The joystick of sex

From the prostitutes of "Grand Theft Auto" to cutting-edge teledildonics, sex has fueled the gaming industry, as the author of "Porn & Pong" explains.

By Tracy Clark-Flory

Read more: Gaming, Technology & Business, Sex, Cybersex, Life, Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon Conversations

Oct. 6, 2008 | In 1972, our sexual landscape was forever changed by the release of two pop-culture legends: the skin flick "Deep Throat" and, months later, the arcade game "Pong." Since then, pornography has greatly influenced how sex and sexuality are explored in gaming, which in just three decades has ballooned into a $18.85 billion industry. From early '80s sleaze fests like "Leisure Suit Larry" to the porny moans of pneumatic "Tomb Raider" heroine Lara Croft to the teledildonics that are changing the way we have -- and think of -- sex, video games have evolved with an understanding that humans crave sexual interaction, whether with a virtual character or a fellow human with high-speed Internet.

It's this sexual history of video games that Damon Brown, who covers technology for Playboy, obsessively details in "Porn & Pong: How 'Grand Theft Auto,' 'Tomb Raider' and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture." Approaching such topics as arm-length pixelated penises and breasts that deserve their own planetary orbit with a sense of humor, Brown explores how virtual sex has gone from the crude, joystick-controlled adult games on the Atari 2600 and text-only cybering in early-'90s AOL chat rooms to bumping uglies (fully customizable, by the way) in the virtual world "Second Life" and banging prostitutes in "Grand Theft Auto." He also examines how video vixens went from having bodies practically built out of Lego blocks to becoming ever more realistic -- at least, as much as porn-industry bodies can be called "realistic."

I recently spoke with Brown about these topics and more in Salon's San Francisco office.

How did the first pornographic video game come about?

The first mainstream pornographic game would be "Custer's Revenge," which came out in 1982 and was manufactured by a pornographic company that wanted to get a piece of the large Atari 2600 market. The game is based on General Custer who, of course, failed at Little Bighorn back in the 1800s. Part of the traditional history is that not only did General Custer fight against the Native Americans, but he also slept with quite a few of them, as did his soldiers. That was Custer's revenge for losing so badly.

In the game you move a naked General Custer across the screen, avoiding Native American arrows, toward a voluptuous Native American woman, who has her hands and legs tied to a cactus. Your job is to get to her, have sex and once you have enough orgasms or she has enough orgasms it starts over and you're back on the other side of the screen. You get to do it again, only there are more arrows coming. That was the whole game and it sold 80,000 copies at $50 a piece.

There was another one called "Strip Poker" that was for the Apple II. It was a poker game where you had this digital image of a fully clothed man or woman lying down and, as you beat them in rounds of poker, the screen would flash and they would take off another piece of clothing. There were six stages, so you went from fully clothed to bra and panties -- and in later editions completely nude.

"Leisure Suit Larry" was the first fully accepted sex-related game. It had a lovable character wearing a leisure suit. He came straight from the '70s. He was like the 40-year-old virgin, except much sleazier. He just wandered around a parody of Las Vegas trying to pick up women, and it sold about a million copies in the '80s.

"Leisure Suit Larry" was released in 1987, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Did the game acknowledge the anxiety of that time?

Al Lowe, the guy who created the game, wanted to take this older, classic character from the '70s into the hip '80s. It's a clash of culture. Imagine living in '77 and then going into deep freeze and coming out in '87. By that time we had herpes and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This character is in Las Vegas, he's trying to get laid, but things are totally different now, and he just doesn't get it.

How has sex online -- what we once so breathlessly termed "cybersex" -- evolved?

The idea of private chat rooms without an administrator blossomed with AOL in the '80s and '90s. All of a sudden two or more people could hang out and send [sexual] text messages to each other. As soon as two humans can interact with each other online they will try to do some type of sexual act. After "Ultima," one of the more popular multiplayer games, came out in1980, the creator Richard Garriott said, "We have no sexual function in this game, but as soon as two people got on that first day we had virtual sex!"

When did avatar sex -- where, instead of text-only "cybering," you can position your virtual character into every pose in the Kama Sutra with the simple click of a mouse -- come about in "Second Life"?

In the very beginning. Kevin Alderman -- his screen name is "Stroker Serpentine" -- created this tool that allowed characters to have realistic body parts -- penises, vaginas and … assholes. Most, if not all, of the sexually oriented stuff in "Second Life" is user-generated. There's plenty of anything you're into -- from prostitution to BDSM -- because it's user-generated.

Last year, real-life officials in Brussels opened an investigation into a "Second Life" rape. When did rape first show up in virtual worlds? Is there such a thing as rape when you're communicating with someone via text?

There is. As many criminologists say, rape isn't really about sex but power -- and words are pretty powerful. One of the things I write about is the first documented cyberspace rape in a text-only environment called LambdaMOO. A user found a loophole that allowed him to control the actions of other players. He could make one player hurt or have sex with another player and so on. The malicious user went rampant through the game universe, forcing players into sexual acts, and was repeatedly kicked off the game, but he always managed to come back under a different user name.

Your book talks about game designers studying "breast physics" -- or what one might call Newton's laws of mammaries. Is the aim to create a realistic bounce?

For some it is. Tomonobu Itagaki [the creator of the infamous fighting game "Dead or Alive"] dedicated years of his life to making sure the physics were correct on these triple H -- or whatever size they might be -- breasts. For some designers, it's about making sure they look good, but for Itagaki, it's making them looking realistic. I think he really likes the bounce aspect. [It's particularly noticeable] in the later versions, like "Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball." One reviewer said that one breast moving in one direction and the other moving in another direction actually made her seasick.

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