Print Screen: "Porn & Pong": Testing the Limits of Titillation

9/30/2008 7:30 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

The surest way to get hits on a gaming Web site is to write something about sex. If you do a "Ladies of Gaming" spread, then you will attract both the mouth-breathers who like to imagine Lara Croft in a silk teddy and the car wreck gawkers who will read the feature just to complain about what it represents. Do something more serious and reflective about sexual imagery and content in gaming, and you'll draw from the same two audiences.

In fact, it's such a reliable topic that anybody who wants to write about sex and games quickly runs into the problem that there isn't much left to say, especially since Brenda Brathwaite's 2006 book, "Sex in Video Games," is the canonical work for anybody interested in a serious examination of how sexual desire can be communicated in the industry. It's not that there is only room for one book on the topic. But Brathwaite has set the bar so high so recently that Damon Brown's "Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture" struggles to find anything really intriguing to say.

Brown's hole card is his desire to put the sexual evolution of gaming in a larger cultural context, making references to the porn industry's shift to video as the home game industry starts to take off, or to the growing popularity of "lad mags" like Maxim when Tomb Raider first becomes a hit. But "Porn and Pong" is less than half the length of Brathwaite's opus, and its dual track means that there is little room left for anything other than a "greatest hits" survey of sex and gaming, shedding little light and generating less heat.

If you are new to the topic and haven't the patience for Brathwaite's book, "Porn &Pong" should suffice. And the title is sure to draw attention. But, aside from the usual wisdom of Al Lowe (creator of Leisure Suit Larry) and a nice history of Lara Croft, much of the book is taken up by culture war play-by-play. The efforts to ban Custer's Revenge, the Japanese adult game industry, "Hot Coffee" revisited, Bully ... so much of this territory has been plowed that it's a shame Brown doesn't bring a lot of original reporting. Connecting Mystique's Custer's Revenge to the growing popularity of adult entertainment at home is a nice insight, but, sadly, it is the only cross-cultural connection that really sticks.

Brown's subtitle promises much more than he is able to deliver. Can anyone really make the case that Leisure Suit Larry or a hot tub ad with Roberta Williams changed our culture? Even within the subset of gaming culture, the Playboy Mansion game and BMX XXX are considered industry detritus, leftovers that tried -- and failed -- to market themselves as sexy alternatives to more mainstream titles. A societal reaction to sex games in Grand Theft Auto is not evidence of culture being changed by Grand Theft Auto. And, even if GTA is an agent of change -- a plausible case -- it is only part of the larger stew of a coarsened culture or societal commentary or whatever you think the series represents at this stage in its history.