the final game, the background would be pitch black and opponents
would lay horizontally, from left to right, as if sprawled atop a fireplacewarmed bearskin rug. One woman would wear thigh-hugging hot pants
and a low-cut polo shirt, her long, blonde tresses tumbling past her ample
cleavage. The four opponents would have six different poses the number
of successful poker hands it takes to get to a modesty scene and three
different outfits chosen at random. Artworx also sold expansion packs,
called data disks, that added twenty-four opponents. Two of them were
male. It was probably radical at the time, Walsh said. We had women on
staff, so I talked to them when we were developing this to see what they
thought of [having male opponents], but from an appearance standpoint it
was important: We wanted to be even handed. And obviously, if there was a
demand, we would appeal to the demand.
Strip Poker: A Sizzling Game of Chance was released on the Atari 800 in
1982. The Atari version became quite popular. Then it went to Apple, then the
original PC when it came out,Walsh said. As far as competition, anytime youve
got something that sells, other companies will say We can do it, too. Clones
included Cover Girl Poker and Samantha Fox Strip Poker, the latter featuring the
popular adult film star, but the competition forced Artworx to take risks. In
order to make use of the photos, we would have the player go against both a
male and female opponent in the same game. We also did it with two women
at the same time, Walsh said, adding The multi-opponent ones were very
popular. But weve also seen it be used by a spouse a husband will use it as
an excuse to buy it because hes buying it for his wife.

Just prior to Strip Poker hitting the shelves, Time magazine featured
an article on On-Line Systems, a small company run by husband-and-wife
team Ken and Roberta Williams, and its adult text game, Softporn Adventure.
On-line, a California software company, sells a program called Softporn for
$29.25. In the computer fantasy game, players seek to seduce three women,
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while avoiding hazards, such as getting killed by a bouncer in a disco. Time

actually showed the box art along with the article. It features three nude
women in an outdoor Jacuzzi, the bubbling hot water rising just high
enough to cover their nipples. They are sipping from champagne glasses,
and a waiter with a jet-black helmet of hair stands awkwardly behind them.
In the background, next to the waiter, partially obscured by the second
womans hairdo, is the Apple ][. On-line Systems had done a big advertising
campaign in major computer magazines like Softalk, using the unchanged
box art as the ad. I got a copy of Softporn as soon as I got my Apple ][. Hell,
everyone had a copy of Softporn! Youd think it was packaged with the Apple
][, said eighties game designer Al Lowe. Lowe would soon be working for
the nude woman in the far right of the Softporn ad. The blonde with the baby
face was On-Line Systems co-owner Roberta Williams.
Lowe began programming when he bought his first home computer,
an Apple ][ with 48K RAM, a 9 green screen, two 120K floppy drives and
a state-of-the-art Epson MX80 printer ($3,500). A music teacher, Lowe
convinced himself the computer would help him with work, even creating a
simple program to organize his class schedules, but he really got the system
so he and his son could play together. The first games he bought were the
adventure Cranston Manor and the Pac-Man clone Gobbler, both by On-line
Systems. Lowe became more serious about the Apple ][ when he went to a
music convention and stayed around for a computer convention. The music
convention had been pretty much the same old stuff Id known and seen
kind of all the same things over again whereas the next weeks show was so
exciting and so full of new technology, Lowe said. He happened to mention
his homemade schedule program to one of the vendors. The publisher
offered him a deal. Lowe went back home and perfected the program just
in time for the publisher to go out of business. In a last-ditch effort, Lowe
and his wife went to AppleFest 82, a popular conference that summer, and
purchased a 10 x 10 booth with a months income (combined). Im there,
and down the hall comes [On-line Systems co-owner] Ken Williams, and as
usual he was antsy, walking around the booths to see what was new. And
he gets to our booth, stops, and yells Hey berta! These games look just like
yours! Ken and Roberta were impressed by the software and asked them to
come by the On-line Systems booth first thing in the morning to talk about
a publishing deal: Lowe would make the software, On-Line would distribute
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THe porn era: spaceships

it. Within a year Lowe quit teaching music and become a full-time game
designer for On-line Systems. The up-and-coming company moved to a
mountainous region of California and renamed itself Sierra On-Line.
When Lowe came aboard, Sierra On-Line had just successfully negotiated
the use of Disney characters in their games provided it drop the best-selling
Softporn Adventure from its catalog. Lowe became instrumental in bringing
the wholesome characters to the Apple ][, creating graphics, music and level
design to products like Donald Ducks Playground and Winnie the Pooh in
the 100-Acre Woods. Sierra On-Line had also invested a significant amount
of money into developing Atari 2600 software and, as a result of the 1983
video game crash, ended up laying off two-thirds of its staff. Ken Williams
asked Lowe to leave his full-time programmer post to become a consultant,
a work-for-hire employee who would be paid an advance upfront against
royalties for each product he was involved in. He shows me the advance
and its like double the money I was making before! So I say yes. And then,
as I stared to walk away, I ask Have I just been fired? Ken says, Yes. I say, Oh,
OK. I remained an outside contractor for the next fifteen years. Not unlike
Disneys standard employee contract, Lowes new agreement meant that he
wouldnt have much, if any say as to how his characters or creations were
used. Any requested feedback would be a courtesy.
Sierra On-Lines Disney licensed expired in 1986. Ken Williams
recommended the company look at updating Softporn Adventure, the 1981
title that sold approximately 25,000 copies at a time when there were only
100,000 Apple ][s. Lowe excitedly went home, dusted off his Apple ][ and
played the game. I was appalled. It was literally a game about a guy getting
laid It had no protagonist, little or no plot, almost no text, understood
almost no input. So I reported back to Ken: theres no way I could bring this
game into the eighties unless he let me make fun of that lifestyle. I said Its
so behind the times it might as well be wearing a leisure suit! And everyone
laughed Thus was born Leisure Suit Larry.
Lowe was in his late thirties, happily married to his wife, Margaret. The
two music teachers had a son and daughter, Brian and Megan, who would
both end up happily married as well. Lowe had never been to a strip club.
Larry is the anti-Al, he admitted later. Theres not much of Larry in me. Thats
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why I could make fun of him in the game. It was sincere. Lowe determined
that Larry would be a 30-year-old loser wandering the streets of Los Wages,
equipped with only a permanent erection. Wearing a tight white suit with a
butterfly collar, Larry represented an era of key parties, unprotected sex and
orgy-friendly bathhouses. Larry was a living relic.
Lowe didnt think much of Softporn Adventure, with its lack of storyline
and narrow scope, but the puzzles, the puzzles in Softporn were smart, very
old school. It reminded him of the late 70s text adventures like Scott Adams
Adventure or Willie Crowthers seminal Colossal Cave, games with thoughtful,
occasionally frustrating situations, but puzzles that were always solvable and
often brilliant in hindsight. Like the beginning of Softporn Adventure, Larry
would start in front of a dive bar called Leftys. There would be no instructions
on what to do next. Making any type of progress in the game required
unconventional forethought. For instance, when you receive a cocktail from
Leftys grimy bartender, your first instinct is to drink it. Instead, if you take
the drink and give it to the homeless man laying in the bars back alley,
hell tell you the secret password to enter a neighboring speakeasy where
a lady (and her pimp) is waiting for you. If players outsmarted the game
outsmarted Lowe they would be rewarded with sex. (Lowe even managed
to turn sex into a puzzle: in one case, Larry will die if he has sex without using
a condom found in a previous area.) The actual act was more implied than
explicit: when Larry does finally get laid, the naked scene is covered with a
big, black CENSORED! bar that moves and stretched around the couple like
an accordion. Every adventure game was swords and sandals or save the
galaxy from these aliens. I thought I cant do another space game. I cant do
another kings quest game. I wanted something the average guy can relate
to, Lowe said.
Lowe spent Winter 1986 working from home, dedicating his time to
perfecting Leisure Suit Larrys in-game puzzles. If he found one hilarious, he
would often redo the puzzle to make it funnier. After months of revisions
Lowe posted a notice on Compuserve, one of the first online service
providers. Lowe said that he and Ken Williams were looking for ten people
to test the new Sierra game for bugs and, more importantly, humor. The
response was overwhelming, and it also was the first documented time a
game company did an official public beta-testing. I did it because I wanted
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THe porn era: spaceships

the game to understand as much as it could, Lowe said. Each beta-test

copy of Leisure Suit Larry had a special file. The program would make a note
whenever the player typed in a command it didnt understand. I would go,
Oh, somebody typed that? Oh, OK. I would then create an in-game response
to that, or create a new puzzle. Each typed command, such as open door or
have sex, needed to be programmed in. In his sex game, Lowe would have
to anticipate everything that the gamer could possibly want to do.
Sierra released two new adventure games in the summer of 1987: Leisure
Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards and the gritty Dirty Harry-inspired
cop adventure Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel. Games were usually
sold hand-to-hand by eager salespeople, by word of mouth and by the
cover art and text. Softporn Adventure ads notwithstanding, video game
advertisements were still in relative infancy. Two decades later Grand Theft
Auto III and other gamers supported by Hollywood-sized budgets would
have commercial spots during The Tonight Show. In 1987, computer games
sales methods werent much different than the Ziploc days. As a result,
games that seemed the most familiar were generally the best sellers. Sierras
other top titles, Kings Quest III: To Heir is Human and Space Quest II: Vohauls
Revenge, were already part of their respective well-established series. Police
Quest was new, but it carried the Quest moniker and had a stylish cover
reminiscent of a Clint Eastwood movie. (Eastwoods next Dirty Harry movie,
The Dead Pool, would be out the upcoming summer.) The cover of Leisure
Suit Larry had the hero with his pickle nose, oversized head and butterflycollared shirt, sipping a martini and leaning against a TV displaying a naked
digital woman in a Jacuzzi, reminiscent of the Softporn ad.
Overseas, Palace Software released the action game Barbarian: The
Ultimate Warrior. On the cover was a warrior couple played by an unknown
male model and Maria Whittaker, a busty page 3 girl. An iconic feature,
British tabloids often featured a nude or topless woman on page three. On
the game box, Whittaker had a leather bikini bra, a metallic-looking thong
and very long sword. Maria Whittaker was a famous page 3 girl who had
often been featured on page 3, but when she appeared on the games cover,
clad in far more clothes than usual, with a fancy brassiere and (admittedly)
skimpy thong, a right to-do ensued, according to the book High Score: The
Illustrated History of Electronic Games. There was much protest and hoopla
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over the buxom Ms. Whittakers state of dress on the Barbarian cover, and
this is the ironic part nothing about the extreme gory violence of the
game, which was far more gruesome than just about anything that had
been previously released. Unlike Softporn Adventure, games like Barbarian,
Strip Poker and Leisure Suit Larry were being sold at major electronics outlets
to mainstream audiences, not directly from small home offices to techies.
Strip Poker was being taken off the shelves, which was in the late eighties
through the early nineties, said Artworxs Arthur Walsh. At Electronics
Boutique we had one of its best-selling programs, but we were notified that
it wasnt going to buy any more of our programs. This letter was from the
new Vice President of Purchasing, who said it was inappropriate for sale.
Sierra was in a similar quandary when Radio Shack and several other outlets
refused to carry Leisure Suit Larry. Police Quest and Larry shipped. Police Quest
flew out of the stores, but Larry sold, like, 4,000 copies the first month it was
out. Now this is back when almost all Sierra titles sold 50,000 copies or more
per month, Lowe said. It was one of the worst, if not the worst selling game
in Sierras history. Six months of hard work gone, Lowe just immersed himself
in other titles, including the next Larry game, Leisure Suit Larry Goes Looking
for Love (in Several Wrong Places.). Did my life change after Larry first came
out? Not really, Lowe said. My wife and I had the opinion that the game
thing was kind of temporary, so she kept working as a music coordinator. We
lived off of her salary.

On Monday, October 19, 1987, the New York Stock Exchange dropped
more than 500 points, the equivalent of $500 billion disappearing in one day.
It was the worst devaluation in American stock market history. The market
was the victim of inflated Initial Public Offerings and over-hyped companies.
Donald Trump revitalized Atlantic City, becoming a billionaire and, perhaps
more importantly, showing that anyone could have The American Dream
if they were hungry enough. Trump: The Art of the Deal was the number
one book by the end of the year. Oliver Stone released Wall Street, which
popularized the 1987 mantra, Greed is good.There were enough aggressive,
financially-minded high rollers around to create a new term: yuppie, or
Young Urban Professional. Buying stock in new, future-minded companies
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was considered a great, fast way to get a good return on investment. Many of
these new, future-minded companies were filled with hot air. They popped
on Black Monday. Newspapers reported seeing broke twenty-something
Manhattan penthouse owners, their Italian shoes halfway off the window
ledge, yelling to the world that they were going to jump. Bobby McFerrins
video to his hit Dont Worry, Be Happy parodied the stock market suicides.
Investors who wanted to continue to work could not the world markets
were paralyzed by the New York Stock Exchange crash.
A Wall Street employee, perhaps a bored analyst, perhaps a frustrated
broker, uploaded a copy of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge
Lizards onto the companys computer server. Several sources claim it was
at Merrill Lynch. The managers noticed the companys computers were
running sluggishly, but other firms had caught on by then. It was too late.
Computer games have proved increasing popular since the fall in trading
volumes experience after the crash of October [and] dealers have filled in
their work hours by playing games, said a London Financial Times article.
The adventures of Larry the Lounge Lizard have proved particularly
popular because of their salacious content. Those 4,000 copies Leisure Suit
Larry sold the first month became 8,000 the next month, and 16,000 the
next. By February, the Softsell Top 10 computer game chart was owned by
Kings Quest 3, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. Lowe had a hand in all of
them. Leisure Suit Larry alone would sell more than 300,000 copies.
Lowe received a call from Gruber-Peters productions, the company
behind the hit Fox comedy Married with Children. It wanted to do a Larry
sitcom. Lowe went down to their offices and set up Leisure Suit Larry in one of
the boardrooms. About twenty employees crammed into the room to watch
Lowe manipulate Larry on the 36-inch computer monitor. So they would say
something, Id paraphrase it and type it in, and it would mostly work. Like we
went into the bar, went to the bathroom to the urinals, and someone would
say Take a leak. Id type it in and it worked, Lowe recalled. Then some guy
said Masturbate! Now Im thinking, Im not sure if itll understand I cant
remember if I programmed that in or not! So I type it in and it came back
and said The whole idea was for you to STOP doing that! Everyone cracked
up. Other studios approached Lowe about doing a Larry movie, going as
far as reading some potential scripts. One wanted to get Jim Carrey, Lowe
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would later say. He was hot from Dumb and Dumber. He says studios offered
horrible scripts, and those that had decent ideas wouldnt allow him to play
a role in the final product. He says he was offered a considerable amount of
money. He turned everything down, wanting to protect his lovable character.
Shortly after Leisure Suit Larry shipped, a friend overseas told Lowe his game
was a hit in Russia. The problem was Sierra didnt do a Russian version of
the game. He later saw it himself. I found one in Moscow for two dollars.
And their CD art was even better than ours! Now, the entire game had been
copied, but they couldnt figure out the audio files, so they had rerecorded
the voices in Russian overdubbed it. My first reaction was We should hire
this guy! Lowes character was becoming an international icon, whether he
wanted Larry to be or not.
Lowe initially saw the Leisure Suit Larry series as a trilogy. In Leisure
Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals, Larry
finally finds his soulmate, Patti (a heroine you can control during certain
segments of the game), and ends up falling out onto the back lot of
Sierra Productions a homage to Lowes favorite comedy, Mel Brooks
Blazing Saddles. The game finishes with Larry getting hired by Ken
Williams to do a new game for Sierra. I think Ill start the game in Lost
Wages, outside a bar named Leftys, Larry says, typing the beginning
of the first Leisure Suit Larry. Lowe publicly said there would never be a
Larry 4. This was before Leisure Suit Larry 3 became the most successful
Larry game yet, and before it became obvious that Larry wasnt going
to go away. Lowe and Ken Williams had another one of their talks and
decided that instead of breaking up the trilogy, Sierra would put Larry
online. It would be called Larryland. We had this room full of modems
we thought it had to be one modem per computer, Lowe said. With the
limited bandwidth we could create a multiplayer game like chess and
checkers, but we wanted to do an adventure. There was no nationwide
digital infrastructure, like broadband or cable hookups, that could quickly
transfer information from computer to computer to make a complex
game playable. Two Sierra employees, Jeff Stephenson and Matthew
George, handled the technical end. [And] my job? Simple. All I had to do
was design the first interactive, multi-player, on-line adventure game,
Lowe recalled on his online diary, AlLowe.com. Needless to say, I failed.
Lowe quit LarryLand after six difficult months. The infrastructure would
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eventually become The Sierra Network, an online gaming community

that would struggle to make a profit in upcoming years.
Shortly after LarryLand failed, the company Quantum launched a
sophisticated BBS program for the Macintosh. Unlike its competitors,
Quantum wanted to provide Internet access and services to people new
to computers. The dominant company at the time, CompuServe, was
made by techies for techies. (For example, CompuServe email addresses
were composed of assigned, seemingly random numbers and letters.) The
Quantum service would have easy-to-use chat rooms, colorful graphics and
online games. The company already had some success with its previous BBS
program, Quantum Link, for the Commodore line of computers. Quantum
would release the Mac version under a new name, America OnLine. In a few
years it would surpass CompuServe, Prodigy and other service providers.
AOL would eventually purchase The Sierra Network, shutting it down
shortly after.
Despite the LarryLand setback, fans continued to ask Lowe when Leisure
Suit Larry was coming back. Are you still working on Larry 4? a co-worker
asked him one day. No, he says. Im working on Larry 5. He pauses after his
wise-ass comment and realizes hes onto something. Lowe began work on
Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work, which would
also go on to sell 300,000 copies. The sequel makes references to events that
happened in Larry 4 game events that, of course, never occurred.

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OTAKU
Tokyo has many towers. There is one specific building, Tokyo Tower,
which is a replica of Paris Eiffel Tower. Created in 1958 to symbolize Japans
postwar growth, the tower cost nearly 3 billion yen and was painted burnt
orange and eggshell white. It is also a few inches taller than Gustave Eiffels
original tower. Tokyo is filled with towers and, together, they create a startling
skyline. Individually they are mostly unexceptional, mundane buildings that
sell commonplace goods like groceries, electronics and books. In Japan
Unbound, John Nathan explains why modern day Tokyo grows tall, not
out. In 1986 the value of Tokyo real estate doubled, and doubled again in
1987; in September of that year, one hundred square feet on the downtown
Ginza was selling for $1 million. By mid-1988, the value of Japanese real
estate would be worth five times that of the United States. Seven story high
buildings are not unusual. You explore one floor, which is the size of a decent
American kitchen, climb the thin steps, pardoning your way through the
ever-present crowds, and begin exploring the next floor. While towers house
everything from clothing boutiques to posh eateries, a notable amount are
packed with porn. Big breast porn. Black man porn. Animal porn. Bodily
function porn. Blonde porn. School girl porn. Store product is almost always
well organized, sectioned off and clearly labeled on small shelves. There is
usually a separate rack up front dedicated to pornographic video games.
Adult stores generally focus on magazines and movies, not games, but fans
of interactive porn wouldnt go to a tower of porn to get their games anyway.
From the time I arrived there, I remember the only mainstream PC games
being sold in shops were on one rack, like the PC translation of Final Fantasy
VII or Diablo, and the other 90 percent were sex games said Chris Kohler,
author of Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life.
They started making erotic games pretty much as soon as they figured out
how to make games.

Custers Revenge (Mystique, 1982) for the Atari 2600 was the first mainstream
porn video game. It caused multiple protests.

The Japanese arcade game Gals Panic (Kaneko, 1990) was a top ten hit in America.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (Sierra, 2004) was the critically panned return of the 80s
sex game icon.

The first video game to feature a lesbian couple Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix (Eidos, 2001)
had its controversial ads banned in America.

Dead or Alive 2 (Tecmo, 2000) was a well designed brawler, but its bouncing breasts made
it infamous.

The Hot Coffee minigame in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar, 2004) drew ire
from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The fighter Dead or Alive Ultimate (Tecmo, 2004) featured more skin than its predecessors.

Despite having topless riders and strip club footage, BMX XXX (Acclaim, 2003)
was a flop.

Ayane battles in different outfits in the fighting game Dead or Alive Ultimate (Tecmo, 2004).

Rachel is the heroine in Ninja Gaiden Sigma (Tecmo, 2007). It was designed by Tomonobu
Itagaki, the man behind Dead or Alive.

Roxy from the brawler Final Fight (Capcom, 1991) is one of the few transgender video game
characters.

Playboy: The Mansion (Arush, 2005) added nudity to the popular Sims genre.

The Sims 2: Nightlife (EA, 2005) emphasized relationships over sex, though there was heavy
petting.

Naughty America: The Game (Naughty America, 2005) made a stir at the annual gaming
convention, but ultimately was never released.

Naughty America: The Game (Naughty America, 2005) was the popular adult websites attempt
at online virtual sex.

Protagonist Jimmy Hopkins could make out with other prep school boys in Bully (Rockstar,
2006).

In the volleyball simulator Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Tecmo, 2006), players could
dress their character up in tiny outfits.

Technically a sports title, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball (Tecmo, 2006) dedicated hours
of gameplay to girl watching.

The popular action game God of War 2 (Sony, 2007) had interactive sex scenes, as did its predecessor.

Dead or Alive 4 2006 Tecmo

Dead or Alive 4 (Tecmo, 2006) was the first version of the fighting game on the Microsoft XBox
360 next generation system.

Eidos celebrated a decade of Lara Croft with Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition
(Eidos, 2007), a revamp of the original hit.

Lara Croft, featured here in Tomb Raider: Anniversary Edition (Eidos, 2007), was the first video game
sex symbol.

In 2006, Jon M. Gibson and Chris Carle released Nerdcore, the first nude video game calendar.
Miss November is playing a classic Nintendo Gameboy.

THe porn era: spaceships

The first well-known pornographic title in Japan was 1983s Night Life, a
good year after the notorious Custers Revenge was released in America. Koei,
an upstart game publisher, released it for the Fujitsu FM7 home computer.
The back cover features two outlined figures in six positions: 69, doggystyle
(floor), doggystyle (table), on the knees, missionary and a complex spooning
angle. A rhythm method calculator and a sex diary were included. Night Life
became Koeis first hit. The company followed up with another title, one that
loosely translates to The Tempting Housewife Next Door. Koei pulled out of
the virtual sex market early, later making a name for itself with historically
accurate Japanese war simulation games. Following Koeis lead with its socalled romantic education tool, publishers began making erotic games
with a traditional spin. Several popular arcade games updated Mahjong, the
ancient tile game. A coy virtual vixen will lie in the background as you, her
opponent, decide which tiles to remove. Based on your table skill, she will
start to disrobe. Adult Mahjong and card-based games fill the average Tokyo
arcade, rows of erotic entertainment blended with ancient diversions.
The biggest bridge between classic and modern entertainment,
however, would be through a century-old business in rural Japan. In 1889,
artist Fusajiro Yamauchi started a small craft company, Nintendo Koppai. He
specialized in making playing cards call hanafuda, or flower cards.Yamauchisan made a modest living, enough to take care of his family, but his business
blossomed when a neighborhood organization took interest in his product.
In the absence of horse or dog racing or sports pools, the yakuza, Japans
equivalent of the Mafia, operated high-stakes games of hanafuda in casinolike parlors. Nintendo profited handsomely, since professional players would
begin each new game with a fresh deck, discarding the old one, David Sheff
writes in Game Over: Nintendos Battle To Dominate Videogames.
Nintendo would expand into other forms of entertainment, focusing
on electronic goods as computers became more affordable. In Fall 1985 it
released the Nintendo Entertainment System, the biggest American game
system launch since the Atari 2600 a decade before. The NES included two
games, two controllers and two accessories: A red plastic gun called the
Zapper and a foot-high midriff-twisting machine called R.O.B. the Robot.
The Zapper is a light gun that makes the screen flash when you pull the
trigger, used to kill fowl in the packed-in game Duck Hunt. R.O.B. the Robot
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turns in a semi-circle and moves a set of spinning tops in conjunction with

the action game Gyromite. The NES would only be available at toy stores, no
computer or electronic stores, and it could not be purchased without also
buying the plastic accessories. The 1983 Japanese version was called the
Nintendo Family Computer, or Famicom, but it was renamed the Nintendo
Entertainment System to disassociate it with technology. Nintendo wanted
to show the United States that the NES was a toy, not a game machine, unlike
the expensive Ataris and Colecovisions that now grew rusty in American
closets. Nintendos chief game architect, Shigeru Miyamoto, designed The
Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. and other games that took full advantage of
the system. The cutting-edge technology allowed better graphics, improved
interaction and complex narratives that werent possible on the decade-old
Atari 2600.
Nintendo also brought the Nintendo Seal of Quality. Comparable to a
Good Housekeeping approval, a golden Seal of Quality on the box was to
insure customers that Nintendo knew the content of the respective video
game and decided it was appropriate to play. According to author Brenda
Brathwaite, former Nintendo of America senior vice president Howard
Lincoln listed the companys standards as follows:
No sexually suggestive or explicit content
No sexist language or depictions
No random, gratuitous, or excessive violence
No graphic illustration of death
No domestic violence or abuse
No excessive force in sports games
No ethnic, racial or religious, or sexual stereotypes
No profanity or obscenity
No use of drugs, smoking material, or alcohol
No subliminal political messages or overt political statements
Lincoln elaborated, Among the sexual content Nintendo deemed
inappropriate were women dressed as Playboy Bunnies, men whistling at
women, a woman who shakes her breasts, and a game in which a females
clothing did not adequately cover her body. Nintendos restrictions did not
seem much different than the Comic Book Code of 1954, which required
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that women be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical

qualities and that Illicit sex relations are neither to be hinted at or portrayed,
or even Hollywoods earlier Hays Code of 1930, which carried a whole section
on depicting impure love. According to the Hays Code, impure love means
intimacy outside of marriage, love which society has always regarded as
wrong and which has been banned by divine law. However, if filmmakers
feel they have to show impure love, It must not be presented in such a way
to arouse passion or morbid curiosity on the part of the audience.
By Holiday 1987 the Nintendo Entertainment System was the number
one selling toy, surpassing Cabbage Patch Kids and Teddy Ruxpin. Other
companies also prospered. Voltron, Robotech and similar cartoons captured
adolescent imaginations by combining high-tech machines, soap opera
subplots and quirky Japanese humor. In 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo brought
Akira to America. The animated movie was about three gang member
teenagers fighting a monster made out of pure energy, trying to put Tokyo
under nuclear attack. There is a rape scene, limbs are severed and adolescent
bodies are squished like cow eyes under a hammer. It became required
watching for any boy under 16, and culturists well beyond puberty loved it,
tooeven critic Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs up. Akira was recognized both
critically and commercially because it was a perfect example of what Japan
does best: take pop art seriously.
Japan also exerted its heavy influence in 1980s American commerce,
a turnabout from decades as the economic underdog. In 1973 the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, inflated gas prices
for profit. The oil crisis made cash-tight Americans more dependent on
the small, fuel efficient Japanese cars. A second OPEC price jump, in 1979,
doubled United States gas prices. Honda and Nissan established plants in
Ohio and Tennessee, respectively. The Japanese auto industry ended up
dominating Henry Fords America in both sales and productivity. Unused
to creating cars with a Japanese level of efficiency, GM, Chrysler and Ford
were losing money, closing plants or selling them to Japanese companies.
Only 40 years before, the World War II Allies, led by America and Britain, had
decimated much of the Asian countrys infrastructure. In 1947, the year of
the transistors invention, American aid to Japan exceeded $400 million.
To help pull Japanese industry back onto its feet, the U.S. would provide
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technological assistance and encourage Japan to undertake research and

development, according to Bob Johnstones We Were Burning: Japanese
Entrepreneurs and the Forging of the Electronic Age. Hewlett Packard, Texas
Instruments and other American companies created the transistor, compact
disc laser technology and high-resolution television. Nearly all the technical
research was licensed, if not outright given to the Japanese. Johnstone cites
various political and economic reasons for this. There was, however, still
another reason why U.S. concerns were prepared to transfer their technology
to Japan so blithely: Simply, in their wildest dreams, the Americans never
imagined that the Japanese would catch up to them so quickly.

Started by cocksure American entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell, Atari had

managed to exile its founder and lose billions during the 1983 video game
crash. It was now looking for an Atari 2600 follow-up to fight Nintendo. The
company released the Atari 5200 and the Atari 7800, two systems that were
technically inferior to the NES. Neither sold well. At the arcades, Japanese
company Capcom released Final Fight, a mindless, yet addictive combat
game that established the side-scrolling fighting genre which would
dominate arcades the next five years. Atari would respond with Pit Fighter, a
stiff battle arcade game composed of stilted digital pictures reminiscent of
Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. Capcom again replied with Street Fighter
II: The World Warrior, which became the most imitated one-on-one fighting
game in arcade history. Unlike the seventies, Atari didnt have hit arcade
games to draw customers to its home systems and third-party companies
like Capcom and Konami decided to bring their games to Nintendo instead.
Atari lost a foothold both at home and the arcade, and there was no other
American company qualified to take the lead.
The newly profitable home and arcade market encouraged other
Japanese companies to reenter the American video game industry. One
publisher, Kaneko, released three arcade games within one year: the Final
Fight-inspired DJ Boy, the frantic shooter Aero Blasters and the puzzle title
Gals Panic. Gals Panic is a revamp of Taitos Qix, a 1981 arcade hit released
around the time Kaneko was last relevant. In Qix, you drop a continuous line
that, when made into a box, paints the enclosed area. The goal is to paint 75
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percent of the screen while avoiding two enemies: a spinning electric wand
and a set of sparks walking along the box borders. You are only vulnerable
to the wands attacks when out painting, but are exposed to the sparks
when sitting on the wall. You have to keep moving. Qixs basic graphics and
electronic, florescent backgrounds made the game more Tron than Ms. PacMan, giving it a nerdy glow. Arcade games have an Attract Mode, a demo
that repeats when people arent playing. The Attract Mode for Gals Panic
begins with purple, red and orange bubbles rising to the top of the screen
and popping to spell out G-A-L-S P-A-N-I-C in irregular letters. A spinning
pink bow flies under the games title and a chipper Japanese woman says
Good luck!, calling passersby to deposit a coin.
Once the game starts, the first thing you see is GAL SELECT in big
rainbow letters above six Japanese profiles. They are relatively chubby, round
faces, and seem to still be working off puberty. There is smiling Marina, in a
stylish haircut and bedazzled earrings, dour Emi, with a serious face packing
a strained smile, and four other women. The game has three rounds. In the
first area, a fast-moving spider spits tiny arachnids and webs to slow you
down. The second area has a very fast moving fireball shooting little killer
flames. The final area has a ridiculously fast moving pyramid capable of
splitting itself into a dozen separate pieces, all bouncing off into different
directions. In the background, underneath the chaos, is a cartoon silhouette
of the woman you selected. She is fully clothed during the first round, in
her underwear during the second and completely nude in the final round.
Successfully creating boxes over the body reveals her skin. Making boxes
over her body also requires energy, which is tracked by an onscreen meter.
Hit a certain low point and the curvy silhouette will turn into a random
picture which could be, among other things, a blue female bear wearing
red lipstick or a bloody figure that resembles the pinhead character from
Hellraiser. To win the round and see the woman, you have to make boxes in
the area around her silhouette, which adds energy, until the meter is long
enough to complete the act. The women give encouragement, You and I
are going to have fun! and Good! Unbox the vagina, breast or belly button
in the final round and you receive more colorful commentary. Ohhhh, good,
Ayami might say in a muffled voice, as if shes speaking with her face in a
soft pillow. If you manage to uncover 80 percent of her body, a visual round
of claps appears and a long note of striptease music plays. The cartoon
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representation of the woman is star wiped away and replaced with a photo
of the real model. She is usually kneeling or bending down to the floor. She
looks younger than the cartoon drawing. The model squeaks once last thing,
Touch my body or perhaps Hold me!, and the game returns to the GAL
SELECT menu.
Gals Panic was an American sleeper hit in 1990, but in Japan it fit well
with the erotic Mahjong and card games genre. Kaneko made at least six
sequels. In America none were as popular as the original, which is enough
of a moneymaker that it can still be found in modern American arcades
albeit in a dark corner. Regular Qix wills the player into doing things within
the context of the game. You want to create tiny boxes, but for some reason
you think Oh my God, I can do a huge box and I can get all this area! and, of
course, you get hit by the enemy and die, said Power Up author Kohler. For
Gals Panic, its even more intense because of whats under there. It is all the
more reason for the player to act like a total idiot, waste his 100 yen and play
it again.
Another notable sexual arcade game in Japan would be from Taff
Systems, a Korean company. On Boong-Ga Boong-Ga, the units top half has
the usual TV screen, but the bottom has a bottom: a persons behind and legs,
slightly bent as if picking something up. He or she is wearing tight jeans. The
mannequin makes it look like someone is halfway inside the arcade machine,
perhaps trying to repair a loose nut. Next to the butt is a large, removable
plastic finger. Boong-Ga Boong-Ga translates into Spank em in English, but
the game is actually an anal penetration simulator, hence the plastic finger
(as opposed to a hand) and the drawings of whipped, multicolored flying
poo on its marquee. This is a fun game of spanking peopple [sic] that make
your life miserable, said the arcade flyer. When you spank the character that
you choose to punish, the face [sic] expression of the character will change
as they scream and twitch in pain. The funny face [sic] expressions will make
people laugh and relieve the stress. It lists eight characters you can make
scream and twitch in pain: an ex-girlfriend, an ex-boyfriend, a gangster, the
mother-in-law, a gold digger, a prostitute, a child molester and a con artist.
the game was received enthusiastically [in Tokyo] last year, wrote WIRED.
Taff System recently signed a deal to distribute 200 Boong-Ga Boong-Ga
machines in arcades all across Japan.
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THe porn era: spaceships

Tomonobu Itagaki is a tall, pale man, probably in his forties, with shiny
black hair down to his shoulders, dark clothing and pale, acne-scared skin.
Perpetually sunglassed, most gamers have never seen his eyes. He could
be a Japanese member of The Ramones. Itagaki-san has worked for only
one company, Tecmo, a medium-sized game publisher in Tokyo. He went
there straight from college after deciding against becoming a professional
Mahjong player. His first assignment was Super Tecmo Bowl, Tecmos popular
sports franchise. I guess I can take credit for having snow in the game, he
said in an interview. In fact, thats the only thing I did for that game. (Super
Tecmo Bowl was one of the first sports games to incorporate weather.) Itagakisan decided that for his next project he would try designing a complex 3D
fighting game. He called it Dead or Alive, not for the games deadly martial
arts, but because Tecmo was in financial trouble: it needed a hit or it was
going under. (Game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi named Squares legendary
adventure series Final Fantasy for the same reason.)
Dead or Alive was a hit. The 1996 brawler had colorful 3D environments
and visuals that pushed the respective platforms the Sony PlayStation and
the Sega Saturn to previously unknown heights. It also did well in arcades
worldwide. Classic one-on-one fighting games like Data Easts Karate Champ
and Konamis Yie Ar Kung Fu were popular in the early eighties, but Itagakisans title joined an arcade resurgence led by Capcoms Street Fighter, Segas
Virtua Fighter, Midways Mortal Kombat and Namcos Tekken. By the time
Dead or Alive 2 arrived in 1999, Itagaki-san openly gave his opinion of the
competition: Tekken wasnt that good and, frankly, Mortal Kombat was of low
quality. He had little to nothing good to say about the remaining fighting
games. From Tekkens blocking system to Virtua Fighters innovations in three
dimensions, Dead or Alive would probably not have been as progressive of a
fighting game without its predecessors something the designer was loathe
to admit. It was as if Dead or Alive played Athena to the competitions Zeus,
appearing fully formed without anyone elses intervention.
Tecmos follow-up Dead or Alive 2 wasnt as much of a leap in gameplay
as it was a study in detail. Spinning leaves fall from the semi-nude trees onto
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the battlefield below. A well-timed kick knocks a character through a dojo

wall, exposing the outer perimeter of the arena. The sun glistens off in the
distance, creating a bit of lens flare. The female characters, of which there are
many, shake spherical, buoyant breasts, tugged by some unknown centrifugal
force as they walk, run, kick and jump. Dead or Alive 2 sold significantly better
than its predecessor, and Itagaki-san began developing DOA 2 remixes on
different platforms. He did several redesigns of another Tecmo franchise, Ninja
Gaiden, by adjusting the difficulty, improving the graphics and re-releasing
it on the newest gaming hardware. For Dead or Alive, he kept tweaking the
breast physics. They had to be perfect. DOA is known for its bouncing breasts,
he would later say, citing the little-known 2D fighting game Garou Densetsu
as the first game he saw with a considerable jiggle factor. Of course, when I
applied it to a 3D game, it was almost too much for people.
Popularity increased with Dead or Alive 3 and the DOA spinoff Dead
or Alive Xtreme Volleyball. In the sports game Zack, a fighter from Dead or
Alive, purchases a deserted island, builds a casino and tricks all the DOA
characters (at least all the female ones) to come there for a free vacation.
Previously ruthless adversaries, the trapped ladies begin playing games
together, rubbing each others backs and generally getting to know each
other better. As the omnipotent voyeur, you tell the women where to go,
what to wear and where to touch. There is an occasional volleyball match to
earn extra points, which in turn can be spent on buying more outfits for the
women. Despite the games title, its easier to find the women in a jumping
race across floating wafers or a butt-bumping balance battle on a log. They
are almost always bouncing and are almost always wet. Dead or Alive Xtreme
Volleyball received a M for Mature rating from the Electronic Software Ratings
Board, roughly the equivalent of a movie R, and reviewers panned the title.
Watching boobs bouncing about independent of one another made me
seasick, said one reviewer. It spent months on the American top ten sales
charts, and Itagaki-san churned out a sequel, Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball
2, with similar results. He would turn out more Dead or Alive remixes in
upcoming years. (He would also be sued by a female coworker for allegedly
groping and forcibly French-kissing her during a shared afterwork cab ride.)
In Japan, Tecmo began selling dozens, if not hundreds of different Dead
or Alive porcelain figures. One character, a young, buxom brunette, wears
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a slim black bikini and leans back, playfully, spread eagle on a water raft
from Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball. The popular Japanese importer J-List
sold it for $83. In one post, the videogame website Kotaku listed the newest
Japanese Dead or Alive products including a real womans bikini emblazoned
with the characters, a bendable doll and a life-sized body pillow of a lead
character. The final item shown was a mouse pad with two raised lumps.
In case youre not sure how to use the mousepad, the folks at ChestRest,
who make them, have included some basic Dos and Donts: Do place your
wrist between Kasumis well-endowed breasts; Dont hug and then fall in
love with Kasumis breasts; DONT even think about placing her breasts
against your crotch and then pumping your arm in the air while shouting:
Woo! Woo! Woo! Kotaku titled the post Play with Kasumis Breasts for $25. It
later noted, Just because Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 didnt exactly set the world
on fire, doesnt mean its game goods cant. (And some will argue that the
series is now produced to sell certain segments of the population life-sized
character pillows.)
Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball fits into a Japanese game genre called
bishoujo, or pretty girl. The goal is to pleasure or have fun with the women
in the game. (The genre can also be called hentai.) Megatechs 1992 PC
adventure Cobra Mission was the first major bishoujo title to come to
America. You play JR Knight, a detective searching for missing women in the
shadier parts of Florida. It has a top-down view, not unlike Pac-Man, and
the characters, including your handsome gumshoe, are short and stocky.
Successfully follow the clues to a damsel in distress and Cobra Mission shifts
to a detailed, first-person view close-up of the woman. A list of options
appears. You are given a limited amount of turns to pleasure her. A traditional
set of choices:
Use your hand
Use your lips
Whisper
Rotary Vibrator
Vibrator
Candle
READY to GO!!

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Porn and Pong

Megatech released a R version with limited nudity, but players could

purchase or later upgrade to an X version with more graphic visuals. The
box reads, Cobra Mission (TM) graphics are drawn by established Anime
artists in Japan. Our Anime girls are wonderfully fresh and unique sporting
flashy eyes, fine noses and spunky hair colors. Youll be dazzled by 190+ highresolution Anime graphics including 50 solely for the sexier moments of
play. The text is bracketed by four photos, including a group shot that looks
like it may be the prelude to a large orgy. So provocative is Cobra Mission
(TM) youll find yourself reacting both physically and emotionally!!!
Japan also had a parallel genre equally popular to bishoujo. In Masuyas
PlayStation 2 game Choaniki: Legend of Holy Protein, two well-greased
bodybuilders, Adon and Samson, fly through space shooting evil aliens.
They are ripped, evenly tanned and don heavily-weighed thongs. A video
game poster shows the pair facing each other, holding hands, smiling, in
a standing action pose, leaning on their toes forward as if the next frame
would show them wrestling. One character has his knee securely between
the others thighs. Originally for the Japanese PC Engine system, Choaniki
was a descendent of Konamis eighties spaceship title Gradius. While the
classic bad guys were multitentacled extraterrestrials and wide battleships,
Choaniki: Legend of Holy Protein had half-naked human-looking beings.
The heroes fend them off by shooting sparkly white blasts from the tops
of their heads. They are after the holy protein, a powerful substance that
will give them the perfect bodies. (Protein is also a major component of
human sperm.) A similar title, D3 Publishings The Friendship Adventure for
the PlayStation 2, casts you as a young new broadcaster who must bond
with other males on staff both in the office and after work. The locations vary
from beer-soaked sports bars to sweaty saunas. The goal is to get as close as
possible to your desired mentor. One of the more revolutionary details put
into the game is after you input your name, you can set if youre the giver
or receiver (ahem), noted the website GayGamer.net. You can also set any
of the NPCs sexuality as Gay or Non-gay. The characters end up [having
orgasms] either way, but the dialogue and story flow changes depending on
your choice. It adds, The original PC adaptation is recognized as one of the
first games that was made specifically for the gay market in Japan. Japanese
games exploring yaoi, which literally translates to boy love, usually arent
geared towards gay men, but to young women. According to Power Up, ...
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[T]here are dating games that put the female player into the role of a male
high school student who goes after other male high school students. One
is called Gakuen Heaven: Boys Love Scramble. Its box proclaims it a Love Love
Hyper Boys Game. Kohler estimates about half of all Japanese computer
games sold are pornographic. Peter Payne, owner of the popular import site
J-List, explains how in the book Sex in Video Games. Since, over the years,
some of the bishoujo game titles released in Japan have caused concern
about their negative influences on society, the industry is currently selfregulated, through an organization called the Software Morality Association
(Sof-Rin) which sets standards for the games. No characters under 18, no
themes such as incest or bestiality, and so on. For the most part, these efforts
keep the bishoujo game industry out of trouble as far as the law is concerned.
Part of the reason why adult dating-sims get extra leeway is that they arent
live-action and arent really viewed as porn in a real sense. American arms
of publishers like Nintendo and Sony are much more conservative than their
counterparts, so most bishoujo-style games would have to be purchased
through import companies like J-List. Choaniki, The Friendship Adventure and
Gakuen Heaven: Boys Love Scramble never made it to the United States.
Segas PlayStation 2 title Rez was one of the few provocative Japanese
games to make it to America. A fast-paced shooter, you play a programmer
who enters a hostile computer world. It used vector graphics, visuals
composed solely of straight lines, to convey the sparse universe. The
background music adjusts to your actions so you, in a sense, are creating a
rhythm as you play. Rez came with a mouse-inspired peripheral, about five
inches long and three inches wide, which shook to the rhythm. It was called
the Trance Vibrator. You can put in anywhere your foot, your back, your
waist, Rez designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi told Wired. Its up to our customers
imagination. It also came with a washable protective pouch. Sony gave the
game an E for Everyone rating.
Sega never admitted it, but Rez utilized teledildonics, a new field where
heavy-automated vibrators and other machines are used in a directly
sexual manner. Similarly inspired, Kyle Machulis of the sex and tech website
Slashdong created a vibrating dildo and butt plug that connected directly to
the Microsoft XBox system. It would be called the SexBox. However, Segas
Rez was the first major video game to feature teledildonics. The PlayStation
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2 version proved to be the most popular, but Rez was originally released on
the Dreamcast, Segas own late nineties system that failed in the American
marketplace. Overseas, the Sega Dreamcast maintained a solid Japanese user
base based on a continual stream of bootleg pornographic games. Erotica
publishers would eventually stop producing for the Dreamcast about six
years after Sega stopped manufacturing the system.

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THE
LARA CROFT
ERA
(1996 2001)
From a pure design standpoint, Lara Croft herself actually isnt that
amazing shes the equivalent of a stick figure with huge boobs. Still, her
name does serve as excellent shorthand for a sea change, like when you
say Eminem or George W. Bush: There is an immediate thought, a rush
to opinion, a for or against and, most importantly, a before and an after.
In Laras after, well-adjusted men were contemplating fucking a bunch of
pixels, lusting after a digital diva that didnt exist and actually admitting it to
other people! Its no coincidence she blossomed at the dawn of mainstream
Internet porn (though, with online pictures and video, you at least know that
person is out there somewhere). Lara represents the first time America
fell in lust with the idea of someone in a video game, as much as a comic
reader may have for Jean Grey in The Dark Phoenix Saga, or as I did with the
liberated Madame Bovary in Gustave Flauberts classic novel. Video games
now had the power to ignite sexual passion.
However, those passions were still diffused through other pop cultural
identities, and the three major characters of this era Lara Croft, the virtual
Sims, the lesbians of Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix are still caricatures of norms
established by Pamela Anderson, Reality TV and the movie Bound, in that
order. They managed to make people horny, but video games still werent
their own cultural force.

Porn and Pong

VIRGINS
On Independence Day 1997, a probe landed on the red planet. Called
the Mars Pathfinder, the small NASA-created vehicle carried an even smaller
land rover named Sojourner. The rover was a photojournalist. Sojourner
would crawl over the red desert surface, trolling for interesting items and
taking pictures at NASAs request. The rover would explore areas that, at -220
degrees Fahrenheit, would break the human body apart like shattered ice.
Over the following four months it would show us what had never been
seen by the human eye. Nightly news would end with the latest widescreen
Mars photo. Scientists pontificated about possible extra-terrestrial life. The
media took a renewed interest in H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and other futureoriented authors. Using a new medium called the Internet, NASA would post
photographs on its website shortly after they were taken. Users could select
the Mars pictures they liked best and download as many photos as their
28.8k baud modems could handle.
During Neil Armstrongs 1969 moon landing, the Americans in New York
and the Americans in California looking at their television sets were watching
the exact same footage at the exact same time. It was a shared experience.
It was also a generic experience. During the Mars probe thirty years later,
viewers could go online at, say, three in the morning to see if there were
any new photos. Passionate fans could enter forums or chat rooms and
argue about the existence of extra terrestrials. They could set their favorite
Mars photo as a computer desktop picture. Utilizing the World Wide Web,
NASA allowed each viewer to create his or her own unique connection to
Mars. By its final transmission on September 27, 1997, the Mars Pathfinder
and Sojourner sent more than 16,000 pictures of the red planets surface.
Technology was extending the arm of human experiences. It just happened
to be a robot arm. As groundbreaking as the Mars mission may have been,
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Americans didnt necessarily learn the true power of the Internet by looking
at porous crimson rocks and dried river valleys. They learned earlier that
summer, at their workplace office, in their dens, in front of their televisions,
as they watched clips of Pamela Anderson fucking her husband, Tommy.
Internet discussions and media coverage related to Pam & Tommy Lee:
Hardcore & Uncensored trumped the historical Mars visit. Porn pundits argue
that it was downloaded or bought online several times over any Mars-related
paraphernalia. In retrospect, it seems that Pamela Anderson Lee was the real
uncharted world.
The twenty nine year old bleach blonde was a worldwide star thanks to
Baywatch, a popular lifeguard show that featured a good-looking cast of men
and women saving good-looking bad swimmers. The title sequence slowed
down as Lee ran down the beach, her 36DD breasts restlessly bounding in
her tight red suit. A poster of her in the Baywatch swimsuit was a bestseller, a
staple for adolescent rooms and college dorms. Her husband, Tommy Lee, had
just reunited with his group, Motley Crue. Known for hits Dr. Feelgood and
Girls Girls Girls, the once-popular eighties rock band had gone out of favor,
gotten into drugs and fallen out with each other. The drummer wanted the
band to make a comeback and hoped that the ongoing recording sessions
for the next album, Generation Swine, would provide one. It was during this
hectic time that the newlyweds took their houseboat to Lake Mead, Nevada,
for a five-day vacation. They decided to take a video camera.
Tommy Lee claims that the grainy, seventy-six minute tape was stolen
from his family vault by a disgruntled personal assistant. The tape ended up
in the hands of Seth Warshavsky, a twenty-three year old Internet mogul and
owner of the Internet Entertainment Group. He contacted Tommy Lee and
told him he was going to broadcast the tape on the Internet. The couple sued
IEG, but the courts ruled that, since they were public figures, the content was
newsworthy and Warshavsky could show the footage. He would eventually
release it on VHS, but for now it would be streamed shown live from
the IEG members-only website ClubLove. Warshavsky said millions joined
ClubLove to watch the sex video, and millions of dollars were definitely made
from the notorious video tape. Pamela and Tommy Lee would eventually be
awarded $1.5 million in damages, as well as attorney fees, but no amount of
money could take the video out of Americas hands. Years later Tommy Lee
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was still livid. It pissed me off because I dont ever want my kids to go to a
friends house and find a video in the VCR of their parents fucking.
Pamela Anderson began modeling for beer companies in the mideighties. She quickly got a Playboy centerfold, followed by a stint as the tool
girl on the hit ABC show Home Improvement. In 1992 she joined Baywatch,
making her tight breast-implant filled red swimsuit an icon in itself. In Barb
Wire, a 1996 movie based on a comic, she wore a tight one-piece leather
catsuit for the role, the top turning into a low-cut bustier that pushed up
her breasts together. The movie bombed at the box office, dashing her goals
of transitioning from televisions to theaters. Barb Wire was nominated for a
Razzie Award Worst Picture, but lost to the $50 million Demi Moore movie
Striptease. (Moores movie also won Razzies Worst Actress, Worst Director,
Worst Original Song, Worst Screen Couple and Worst Screenplay.) The film
followed a single mom stripper and her coworkers, but Striptease also
featured Demi Moores new breasts. They were big, buoyant and spherical,
and made her look less like the girl next door seen in Ghost.
Aside from silicon, both Striptease and Barb Wire shared another
element. Striptease shows a stripper who never takes it all off for the
movie audience. Barb Wire features a ruthless sexy action hero who never
copulates. Neither hormonally-aggressive character is ever nude. On Times
Square, Calvin Klein crafted multistory billboards featuring an underwearclad Mark Wahlberg. In Congress, conservatives and liberals argued over if
sex education classes promoted sexuality and whether condoms should
be distributed in the school. It seemed okay to sell sex appeal and to
imply sexual situations, but not to actually have it. With Pam & Tommy Lee:
Hardcore & Uncensored, the famous Baywatch actress had crossed the line.
She publicly gave up the goods. The virgin/whore archetype was ruined.
There was nothing more to see.
Pamela Anderson Lee would be replaced on Baywatch the following
year.

There are several myths in the video game industry. In one, a young,
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geeky game designer named Toby Gard was working on a new character,
one he would later describe as a female Indiana Jones. She was originally
Larry Croft, but he thought a female character would be more appealing.
It would be a 3D game, not one that would require glasses, but one that
would have physical depth. You would feel like the character was going into
the screen. Each item onscreen would be made up of polygons, geometric
shapes that could be manipulated to scale and, therefore, make 3D levels
easier. As you got closer to an object, the polygon scale would increase
and it becomes bigger, and the opposite as you walk away. The characters
themselves would also be composed of polygons and the game artists would
use special graphic software to create them. So far, this is all true. The myth
is that Gard was in the offices of Core Design, the UK-based development
company, working on his new female heroine when, on a whim, he made
her breast size 150 percent bigger than normal. Officemates noticed and
encouraged him to keep the design at least for a little while. Gard went
along with the joke. This well-told story of how Lara Croft received 38 DD
breasts seems much more likely when you realize that Toby Gard was only
nineteen years old.
Ms. Pac Man was perhaps the first video game heroine, but she was
not created by the game manufacturer, Bally. In 1981, nine MIT students
reprogrammed the Pac-Man machines they leased to local stores. They
modified the mazes and made the frantic game even faster. The crew then
went a step further, creating a special circuit board that, when added to a
normal Pac-Man machine, automatically upgraded it to their special version.
Now they could sell the board to arcade owners who didnt want to risk
breaking their expensive units. The students first tried it with another popular
game, Ataris Missile Command. As they completed the work on Pac-Man,
Atari caught wind of the Missile Command board and sued them before they
could sell any. The game company then did something unprecedented: Atari
offered the kids a contract to make Atari games provided they, of course, stop
manufacturing modification boards. They agreed. Contract in hand, the MIT
students went straight to Bally, showed them the modified Pac-Man board and
started negotiating. Coincidently, Bally had no idea how to follow up the most
popular video game ever made. It asked them to modify their enhancement
board to create an official Pac-Man sequel. Their first decision was to make
the new Pac-Man a woman, later adding a red bow tie and a beauty mark.
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(The game would also have intermissions with Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man
chasing each other, locking lips and eventually having a baby Pac Man,
making it arguably the first sex scene in a mainstream video game.) The next
notable heroine was Samus Aran, the tough bounty hunting space warrior in
Nintendos Metroid. (The game seemed inspired by Sigourney Weavers Alien
movies, the second of which came out in 1986, the same year as Metroid.) The
twist was that the gamer wasnt told her gender. You spend hours playing
through the lengthy adventure, starting at and guiding the innocuous figure
in a full body metal space suit. It wasnt until the end, as the credits were about
to roll, that the warrior would stare at the screen, towards you, and emerge out
of the shapeless protective covering to reveal a purple dancers leotard and
long, very green hair. Well before email or the Internet became commonplace,
Samus Arans true identity remained a secret that was slowly exposed to skilled
individuals who beat the game. Those who completed Metroid under the time
limit could play Samuss adventure again without the body armor. Metroid
aside, most female characters were accents to the main male characters, like
the Valkrie in the popular 1985 dungeon crawler Gauntlet, who, among three
other warriors, was the token woman, or Chun Li, the single female in 1992s
seminal Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. Valkrie wore a revealing metal
bustier, similar in shape to the Barb Wire outfit, and was later upgraded to a
furry two-piece bikini worthy of Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.. Chun
Li initially wore a blue Asian top, Princess Leia-style earmuffs and a tiny skirt.
Skilled gamers could time her kicks just right to see her cotton white panties.
These were female characters before Lara Croft.
Gard and the Core Design team spent eighteen months creating Tomb
Raider featuring Lara Croft, a game best described as an intelligent shooter.
Unlike Doom and other combat-focused precursors, Tomb Raider split
gameplay evenly between perilous shootouts and brain-teasing puzzles.
Lara also had the option of holstering her guns a first in modern video
games which allowed her to scale cliffs, grab swinging vines and, perhaps,
even think before reacting. A smart woman, the character would be the
daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft. She would speak in proper English with
a proper British accent. She would live in a manor. [S]he was supposed
to be this strong woman, this upper-class adventurer, Gard said. He also
acknowledged some not-so-obvious source material. Lara was based on
elements of Indiana Jones, Tank Girl, and, people always say, my sister, Gard
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later told a British newspaper. Maybe subconsciously she was my sister.

Core Design was a development company, not a publisher, but it
connected with another small British outfit named Eidos Interactive to
distribute Tomb Raider. The development company is the artist, the publisher
the proverbial salesman. The publisher will often fund the development
companys projects and ideally facilitate the peace and quiet it needs to
create. It will also work on brand recognition, organizing media junkets and
other forms of public relations. When royalties arrive, it is the one that cuts
the check.
It is heavily rumored that Eidos faced bankruptcy before its deal with
Core Design. Tomb Raider could have literally been a make-or-break title,
which turned the Eidos PR machine into overdrive. The company released
promotional pictures of the buxom character in tight bathing suits and
clingy cocktail dresses. Maxim and other mens magazines published her
pictures and her dimensions: 38-24-34. Gucci paid Eidos $30,000 for Lara to
pose in the famous houses latest couture. (It used virtual clothing.) English
nude model Neil McAndrew was hired to play Lara Croft at marketing events.
Gard, an employee on the company payroll, had nothing to do with Laras
presentation to the public. She wasnt [meant to be] a tits-out-for-the-lads
type of character in any way. Quite the opposite, in fact. I thought that what
was interesting about her was she was this unattainable, austere, dangerous
sort of person, he said in an interview. Eidos took the untouchable character
out of Gards hands and made you feel like she was in yours. Gards ice queen
became public domain. Angry and disillusioned, Gard quit Core Design two
months after the games release. He started a new development studio,
Confounding Factor, and a new project, a pirate game named Galleon.
Galleon is not a progression from Tomb Raider, he declared. It is simply
what Tomb Raider should have been. His new found venture wouldnt be
burning up much Tomb Raider money. By leaving Core, Toby lost his share of
the estimated $700 million.

On November 15, 1996, Tomb Raider was released for the Sega Saturn,
the PC and, soon thereafter, the new Sony PlayStation. Tomb Raider sold three
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million copies within the first year, and was a critical and commercial success.
By November 1997 Eidos shot out a sequel, Tomb Raider II, and Tomb Raider III:
Adventures of Lara Croft arrived the November after that. The next Tomb Raider,
The Last Revelation, would again be out the following November, to which
one critic said, This latest Tomb Raider can be rewarding for those who can
suffer through its cumbersome controls, numerous high difficult gameplay
sequences, and occasional bugs. Tomb Raider sales remained relatively high,
but the numbers for each successive game dropped significantly. Critics said
Eidos and Core Design did little to improve the games, and it certainly didnt
help that Tomb Raiders principal designer, Toby Gard, had left the company
likely before the first sequel was even outlined. Meanwhile, Lara Croft
appeared in original comics and as plastic action figures. U2 commissioned
original Lara Croft animations for its sold-out PopArt tour. The band would
show the footage on multistory monitors as they performed. She became
the 1997 cover girl for the popular British magazine The Face. In 1999,
Playboys August cover read Tomb Raider Nell McAndrew A.K.A. Lara Croft
Nude alongside the then former Tomb Raider model posing in an army
fatigue-colored bikini. Inside was McAndrews eight-page nude pictorial
alongside digital photographs of Lara. The first has Lara, with a low-cut tanktop and exposed midriff, holding a copy of Tomb Raider III: Adventures of
Lara Croft. The last has Lara laying down in a small silver bikini, letting her
arm with the gun rest on her thigh, right below McAndrews nude spread.
The Internet flooded with recommended in-game locations, specific
areas where, if Lara was turned just right, you could catch a better glimpse
of her cleavage. Shortly after the original Tomb Raider a small downloadable
program called Nude Raider appeared on pornographic and gaming
websites. The program would superimpose a graphic layer, called a skin,
onto the in-game character. The imaginative skin stripped Lara of all her
clothes so gamers could run around the Venetian catacombs nude or skinny
dip in digital Peruvian falls. Amateur artists began to make unauthorized
digital pictures of Lara. Supported by new, cheaper 3D software and a
grateful audience, they would reenact scenes from the game or create new
scenarios entirely. A small number of websites run by fans of the Tomb
Raider game series and its heroine Lara Croft post fan-made art that they call
Nude Raiders, which show the lovely heroine wither clothes off, the game
website IGN reported. Some of the images are even more risqu, showing
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her bound, cuffed and in other pornographic poses. One memorable digital
poster shows Lara sitting on the floor next to her bed. She is topless and
only wearing her jeans, knees to her chest to cover her breasts and hands
wrapped around her legs. With her pensive look to the door, it looks as if
she just got a spanking. By the 1998 release of Tomb Raider III, there were
hundreds of pieces of Nude Raider art available for free online. Creating one
digital image would take dozens, if not hundreds of hours. These posters
could be considered the first homage to a digital sex symbol. Keenly focused
on ownership and control, Eidos and Core Design sent cease-and-desist
letters to the few, but persistent websites dedicated to Nude Raider art. It
proved ineffective. In August 1998, Core Design sued an American web host
company for $1.1 million to get the rights to www.nuderaider.com, home of
the supposed ringleader in Lara Croft nude art. Core bases its action on the
argument that it owns the copyright on all forms and permutations of the
Lara Croft image, one legal website reported. It won the case and quickly
shut down www.nuderaider.com, but by then illegal Lara Croft posters had
already spread across the Internet faster than a virus. The company would
have to search the then billion-or-so World Wide Web pages to find pictures,
often renamed or hidden away in unreachable partitions, not to mention the
posters that left the Internet and were saved on fans home computers. Most
Nude Raider art was comfortably sitting on peoples hard drives next to the
illegal Pamela and Tommy Lee sex movie.
Three Tomb Raider iterations came and went before Toby Gard finally
released his pirate adventure, Galleon. It was most often described as an
ambitious, yet underwhelming experience. It failed at retail. Gard would
come back to the Tomb Raider franchise after its fifth game, Tomb Raider:
Angel of Darkness, was a critical and commercial flop. He would be returning
to a new company: Eidos fired Core Design (keeping ownership of Tomb
Raider) and hired Crystal Dynamics, a small but well-known company behind
solid adventure games like Soul Reaver. By the time the Angel of Darkness
follow-up Tomb Raider: Legend was released, Lara had changed hands from
Toby Gard to Core Design to Eidos to Crystal Dynamics with Toby Gard.
Considered a wonderful return to its essence, Legend was a huge success
on all levels, selling record numbers and getting rave reviews. It didnt seem
to change Gard. He would refuse media interviews, even at Eidoss urging,
and avoid the limelight as if he was a paparazzi-fazed pop icon himself. The
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average person may be angry about the millions of dollars lost or creating
what critics consider an artistic failure and doing a proverbial return to the
nest. For Gard, it seemed to all come back to Lara. An early advertisement
spread for Tomb Raider: Legend shows Laras perfect apple bottom in tight
khaki shorts and her rock-solid legs standing on a cliff. Off in the distance
you can see a grassy valley off cliffside, and beyond that a deep, damp canal,
noticeable if you look between her legs. In capital letters it says LARA IS
BACK. Nothing, it seems, had changed. Gard articulated the issue in 1997:
I had problems when they started putting lower-cut clothes on her and
sometimes taking her clothes off completely. Its really weird when you see
a character of yours doing these things. You cant believe it. You think She
cant do that! Ive spent my life drawing pictures of things and theyre mine,
you know? They belong to me.

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WILDFLOWERS
In the nineties, Music Television tried its first non-music program,
The Real World. The MTV program was, to paraphrase the shows opening
credits, when seven strangers are picked to live in a house to show what
happens when people stop being polite and start being real. It was a big risk
for a channel known only for music videos, but The Real World gained high
enough ratings to return with a new cast.
In one of the second seasons episodes, Jon, an eighteen year old virgin
and country singer never seen without his 10-gallon hat, is sitting with
his television roommate Dave, a struggling African-American comedian
reminiscent of Eddie Murphy in both looks and tone. Daves beeper goes
off. Do you sell drugs? Jon asks with a grin. Dave scowls and lets him know
that, with his ridiculous hat and southern Christian upbringing, he expected
a racist assumption that being black means you sell drugs to come from
his redneck mouth. Jon blinks several times. Im making a joke! Didnt you
ever see the first season of The Real World when Heathers beeper goes
off and (white) Julie asks (black) Heather if she sells drugs? Dave, perhaps
embarrassed for his tirade, just gives Jon the middle finger. In the previous
season, Julie, Heather, and the other five strangers picked to live in a SoHo
house may have had no idea what would happen to them (MTV claims the
participants werent prepped at all) or who their roommates were before
everyone moved in, but they certainly did not know they would have the
heated conflicts about sex, racism and class, budding romance between
roommates, near fisticuffs and, perhaps most importantly, how these few
recorded months of their life would forever define them to an audience
of millions. The Real World was the first major American reality television
show. Jon, David and the other season two roommates were likely part of
this audience of millions, knowing enough about the show to want to get
involved, and were probably aware of what would or could happen while
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the cameras were rolling. Like The Real World fans, they knew whatever they
did in that house would forever be caught on tape. Jons referential joke
revealed that this spontaneous, real life journey that he and the other cast
members were supposedly partaking actually had precedence. Reality TV
was becoming self aware.
The Real Worlds first season cast featured a rough-edged, heavyset female rapper, a grunge-era thin man with curly, greasy hair, a gothpale Midwestern hipster and, with the exception of a male underwear
model, three other non-photogenic people. They were average. The only
requirement seemed to be participants being between eighteen and twenty
five. It would be a surprise hit, earning MTV some of its highest ratings yet.
The show managed to capture the elusive, yet influential 18 24 year old
demographic, which made it attractive to advertisers. The network launched
Road Rules, which would best be described as The Real World on wheels,
and it began scaling back music videos in favor of reality programming.
MTV would produce almost twenty The Real World seasons within the next
fifteen years. Participants in the second season were nearly as average as the
first, but the roommates seemed to become thinner and prettier with each
new cast. Eventually the standard women were a size 2 or 4, often buxom.
More than a handful would go on to pose in Playboy. The men were chiseled
Adonises, easy on the eyes and a little dangerous. Originally a bunch of bike
messengers and aspiring artists, The Real World actors became fashion models
or aspiring actors in following seasons. (One participant even admitted that
the experience would look good on her acting reel.) The first The Real World
season was like the average college dorm, highlighted by late-night political
discussion, awkward conversations and occasional partying. A decade later,
during season twelve, roommates had a threesome in the first episode in
the MTV-provided hot tub. Defending their questionable behavior on the
show, cast members would later suggest MTV encouraged them to act wild
on camera. The network kept a steady open bar in the house and at every
club they visited. Some claimed the MTV crew would pull them aside and
ask probing, passive-aggressive questions off camera, such as We heard Jon
say he likes the Confederate flag. How does that make you feel?
CBS producers fueled antagonism with participants on Survivor, the first
major situation-based reality television show. Launched in May 2000, the
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series threw a dozen people on a deserted island. Each person was forced
to find food and participate in physical tribal challenges. People would get
voted off the island one by one by other contestants. The last person
standing received a one million dollar cash prize. Like The Real Worlds first
season, Survivor participants had to feel their way through different, new
situations. For instance, how do you cook a rat you just caught (or, more
pointedly, is that a rat you just caught)? On some level the audience knew
the island wasnt deserted, as there were obviously cameras everywhere, and
perhaps even that there were hamburgers, hot dogs and other traditional
modern foods on the island, since the cameramen, the light guy, the host,
Jeff Probst, and other CBS crew had to eat, too. Millions of viewers seemed
happy to suspend disbelief. It became the number one program on regular
television.
In the Nintendo age, we expect our televised entertainment to take
a new form: a series of competitive tests, growing more challenging over
time, Steven Johnson writes in Everything Bad Is Good For You. Soon there
were programs like ABCs Joe Millionaire, where women would compete
to marry who they thought was a rich stranger, to NBCs Fear Factor, in
which people would win prizes by successfully eating live scorpions,
bungie jumping off a cliff or other dares. Big Brother put several people in
an isolated, cramped house and voted the most annoying people out. The
Swan took several so-called ugly ducklings and paid for a totally makeover,
including extensive plastic surgery. The most improved would get a prize.
Reality shows cost anywhere from a quarter to half as much to produce as
scripted shows, Michael Hirschorn, VH1 Executive Vice President of Original
Programming and Production, acknowledged in The Atlantic Monthly. Even
television programmers see the genre as a kind of visual Hamburger Helper:
cheap filler that saves them money they can use elsewhere for more-worthy
programming. Hamburger Helper would eventually become more than a
fifth of all TV programming. Following Survivors model, most would feature
a bunch of competitive strangers that are confined to a limited area and are
slowly picked off week after week. And like The Real World, any season two
participants would be more aware than the previous bunch: more aware of
the cameras, the limelight and the repercussions. It wasnt necessarily about
reality anymore, but about watching beautiful people in simulated situations
and observing them as one might a hamster in a well-greased wheel.
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Wil Wright released his people simulation, The Sims, in February 2000,
about three months before Survivor first aired. According to the book
Smartbomb, Wright once sat down and talked to a group of twelve year
olds about the game. The first question they asked was if you could kill your
character. The question didnt disturb the lanky, brilliant designer at all.
[Wright] says the kids were doing the most natural thing in the world: trying
to intuit the boundaries of the possibility space they were given Thats a
kids job, he says. Wrights previous game was SimAnt.

The Sims is a simple game. You create a human character, or Sim,

which can be made into your or someone elses likeness, or into a random,
imaginary person. You can take a prefab home or design an original house
using a basic toolkit. Your Sim is then plopped into an imaginary house in
American suburbia alongside other, computer-controlled Sims that play your
neighbors. The game is spent making sure your Sim is happy by maintaining
its eight ratings: bladder, comfort, energy, fun, hunger, hygiene, room and
social. While it is possible to complete pointed tasks and minigames, there is
no end to The Sims. Your little person is living a life. It is always there.
There were two early inspirations for The Sims. The first was Tamagotchi,
a childrens toy released by Japanese game developer Bandai in 1996. It was
a small locket with a digital display of an egg. When you turn on the device
for the first time, it hatches. Most of them resemble a rat with big ears. As
owner of a brand new Tamagotchi, your job is to press a button and feed the
baby whenever it became hungry, which, on average, is every half-hour. (It
also slept.) Millions of Tamagotchis were sold, bootleg and otherwise.
The second inspiration for The Sims was a generally forgotten Commodore 64 game, Raid on Bungling Bay, which was Wrights first title. In the
action game, you fly a chunky helicopter over pixilated terrain and try to
destroy everything that moves. It was a minor hit. Wright admits that Raid on
Bungling Bay was a dumb game. Like many game creators, he made design
software so he could produce new Raid on Bungling Bay levels quickly. Hed
shuffle the pre-made tiles around, laying down bridges, buildings and bodies
of water where he pleased. This part was fun, he thought, later telling The
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New Yorker he was more interested in creating the buildings on the islands
than in blowing them up.
After studying several books on urban dynamics, Wright created a city
simulator based on his game design tool. You could make buildings, organize
city power and strategically map residential and commercial districts, but
you also had to monitor crime, watch the city budget and keep the populous
happy. He added a natural disaster icon that featured a giant, fire-breathing
lizard. And, unlike most video games, you could play as long as you liked.
There was no end. Broderbund, the publisher of Raid on Bungling Bay, said
it didnt see the point in a game you couldnt beat. It passed. Two years
later Wright met Jeff Braun, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and showed him
what he now called SimCity. The two started their own company, Maxis, and
released the game in 1989. The company was based in Brauns apartment.
Through word of mouth, Maxis SimCity became a cult favorite and spawned
several back-to-back sequels including SimCity 2000, SimEarth and SimAnt.
Electronic Arts, purchased Maxis and gave Wright seventeen million dollars
worth of EA shares for his portion of the company.
The Sims is a natural extension of SimCity. What happens when you
zoom in on a group of people within a bustling city you control? It was the
microcosm of the macrocosm. Wright poured over sociological theories such
as Maslows hierarchy, the theory that human needs can be prioritized in a
five-step pyramid (physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem and selfactualization), and books like E. O. Wilsons The Ants.
In an average day (in the game, not in real life), your Sim will wake up
at a reasonable time in the morning (unless he or she had a late night out,
in which case you need to wake your Sim at a reasonable time yourself ). It
will then stand there. If it has priorities adjusted towards, say, partying, it
may walk over to the billiards table and play a game of pool (not that there
is anything wrong with that at 6:00 a.m.). More than likely, however, after
eight hours sleep or a long night of drinking, your Sim will have to go to the
bathroom. It subtly begins jumping up and down, sometimes holding its
crotch. You move the cursor to the bathroom (you did build a bathroom in
the house, didnt you?) and tell the Sim to walk there. It moves. Once it gets
there, you click on the new option, Use Bathroom. It pulls down its pants
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and squats on the toilet, the details covered in a fuzzy blur. After a minute
(or two), the Sim gets up, turns around and flushes the toilet. You click on the
sink and the Sim will wash its hands. The Sim is messy, so usually you will find
several water spots on the tiled floor. You should find the closet, tell the Sim
to walk there, click on the mop, tell the Sim to walk back to the bathroom,
and then click on the appropriate wet tile squares (roughly 10 pixels across)
for the Sim to mop them up. Your Sim could slip and fall and die if youre not
careful with that. What makes The Sims so popular is its dogged adherence
to the minutiae of subsistence, and thats where were supposed to feel the
realism, wrote Chuck Klosterman in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture
Manifesto. He dedicated a whole chapter to the game. The Sims make the
unconscious conscious, but not in an existential Zen way; The Sims forces you
to think about how even free people are eternally enslaved by the process
of living. Suddenly, I had to remember to go to the bathroom. I had to plan
to take a shower And though I need to do all those things in reality, the
thoughts scarcely cross my mind unless Im plugged into the game.
It was released on the PC in 2000, the year that situation-based reality
television began, and was an instant hit. In short time EA followed up with
The Sims: Livin Large, The Sims: Hot Date, The Sims: House Party, The Sims
Online, The Sims Deluxe, The Sims: Unleashed, The Sims: Vacation, The Sims
(Sony Playstation 2, Microsoft XBox and Nintendo GameCube editions), The
Sims: Superstar, The Sims: Bustin Out, The Sims: Makin Magic, The Urbs: Sims
in the City, Sims: University, Sims: Nightlife, Sims: Open for Business and Sims:
Seasons. The Sims 2 came out, too.
The Sims and its spinoffs sold 85 million copies, making it the top-selling
commercial video game of all time. Hundreds, if not thousands of players
designed personal websites for their Sims: day-in-the-life diaries (later called
blogs), wedding web pages and, when animals were introduced to the series,
pet sites. Time found one player who liked to re-create real-life interpersonal
relationships in the game to see how things would play out. Other players
would set up torture scenarios, like having their Sim eat several meals and
then trap them in a closet and have them piss or shit on themselves and pass
out from exhaustion on the feces-covered floor. Homemade Sims videos
would be passed around the Internet. Time noted, [I]n the hands of its legions
of devotees, the game has become an expressive language they can use to
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tell stories about their own lives. Despite dozens of sequels and spinoffs, The
Sims games remained focused on mundane tasks. Wright only provided blank
characters that users could project their own values, prejudices and issues
onto. He discussed his game, his experiment in Smartbomb. Its gotten to the
point now where I surf the fan sites everyday and download cool things the
fans have created, which is really ironic in a way! Because now its the fans out
there that are entertaining us, the developers, with their creations!
Reality programming unfolds in the most artificial of environments
[b]ut they nonetheless possess an emotional authenticity that is responsible
for much of their appeal, Steven Johnson says in Everything Bad Is Good
For You. At the peak moments when Joe Millionaire reveals his true
construction worker identity; when a contestant gets kicked off the island
late in a Survivor series the camera zooms in on the crestfallen face of the
unlucky contestant, and what you see for a few fleeting seconds is something
you almost never see in prime-time entertainment: a display of genuine
emotion written on someones face. The thrill of it is the thrill of something
real and unplanned bursting out in the most staged and sterile of places, like
a patch of wildflowers blooming in a parking lot.

When Electronic Arts released The Sims Online, the Internet itself had
arguably reached its tipping point. In its early years, consumers logged
on at hyperspeed. U.S. households online soared from zero to about 50%
in six years, wrote Business Week. PCs took 18 years to reach the same
penetration. The average modem speed was 56 Kilobytes/per second, or 56 K,
at least twice as fast as when the Sierra Network launched years earlier. Visually
and structurally complex video games could be played over the Internet now
that information was passed faster between computers. (America OnLine
(AOL), which purchased The Sierra Network years earlier, was now by far the
largest Internet service provider.) The first major online role playing game was
3DOs Meridian 59, released in 1995. A sword and sorcery game, Meridian 59
is essentially a visual version of the classic Dungeons & Dragons-inspired text
adventures like MUD. The designers reportedly established the term massively
multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. It won several industry
awards, but became a cult classic rather than an outright hit.
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EAs first foray into MMORPGs was Ultima Online in 1997. The creator
was Richard Garriott, the same designer who made a fortune with his small
company, Origin, in the early 80s. After his hit Akalabeth: World of Doom,
Garriott started a popular series of role playing games called Ultima. Ultima
Online would be an Internet-enabled version of the long-standing world,
Britannia. It would have its own currency, economy and weather. The nonplayer characters, or NPCs, including barnyard animals and gruesome
monsters, would have their own artificial intelligence. It would be a fullyfunctional online world. It garnered more than 250,000 subscribers. The
first time I visited Britannia, I went as Gudrun, a young archer, journalist
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker. I gave her a peaches-and-cream
complexion, blond pigtails, and a not very medieval miniskirt. Not long
after Gudrun arrived in the kingdom, she met Dark Wolf. Dark Wolf was
wearing a red robe and carrying a long sword. He bought Gudrun some
shoes, and also a suit of leather armor, which, when she put it on, turned
out to be a tight-fitting affair halfway between a cuirass and a bustier. It
was unclear to me whether Dark Wolf was expressing simple fellow-feeling
for Gudrun or something harder to satisfy. Kolberts article was titled
Pimps & Dragons. In Sex in Video Games, Garriott said sex-related services
began in the game immediately after it went live. Two people had logged
into the game and one person was pimping for the other, who would then
lead people into a storeroom along the docks where they hung out and
ooh and ah at the John. The game supported no depictions of sex, but
the player demand was clearly present, and they engineered their own
solution. Any of the quarter million players could pass by the docks and, if
they wanted to, stop and watch.

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CLOSETS
On the night of March 11, 2000, a group of fraternity guys were drunk
and angry. They just spent two hours watching the Ellen DeGeneresproduced lesbian drama If These Walls Could Talk 2 and not seen any hot
lesbian sex. In a non-sequitur that would become typical of Saturday Night
Live, one of the frat boys, played by comedian Jimmy Fallon, says he has
a genie that can grant him three wishes. He uses the first two wishes on
important things, like turning their small beer keg into a larger beer keg,
and then decides to use the last wish to make two lesbians appear in the
room and start making out. He asks that the women be unaware they are
watching. His wish is granted and the two women appear in his bed, but
they immediately realize something is wrong. Both women are homelylooking, wearing heavy flannel clothing and homemade cut-off shorts, and
the hair on their legs seems longer than the hair on their heads. The frat
starts complaining to the genie, but she explains that the wish cannot be
taken back. The lesbians embrace. One lover licks the other ones face. A frat
boy puts his head behind the couch and starts vomiting. Another one starts
crying something to the effect of These arent real lesbians! A third shouts
This thing is giving me a hard-off!
A few years earlier, Ellen DeGeneres decided that the character she
played in her popular ABC sitcom, Ellen, would come out of the closet. In
other words, the character, also named Ellen, would reveal she was gay.
DeGeneres herself had not publicly discussed her own sexuality, despite
rumors that she was a lesbian. Outing her self-named sitcom character
would out her in the process. The year before, the Walt Disney Company
purchased the American Broadcast Company. Executives at the parent
company were against DeGeneres idea. Once word leaked on the potential
episode, ABC affiliates across the Bible Belt said they would not air the show.
Long-time advertisers bailed. In the end, ABC executives decided to do the
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episode. Times have changed, CNN said of the heavily watched episode.
ABC lost $1 million in advertising revenue when the thirtysomething show
depicted two gay men in bed. Seven years later, there are sponsors for Ellen
and they reportedly paid more than $300,000 for each 30-second spot. Time
gave DeGeneres the cover. It read, Yep, Im Gay.
One of the most critically noted movies at the time was Bound, a bloody
crime caper starring a effeminate, busty character played by Jennifer Tilly
and a hard-driving plumber played by Gina Gershon. They were lovers in
the film. Several cultural critics wrote about the sexual tension in Thelma
and Louise, the Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon movie in which two
women kill a rapist, but found the lesbian undercurrent symbolic, not literal.
Catherine Tramell, Sharon Stones character in Basic Instinct, kissed her
lesbian girlfriend throughout the film, but Tramell herself was a bisexual.
Basic Instinct focused on the dynamics between her and the male lead,
Michael Douglas. There are only two leads in 1996s Bound: lesbians Violet
and Corky. Andy and Larry Wachowski, who would later write and direct
The Matrix, even hired expert Susie Bright as their on-set sex consultant.
Bound is about the lovers plan to steal two million dollars from Violets
mafia boyfriend, Caesar. Corky is an ex-con, a former professional thief,
which is why Violet asks for her help. They only know each other from a
one-night stand the evening before. Corky explains her reservations to
Violet. For me, stealing has always been a lot like sex. Two people who
want the same thing. They get in a room, they talk about it. They start to
plan. Its kind of like flirting. Its kind of like foreplay. Because the more
they talk about it, the wetter they get. Corky gives a sly smile and readjusts
in her seat. The only difference is I can fuck someone Ive just met. But to
steal, I need to know someone like I know myself. Violet coaxes her into
getting involved, but the plan goes awry and Caesar catches them, traps
them in his bedroom and ties them up in heavy rope. The mobster points
his gun at Corky. He interrogates her on the location of the money. Then
he demands to know how she stole his woman. Everybody knows your
kind cant be trusted. Fuckin queers. You make me sick What did you do
to her, huh? He is practically salivating. What did you fuckin do to her?
Thats not my Violet! He turns and points the gun at his girlfriend. What
did she do to you? Violet looks at him coolly. Everything you couldnt.
Caesar leans back, lets out a heavy sigh and turns his back to them. Caesar
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has murdered several people to find out where his money is, including a
mafia boss, but at this point he seems ready to give up. The gun may as
well be shooting blanks.
Corky had to be the kind of woman whom everyone in the theater
would be dying to go to bed with Susie Bright later wrote in her book
Mommys Little Girl. Violet, on the other hand, couldnt be just any straight
girl on the drift. She had to be a femme diva, as calculating and as sensual
as a cat.
In the first scene of the 2001 video game Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, Hana,
a curvy, short-haired brunette, is entering what looks like a pay-by-the-hour
motel. The camera zooms in on her behind, taking in her semi-translucent
black negligee and white thong panties. She slinks towards the john sitting
at the beds edge. He is blond and buff, and wears a childish, ear-to-ear
grin. Hana moves in front of the nameless man and slowly begins taking
off her dark nightie. The room dims. Later that evening, Hana walks into the
bathroom and looks down at her lover in the bathtub. He is now dead, his
lifeless body bobbing in the bloody water. She notices that hes wearing the
same grin his face, which makes her smile. She has to ask. So, was it worth
dying for?

Stanley Liu, creator of the Fear Effect series, was raised in Hong Kong. To
make sure he blended in with the other boys, his father let him drink beer
at age four and gave him cigarettes as a teenager. When you take away the
taboo of things, it becomes a non-issue, Liu would later say. In 1988, the
Chinese government would create a movie rating system, the highest being
sai chai, or category IV, equal to an X rating. Liu was in Hong Kong in the late
sixties and early seventies, well before the more liberal ratings. He wouldnt
see his first porn movie until he was 16, when he came to America. When I
was in Hong Kong, there was no such thing as a XXX movie the law said they
cant show intercourse and nothing below the waist, something like that. The
worst I was were some breast shots! he said. They were more restrictive.
Very conservative with sex. He says his viewpoint was further complicated
by religious views. My parents are hardcore Buddhists. However, I was sent
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to a British Catholic school through most of my young adult life. I grew up

with this clash of Chinese superstition and Western Catholicism in my head. I
remember vividly how we had to burn offerings to our ancestors in July and
make Sunday mass at the same time.
Liu attended the Art Center in Southern California to study digital
graphic art. After graduating he did cinematic effects for major video game
companies like Origin, creator of the popular role playing series Ultima, and
Sierra, of Leisure Suit Larry fame. (He did not work on the Al Lowe series.)
Liu then pooled his resources and started his own game company, Kronos
Digital Entertainment. The small, boutique developer would make games
other publishers would distribute. Japanese publisher Vic Tokai sold its first
title, the 3D fighting game Criticom, in late 1995. It followed up with Dark Rift.
Dark Rift is the product of Kronos, the same company responsible for the
abysmal Playstation fighter Criticom, the website GameSpot wrote. While
Dark Rift isnt a sequel, the lackluster fighting contained on the cart might as
well have been culled from a mythical realm called Criticom II. On the upside,
Dark Rift isnt quite as bad as Criticom. It received a 5 out of 10. Most major
reviewers echoed GameSpots opinion, though some thought the graphics
in Dark Rift were impressive.
All the while, Liu dreamt of creating an aggressive, gun-happy animated
movie similar to the popular Asian action flicks he grew up watching. He was
a big fan of John Woo, the Hong Kong director of Hard Boiled, The Killer and
other violent, critically-acclaimed action films. Liu and his business partner,
John Zuur Patten, talked about paying homage to anime, a Japanese
animation style that usually focuses on surreal settings, strong female
protagonists and violent resolutions. One of the most famous was 1988s
Akira. Lius movie would star a group of ruthless Western bounty hunters led
by a headstrong femme fatale named Hana. Their exploits would lead them
straight into a mythological Chinese hell. The whole concept of Hell and life
after death was always an interesting philosophical mind twister to me, Liu
said in a interview. When I came up with the concept and the back-story for
Fear Effect, it was like therapy! Fear Effect for the Sony PlayStation (PSOne)
would balance highly challenging action-adventure levels with animeinspired animated shorts called cutscenes. Liu wanted to blend the playercontrolled portions and the cutscenes well enough so that the two would
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be almost indistinguishable. Previous home games like Tecmos Ninja Gaiden

had an obvious distinction between the interactive and the cinematic. Arcade
games like Cinematronics classic Dragons Lair were smooth, but required
expensive hardware to run. We had to make sure that the cinematics and
gameplay were seamless, Liu said. I mean, the label interactive movie is a
death sentence.
The last notable interactive movie was Segas Night Trap, a 1992 game
that used digital footage. It featured several teenage girls having a slumber
party, discussing boys and other important matters, while vampires, who
resemble men with stockings on their heads, quietly hunt down the girls
with what looks to be a long drill. Your job is to defend the helpless women.
Pressing a button at the right time would show a vampire being caught
in one of the many set traps, while bad timing would show prerecorded
footage of girls being subdued in some angry, PG-level way. The girls tended
to disperse. To do the job right, you have to constantly watch footage of the
women from hidden cameras stationed in every room. Night Trap had no
nudity, but the panty-raiding voyeurism created a minor controversy. One
of the teenagers featured was Dana Plato, the actress who played Kimberly
Drummond on the eighties sitcom Diffrent Strokes. That same year she
would star in Bikini Beach Race, a porn with Ron Jeremy.
Quality issues aside, Liu realized that home game system technology had
advanced since Night Trap. The Sony PSOne used high-memory CDs instead
of low-memory cartridges, which allowed programmers to include visuals
less grainy than in Night Trap. Fear Effect could have more storage space
to showcase the game world. Developers could also spread a game across
multiple CDs, something not possible with cartridges. Kronos determined
Fear Effect would span four separate discs, one for each of the games worlds.
Also in Kronos favor was a competitors title, Resident Evil. Capcoms zombie
horror series, which balanced B-movie thrills with action sequences, would
eventually sell more than 24 million copies. It even coined a new game genre:
survival horror. While not as visually stunning as the game Liu proposed,
Resident Evil proved that a great story could be told while still keeping
the gameplay solid. Kronos talked with potential Fear Effect distributors,
including Tomb Raider publisher Eidos. It was an uphill battle. I even had to
convince some of our in-house people that the game was viable, he said. I
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remember being in the boardroom after the Eidos presentation of the first
game and, afterwards, the president looked me straight in the eye and said
How much of this is just cool in your head, Stan?
Eidos did eventually give Kronos a deal and released Fear Effect in
February 2000. One review read: From out [of ] nowhere, it seems, comes
Kronos, who hasnt made a single game thats worth owning, until today. Fear
Effect wont knock Resident Evil off the survival horror map, but it takes the
Resident Evil formula and prods and pushes it in new shapes and directions
like a kid with Play Dough. One major point of interest was the Fear Effects
domineering leader, Hana. She wore tight, revealing outfits throughout the
game. In interviews, Liu was often asked if there was a code you could punch
in to play Hana nude, an understandable question with the rumors that a
similar was available for another Eidos game, Tomb Raider. Liu said no. You
get to see Hana in her bare minimum quite a bit throughout the game. For
me, it is more interesting to see her in different sexy outfits than it is to see
her in her raw, exposed nakedness. We got some very interesting costumes
designed for her next endeavor. Rest assured, there will be plenty left for the
imagination.
An unprecedented success, Kronos immediately went to work on a
Fear Effect sequel. The team knew it wanted to add more of whatever made
the original a hit: more background story, more violence, more sex appeal.
Kronos used new graphic techniques to get more visual detail out of the
aging PSOne system. It gave the sequel an easier learning curve, to make it
more accessible than the original, and provided thirteen possible endings
to the game based on what decisions you made. Hana also got a lover. Her
name was Rain. A lot of subject matters, like homosexuality, are brought
up in our game not to shock, piss off or offend anyone, but to look and talk
about it. Video games are a great medium and, now that many game players
are grown-up adults, to restrict it is such a waste. So, Hanas sexual preference
wasnt made to put people into shock, but because it fit her character, Liu
said. In one cutscene, the two bounty hunters need to assassinate someone,
but first they must distract the building guards to use a secret elevator. After
a quick discussion, Hana grabs her busty blonde companion and starts
making out with her in the small shaft. Hana begins to peel her tight green
party dress off, but stops just before getting naked. She waggles a free finger
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at the camera. Sorry, boys. This is private, she says, tossing her dress over
the surveillance equipment to block the view. Two male guards are watching
in the camera room. Damn. Should we kick em out? one asks. No way!
the other replies. Maybe the dress will fall off! In an early action sequence,
Rain has been taken hostage by a multi-tentacle alien. The monster has
stolen Rains clothes and strapped her into four-point restraints located in
its laboratory. (The scene is similar to Jabba the Hutt capturing Princess Leia
and dressing her in a metal bikini in Return of the Jedi.) In the battle, you use
Hana to fight the alien while Rain writhes and squirms, struggling against
the cold metal restraints, wearing nothing more than her bra and panties.
Originally, we heard a tone it down speech from Eidos, because Wal-Mart
wouldnt carry Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix if it was too explicit, Liu recalled. Id
say by mid-production, though, we said Screw it! And it stayed. We have a
little touching and such, but it all fits in the story.
Eidos began an extensive Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix print campaign in
Winter 2000, the same time it started promoting the fourth Tomb Raider
game, The Last Revelation. In the two-page spread, Rain is straddling Hana,
and Hana is lying on her stomach reading a magazine called Big Guns. They
are both in their underwear. Referring to Fear Effect 2s multiple endings, the
caption reads No ones surprised this story is capable of thirteen climaxes.
GamePro refused to run the ad, as did other publications with a youngerskewing readership. Eidos provided them with a more acceptable ad. The
original ad had no explicit nudity, just light touching and innuendos, but
they had a problem with the word climax, Liu said. We have another ad
where Hana and Rain are in regular clothing that says These two ladies
put the ass in assassin. And that ones OK! Mens magazines like Stuff
happily ran the original ad. The hipster sex magazine Nerve profiled the
Fear Effect women in a photo spread, guns drawn, along with quotes from
Liu about the elevator make out scene. Playboy.com did an article on the
advertising controversy. Eidos provided different Fear Effect 2 ads based on
the country. The Italian ad was similar to Americas censored one, with the
text Dont let us play on our own. The German advertisement had Hana
and Rain partially naked, giving each other a hug as they look at the reader.
Rain is wearing virgin white bra and panties, while Hana is clad in the
same black nightie and white thongs she wore in the games murderous
cutscene introduction. The women have guns in hand. A caption reads,
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in big brown letters, Stell dir vor, du hast eine uzi und eine pumpgun und
einen verdammt geilen arsch! Roughly: Imagine you have an Uzi and a
shotgun and a damned hot ass!
Eidos released Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix for the PSOne in February 2001,
a year after the original game. It received excellent ratings. The tough
magazine NextGen made Fear Effect 2 the featured review of the month,
giving it four-and-a-half out of five stars. Critics said graphically it pushed the
Sony PSOne as far as it could go. Three months earlier, in November 2000,
Sony launched its advanced PlayStation 2 (PS2). Kronos began working on
Fear Effect 3: Inferno for the new system. The PS2 would allow bigger games
because it used DVDs instead of CDs, similar to how CDs were a big leap from
cartridges. The first two games raised a lot of questions we plan to wrap
up in [part three], Liu said in a 2001 interview. A lot of technical problems
came because the first two games had to be on four CDs, so with [Fear
Effect] 3 being on DVD, we hope to not have as much constraint. Kronos
and Eidos attended the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the largest American
video game conference, to show a two-minute collage of cutscenes from
the upcoming game. In one scene, Hana is running down the hallway of
an asylum while being chased by aggressive hospital guards. They trap her
in a corner and pull out a needle, presumably filled with medicine that will
sedate her. In a panic, Hana scratches one of the guards and his whole face
falls off, revealing bloody muscles and long fangs. She manages to escape
into an elevator and, as she takes a deep breath, the elevator walls begin
to ooze blood. The preview showed a level a gore well beyond anything in
the first two games. The following year, Fear Effect: Inferno was a no show
at the annual gaming conference. Eidos tells the press that the game is on
hold at the current time. In short time Eidos says the project is indefinitely
postponed. Stanley Liu and his company Kronos were no longer available
for comment. Calls to the offices were answered by a disconnected phone
line message. Several sources say that the members of Kronos went their
separate ways and all game-related assets had been destroyed. Eccentric
movie director Uwe Boll, best known for the 2003 flop based on Segas
House of the Dead, bought the film and TV rights to Fear Effect. Fear Effect is a
fantastic game with a dark story, he said in a press release. I want to create
an action film in the vein of Charlies Angels, but portray its sexy heroines
Hana and Rain in a much edgier fashion.
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In 2000, Showtime cable channel started Queer As Folk, the first major
gay soap opera. Will & Grace, an NBC comedy about a gay man and his
straight female friend, was a top-five prime time hit. MTV launched the
gay-focused cable channel Logo. Another new basic cable channel, Bravo,
began several gay-friendly shows, including Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a
makeover program where five gay men help a hapless straight man improve
his couture, grooming, decorating, cooking and social skills. The so-called fab
five appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, cut an official single and
video for its theme song All Things (Just Keep Getting Better) and, perhaps
the biggest pop cultural measurement at the time, were parodied on the
satirical cartoon South Park. Showtime launched the lesbian drama The L
Word, which became another hit for the network. Unlike most pornographic
films or mainstream movies, these programs were not created or written by
straight males, but by people intimately familiar with the cultures. Based on
Nielsen ratings and cable data, millions of Americans were watching gay and
lesbian-focused shows, letting a previously unknown subculture into their
living room as easily as they observed the four straight single women on
HBOs popular Sex And The City.
By the time Fear Effect 3 was lost in indefinite postponement, websites
such as GayGamer.net were representing the gay and lesbian video game
community. Players were affectionately called gaymers. A Nottingham
Trent University study at the time found that 54 percent of male gamers
and 68 percent of female gamers preferred to create game avatars, or
online personas, of the opposite sex women to avoid unsolicited male
approaches and men because they found themselves being treated
better by other male players. Just a decade earlier, Nintendo refused to
allow Capcom to release its seminal arcade brawler Final Fight on its Super
Nintendo system. In the fighting game you beat up drugged-out street
urchins, Mafia bosses and crooked cops. You also defend yourself against
two women, Roxy and Poison. Depending on the version of the game, the
two sisters have long pink or purple hair, tiny cut-off shorts and half t-shirts
that barely hold their breasts. Handcuffs hang from their shorts. Their tight
t-shirts rise when you hit them. According to Game Over: Nintendos Battle
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To Dominate Videogames, the game company told Capcom abuse against

women was against its content policies. Capcom told Nintendo that Roxy
and Poison werent always women. They were transgender. Final Fight was
released on the Super Nintendo in 1991 sans Roxy and Poison. (A rare
home port, for the Sega CD, reportedly has the sisters. Later Capcom games
would feature them in less revealing attire.) The topic was discussed enough
for Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono to explain Poisons gender years
later. In North America, Poison is officially a post-op transsexual. But in
Japan, she simply tucks her business away in order to look like a girl.
Atari, which now only released games, not systems, published
Dungeons & Dragons: The Temple of Elemental Evil. Based on the popular penand-paper games from the 1970s, The Temple of Elemental Evil was a role
playing title geared towards hardcore gamers. In one point in an otherwise
straightforward game, you and your merry party of men met a slave named
Bertram. The slave says that if you can defeat his master, hell repay you by
marrying a male party member. Beat Bertrams master and youre treated to
a wholesome same sex marriage ceremony. And Elemental Evil isnt the only
place where gamers can find gay romance, tech journalist Clive Thompson
wrote on the website Slate. Players of Knights of the Old Republic discovered
that while playing a female Jedi, they get hit on by another female Jedi.
Later this year, virtual gay wedlock will hit the mainstream when The Sims
2, the long-awaited sequel to the most popular PC title of all time, allows
marriages between same-sex Sims.
The Sims 2 became the first major American video game to allow gay
marriages, but the series had always allowed gay couples. There were no
press releases. No special The Sims: Gay Edition. You just made your Sim flirt
with someone of the same sex and build a relationship from there. The
inclusion of gay relationships in The Sims and other games reflects the
Will & Grace effect, said Wired sex and technology critic Regina Lynn. For
the majority of the gamer generation, theres nothing more provocative,
political or puerile about homosexuality in The Sims its simply no big deal.
This may have been easier to swallow since The Sims had no on-screen sex.
(Later editions, such as The Sims: Hot Date, introduced heavy petting.) When
the Internet-connected The Sims Online was released, the gay magazine
The Advocate wrote that the game had the potential to bust down antigay
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barriers around the globe. When The Advocate asked one of the game
designers about the inclusion, he responded that [o]ur decision was not
to put artificial limits on behavior. Were here to make games, not push any
moral agenda, so [allowing gay Sims] seemed like a no-brainer.
The first major moment in online gay gaming didnt happen with Sims
people, however, but among elves and orcs. While The Sims Online came and
went, 100 players gathered in a major virtual city, put on their digital pink
shirts and staged the first virtual gay pride parade in World of Warcraft, the
largest massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). The parade
was prompted by Sara Andrews, a transgender woman from Nashville. She
wanted to create a LGBT-friendly (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender)
club within the WoW universe. Anti-gay slurs tended to fly faster under the
anonymity of a computer screen. It was not unusual for established virtual
worlds to have gay-friendly cliques for comradely playing. WoW developer
Blizzard Entertainment told Andrews she couldnt create the club and, if
she used the LGBT acronym within the game, her WoW account would be
canceled. In a later statement, Blizzard said its goal was to promote a positive
game environment for everyone and help prevent harassment from taking
place. Lambda Legal Defense, Americas biggest LGBT rights organization,
joined Andrews cause. Lambda announced a potential lawsuit, WoW players
organized a gay pride parade and Blizzard retracted its decision all in about
three weeks.
In the first two years more than six million players joined World of
Warcraft, and in those 700 days Blizzards duty switched from providing
fresh dungeons and monsters to managing the social dynamics of a world
more populated than Los Angeles. After the pink parade, the legal threat
and the bad press, Blizzard Entertainment called the club rejection a
misunderstanding and said it would give more sensitivity training to the
online game managers the modern day Dungeon Masters monitoring
the everyday happenings of the virtual world. Talking to the San Francisco
Bay Times, a Blizzard spokesperson told people not to expect a miracle. We
cant do everything, she said. Its a very big world.

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THE
GRAND THEFT
AUTO ERA
(2001 2008)
Grand Theft Autos impact on new millennium culture is astonishing,
especially when you realize the game is quite old: the first version came
out in 1997. It took several iterations, a graphic upgrade and a mountain of
controversy to ascend to 2001s landmark Grand Theft Auto III.
Mentioning Tomb Raider leads to only one thought the curvy Lara
Croft but bringing up Grand Theft Auto unravels a complete world of car sex
with prostitutes, virtual blowjobs from in-game girlfriends, and (now) illegal
pornographic diversions uncovered like hidden gems. The louder the protests
from Senator Hillary Clinton, conservative lawyer Jack Thompson and other
public figures, the more real this game world became. Now they were debating
the politics of virtual sex work as if at some town hall meeting.
Grand Theft Auto also served as a wonderful precursor to the real online
hookups happening in game-inspired virtual worlds like Second Life, though
in these cases there was actually another human at the other end. From a
player standpoint, however, the sexual Turing test didnt seem to matter
you had a virtual fuck buddy either way.
This point is driven home when, in 2004, Playboy starts an annual
spread of naked video game characters. The longtime cultural trendsetter of
male sexual norms is now leaning on Microsoft, Sony and Rockstar Games
to tell them what is sexy. In the Grand Theft Auto Era, games are no longer
mimicking other mediums. Games are shaping them.

Porn and Pong

FRANKENSTEIN
The 9/11 attacks on September 11, 2001, crushed four planes, two
skyscrapers, one government building and 3,000 lives, but the terrorist run
served an equally paralyzing blow to our cultural expression. On September 29,
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opened Saturday Night Live, the 30-year-old
comedy show known for its biting social commentary. Bracketed by real New
York firefighters and policemen, Giuliani had a serious opening monologue
declaring that New York was still open for business, but it would be weeks,
if not months before any Saturday Night Live skits actually referenced the
suffocating smoke, dead bodies and smoldering cinders still stewing down
the street from its Manhattan studios. Sony cut a scene from its new movie,
Spider-Man, because it featured a helicopter caught in a web between the
Trade Center towers. The soon-to-be-released Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle
Collateral Damage was held for more than a year because it revolved around a
skyscraper bomb plot. The New Yorker wrote that violent, explosive Hollywood
blockbusters seemed strange after we watched a live show, on 9/11, that
was all too real. As America sifted through the psychological rubble, Rockstar
Games released Grand Theft Auto III, a darkly sexual, anarchistic fairytale. It
would become a lightning rod for our hopes and our fears in a way no other
cultural expression on no other medium could be.
The beginnings of Rockstar Games, and of Grand Theft Auto specifically,
were humble. The series was created by a bespectacled, unassuming
Scotsman named David Jones. As a teenager he got a job working from
Timex which, in Western European countries, was known for its computers
as well as its watches. Its Sinclair series, including the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
and Sinclair ZX81, became the home computer standard across Europe in
the mid-80s around the same time the IBM PC and Commodore 64 found
popularity in the states. After four years, Jones left Timex and studied
programming at the University of Abertay Dundee in Scotland. He found
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he was a natural at it. I wondered if I could design a decent computer game

in all this spare time, he would later say. Jones started a small company,
DMA Designs, and created two games. He sold the second one, Lemmings, to
Psygnosis, a well-established European publisher. In Lemmings, you direct a
group of absent-minded, half-blind rodents from one end of the screen to the
other while protecting them from high cliffs, blazing fires and other deadly
dangers. Released in February 1991, Lemmings became one of the bestselling
computer games of the decade. It was ported to roughly two dozen different
game systems. It was also true to the creator: The sadomasochistic setup, to
keep (or to not keep) cute animals from killing themselves, was reflective of
Jones own dark humor.
After the success of Lemmings, Jones expanded his development team
and began working on a cop and robbers game called Race n Chase. The goal
was to create a living, breathing city with moving subway cars, commuters
going to work and actual stoplights. It would have a 2D overhead view.
DMA Designs successfully made a functional city, but decided to scrap
most of the details that would be inconsequential to game play, such
as the traffic lights. International music publisher BMG just launched its
interactive entertainment arm and agreed to publish Race n Chase, but
only if it got a visual overhaul. The games flat birds-eye perspective didnt
look as sophisticated as 3D games for Sonys new system, the PlayStation
(PSOne). The team spent another eighteen months recreating the nowdated 2D graphic engine from scratch. Though it kept the same viewpoint,
DMA Designs used a special visual technique to give depth. In real life, if
you are on a moving train and look out towards a forest, the trees nearest
to you will appear to pass faster than those farther away. This, among other
factors, shows you if an object is near or far. In Race n Chase, the design
team would make rooftops, overhead bridges and other high objects pass
faster than the busy street action below. Parallax scrolling was popularized
in 1989s Shadow of the Beast, a visually stunning action game released
by Lemmings publisher Psygnosis. Not quite flat and not quite dynamic,
designers would call the Race n Chase viewpoint two-d and a half.
While reworking the graphic engine, the developers noticed a major
design problem. No one wanted to play the cops, Jones recalled. Team
member Brian Baglow added If traffic was heavy you, as a cop, couldnt
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decide to drive on the sidewalk, or plough through a busy park. We couldnt

let the player do that and reward them. Instead, Race n Chase would reward
you for being the best criminal possible. After answering a pay phone in the
public park, your nameless main character would get various assignments,
such as driving the getaway car after a bank job or offing a disloyal gang
member. You could also not answer the pay phone and go on your own
personal adventure, like stealing a car, running over a cop and shooting up a
neighborhood park. There were no consequences, sans a wanted meter that
increased the police force after every criminal action. DMA Designs intended
the game to be played in five-minute intervals, not with an overarching
story, so the traditional game goal of beating the game would be replaced
with creating the most fulfilling, creative, and destructive experience within
the environment. The city would be packed with pedestrians, abstract little
bodies with big heads. Shooting, running over or otherwise killing random
individuals in a successive fashion earned you bonus points. Extra rewards
would be given for cops and Hare Krishna members. It took DMA Designs
several years to create the complicated graphics and the unusually open
world. I sat through heated design meetings, which resulted in tears,
Baglow said in a later interview. Screaming, punches and arguments were
common. The designers realized the name Race n Chase didnt make sense
now that everyone would play the bad guy. With the plethora of car stealing,
they renamed it Grand Theft Auto.
Grand Theft Auto was released in November 1997. It received solid reviews
and gained a small cult following on the PC. The game did not create much
controversy, likely because it came out after two other violent games, the
aggressive racer Carmageddon and bloody shootout Postal, and any critical
mention of the title was usually evidence in the prosecution of these higher
profile games. The game company Take Two acquired BMG Entertainment
and supported a few spin-offs and a GTA sequel, but few innovations were
added to the series. Jones created a few games for the new Nintendo 64
system, then sold DMA Designs to Take Two and created a new company,
Real Time Worlds. He reportedly got a low six-figure amount from the DMA
Designs sale to Take-Two, which would be the last known time he would get
a check from the Grand Theft Auto series.
Prostitutes wouldnt come into the picture until Jones left the company.
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Dan and Sam Houser joined BMG in the late nineties. The two London
brothers grew up in their fathers jazz club and would stay up late listening
to vintage rap records in their bedrooms. Terry Donovan, a good friend of
theirs, DJed for local techno clubs. His dad directed Robert Palmers Simply
Irresistible music video, which featured the middle-aged Brit in front of
several pale look-alike models, wearing tight skirts and red lipstick, gyrating
to his rhythm. Enamored with rock star culture, the three friends got jobs
at BMG Music. They found their brief stints in concert promotion and artist
representation less than glamorous. Looking for a way out, the friends
jumped to BMGs newly formed interactive entertainment division. One of
the first proposals to cross their desks was Race n Chase. Dan the creative,
Sam the visionary and Terry the mouthpiece all loved the idea.
BMG Entertainment was acquired by Take-Two and Grand Theft Auto
developer DMA Designs was christened Rockstar Games. Now based in New
York, Rockstar Games would throw lavish, hip-hop pumping launch parties,
holding court in warehouses that could have easily had a rave party the
night before. For the Grand Theft Auto 2 party, Rockstar reportedly required
guests to dial a special line, leave their phone number and, when called
back, answer a random question. People were finding ecstasy pills branded
with the Rockstar Games logo. Video game tastemakers openly laughed at
the Rockstar crew. One major video game website wrote a scathing editorial,
calling the Houser brothers and their marketing plan pretentious. People did
not launch a new game with a Hollywood-style party in 1998.
David Jones left around this time. The big parties stopped. The friends
stayed out of the public eye. Aside from occasional press releases, the public
face of Rockstar was silent. Behind the scenes, Sam Houser would now take
a much bigger production role in the next Grand Theft Auto. Dan Houser cowrote the script and developed a new, intricate storyline that made heavy
references to Scarface, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Casino, The
Sopranos, Ice-T and Ice Cube. You were still playing an anonymous thug,
but the world characters, from the Paul Sorvino-inspired Mafioso boss to
the over-hyped gang leader, were equal to the average action movie. (The
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characters themselves were voiced by Robert Loggia, Joe Pantoliano and

other Hollywood actors.) Nearly four years after the original game, new 3D
software made it easier for Rockstar to make the experience more realistic.
Gamers would experience the next Grand Theft Auto on the ground, not from
some distant helicopter view. The game would go into widescreen when
you did something particularly cool. Whether transporting a prostitute to a
john or planting a bomb under a truck, each mission would feel like it was
the climactic scene. Grand Theft Auto III would make any player feel like a rock
star in his own movie.
Grand Theft Auto III was released for the PlayStation 2 on October 22,
2001, a few weeks after the September 11th attacks. Grand Theft Auto III
became the subject of dozens of newspaper editorials, political discussions
and PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) meetings. Some argued that, like
Doom, it was virtual target practice for American kids. Rolling Stone and
Time discussed the impact of the game. Pop culturists marveled that a video
game could actually create social commentary. Game critics were equally
surprised. As one GameSpot reviewer put it, Its hard to believe that a game
that has become an icon of the entire video game industry got its start from
a primitive-looking and sounding 2D game. It quickly sold a million copies.
This was well before the media caught wind of the virtual sex.
Aside from three or so female characters woven into the plotline, the
only women are the prostitutes that infiltrate the city boulevards when
the streetlights turn on. Often dressed in mini-skirts and halter-tops, their
curves filled by jagged digital polygons, the working women will catcall
from the curb if they like what youre driving. Stop your stolen car and honk
the horn if youre interested. She looks around and, provided she decides to
trust you, will open the passenger side and hope in. You have to find a semisecluded area, like a dirty alleyway by the trash can, or a dim place under
one of the Brooklyn Bridge-inspired infrastructures. Things wont start
away once you get to a spot. You have to be patient for a second. You cant
touch your joystick. Everything will go silent. Then, a barely-perceptible
squeak. The car starts to rock up and down. It sounds like a trapped mouse.
The controller vibrates. The hero and his entertainment remain quiet
throughout. The car then abruptly stops after one last, quick, awkward
pump. Money, one of your scores, goes down a few points, while your
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energy bar increases. She gets out of the car with her pay and walks away,
not bothering to turn around or to further acknowledge your presence, as
if trying to forget the last 15 seconds of her life. You could get your cash
back by going after the prostitute and beating her to death, picking up
the damp green digital money from her bloody body. Killing a series of
working women might instigate a police chase, but beating one or two
will rarely get their attention. By the end of 2001, as more people learned
about the prostitution, the media analysis of Grand Theft Auto III shifted
from violence to sex. The game sold even faster. No matter how gruesome
the latest Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Halloween
may have been, viewers remained just that viewers. Nothing in modern
entertainment history equaled the power to destroy a lifelike individual, in
a lifelike world, with your own hands. [F]ar more than books or movies or
music, [video] games force you to make decisions, Steven Johnson writes
in Everything Bad Is Good For You. No other pop cultural form directly
engages the brains decision-making apparatus in the same way. Unlike a
film, no one else made the decision to kill off the prostitute. You did.

Well after his departure, David Jones spoke at a video game convention
and admitted that the original Grand Theft Auto wasnt meant to be a
revolutionary game. GTA came from Pac-Man. The dots are the little
people. Theres me in my little, yellow car. And the ghosts are policemen.
Rockstar Games had just released Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a tongue-incheek ode to eighties Miami drug culture. The main characters wore acidwashed jean jackets and pink shirts with white suits. Actor Philip Michael
Thomas, from the iconic show Miami Vice, played your sidekick. Grand Theft
Auto carpeted the media. Grand Theft Auto parodies were done by South
Park, The Chappelle Show and other cultural barometers. It was anticipated,
dissected and analyzed as intensely as the latest Harry Potter book or a Star
Wars movie. Politicians wanted to know what people were thinking. Parents
wanted to know what their kids would be playing. Gamers wanted to know
what the next level of interaction would be. Grand Theft Auto III had only
been out for a year. Released in October 2002, Vice City spent the next year
wrestling with Grand Theft Auto III for the number one spot. Critics called
Vice City a solid, not necessarily distinctive sequel to its predecessor, a Grand
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Theft Auto III update with 80s varnish. Both games were selling millions of
copies at $50 each. I think the videogame industry was actually crying out
for us, Terry Donovan told Wired. We dont make games about Puff-theFucking-Magic Dragon.
Take-Two released two other major games, the riot simulator State
of Emergency and the driving title Smugglers Run. State of Emergency was
released in the wake of several World Trade Organization riots, the most
notable one being in Seattle, but sales dropped after the initial controversy.
Smugglers Run was a sleeper. The Securities and Exchange Commission
started investigating Take-Two for several grievances, including backdating
stock options and overestimating profits. By the end of 2002, Rockstar
stopped granting media interviews altogether. When it finally does a
statement, it says the company is working on Grand Theft Auto IV, an online
multiplayer game, but a later statement says the next game isnt going to be
multiplayer at all, but it will be based in California.
The public silence didnt quiet the many detractors. The Playpen
Gentlemens Club in Los Angeles sued Rockstar Games for trademark
violation because some of the in-game strip clubs were named Pig Pen.
They lost. Similarly, the Sex Workers Outreach Program issued a statement
against the treatment of digital concubines: Censorship is a blight on the
freedoms we hold dear, but we wholeheartedly encourage citizens to vote
with their dollars by refusing to purchase products which encourage the
denigration and destruction of prostitutes. By then the series had already
sold about 30 million copies. Grand Theft Auto was arguably as large as any
modern pop cultural icon, so few protests or arguments against the series
could realistically be to tear it down, but to raise the notoriety of the critic.
Politicians and organizations realized that and, with its persistent press
coverage, any affiliation to Grand Theft Auto would help them get their
voices heard. In seven short years Grand Theft Auto changed from a small
lightning rod to a broadcast radio signal. Each game seemed to further push
the envelope and court more controversy. In a 2004 interview, it was clear
that Dr. Frankenstein had no idea where his monster would attack next.
Some of it does make you grimace, David Jones said. It is like watching
GoodFellas. There are some scenes when you ask yourself, Did they really
have to do that? How far will it go?
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BOYS
It is the night of the Academy Awards, and nominated writers Matt
Stone and Trey Parker walk the red carpet. Stone, a thin, nerdy man in his
late twenties, is wearing a peach spaghetti strap dress with additional
fabric long enough to drape over his arms. It is based on 1998 Academy
Award winner Gwyneth Paltrows dress, but on him the front sags low on
his droopy, underdeveloped chest. Parker, his friend and fellow co-writer
and co-creator of the show South Park, is wearing an imitation of Jennifer
Lopezs previous Academy Award outfit, a seaweed green dress that creates
an open V from the shoulders and exposes his patchy torso down to the
belly button. He usually favors a young Bill Murray, but tonight, wearing a
wig with long Lopez-inspired locks and ample lip gloss, he looks like a very
hirsute woman.
Nominated for Best Song (from the South Park movie), the two friends
had just launched South Park three years earlier, which itself was based on a
four-minute homemade short called The Spirit of Christmas. The film featured
two school children who witness their friends get murdered by an evil, Frostylike snowman. The Rankin-and-Bass cartoon gone wrong ends with a battle
between the snowman and baby Jesus. The infant eventually decapitates
the snowman by tossing his boomerang-like halo. George Clooney and
other Hollywood heavy hitters supposedly passed around the video among
each other and it caught the attention of Comedy Central. Stone and Parker
were working at pizza chains at the time. They werent the managers.
The twosome used the South Park cartoon to parody Al Qaeda leader
Osama Bin Laden and President George W. Bush, African famine and the word
nigger, right-to-life icon Terry Schivo and Scientologist actor Tom Cruise, and
any other controversial topic of the moment. Its closest competitor, FOXs The
Simpsons, spent several months drawing each episode. South Park, with its
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relatively crude animation and simple visuals, was written, drawn and edited
within a week. Stone and Parker were able to quickly address current events.
(The Terry Schivo episode, which won them an Emmy, aired the week she
died.) It consistently drew more than three million viewers and became one
of the most watched shows on television, surpassing Comedy Centrals very
popular The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. The audience seemed to connect
to South Park and its fart jokes, offensive language and racy content.
America was going through a shift. The Latino population was growing
almost exponentially and, because of heavy immigration and a history of
having larger families, was expected to be the largest ethnic group within
two decades. Affirmative action and more economic and educational
opportunities put more African-Americans and women in positions of power.
In 2001 Colin Powell became the first African-American Secretary of State,
replacing Madeline Albright, the first female one. The same year, Clarence
Thomas was appointed an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. MTV,
which once was reluctant to play Michael Jackson videos from 1982s Thriller,
highlighted music from inner-city artists like Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur and Sean
Diddy Combs. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, or NAACP, held a press conference to discuss if its people should
be called Black or African-American. Secretaries became administrative
assistants. Midgets became little people. Ghetto-raised youths became
at-risk kids. A new term, politically correct, or PC, became shorthand for
any euphemism used to cushion judgment. While being PC was in fashion
for a decade, pop cultural icons began attacking the concept as the new
millennium arrived. Comedians like Chris Rock and Bill Maher and programs
like MadTV and South Park took America to task for its political correctness,
using biting humor and rude behavior to show that being PC just changed
the language, not the actual judgments made. It relived the symptom, not the
cause. If The Simpsons, which began in 1989, parodied how dense the typical
American family was, 1996s South Park showed, despite our enlightened
cultural sensitivity and new-found morals, how little we had progressed in
thought and how much we patted ourselves on the back for superficial
changes in rhetoric and outward demeanor.
Video games were going through a separate, but parallel rebellion. In the
early days of wood-panel Atari 2600s and lively midway arcades, Konami had a
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popular game with a frog crossing the road (Frogger), one-hit wonder Gottlieb
made players hop a furry, hose-nosed monster along pyramid-shaped blocks
(Q*bert), and a young Nintendo established itself with a plumber dodging
flaming barrels tossed by an ape (Donkey Kong). Fed by an open-minded
audience interested in new experiences, there seemed to be no limit to what
was artistically possible. Time creates standards. Joysticks began looking
the same, characters fit into definable categories, and specific genres were
established. There was the fast-action twitch shooter, the novel-like role
playing game, or RPG, the action/adventure, the sports or fighting title, the
first person shooter, or FPS, and the strategy game. By the time the game
industry hit the billion-dollar mark, anything beyond classification rarely got
on the shelf. Experimental games usually didnt get funding from publishers. It
was only a matter of time before the status quo would be attacked.
In summer 2003, 60 Minutes II visited Acclaim in its Long Island offices.
The game company had made a parody of Activisions Tony Hawk Pro Skater
series. Tony Hawk Pro Skater was the first sports game to give skateboarding
an arcade sensibility: you could do complicated, cool-looking tricks with a few
quick joystick flicks. The series had been a consistent bestseller since beginning
on the Sony PlayStation in 1999. Acclaim had created its own Tony Hawkinspired game, Dave Mirra BMX, and it failed both critically and commercially.
When talks for the next Dave Mirra BMX began, Acclaim was experimenting
with new marketing techniques. It offered new parents a significant sum of
money if they named their child after its new action game, Turok. It reportedly
started buying gravesites and real headstones to promote its undead game,
Shadowman. Once a solid leader of arcade-to-home translations, Acclaim could
now not afford another failure. With sport figure Dave Mirras blessing, Acclaim
turned its BMX game into a Tony Hawk Pro Skater parody. It would be called
BMX XXX. We wanted to do something that was different, that hasnt been
done before, co-designer Ben Fischbach told 60 Minutes II correspondent Bob
Simon. Youre going to see a hooker, youre going to run into a pimp, youre
going to actually carry a hooker from one point in the game to another point
in the game. 60 Minutes II had more than 10 million viewers.
BMX XXX begins with you doing bike stunts in a Central Park clone.
During a quick run through the park you encounter a hot dog vendor
who claims that someone is stealing his wieners, a can-collecting
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homeless man who speaks in seventies jive, a diarrhea-plagued dog, a

firefighter complaining that his hose is limp and the aforementioned
cursing prostitutes and their pimp, a purple-suited African-American
man in stack-heel shoes and a wide leopard hat. One of the first missions
is to steal the pimps pink poodle and throw her at the diarrhea-ailed dog
to distract him from pooping. Successful players are treated to a fivesecond animation of the digital dogs having sex, which is on par for other
rewards received throughout the game. You create your own biker from
scratch, from deciding a gender to the number of back tattoos. Later you
can unlock more options, including topless riding, which Acclaim touts as
a feature on the games back cover (with a black bar across the offending
bits). Unlike Itagaki-sans Dead or Alive series, there is no jiggle factor:
character breasts are round and stiff, like old bakery bread, and stand still
like large, glandular rocks. You can find special tokens throughout the
game, redeemable at Scores-licensed strip clubs within each level. BMX
XXX shows a brief title screen Scores Manhattan: Candy and an even
briefer dance video of the stripper on the pole. It is on par with the movie
Showgirls, but with grainier visuals.
BMX XXX was released for the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft XBox and
Nintendo GameCube. Wal-Mart, KB Toys and Toys R Us refused to carry the
title. Sony made Acclaim remove the nudity on the PlayStation 2 version. This
is a right we rarely exercise, a Sony spokesperson said. In the case of BMX
XXX, we felt that some of the games content did not fundamentally add to the
overall experience, and is therefore included purely for effect. Dave Mirra sued
Acclaim three months after the games release, claiming breach of contract,
injury to reputation, unfair competition, false advertising and invasion of
privacy. The extreme sports icon also asked to get his name taken off the
game, saying he didnt fully realize what kind of game Acclaim was making.
He sued for $21 million. Both edited and unedited versions were critical and
commercial disappointments. Several critics called it the worst sports game
ever made. In September 2004, Acclaim filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The
company was worth about $47 million, but owed $145 million. Acclaim
decided to liquidate its assets and close its doors, but didnt tell its employees.
Basically, one morning we were locked out, a former employee told Game
Developer magazine. It was Dont bother coming in, theyre late on their rent,
once they pay it we can go back in. They were never let back in.
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The week before Acclaim closed, a publisher called The Gathering

released The Guy Game on the PlayStation 2 and XBox. It is a trivia game.
In TitWitz, one of The Guy Games levels, you watch movie footage of one of
the women at Spring Break, young, tanned and often peppy, answering a
difficult question, such as, What is the capital of Lithuania? (Vilnius.) The
game then pauses and, while you stare at the freeze frame of her chest, asks
you if she gave the right answer. She often does not. Wager the correct way
several times and The Guy Game logo, which obscures the womans privates,
begins to go transparent until she is completely nude. The corresponding
Flash-O-Meter raises from Soft and Squishy to Sorta Chubby to its
maximum length, Super Stiff.
I feel innovation is incredibly important in the video game industry,
Jeff Spangenberg, CEO of TopHeavy, The Guy Game designers, said in a press
release. With The Guy Game we set out to do something completely different
than what had been done before. The Guy Game did not sell many copies and
did not do well with the critics, either. So whats with a bland party game
that makes you sit through hours of girls blathering before perking up?
Electronic Gaming Monthly said in an editorial. The college coeds in a certain
direct-to-video series (its wild) never had to name the current president
before lifting their shirts and showing off their Dow-Corning labels.
The Guy Game was inspired by Girls Gone Wild, the direct-to-video series
started by Joe Francis in 1998. While acquiring footage for various reality
TV specials, the twenty-four year old noticed that freelance filmographers
were mailing in an inordinate amount of live nude footage from Spring
Break, Bourbon Street and other public nudity hot spots. He then realized
that the girl next door strip-downs turned him on more than the average
porn video. Convinced he wasnt the only person who felt that way, Francis
quit his day job and began compiling what he considered the best nude
clips. Going into debt, he bought late night television advertising time, hired
a cameraman and hit all the major Spring Break vacation areas Cancun,
Daytona Beach, Panama to ask women to show their chest for the camera.
Often he would get them to do more. Of course, the women probably did
not know about his several accusations of rape (most of them from Girls
Gone Wild participants), the dozen lawsuits for non-consensual filming, the
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restraining order against him by his Santa Monica neighbor and his physical
assault against a prominent journalist. Even he was surprised, hes said, at
what a young woman will do for only a Girls Gone Wild t-shirt. (He boasts
that he doesnt pay them anything.) Francis has aimed his cameras at a
generation whose notion of privacy and sexuality are different than any
other, Los Angeles Times adult business reporter Claire Hoffman observed.
Nursed on MySpace profiles and reality television, many young people
today are comfortable with being perpetually photographed and having
those images on the Internet for anyone to see. The popularity of being
on the series was equal to how many people were interested in watching
it. The music club-style setup, where customers automatically received the
next Girls Gone Wild movie if they didnt say no, was paying off. In 2002,
two years before The Guy Game, Joes Mantra Films Inc. sold an estimated
4.5 million tapes and DVDs. By the time The Guy Game was out, Joe flew his
personal Gulfstream jet to scouting areas. Critics suggested he was planning
on buying the Playboy empire. Francis did not dispute it.

In 2003, Playboy turned fifty. The magazine circulation, as high as seven

million in the seventies, had plummeted down to three million readers.
Additional revenue from its once popular Playboy Clubs and other brand
extensions had decreased enough for the company to shut nearly all of its
traditional extracurricular ventures down. Playboy told the press its focus was
now going to be on new media: member-based websites, DVDs and Internet
partnerships. In the early nineties, sophomoric, British lad magazines
stormed the American shore. Maxim, Stuff and others were considered part
of the usual publication cycle: two or three publishers will jump on the same
topic, such as the home style publications Real Simple and Martha Stewart
Living, or the mens tech publications Sync and Cargo in 2004, and the trend
will die down in a yearleaving one or none of those magazines standing.
As the new millennium came, however, the lad mags werent disappearing.
They were growing. The biggest one, Maxim, went to 2.5 million subscribers
within a few years. Its parent company, Dennis Publishing, began racking up
several prestigious magazine awards. Playboy and Maxim seemed to be on
opposite trajectories.

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On the cover, Maxim featured the latest young, thin, but curvy Hollywood
actress, wearing revealing lingerie or a tight bikini. Inside were near-nude
young women and features bracketed by suggested pick-up lines. No articles
were over one thousand words. Recurring themes were beer, women and
sports, and at least one article mentioned all three. Maxim appealed to a
generation raised on softcore cable movies, heavily sexualized ads and free
Internet porn. Playboy, which could have been Maxims grandfather, was
known for its groundbreaking journalism and hard-hitting interviews. Its
risqu reputation had quite mellowed. After Debbie Does Dallas or [heiress
Paris Hiltons sex tape] 1 Night in Paris indeed, after Internet pornography
who needs Miss December 2004, flashing her little heinie at us from aboard
a yacht, cultural critic Joan Acocella once said in The New Yorker. One might
answer that some people prefer their sexual materials softcore. If so, they
can turn to the new lad magazines, such as Maxim or FHM, which show the
women clothed (if barely) and, at the same time, look more up-to-date than
Playboy.
Maxim had the ability to sit on a college kids coffee table, right next to
Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver, while Playboy, with its semi-nude covers,
would have to stay under the mattress next to the sticky porn collection
(assuming all the porn wasnt on the laptop). Playboys heavily airbrushed
pictures also went against the biggest trend to affect young mens taste: Girls
Gone Wild. Creator Joe Francis said his goal was to show the girl next door
naked, something that Hugh Hefner originally said fifty years earlier, but the
Playboy aesthetic changed in light of breast implants, Adobe Photoshop and
other technological innovations. Girls Gone Wild fulfilled the girl next door
promise, conveying youthful innocence no matter how dark things may
have been behind the scenes. If Maxim had a home movie series, Girls Gone
Wild would probably be it. Playboy was stuck between hardcore porn, which
was free to anyone with an Internet connection, and the soft, virtually guiltfree visuals, which were pushed by lad magazines and R-rated movies.
One of Playboys first new media ventures was Arushs Playboy: The
Mansion in 2005. You play 1953 Hugh Hefner, a.k.a. Hef, with three primary
goals: build the magazine empire from scratch, facilitate intellectually
stimulating parties and have as much sex as possible. There are many little
details, like buying office furniture, determining how much to pay models
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and sending out party invites. A social climbers version of The Sims, Playboy:
The Mansion rewards players for making connections with the various
characters in the game. You can prosper as a facilitator, with Hef introducing
two people who want to work together, or as a social player, with Hef asking
a woman to bed. After a brief pause, Hef will sit on the couch and watch as
the woman strips down to her g-string, her round breasts and nipples as
tightly wound as corduroy, and does a little stripper dance for him. (Digital
Hef doesnt seem to be able to hook up with guys, as he said he did in real
life.) She then straddles his lap and jumps up and down, yelping and gasping
with an occasional Wee! It lasts for about a minute, not unlike a five-cent
pony ride outside of a supermarket. The photography sequence is a bit
closer to reality. True to his real-life counterpart, Hef takes all the pictures
when he starts the magazine. Once a model, a photo-shoot and a backdrop
is in place, you look through the viewfinder lens and snap pictures as the
perky computer-controlled model makes love to the camera. The women
lacked the natural curves found in 2003s Dead or Alive Xtreme Volleyball, and
Playboys biggest inspiration, The Sims, already had a dozen spinoffs and
sold several million copies. Designer Will Wright dedicated the last decade
and a half of his life to creating Sims-based products. It was an uphill battle
on both fronts.
Arush was not the only company to do a sexy Sims-style game. For
instance, in 2004 Eidos released a similar title, Singles: Flirt Up Your Life.
Playboy: The Mansion had the biggest marquee value. All the games had the
same results. Reviewing Playboy: The Game, Electronic Gaming Monthly wrote
Your appreciation for this game depends entirely upon your desire to see
freakishly large cartoon boobs, because almost everything else in Playboy is
a limp Sims rip-off.

In October 2004, after several years absence, Leisure Suit Larry returned
in Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude for the PC, Sony PlayStation 2,
Microsoft XBox and Nintendo GameCube. Al Lowe did not return with him.
Sierras new parent company, Vivendi Universal, was able to cut him out of
the game development. (This was likely because of the contractual loophole
created when Lowe signed the contractor agreement two decades earlier.
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He had been involved in every sequel through 1996s Leisure Suit Larry 7:
Love for Sail.) The new game featured Larry Lovage, Larry Laffers nephew,
a virgin trying to have sex on his new college campus. Magna Cum Laudes
women had grapefruit-round mammaries and flawless skin. To hook up with
someone, you have to beat several mini-games based on classic arcade titles
like Pong or fraternity drinking staples like Quarters. (To play Quarters, you
bounce a quarter off the table to make it land in a shot glass. If you miss,
you take a shot. If you make it, everyone else does.) In one particular minigame, you maneuver one of Larrys sperm through a maze of viruses. Win
and the woman will strip, if not have sex with Larry. There are no overarching
storylines, no strong heroines and no cheeky innuendos like the previous
Leisure Suit Larry games. But there is a lot of nudity and cursing, two things
that were heavily censored in previous games. A few months before the
games release, new Leisure Suit Larry producer Joshua Van Veld said that
his audience was a lot more sophisticated, or at least a lot more exposed
to sex, than the purchasers of the original Larry games. We realize that if
you can make people laugh and show lots of jiggling boobs, people will
like it. Playboy.com reviewed the game in fall 2004, ending with [a]lthough
the game can be downright funny and sexy, veteran fans of the series
wont likely appreciate the new direction, while newcomers may find that
once you get past the jokes and boobs, theres not much else to keep you
playing. Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it the Shame of the Month award
with a 2.5 out of 10 rating average between the three reviewers. When it
comes to Larry, one of them noted, abstinence sounds pretty good. Lowe
himself said he admired some of the jokes in Magna Cum Laude (I think the
masturbating monkey addicted to cigarettes is very funny!), but overall
the game is schizophrenic: hilarious here, offensive there. He blamed the
turnover of Sierra/Vivendi Universal staff mid-development for the uneven
gameplay. I have mixed emotions about Magna Cum Laude. Its like watching
a videotape of your son recorded by his kidnapper: Its nice to see hes still
alive, but under what conditions?
The October 2004 issue of Playboy had its first video game centerfold, a
two-page spread Luba Licious, a Larry Lovage love interest. She is wearing
only a green knit cap. Luba has Kate Moss-sized arms and a 21-inch waist,
both overshadowed by her wide hips, prominent bikini bottom tan and two
round breasts as large as her head. A small bio lists Lubas turn-ons (Jell-O
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shots, Burning Man, college professors, my roommate), turn-offs (the

missionary position, long-term relationships, teetotalers), and favorite book
(Kama Sutra [a.k.a. The Bible]). Playboy had been taking heavy criticism for
retouching and enhancing spreads for nearly two decades, since advances
in desktop publishing made it easier to manipulate photos. In reference
to a recent centerfold, one 2003 letter to the editor congratulated Playboy
for making the best piece of digital art since Shrek. With the video game
centerfolds, which would become an annual affair, Playboy was no longer
about sexy pixies, but sexy pixels.
The following year, lad magazines Gear and Loaded closed, FHM went
completely online and Maxims circulation topped off. The Maxim generation
was growing up and, as a result, may have become a new, younger audience
for Playboy and its compatriots GQ and Esquire. E! Entertainment would give
Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner and his three young girlfriends a reality TV
show. Most episodes would find the Greatest Generation hero and Viagra
supporter watching his two twenty-something (and one late teen) girlfriends
romp around the Playboy Mansion estate, trying on different fetish clothes,
throwing large parties and occasionally playing with each other. The Girls
Next Door became E!s number one program. Hefner spent his 80th birthday
in his mansion, blowing out the candles with his three girlfriends and an
audience of millions.
Joe Francis did not buy Playboy Enterprises. In 2004, the Federal Trade
Commission found Mantra Films Inc. guilty of unauthorized shipping and
billing. His opt-out subscription plan was considered deceptive. He was
fined $1.1 million, half of which went back to customers. Two years later,
Mantra Films Inc. lost two lawsuits, one, worth $2.1 million, for not keeping
accurate age records on file and a second for filming two seventeen year old
girls in Florida. In April 2007, a Reno, Nevada federal court indicted Francis
on two counts of tax evasion after millions of dollars in deductions, among
other major discrepancies, were found on his returns. The mogul faced up to
ten years in prison.
The Gathering and TopHeavy Studios were sued four month after
the release of The Guy Game. One of the women featured was actually
a seventeen year old from South Padre Island, Texas. She wasnt an adult,
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which automatically made the game footage nonconsensual. In summer

2005, a judge found for the girl, deemed The Guy Game child pornography
and ordered the title off the shelves. The Gathering recalled the remaining
copies. In an attempt to recoup, the company offered a compilation DVD
called The Guy Game: Game Over! The rumors are true! the game website
now read. The most controversial video game ever created The Guy Game
is no longer available! The Gathering also sold a Special Offer: the DVD,
along with a hat and t-shirt with The Guy Game logo. It went for forty bucks.

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ERUPTION
It all started with a Vietnamese hooker. Me so horny. Me so hooorney.
Me love you long time, she called out to the American soldiers. She says
it with a strange clip, as if she was ordering miso soup instead of trying to
seduce money out of GIs pockets. It was one of several surreal moments in
Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubricks 1987 film about Vietnam. The memorable
prostitute scene was bracketed by some of the most violent, disturbing war
images set to film. Oliver Stones Platoon, the Vietnam film from the previous
year, looked like a coming-of-age movie in comparison.
As Full Metal Jacket hit theaters, rapper Luke Skyywalker began managing
a new music group, 2 Live Crew. The California-based posse made what
would later be known as bass music, bottom-heavy tunes with repetitive
party lyrics and refrains. Skyywalker relocated the group to south Florida,
where modern street life was cruising in sixties cars blasting trunk-rattling
bass music. (The bass culture may have originated on the west coast, as
reflected in California group Wars 1975 hit Low Rider, but musically shifted
to Miami in the eighties.) 2 Live Crew made a couple local hits. Skyywalker
felt the group still needed another hook something to distinguish it from
the thousands of other independent rap acts out there. He decided to make
it the nastiest group in south Florida. In 1986, the reinvigorated act released
a new album, 2 Live Crew Is What We Are, featuring songs such as We Want
Some Pussy. It was certified gold, or 500,000 sold. A minor obscenity
complaint convinced Skyywalker to release dirty and clean version of
his albums: 2 Live Crew would do a non-explicit rap in the studio, then
record the rap again in its original form for the explicit album. Skyywalker
Records was the first hip-hop music label to offer two versions. The clean
albums made it easier for radio stations to play his groups music, but it also
gave Skyywalker an opportunity to be more explicit on the dirty albums.
Buying the dirty version had to be a conscious choice by the consumer. In
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1989 2 Live Crew released its second full-length album, As Nasty As They
Wanna Be. The lead single was Me So Horny.
Rap is based on found art. Synthesizers and live instrumentation have
peppered rap albums since its inception, but the foundation of rap music
is built on taking sixties and seventies albums, finding a short instrumental
portion called a break or breakbeat, and looping it so a MC can talk over
it. Kids in the Bronx did not have guitars and drum kits, but they had their
parents James Brown collection and hi-fi record players. Even at the turn
of this century producers talked about treasures theyd found, hard-to-find
records, musty and abandoned in some random New York alleyway, that
became the foundation for top ten songs. 2 Live Crew built Me So Horny
around a brief, looped breakbeat from Firecracker, a chunky-bass single
from the late seventies dance group Mass Production.
The hedonistic calls of the disco floor were appropriated for the Reagan
era. You said it yourself, you like it like I do, Fresh Kid Ice says over the gogo beat. Put your lips on my dick, and suck my asshole, too. The chorus is
Kubricks Vietnamese prostitute: Ahh! Me so horny! Me love you long time!
Scratched and skipped along the breakbeat like a pebble, her recorded vocals
sound like shes stuttering from a blunt trauma. Me So Horny became a top
40 hit. It was hard not to hear her erotic wails on major cruising strips in
San Francisco, Myrtle Beach, Washington D.C. and particularly in the groups
adopted hometown, Miami.
Me So Horny caught the ear of Florida lawyer Jack Thompson, a
Christian activist and supporter of the American Family Association. He
contacted Governor Bob Martinez to find out if, under state law, the album
was obscene, which in turn would make selling As Nasty As They Wanna Be
illegal in Florida. The state started a formal inquiry. In June 1990, District Court
Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled that the album was legally obscene and illegal to
sell. Undercover cops were dispatched to local record stores. Within a week
a retailer was arrested for selling As Nasty As They Wanna Be to a disguised
officer, not unlike a crack dealer or an unlucky john. The same week 2 Live
Crew was arrested for performing the material live at a local club.
Newspapers and magazine reporters, already sensitive to amendment
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rights and to FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act), saw the local fight as a
national battle for free speech. It was written about every week. The month
following its arrest, 2 Live Crew released the equally-explicit Banned In The
U.S.A.. The title track was a cover of Born In The U.S.A., Bruce Springsteens
1984 ode to America. A Florida Appellate Court would ultimately determine
that As Nasty As They Wanna Be was not legally obscene. On the other side
of the country, the California group Niggaz Wit Attitude, or N.W.A., had
received a letter from the FBI recommending it stop promoting violence.
N.W.A.s Straight Outta Compton spoke of killing people as explicitly as 2 Live
Crew did of sex, but the FBI specifically had issue with the song Fuck the
Police, a graphic story about police harrassment. The album was not banned,
but the controversy helped sell albums. Straight Outta Compton and its FBI
letter would give the group almost as much spotlight as the As Nasty As They
Wanna Be obscenity ruling. In both instances, the groups realized they could
be as explicit as they liked without any legal repercussions. N.W.A. would
release its last album, 1991s Efil4zaggin, with the songs One Less Bitch, To
Kill A Hooker, and Appetite For Destruction. (Efil4zaggin was Niggaz4Life
backwards.) Best-selling rapper Jay-Z once said that rap isnt just supported
by minorities anymore; if youre doing better than platinum, or one million
sold, white people are buying your hardcore music, too. Banned In The U.S.A.
and Straight Outta Compton both went double platinum.
The success of 2 Live Crew and N.W.A. expanded the popularity of sexual
rap and so-called gangsta rap. Aggressively sexual rappers Lil Kim and Foxxy
Brown would go multi-platinum in the mid nineties. N.W.A.s Dr. Dre would
dissolve the group and produce 1992s The Chronic and protg Snoop
Doggy Doggs Doggystyle, two landmark albums that opened the door for
Tupac Shakur, The Notorious B.I.G., Geto Boys, Spice 1 and numerous other
gangsta rap artists. Using Skyywalkers clean and dirty system, these songs
were played not only on the strip and in strip clubs, but in college dorms, at
picnics and on prime time radio. Within a short period of time the number of
well known hardcore sex and violence rappers tripled.
During explicit raps rise, comedian Chris Rock released the movie CB4.
The satire follows the adventures of aspiring rapper Albert Brown, played
by Rock, and his two friends when they disown their middle- and workingclass backgrounds and personify hardened criminals. In one scene, the
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rappers tour bus is stopped by protesters as it arrives for a Sacramento,

California concert. The groups manager stands next to the bus driver. He
is wearing a blue sweatsuit, oversized glasses and a gold nameplate that
reads Trust Us. Facing the concerned group, he tells them not to worry.
To some people, these fools out here could be a problem. Bad for they
image, bad for they record sales. But you brothers have created something
so . . . nastay, so foul, that the iller you get, the better off we are. He flashes
a Cheshire cat grin. Now go out there, and have a good time. The scene
was preceded by a montage of Billboard charts showing the groups three
number one singles: Straight Outta Locash, Nigga Please and Better
Than Pussy. Before paying for studio time and other costs, the average rap
group may make ten percent of a ten dollar record, or one dollar per record
sold. A double-platinum record like As Nasty As They Wanna Be or Straight
Outta Compton could have grossed two million dollars for a group.
Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in October 2004. In
San Andreas, you play a black California ghetto teen trying to move up in rank
within a local gang. Like the previous games, it rewards you for a variety of skills:
careful car thievery, expert drive-by shooting, smart prostitute management.
It took the remote, almost comical fantasy of Straight Outta Compton and
making it a personal, intimate experience. You see, were not competing with
Konami, Hasbro or Mattel, Chief Operating Officer Terry Donovan said. Were
competing with Def Jam, Adidas and New Line Cinema. Def Jam was the
number one hip-hop record label. Critics called San Andreas the best game of
2004. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold more than 2 million copies within the
first month, grossing more than $100 million for the company.
The following summer, a fan website called GTA Garage posted a new
file. It was from Patrick Wildenborg, a Dutch gamer who claimed his file
would unlock something hidden in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San
Andreas. [They] decided to disable it in their final release now you can
enjoy the full experience. The game modifier was called Hot Coffee.
In San Andreas, you live a virtual life in South Central Los Angeles. The
main character, CJ, must exercise to stay in shape, practice firing guns to aim
better, stop at burger joints to eat. He must also maintain relationships. CJ can
pick up women, go on dates and even get a steady girlfriend. The storylines
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are cheeky one girlfriend insists on you taking her along on a drive-by
shooting but the relationships themselves are relatively wholesome. Like
its predecessors, San Andreas prostitution segments are limited to the car,
the squeaking shocks and vibrating joystick the only sign of intercourse. The
Mature label on the box came from the violence, not the sex. After installing
the Hot Coffee modifier, CJs girlfriend will ask him in for coffee after the end
of one of their dates. If you agree, the screen flashes This is it! Gird your loins
for love! CJ follows her into the bedroom. She strips down to her thong, her
naked body jagged from the rough polygons used to created it. She doesnt
have any nipples. Kneeling in front of a still-clothed CJ, his girlfriend wraps her
hand and mouth around the thin air in front of his designer jeans, moving her
neck back and forth in the space. There isnt anything in her hand or mouth.
He then puts her on the bed and gets in an awkward missionary position.
He is still fully clothed. For two minutes he pumps, asking random demands
like Tell me Im the best! Instructions in the corner recommend pressing
up and down on the joystick to get the rhythm right. A white Excitement
bar increases or decreases based on consistent motion. Afterwards he leaves
her house and the game proceeds as usual. In San Andreas you go to the
gym and lift weights by tapping the button. If you see a bike you like, steal
it and rapidly push the appropriate key to pedal faster. The game is packed
with little tests of strength. As advanced as the graphics and storyline may
have been, the orgasm bar and joystick rhythm were as simple as Custers
Revenge and X-Man on the Atari 2600. It is fucking as minigame.
Originally discovered in the PC version, Hot Coffee did not disturb many
in the computer gaming community. Ten years before Hot Coffee, homemade
files stripped Lara Croft of her clothes, turning Tomb Raider into Nude Raider.
In the late seventies, when most games were not copy protected, players
could get into the program code and change the game perimeters. Even
as recent as 2000, the PC hit Counter-Strike was a user-modified version of
the already popular game Half-Life. Developer Valve actually gave Half-Life
players the tools to modify it.
A few weeks after Wildenborgs post, Democratic California State
Assemblyman Leland Yee, a child psychologist, was told about Hot Coffee by
one of his aides. Yee had tried twice bill AB 1972 in Fall 2004 and bill AB 450
in Winter 2004 to pass a state law that would prohibit the sale, rent, and
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distribution of violent video games that depict serious injury to human beings
in a manner that is especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, to persons who are
16 years of age or younger those who violate the act may be liable in an
amount of up [to] $1,000 for each violation. Both were rejected. Clearly, the
video game industry is not concerned with the welfare of our children and
thus it is imperative that we step in to prevent the sale of these harmful games
to our children, Yee said in a press release. This was before Hot Coffee. Its
outrageous! Yee told Rolling Stone after the file was discovered. It tells you
how to copulate a woman. That should not be in the hands of children. Yee
contacted the Entertainment Software Ratings Board, the gaming equivalent
of the Motion Picture Association of America, and recommended changing
San Andreass Mature rating to Adults Only. Like giving a movie an NC-17 or X
rating, changing the sticker would restrict who would carry the game. A store
like Wal-Mart, already weary of the controversial game series, would no doubt
stop selling it and severely cripple Rockstars bottom line.
The game company sent a press release in July 2005, a month after Hot
Coffee was publicly discovered. We thoroughly support the work of the
ESRB, and believe it has an exemplary record of rating games and promoting
understanding of video game content. We also feel confident that the
investigation will uphold the original rating of the game, as the work of the
mod community is beyond the scope of either publisher or the ESRB. In
other words, Rockstar said the pornographic segment was wholly created
by a user, like a naked Lara Croft, and not by the company itself. There was no
need to changed the rating. Yee blamed the ESRB. The ESRB blamed Rockstar.
Rockstar blamed gamers. And someone decided to call Jack Thompson.

The objections towards Hot Coffee were built on a long history of attempts
at video game legislation, though the foundation was based on violence, not
sex. In 1976, Exidy released the arcade game Death Race. According to the
game designer, the object was to run over gremlins with your car. A cross would
appear when one of them died. The gremlins were stick figures, stick figures
that could easily pass for humans. 60 Minutes ran a report on the controversial
game. Many arcade owners publicly refused to carry the machine, but those
that did made a killing. Regulations began the same year.
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One of the (if not the) earliest attempt at this type of regulation predated
traditional computer games and occurred in Mesquite, Texas, in 1976. The
city council passed an ordinance that barred anyone under the age of 17
from operating an amusement device unless accompanied by a parent or
guardian, Brenda Brathwaite writes in the book Sex In Video Games, though
she notes the law was also an attempt to suffocate arcade owners who,
the city believed, were affiliated with organized crime. The U.S. Supreme
Court struck down the Texas law in February 1982. A decade later, Midway
released Mortal Kombat. Unlike other popular fighting games, it featured
ample blood and special fatalitiesdifficult-to-execute moves that would
destroy your opponent. In one notable fatality, a strong armed fighter would
lift up his enemy and rip him in half, tossing the bloody torso and wobbling
legs in different directions. In 1993, Congress held hearings on video game
violence. The series of school shootings, most notably Columbine in 1999,
brought video games legislation back in the spotlight after it was learned
the two shooters were fans of the alien shooter Doom. It was released in
1993 by id Software, a developer based in Mesquite, Texas.
On the early morning of June 7, 2003, Devin Moore, an eighteen year old
African American, was pulled over by Fayette, Alabama, cops. Officer Arnold
Strickland suspected that the car was stolen and brought him in for booking.
By all accounts Moore, who had no criminal history, was cooperative until
he got to the police station. According to a statement Moore made later,
he grabbed Stricklands Glock and shot him twice, one time in the head.
Stricklands colleague, Officer James Crump, ran down the hallway to help him
and was shot three times, also one time in the head. Moore continued down
the hallway, came to the door of the emergency dispatcher, and shot one Ace
Mealer five times. Again, one of the five shots hit the emergency dispatcher in
the head. Moore found some car keys and drove off in a police car. Life is like
a video game, he reportedly told the police after he was caught. Everybodys
got to die sometime. 60 Minutes did a major report on the incident. Two of his
victims sued Rockstar Games and related companies on the basis that Moore
was a big Grand Theft Auto fan. The families hired Jack Thompson.
A similar case that year, in which two Grand Theft Auto-playing teenagers
randomly killed one man and severely wounded another in Tennessee,
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was also taken on by Thompson. The industry needs to cough up money

so victims and their families can be compensated for their pain, he told
ABC News. The shareholders need to know what their games are doing
to kids and their families. They need to stop pushing adult rated products
to kids. These products are deadly. The lawyer was already knee-deep
in Grand Theft Auto research when Hot Coffee became public in 2005. He
began an extensive, aggressive letter writing campaign to and about the
ESRB and Rockstar Games. Thompson also garnered support from powerful
conservative groups such as National Institute on Media and the Family.
On July 14, 2005, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton held a press conference
to announce that she was proposing new legislation restricting video game
sales. The proposed bill would prohibit the sale of violent and sexually
explicit video games to minors and put in place a $5,000 penalty for those
who violate the law. The ESRB technically required stores to sell Mature
and Adults Only games with proof of age, but had no serious penalty for
disobedient storeowners. The disturbing material in Grand Theft Auto and
other games like it is stealing the innocence of our children and its making
the difficult job of being a parent even harder. I am announcing these
measures today because I believe that the ability of our children to access
pornographic and outrageously violent material on video games rated for
adults is spiraling out of control, she said.
The former First Lady actually consulted Thompson before her press
conference, but she had other allies familiar with artistic law. In the early 80s,
a young mother named Tipper Gore caught her twelve year old daughter
playing Princes Darling Nikki. Horrified at lyrics like, I knew a girl named
Nikki, I guess you could say she was a sex fiend/I met her in a hotel lobby,
masturbating with a magazine, Gore talked with her Tennessee congressman
husband, Al, as well as the wives of the U.S. Secretary of Treasury James
Baker and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond. In 1984 she created the
Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). Led by eight politicians wives, the
committee held rock music accountable for the increase in rape and suicides
among 16 to 24 year olds in the previous three decades, citing artists such as
AC/DC, Ozzy Osbourne and Blue Oyster Cult. Since children today lack the
stable family structure of past generations, they are more vulnerable to role
models and authority figures outside established patriarchal institutions,
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she said. I see the family as a haven of moral stability, while popular music
e.g. rock music is a poisonous source infecting the youth of the world
with messages they cannot handle. The PMRC joined forces with the
National Parent-Teachers Association (PTA) and pressured the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA) into putting a warning label on all
music it deemed explicit. In 1985 the RIAA started putting a black-andwhite PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LYRICS label, colloquially known as
the Tipper sticker, on objectionable albums. Wal-Mart, J.C. Penneys, and
other major stores stopped carrying labeled material. Most material with a
warning label was rock (rap was still relatively underground), but country
and some explicit comedy albums went unlabeled. The Parental Advisory:
Explicit Lyrics label did land on Frank Zappas 1987 instrumental album Jazz
From Hell. Zappa had been an outspoken critic of the PMRC a few years
before. By the end of the decade presidential hopeful Bill Clinton asked
Tippers husband to become his running mate for the presidency. Al Gore
served as Vice President from 1990 to 1998.
Not unlike Yee and Hot Coffee, Connecticut Democratic Senator Joseph
Lieberman would learn of this new popular game, Mortal Kombat, through
one of his aides in 1992. Disturbed by the digital violence and believing
adolescents could not differentiate from fantasy and reality, Lieberman
headed a series of Congressional hearings that put Nintendo and Sega to
task for their home versions of Mortal Kombat, as well as other violent games
such as the sorority-murder satire Night Trap. I was startled, Lieberman
would later say. It was very violent and rewarded violence.
Nintendo and Sega, the former the previous industry leader and the
latter the gaining contender, spent most of the hearings accusing the other
company of being irresponsible. Congress determined that the industry
must regulate itself or a government-appointed group would regulate it.
The industry created two regulatory boards, the Recreational Software
Advisory Council and the Entertainment Software Rating Board, to monitor
and rate every piece of retail video game software. (The ESRB would become
the dominant committee within a few years.) Fearing it would alienate its
customers accustomed to kid-friendly software, Nintendo removed the
blood in its version of Mortal Kombat green. Video game editorials called the
move cowardly. At the end of his vice presidency Al Gore asked Lieberman
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to be his running mate for his 2000 presidential bid. Talk of Lieberman in The
White House launched another set of video game editorials, the argument
being that his efforts over the previous decade had censored dozens of
games. Some threatened not to vote for Gore because Lieberman was on the
ticket. Gore lost the presidency to George W. Bush in 2000, but it is doubtful
gamers had much to do with the loss. According to the U.S. Census Bureau,
18- to 24-year olds, the heart of the video game audience at the time, had
the lowest voter turnout that year.

After Clintons speech, Rockstar Games remained adamant that Hot

Coffee was the work of a determined group of hackers Theyre not
within our company. In the weeks since Hot Coffee was first posted, gamers
worldwide used game hacking devices to explore the PlayStation 2 and
XBox editions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Action Replay, Game Shark
and other legal software allows you to put in codes and temporarily hack
into a video game to get unlimited lives, weapon upgrades and other perks.
It also could unlock hidden content not meant to be found.
A video of the Hot Coffee mini-game began circulating on the Internet,
but it was of the PC version, and PC games, by their very nature, are
modifiable. For instance, Microsoft will alert users when the latest Windows
patch is available for download, which allows the company to correct
software errors after you already bought the package at the local computer
store and started using it. On the other hand, console systems at the time,
like the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, had inflexible software, games that could not
be modified by an outside source. Nothing could be added to the software
that wasnt already there. Diligent PlayStation 2 and XBox gamers were now
trying to dig through the static San Andreas code to see if they could unlock
the sex scene revealed by Wildenborgs Hot Coffee patch. They discovered
that the sex mini-game, in its entirety, was available in both the PlayStation
2 and XBox versions of San Andreas. People who didnt know heard through
the postings on hundreds, if not thousands of video game websites. The
truth was out. After spending weeks pointing at the gamer community, it
was clear that the Hot Coffee mini-game had been programmed by Rockstar
itself. There is sex content in the disc, a Rockstar Games spokesperson
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admitted after the news broke. Insiders claim the company originally
planned to include the sex mini-game, but later buried it to avoid an Adults
Only rating. When dealing with millions of lines of computer code, it can be
easier to hide something than to outright delete it.
The game company recalled all copies of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
on American shelves, promising to re-release the original version with an
Adults Only rating and a Hot Coffee-free version with the initial Mature
rating. This would take weeks. Some major stores, such as Best Buy, said
they werent planning on carrying the game at all after the re-release.
GameSpot and similar used game stores predicted heavy losses because
they wouldnt be able to accept nor sell the millions of copies in circulation.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was still the number-one game in America.
One analyst said that the cost of the San Andreas recall, including new
shipments, loss of used and new game sales, and bad publicity, would be
more than $50 million.
On August 6, 2005, GameSpot reported that, according to credible
sources, the FBI was investigating death threats against Jack Thompson.
One forwarded email read For being a total fucking asshole, I think video
games or [sic] freaking awesome, and they are my entire life, and for you
to insult them, is like telling me my life is totally worthless. For this, sir, I AM
GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!!! A second email read this is not spam, its
[sic] my right as a citizen to send you thousands upon thousands of emails
saying the same thing until you die painfully from gun shot wounds. A high
school student was reportedly arrested for sending a few of the dozens of
emails Thompson received. In November, he was barred from the Devin
Moore murder case by Alabama Court Judge James Moore (no relation
to the defendant) after allegedly sending harassing emails to the law
firm defending Devin. Mr. Thompson felt compelled to smear opposing
counsel, other attorneys with no involvement in this case or individuals,
the judge later wrote. Mr. Thompsons actions before this court suggest
that he is unable to conduct himself in a manner befitting practice in this
state [of Alabama]. He still continued to write passionate letters to leaders
in the video game industry. In one particularly heated correspondence,
Thompson compared Entertainment Software Association head Doug
Lowenstein, a Jewish man, to Adolf Hitler.
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That fall the National Institute of Media and the Family published an
open letter saying the organization would be distancing itself from him. It
asked Thompson not to reference the association in the press. Over the
past few months, I and members of my board have a growing concern that
your use of our name, without our permission, has had a negative influence
as we try to educate the public to this important issue, NIMF President
David Walsh said. Your commentary has included extreme hyperbole
and your tactics have included personally attacking individuals for whom
I have a great deal of respect. Thompson responded with his own open
letter. Dr. Walshs efforts are funded by Target and by a foundation run by
Best Buy lawyer and Best Buy Director Elliot Kaplan. I am suing Target and
Best Buy over [Rockstars upcoming adventure] Bully which both Target
and Best Buy are pre-selling. You connect the dots. He added, I am a
Christian. As far as I know, Dr. Walsh is as well. There is a very clear passage
in the New Testament in which believers are admonished that if they have
a problem with someone, to go to that person in private and try and work
it out. He didnt do that A child psychologist who would give a heads
up to Doug Lowenstein in such a matter without confronting me directly
man-to-man is a person who has lost his way, in more ways than one. He
is the latest casualty in an escalating war started by a reckless industry
whose socipathic [sic] poster child is [president of Rockstar Games parent
company] Paul Eibeler.
Meanwhile, Rockstar Games released Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City
Stories, a prequel to Grand Theft Auto III, for Sony PSP handheld. The game
was a critical and commercial success, topping sales chart despite the fact
it was for a handheld game machine and was, in many ways, a retread of
2001s Grand Theft Auto 3. The Warriors, an adventure game inspired by the
1978 cult classic gang movie, came out at the same time and also sold well.
During that holiday season, Clinton joined Lieberman and Indiana Senator
Evan Bayh in creating the Family Entertainment Protection Act. Submitted
for approval on December 16, 2005, the proposed game legislation bill
would fine store managers for selling material rated inappropriate for
minors by the ESRB. An independent committee would analyze the rating
system annually for accuracy and consumers would have an easier time
logging in complaints regarding the system. Furthermore, the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) would investigate misleading ratings and do random
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audits of stores to determine accessibility of adult material to minors. This

bill will help empower parents by making sure their kids cant walk into a
store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent and pornographic
content, Clinton said in a statement. The press release failed to mention
Yees dismissed California bills or the two other similar bills that had been
shot down on a state level. Two weeks before her announcement a District
Court judge found an Illinois game-restriction law unconstitutional. The
previous month a District Court judge blocked a virtually identical Michigan
law, saying it was unlikely to survive strict scrutiny. Political pundits at the
time said that Clinton was the most likely candidate for the Democrats
2008 White House bid.

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BEEHIVES
The camera zooms in on a perky young woman. She looks to be in her
late twenties, perhaps early thirties, and she starts talking to you about her
first date: how the restaurant had to kick them out because they talked until it
closed, how she looked in his eyes and could tell he was the one for her, about
that instant spark, you know, the spark you feel when you click connect
with someone. The distant strains of Natalie Coles Everlasting Love also
used in the Diane Lane movie Must Love Dogs and other modern divorceelooking-for-love filmsbegin to swell in the background. Her husband (see
the ring flashing as hes gesturing?) is now talking to you about the same
incident, but he has a different, complimentary interpretation. A grey-haired,
honey-voiced old man begins talking to you. His face seems to take up the
whole TV screen. Arent you tired of dating, he asks. Find your soul-mate. He
tells you that eHarmony uses scientific data to match people together. There
is a science, founder Dr. Neil Clark Warren implies, a science to chemistry,
something his company eHarmony analyzes and gives to its subscribers. The
Pew Institutes first online dating survey, released in 2006, found that one
out of every three people knew someone who belonged to an online dating
service and more than one in four knew someone who has gone out with a
person they met online. Nearly overnight, it seemed, dozens of similar sites
emerged, The Atlantic Monthly wrote the same year as the survey. Online
dating became almost de rigueur for busy singles looking for love. The Los
Angeles-based eHarmony alone had nine million members.
Up the coast, California developers Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe
were also convinced social technology was going to be the next big thing.
They worked within a computer company eUniverse and began MySpace,
the first mainstream multimedia blog. (A disputed history has MySpace
culling its concepts from eUniverse CEO Brad Greenspan, a man who has
called himself the true founder of MySpace.)
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After a five-minute setup on MySpace, you can type in your interests,

post messages and music, and make new friends who, in turn, would
provide links to their personal web pages. It would be a test of six degrees of
separation, the concept that every single person knew every other person in
the world through a maximum of six connected people. Every personal site
is one-page deep, but can scroll down as much as someone could fill it up
with new friends and content. The average MySpace site would have a small
box of bio information (22, Los Angeles, CA, Sagittarius), an uploaded picture
serving as background (usually a personal pic or a favorite band photo) and
stacks of friend testimonials reminiscent of high school yearbooks (You
are the kewlist! Stay sweet!). Wired News called it a highly customizable
amalgam of blogging, music sharing and social-discovery services, a typical
page is a near perfect reflection of the chaos and passion of youth: a musicfilled space, rudely splattered with photos and covered in barely-legal prose
rendered in font colors that blend together and fade into the background.
MySpace grew to have seventy million users, roughly one-fourth the
population size of the United States.
Geriatric mogul Rupert Murdoch bought the site for $580 million. Within
weeks of the Rupert Murdoch News Corporation purchase, ABC, CBS and
NBC, influential papers such as the San Francisco Chronicle and other major
news outlets began covering MySpace in earnest as a virtual smorgasbord
for teen predators. Popular among kids, MySpace entries often gave detailed
personal information, if not actual data on their location. It was like a diary
open to the world. This site, said the Connecticut Attorney General, is a
parents worst nightmare.
MySpace was not the only site of its kind. Before MySpace was a popular
networking website called Friendster, and, after MySpace, Facebook became
the most discussed site. Launched in 2004 by student Mark Zuckerburg as a
college networking website, Facebook grew into an older-skewing version
of MySpace. Newsweek featured Zuckerburg on the cover. On the inside
the feature story told what happened when Facebook had one of its rare
maintenance shutdowns. Over the course of those four hours I probably
tried to get in five or more times. Im addicted to Facebook, one person
lamented. She was a 40-year-old mother of three.
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As Facebook began, Linden Labs released the program Second Life. It was
a 3D virtual world where you could create an avatar (a digital representation
of yourself ) and buy land with real money, mortgage a virtual home, get
married, get drunk, make new friends, start a money-making business in
other words, you could begin and live a new life. That was it. Second Life was
a video game with no video game in it. The virtual world remained quiet
until Wired and other tech tastemakers began claiming Second Life could
be Web 2.0, the almost mythical multidimensional Internet that would
take over the now dated World Wide Web. The New York Times, Time and
others discovered the program in 2006. A woman, whos avatar name was
Anshe Chung, became the first Second Life resident to become a millionaire
in real life. (The value of the Second Life Linden dollar fluctuates like a real
economy, but was roughly $300 Linden to every U.S. dollar in 2006.) She
did it by buying up virtual real estate and flipping it for a higher price. Sony,
Nike, and other companies created virtual stores with real products. Reuters
opened up a Second Life branch. Several 2008 presidential hopefuls hopped
on digital soapboxes to hold town meetings. By May 1st, 2007, Second Life
had six million citizens (though critics argued that this figure was inflated
since some people had multiple avatars).
Second Life visitors could actually modify the virtual world. Aside from a
few restrictions, Linden Labs took a very hands-off approach to its universe.
One of the first modifications was by visitor Kevin Alderman, known in-world
as Stroker Serpentine. He created SexGen Platinum, a fourty-five dollar
modification that gave an avatar realistic genitalia and the ability to have
detailed virtual sex with a partner. He would later sue another Second Lifer
for stealing and distributing the applet, making it the first known lawsuit
over a stolen digital dick.
A popular website called SL Escorts listed and ranked avatar prostitutes
based on user feedback, linking the virtual world concubines to their real life
handlers for a potential Second Life meet and greet. I love all sorts of sex play
from the innocent school girl to the sex slave (with or without torture),
read an ad for one leather clad escort. you can just IM [instant messenger]
me and Ill be very happy to content to your deepest desires! It was followed
by this itemized listing (in Linden Lab dollars):
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BLOWJOB
L$350 with clothes
L$500 shows tits
CYBER
L$1,500 for half and hour
L$500 for each additional 15 minutes
VOICE
L$2,000 for 15 min SL voice
L$3,000 for 30 min SL voice
The developing virtual world brought new sexual ethics to the forefront,
and books like Regina Lynns The Sexual Revolution 2.0, Audacia Rays Naked
on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration
and Tim Guests Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds attempted to
navigate what was fair in virtual love. In the Bible it says something about
thinking carnally about another woman is being unfaithful, Guest said at the
time. I dont think people nowadays would agree with that, and similarly, I
think people who have online sex dont see it as cheating. Its morally okay, a
pocket they can put those desires into where they wont threaten their reallife relationship.

It is a balmy Los Angeles day, and two bikini-clad women are picketing
just off a major strip, shouting at any cars or people that pass. Their signs
read TOO NAUGHTY FOR E3. The models are from Naughty America, a
multimedia porn conglomerate, and they are protesting their exclusion
from the Electronic Entertainment Expo happening in the Los Angeles
Convention Center behind them. The E3 organizers decided to ban socalled booth babes, women provocatively dressed, often as video game
characters, populating the various company booths. It was definitely a
change of heart the predominantly male conference allowed Rockstar
Games to bring bra-and-panty strippers a few years before. Contrary to the
timing, Naughty America was not saying their promotional women were
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why it was kicked out of E3, but because of its video game, titled Naughty
America: The Game. The online title would allow players to hook up with
others around the world.
Sex in an online game? Its about time, the press kit said. Naughty
America: The Game is the first of its kind: A massive multiplayer online world
that allows players to do what theyve always wanted to: be naughty. After
establishing a cartoon-like online persona and doing mundane things like
apartment furnishing, you can go hang out in the virtual citys downtown,
uptown or beach. A widely shown screenshot has a buff guy and a cute
young woman dancing at the local discothque. A less circulated picture has
a chiseled blond with a mullet taking a svelte, busty redhead from behind
on his mauve bedsheets. His arms are at her hips, kind of like hes steering a
boat with his wrists. In the corner is a meter that reads sexy to freak. It is in
curvy seventies cursive. We were very disappointed to learn of E3s stance
toward Naughty America: The Game, the company said later. Its the next
step in social networking and online matchmaking. Its certainly not intended
for everyone, but then again neither are a number of the titles featured at
the show. The press called the exclusion a stunt (it was learned after the
announcement that the company just turned in its booth paperwork too
late), but the change to a more conservative conference was real. The E3
organizers was responding to events from the previous year.
Rockstar Games announced its next game, Bully, in 2005, setting up
a preview for retailers and the press at E3. Dozens of protesters picketed
in front of Take-Two headquarters in Manhattan. This game should be
banned, Liz Carnell from Bullying Online (a British website supporting
bullied students) said before the event. The protesters carried signs that said
Prosecute Rockstar Games; they are felons and Put the cuffs on Rockstar,
not youth.Im extremely worried that kids will play it and then act out what
theyve seen in the classroom Carnell said.
After the protest, Rockstar Games quietly announced that Bully,
originally slated for fall 2005, would be pushed back to April 2006. It arrived
on the PlayStation 2 in October 2006. In what could be described as Grand
Theft Auto Jr., Bully is an open-ended adventure at the gothic, repressive
Bullworth Academy prep school. As Jimmy Hopkins, a short, freckled-faced
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Porn and Pong

teenager, you must navigate the various school cliques, such as the jocks,
the nerds, and the preppies, and make allies to survive the school year.
Grand Theft Autos guns and baseball bats are replaced with itching powder
and bag o marbles. Knuckle sandwiches are complimented by headlocks
and Indian burns. The point is to humiliate foes, which, in high school, is
a fate worst than death. You can also make friends. A small set of options
pops up when Jimmy passes someone on campus. You can give the person
a friendly nod (Hey, hows it going?!), a put down (Who are you lookin
at?!) or, if you are behind him or her, a very realistic-looking wedgie. Each
character will respond accordingly. A positive response gives you the option
to do a courting gesture, like giving a stolen box of chocolates or a bunch of
flowers uprooted from the girls dorm front lawn. A few more flirts add a final
option symbolized by two big lips. The courted will usually say something
coy (So, Im doing this science project, and, um, were trying to figure out if
kissing helps you live longer, so, um) and Jimmy, who seems to like being
the aggressor, will grab and toss the person back, and give a long, dramatic
kiss. Jimmy can do this with a girl or with a boy. The homosexual kisses did
not get much media attention, especially compared to Rockstars Hot Coffee
the summer before. The early controversy over the violence, which Bully had
very little, trumped any talks about intimacy, which Bully had in spades.
The Bully protest and the Hot Coffee fallout did not stop new, potentially
controversial titles from appearing. No fewer than six announced [online
sex titles] were in development Spend the Night, Naughty America: The
Game, Rapture Online, Heavenly Bodies, Red Light Center and 3 Feel, Brenda
Brathwaites Sex in Video Games said at the time. Although each game had
a slightly different feature set, all focused on sexual interactions between
characters in the game to some degree or another. One of the most notable
titles was actually in some form of public beta-testing for several years.
Sociolotron is a massive, X-rated virtual world created by veteran game
developer Patric Lagny. There are monsters to slay and treasure to find like
Ultima Online and other adventures, but Sociolotron was made specifically
for you to live your fantasy as a pimp, prostitute or pirate, knight, dominatrix
or spy, or any other self-created design you see fit. You can then have sex
with any of the hundreds of other role players on the virtual plain. If you have
a desire that isnt included in the game and there are many included in the
game you can ask the creator himself to code it in. It is all run by Lagny, like
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a mom-and-pop sex shop. He told the tech magazine Sync, My intent was to
fashion something the big companies, like Sony, wouldnt ever touch. Still,
according to Lagnys data, female Sociolotron players outnumber the men
almost two to one.

In 2006, authors Jon M. Gibson and Chris Carle collaborated on a line of

calendars called Nerdcore. Shot by photographer Cherie Roberts, the first
calendar features porn stars with video games. Miss December leans against
the arcade machine of Williams classic Defender, her long blonde tresses
stopping just short of her ample breasts and her long legs actually, her
whole body only covered from the calf down. She wears gym socks with
gold and purple stripes. Miss November lays on her stomach across a queensized bed playing an old Nintendo GameBoy handheld (originally released
in 1989). She twists her nude body just right so her untanned behind is in full
camera view. The first edition was successful enough for Nerdcore to release
a second calendar focused on superheroes. It had a launch party in a large
Los Angeles comic book shop with an open bar, porn performers and blowup
posters of the calendar. The tech channel G4TV and other international
outlets covered the event. Masi Oka, a lead actor on the popular NBC fantasy
show Heroes, came to the party.
The same year Evergreen Events held the first annual Sex in Video
Games conference in San Francisco. This unique conference will focus on
the design, development, and technology of sex in video games from a
national as well as international perspective, read the website. In addition,
this conference will also have a strong focus on business matchmaking and
networking. During the conferences two day run, it will feature numerous
lectures and keynotes, a machinima art show (erotic art and movies derived
from video games) as well as panel discussions with leaders in video game
and adult video game development. Panels included Sex in Games: Where
are We Now?,,Creating a Massively Multiplayer Online Erotic Game and
Integrating International AO Success into the US Market. (AO stood for
Adults Only.) According to the SiVG organizers, the original meeting place,
the Nob Hill Masonic Center, suddenly refused to hold the conference. The
venue was planned well in advance. At the last minute, the conference
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was moved to the Kensington Hotel. Attendees would get lost in the large
building as the hoteliers did not allow the organizers to put up a sign for the
conference in the lobby. MTV, Wired, and The Washington Post were able to
find the event. There would be no conference in 2007.
A few months before the conference, co-organizer and Savannah
College of Art & Design game design professor Brenda Brathwaite released
Sex in Video Games. Part history lesson and part action plan, the textbook
gave game designers perspective on how adult situations could improve
their games. It was the first book on the topic released and is the most
comprehensive listing of sex-related games available. For new developments,
Brathwaite kept an online blog at www.igda.org/sex. In the book, Brathwaite
seemed optimistic about the future of adult gaming. While a majority of
todays games seem to sport one extreme or the other hyper-sexualized
environments, avatars or actions, or nothing at all games in the future will
likely not be designed in such a way. Just as love scenes in movies are the
norm and, with few exceptions, dont make headlines, so too will games find
a comfortable medium.
One of the most critically acclaimed games at the time was God of War,
a bloody, fast-paced action title based on Roman mythology. Early in the
game the malevolent hero arises out of bed, leaving behind two topless
women with which he presumably spent the night. While most players
may have walked out of the bedroom and started the next game level, you
actually have the option to come back to the bed. The women will let out an
innocent giggle as the bald-headed warrior climbs in between the sheets.
The camera slowly pans to a Roman vase sitting precariously on the edge of
a nearby nightstand. The game shows you a series of buttons to press. Each
successful hit will let out a breathless female gasp followed by a gruff hero
grunt. The mini-game ends when the vase, shaken by the bed knocking,
breaks on the floor. A 2007 sequel had a similar sequence in a medieval
bathhouse. Both received a Mature rating, the equivalent of a movie R. The
PlayStation 2 games were released by Sony, a company that, about 35 years
earlier, lost the VCR war to VHS because Beta lacked porn.
Microsoft also took risks with its Mature-rated XBox 360 title Mass
Effect, a game that was banned in Singapore before it was even released.
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(The country would later lift the ban, perhaps because of pressure from the
multimedia giant.) Built like a dynamic sci-fi novel, Mass Effect allows you to
create a space military character from scratch, visit different solar systems
and explore hundreds of possible storylines and outcomes. Each decision
you make sends you on a different path.
The developers released early video footage of the game to the press.
I see the sadness behind your eyes, a female alien with well-braided
cornrows and sensitive eyes says to you. It tells a story that makes me want
to weep. Pain and loss. But it drives you! Makes you strong. You never hide
your strength, either. It serves you well, terrifies your foes. Few will dare
to stand against you. This may be who you are, but this is not who you
will become. It only forms the basis for your future greatness. Remember
these words when doubt descends, Commander. Your character, a tough
blonde with close-cropped hair, stutters over her words. The alien touches
her face. Close your eyes and relax, Commander. The game closes in on
their faces, the Commander standing in front of the alien while she makes
an expression of subtle ecstasy. The scene ends with a close-up of the
aliens blue arm, thrown against the bedpost in a fit of passion and then
sensuously brought down, as if gone limp. Mass Effect was released on
November 20, 2007. Aside from the Singapore ban, the game did not bring
any major protests or political speeches, nor were any hidden sex games or
secret naked scenes revealed later. There were no million-dollar recalls nor
any lawsuits from concerned parents.
Three weeks after the launch, however, Microsoft did make an official
announcement: Mass Effect had already sold more than a million copies.

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AFTERPEEP
Do games deserve to be taken seriously? After three decades of sexist
and racist depictions, gimmick-based erotic content and biases towards
unrealistic breast sizes, maybe video games shouldnt be considered art at
least not just yet. Virtually the same argument can be placed on modernday television, movies and similar media outlets that, in some cases, have
been around more than a century. Its harsh how quickly video games are
judged when the measuring stick is based on mediums invented several
generations ago. I would guess that thirties cinema, or sixties television, was
equally bad compared to the novel.
And yet, despite its brash navet, video games and their virtual worlds
have rapidly changed our perception of entertainment, of interaction and
of human relationships. MTV has consciously shifted its already fast-paced
programming to keep up with a generation raised on video games. (In
fact, in 2007 it started a highly profitable MTV Games division.) Movie and
television plots are more layered now because, as Steven Johnson argues
in Everything Bad Is Good For You, video games have upped our ability to
multitask and to follow multiple storylines. The way our generation uses
technology to maintain relationships through text messaging, e-mail,
cell phones, social networking sites, virtual worlds and even online sex all
reflect our established comfort with this interactive medium. Its influence is
almost unparalleled, and its impact on our expression sexual or otherwise
will be seen for years to come.
As I finished editing this book in Spring 2008, Rockstar Games released
Grand Theft Auto IV. The insanely popular game sold 5.8 million copies within
its first week. Set in New York-inspired Liberty City, the adventure scored rave
reviews from outlets as varied as Variety and NPR. One critic called Grand
Theft Auto IV the first post-modern video game, which, in my interpretation,
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means the first real video game for adults. Humorously, it carries the same
amount of sex, violence and satire as the previous six games, GTA 1, 2, 3, Vice
City and San Andreas.
In other words, the game hasnt changed, but the perception has. And
a shift in public perception, as far as the future of sexuality in video games,
may be what the medium needs more than anything else.

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FOR FURTHER READING

Dozens of books and hundreds of articles were most helpful in writing
this unusual book, but a few that were indispensable.
John DEmilio and Estelle B. Freedmans thorough title Intimate Matters:
A History of Sexuality in America (The University of Chicago Press, 1997) is
highly recommended for more insight into American sexual history. Rarely,
if ever, have I read such a clear analysis of how weve evolved over the past
five centuries. It is simply breathtaking.
Legs McNeil, Jennifer Osborne and Peter Pavias The Other Hollywood:
The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film Industry (Harper Entertainment,
2006) is entertaining reading for understand the modern porn industry.
Steven Johnsons Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Todays Popular
Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter (Riverhead, 2005) defends the cultural
value of video games, as well as modern television, in a way rarely attempted
in pop culture literature.
Brenda Brathwaites Sex In Video Games (Charles River Media, 2006)
timelines the hundreds of bizarre, scary and occasionally great sex-related
games over the past forty years, many of which werent able to make it into
my own book. Brathwaites book is required reading for further study.

Porn and Pong

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank three women in my life: Bernadette Johnson, Dr.
Jane Briggs-Bunting and Dr. Parul Jashbai Patel. Mom, you have been my
best friend and my rock, even in those times when no one seemed to believe
in me, not even myself. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Jane, you
were my first writing mentor, and no one pushed me as hard, or as far, as
you have in the decade and a half weve known each other (and I still want
you to be proud of me, even now as a grown-ass man!). You taught me that
I can be tough-as-nails journalist while still remaining human, and the only
limits I have are self-imposed. Thank you for being my North Star. Parul, we
met when this book was in its infancy, and you stuck by my side through
publishing industry politics, personal problems and even life-threatening
illness. I will continue to try to love you as much as you have loved me. Thank
you for being my partner.
Dad and Pop, weve had our ups and downs, but I feel that we have been
able to start anew, and today I am thankful to have two wonderful role models
as sensitive, yet independent-minded African-American men. I would like
to be as strong of a father to my own kids someday. And to Steve Garnett,
the tough Medill professor with a heart of gold! Im so glad we were able to
become mentor/mentee, and later colleagues, and it is an honor to be your
friend. I still remember your support in those early days where I felt like I was
just chasing my tail.
Ray and Deirdra, a guy is lucky enough to find one friend that will always
be there, so having two best friends makes me feel almost undeserving.
Thank you for the great feedback throughout the long process, your patience
with my rough (and I mean rough) drafts and, most importantly, being part
of my family through thick and thin. I love you guys.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Kristy, its finally done! I remember us sharing a drink at The Anvil

back in 03, back when I was in such a rush to finish my writing and research,
and you looked me straight in the eye and said You have to decide: Do you
want to be the first or do you want to be the best? It took five more years,
but Im so glad I did the latter. Thank you.
To Jeanette, no one knows more about this day-to-day six year
rollercoaster than you, not only because you are my closest writer friend,
but also because you were going through it at the same time with your own
books. Im grateful for our friendship, and I look forward to us having more
great experiences together. And dont we still have a book to write?
To Kurt, for being one of the craziest people Ive ever met. Your obnoxious
rhetoric kept me happy when things were down, and your faith during this
books darkests times helped me send out one more query, contact one
more agent and write one more chapter. You are a part of this book.
Atlantic City, New Jersey is my birthplace, but Ive called about a dozen
other cities home since then. Thank you to Grandma Johnson, Uncle George,
Aunt Freda, Mush, Noonie, and little AJ in the city and Granddad and the rest
of the Brown clan in the Jersey burbs, my sisters Toni and Tiffany on the East
Coast, as well as Grandma Howard, Aunt Julie and Uncle Mike in Michigan.
Thank you also to fellow video game addicts Jason, Jason and Courtland,
Maine and Sean, and my college buddy Mike for introducing me to Duke
Nukem 3D, ROTT and every other FPS around in 1997. When I decided to go
to Northwestern I had no idea how important Chicago would become, and
Id also like to acknowledge all my wonderful friends I originally met in the
city who, in some way, would shape this book: my long-time buddies Meg
Chilton, Liz Ganshirt and Cecily Channer, the Medill crew of Ben Jackson,
Carrie Greenberg, and Katherine Glover, and fellow pop culture aficionados
Melanie Rowen and Liza Pavelich (Sandy Koufax lives!). Thanks also to Shana
Krochmal for being a good editor and friend, and for introducing me to
Chens Orange Chicken in Long Beach. Safe travels to Wilma Garcia, Shannon
from Seattle, Great-grandmom Brown from New Orleans, Grandmom Brown,
Granddad Howard and Cleveland Gillis. I look forward to seeing you guys
again someday.

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There are many great people who believed in this book and put in
discounted, if not straight-up pro bono work into it: my readers Ray, Deirdra,
Johnny, Meg, Kurt, Shana, Steve, Katherine, Parul and Martin, Sex In Video
Games author Brenda Brathwaite, filmographer Terry this cover will totally
work! Osterhaut (www.digitalfantastique.com), my long-time webmaster
Andrew Kamm (www.nontourist.com), style and marketing maven Rachel
Weingarten (www.weincountry.com), and Nerdcore calendar creator and
foreword writer Jon M. Gibson (www.totallynerdcore.com). I also recognize
my great editors over the years, including Scott and Chip at Playboy,
Maribeth at Playboy.com, Rich at the New York Post, Dave and Kyle at SPIN,
Steve at Computer Games, Jake and Dan at City Link Magazine, Pheadra at
WomenGamers.com, Connie at AAGamer.com, Josh, Julie and Ed at PlanetOut.
com, and Matthew, Cashus, Steve and Kurt at Wireless Gaming Review/
GameSpot, as well as moral support from the soon-to-be-famous Audacia Ray
(www.wakingvixen.com), the wonderful Regina Lynn (www.reginalynn.com),
tech goddess Annalee Newitz (www.techsploitation.com), gaming guru Scott
Steinberg, ultimate otaku Chris Kohler, spiritualist Rosemary Taylor (www.
myspace.com/rorotaylor), romance authors Joan Price (www.joanprice.com)
and Tina Tessina (www.tinatessina.com), indie book hero Mary Beth Temple
(www.marybethtemple.com), inspirational author Jennifer Lawler (www.
dojowisdom.com), my play aunt Andrea King Collier, and literally the whole
staff at the American Dietetic Associationparticularly Dr. Esther Myers and
Jennifer Herendeen.
A big thanks to Adam Parfrey and Feral House (www.feralhouse.com)
for taking a risk on my crazy book, to the James Fitzgerald Agency (www.
jfitzagency.com) for having my back, to Michele Wells for being a great
collaborator, to Marilyn Allen and Manie Barron for the early support and
to Coop (www.coopstuff.com) for the spellbinding cover based on his 2006
mural, Atari.
Finally, to the city of New Orleans. I spent one incredible year in NoLa,
where I wrote the bulk of this book, and I rode out a few hours before
Hurricane Katrina submerged the city. The pain, suffering and neglect still
breaks my heart, but they do not wash away my amazing memories of late
nights, one-of-a-kind experiences and life-long friendships. Much love to
chefs Sarah and Chucky (now owners of the Glass Onion in Charleston, SC,
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

my other favorite southern city: www.ilovetheglassonion.com), my drinking

buddy Candice, foodies Kitty and Daizee, Pete and Jenny at the barbeque
shack on Poland, my NoLa family Marna and JW, rum-loving Wayne (www.
republicofrum.com), my woadie Steve and the always-supportive Dave (fields
of garlic, forever!). Most importantly, to Justin, Tracey and Pheran, and to
mama Ina who took care of us during the worst storm of the century. Thank
you for your love.

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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
& INTERVIEWS

SPACESHIPS
1982.

Associated Press. Atari Files Suit To Halt Blue Games. Associated Press Wire Service. October 15,

Blumenthal, Ralph. Porno chic: Hard-core grows fashionable and very profitable. New York
Times. January 21, 1973.
DEmilio, John and Freedman, Estelle B. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. The
University of Chicago Press, 1997.
Herman, Leonard. Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Home Videogames. Rolenta Press, 1994.
Kent, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon The Story Behind
the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World. Three Rivers Press, 2001.
McNeil, Legs; Osborne, Jennifer; and Pavia, Peter. The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral
History of the Porn Film Industry. Harper Entertainment, 2006.
Moriarty, Tim. Uncensored Videogames: Are Adults Ruining It For The Rest Of Us? Videogaming
and Computergaming Illustrated. October 1983.
Russell, Diana E. Making Violence Sexy: Feminist View On Pornography. Taylor & Francis Group,
1993.
Schlosser, Eric. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market.
Mariner Books, 2004.

PROTECTION
1988.

2001.

Abrahams, Paul. Leisure-Suit Larrys Virus Strikes Computers. Financial Times. November 30,
Brathwaite, Brenda. Sex In Video Games. Charles River Media, 2006.
Brown, Damon. Making the Atari 800 Sexy. Computer Games. May 2006.
Brown, Damon. PCs In Ecstasy: The Evolution of Sex in PC Games. Computer Games. May 2006.
Cohen, Jon. Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine. Norton & Company,

DeMaria, Rusel and Wilson, Johnny L. High Score: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games
(Second Edition). McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003.
Dibbell, Julian. A Rape In Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards,
and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database Into a Society. Village Voice. December 23, 1993.
King, Brad and Borland, John. Dungeons and Dreams: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from
Geek to Chic. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2003.
Lowe, Al. Interview. Conducted December 11, 2004.
Moran, J.S.; Janes, H.R.; Peterman, T.A.; Stone, K.M. Increase in condom sales followings AIDS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

education and publicity, United States. American Journal of Public Health. May 1990.
Pierce, Kenneth M. Software For The Masses. Time. October 5, 1983.
Press, Bill. Press: The sad legacy of Jerry Falwell. The Milford Daily News. May 18, 2007. Available
online at www.milforddailynews.com/opinion/x1987843539
Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People & the AIDS Epidemic. St. Martins Press,
1987.
Walsh, Arthur. Interview. Conducted March 10, 2006.

OTAKU
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160

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Damon Brown (www.damonbrown.net) writes for Playboy, New York
Post, SPIN and Conde Nast Portfolio, and is a technology columnist for
PlanetOut and AARP Online. He graduated from Northwesterns prestigious
Masters in Magazine Publishing program and is the author of several
technology guides, including The Pocket Idiots Guide to the iPhone. Damon
has been interviewed on CNN, NPR, BBC World and G4TV. He lives in the
Bay Area, but can safely consider Atlantic City, Lansing, MI, Chicago or New
Orleans his hometown.

Jon M. Gibson (www.jonmgibson.com) is the co-founder of Nerdcore,

a company that released the videogame industrys very first nude pinup
calendar in 2006. He also created the annual i am 8-bit exhibit, which in both
provocative and intellectual ways, helped to contextualize videogames as
the cultural significant art form that they are.