When it comes to sex, video games have one hell of a bad reputation. Not only are they often linked with ‘porn’ in the ‘twin evils that will poison children’s minds and bring about Armageddon’, they’re also often guilty of pandering to lazy tropes. For instance, creating huge-breasted women with armoured bras that give them less support than a lemming therapy group.
However, while video games and sex have their fair share of problems, they also have their fair share of successes. And in this instance I’m defining ‘success’ as ‘the ability to make my knickers wet.’ I want to talk to you about erotic video games.
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Erotic video games
Before we start, I’m going to tell you two key things:
- I am not a gamer. While many of my teenage years were happily spent using Civilisation cheat codes, I cannot do anything that requires more than the bare minimum of hand-eye coordination.
- I am very very horny. This means that what I class as an erotic video game may be different to your own definition.
I’m going to broadly cover two different types of erotic games: those you play in order to get yourself a little bit horny, before you saunter off for a watch of some porn and a big wank later, and those which include actual sexy play, because you can play them with a partner. This is basically a history of the most formative erotic video games I’ve played, so some of them might only be familiar to those of you over 30. Come with me for a sexy history lesson…
Graphic adventure games
Graphic adventure games are ones where you run around a world using objects to complete missions that form a story – like Monkey Island or Kings Quest. To illustrate this I’m going with the original erotic video game – at least, it was original to me when I sat in front of my Dad’s computer with my siblings and we giggled at it: Leisure Suit Larry.
Larry was a despicably pervy man of the kind you’d usually find propping up the bar at Yates’ Wine Lodge chatting up women who were clearly keen to be elsewhere. Yet for some inexplicable reason, Larry would find himself in a series of increasingly raunchy situations with pixellated semi-naked ladies with cartoonishly large breasts.
I am – to be honest – a bit horrified that Larry was one of the first people who gave me a tingle in my knicker region, because he’s essentially a complete snake.
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The original, which was the one that turned me on to the idea that there could be tits in video games - Leisure Suit Larry: In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards – was a graphic adventure game like the early Sierra King’s Quests. It was pretty easy, especially for someone like me who has no hand-to-eye coordination, so I can only assume that it also worked neatly for people who had one hand occupied halfway down their trousers.
In terms of erotic potential, though, I’m guessing that the main reason I found it a turn-on was because I was young, and only just realising that sexy things existed. At that age I’d have probably got a tingle from accidentally banging my arse on a table as I walked past it.
Later, Leisure Suit Larry was rebooted (over and over) and went through a few new incarnations. “Magna Cum Laude”, played on the original Xbox, saw now-ancient Larry return to University so he could drool over nineteen year old girls. Yeah. To be honest I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I quite enjoyed it. But then I used to play it with a guy I really fancied, so in that environment I’d have easily quimmed my knickers over a weak innuendo in Scrabble.
Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball Edition
You play beach volleyball with lots of girls in bikinis. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t so much an ‘erotic’ game as it was ‘mild titillation for the Xbox generation’, but it’s still in my heart so I’m including it here.
Note from the editor: It is worth knowing that the original version of "Dead or Alive" which was a great fighting game had a feature hidden in the options menu where you told it how old you were. The older you were the larger the more giggly the breasts of the women became. Needless to say my game thought I was 75. Perving has always been part of the game.
Girlfriend simulators
My virtual girlfriend has clearly not left the greatest impression on me, because I can remember neither her name nor the game in which she featured. We were like ships in the night. Me: a horny early-20-year-old with a keen interest in Japanese culture, she: a sensual anime goddess with features so perfect I suspect she wasn’t real at all (OK, so she wasn’t).
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Girlfriend simulators (that’s a NSFW link, but the games are playable if you want to have a go!) do exactly what they say on the tin, only to varying degrees of complexity. In most of them you start playing, then you wander around the world chatting up girls and working out which one is most likely to bone you. It’s like Dragon Age, only instead of having to take the rock to the wizard then fight a dragon then run another errand before you get laid, you mostly just have to have conversations with your Potential Girlfriend then do fairly basic tasks like bowing nicely to her Mum.
Once you’ve got yourself a Virtual Girlfriend, you get to do things like snog her, shag her, and half-heartedly lick her pixellated boobs – basically the same things you’d do with a normal girlfriend who wasn’t made of bytes.
Why is it sexy? I have absolutely no idea. But it is – extraordinarily so. And I use girlfriend sims to make my main point about erotic video games: they’re sexy because they represent a level of effort and eventual reward that you simply don’t get from video porn or erotica. If you want to see a money shot in a porn film, all you need to do is press a button. Yay! Well done you! But if you want to see a glimpse of nipple in “Sex Kitten Sim Date” you really have to work for it.
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And don’t worry if you’re not good at video games yourself. One of the main reasons these games are fascinating, in my opinion, is that some of them are total shit. Take Meet ‘N’ Fuck: BDSM club, for instance – the design is poor, the user interface is laughable, the characters are so two-dimensional that if you tried to stand them up they’d fall over, and yet twenty seconds in I’m already feeling stirrings because OMG! It’s me! A skeezy guy wandering into a BDSM club and being asked to service a sub!
There’s potentially some interesting psychology behind why the erotic video games that stick in my mind are ones in which I get to put myself in the shoes of an achingly horny, usually excessively skeezy bloke. But psychology aside, that’s one of the things I adore about sexy games: you can be anyone. And given the choice of all humans in the world, for some reason I choose to be Leisure Suit Larry.
Maybe I’m just a bit of an awkward loser, so let’s move on to my modern favourite: cock hero.
Playable wanking games
Naysayers among you might say ‘hang on GOTN – Cock Hero is not a video game!’, while others will no doubt be thinking ‘what the hell is Cock Hero, and why haven’t I read about it on my favourite gaming website?’
Let’s answer the second question first: Cock Hero is a cross between a game and a porn film. Cock Hero creators take a bunch of different snippets of porn films and stitch them together into one big montage of sexiness, usually with breaks between ‘rounds’. They then add a soundtrack which gradually builds in rhythm each round. Finally they add a ‘beat counter’ to the bottom of the screen.
Then, in time to the beat counter, you beat your cock. Once for each count. Like on guitar hero, only you don’t need to do the fiddly bits with your fingers. Unless that’s what you’re into, of course.
Essentially you stroke your cock in time to on-screen instructions, and the aim is to keep going for as long as possible without coming.
And if you’re thinking ‘but Girl on the Net, you don’t have a cock’ then you’d be right, but simultaneously wrong: I like playing Cock Hero with my partner. It’s a two-player game, in which one of us (him) is trying hard not to come and the other (me) is watching his aching, desperate face as I wank him to the brink of climax then pause because it’s the end of the round. It’s hot.
Erotic video games are what you make them
If you began reading this thinking that playing an erotic game is something of a lonely, solitary pastime then I hope I’ve opened your eyes a bit. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m by no means an expert gamer – and I’m not even an expert sexy gamer. But when KinkCraft asked people to write about alternate erotica, erotic video games were the first thing that leapt to my mind. While erotica and porn follows a linear storyline, being able to put yourself (or your partner) in the picture means that sexy games can provide exactly the kind of shagging inspiration and casual titillation that spices up a Saturday night.
As I mentioned above, the beauty of games over books or films is that there’s an interactive element. You’re essentially choosing your own shag with each button you press and action you take. As tech moves forward there are more intruguing ways to become the central character in your own sex story. Virtual reality, for instance, which contrary to popular belief is not limited to those with thousands of pounds and an Oculus Rift. You can pick up a Google Cardboard (which is literally made of cardboard and lenses) for under a tenner. Download the right apps and you can play VR videos (and games) from your own phone.
So if the above has intrigued you, get exploring the erotic game possibilities. Whether you’re into full-on hardcore during Cock Hero, a gentle round of bouncy beach volleyball, or something more immersive like virtual reality, there are plenty of ways to put yourself at the heart of the sexy action…
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