# Let's talk about porn in games

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-porn-in-games/477536>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [December 17, 2008, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-porn-in-games/477536 "2008-12-17T10:12:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![runcible\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@runcible\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runcible_spoon)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2008, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-about-porn-in-games/477536/21 "2008-12-19T19:42:58Z")

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I think there’s a huge difference between sex scenes in an otherwise PG game, and an explicitly pornographic game. For the first, I think it’s pretty much down to what serves the story best. Mass Effect did a good job with this (although I thought the way the handled the relationship leadin up to it could have been better), so it’s clearly possible. I’m okay with it, although I don’t think it’s really necessary - for the most part, it’s the relationship that interests me, not the consummation. That said, I think most games don’t do a very good job with relationships. I just played Neverwinter Nights 2, and the thing that irritated me most was that they did the ‘designated lover’ route. I understand that it takes a fair bit of effort to write more romantic options into a game, but only having one out of four female characters available (and the least interesting one, too, IMHO) is just lame. I ended up skipping the romance plot because Elanee annoyed me too much, and I’m a notorious completionist.

As for explicitly sexual games - I think it’s better to have non-explicit, interactive gameplay lead up to an explicit cutscene. As has been said, I don’t want to have to play a game and wank at the same time, but making me work a little to get to the cutscene does make it a little more satisfying. However, the interactive novel style is barely a game - the best model I’ve seen has been dating sims like SimGirl. Not an overly well-done game, but I’ll admit to, ah, ‘enjoying’ it back in high school. The whole build-up-your-character-to-get-nookie makes it a little more of an investment than porn, which I think makes for a more satisfying conclusion. So to speak.

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