Video games were a weirdly large part of my sexual awakening. From creating increasingly complex polyamorous love affairs in The Sims 2 (that normally involved unfaithfulness, aliens, robots, or combinations of the three), to having a crush-that-I-didn’t-want-to-admit-was-a-crush on Ezio from Assassin’s Creed, to figuring out how to open an incognito browser window so I could play NSFW Flash games on Newgrounds, video games and sex were intertwined during my early teenager years. But how long have sex and video games had an intertwined relationship, how has this relationship changed, and how does that relationship look to be changing in the future?
This obviously isn’t a complete history of sex video games. One thing to definitely take into account is that there’s plenty of sex games that just never got much publicity at their time of release (let alone now), some because they were only distributed among private groups and others simply because porn games have rarely been given large advertising budgets. But also this isn’t intended as a deep history of sex in video games or video games about sex- it’s a simple overview resulting
The Early Years
It’s hard to figure out exactly when the first sex video game was made, but if we go way back, we can find games like 1981’s Softporn Adventure. Written for the Apple II, it actually wasn’t originally intend to be sold commercially, but was created as a project to learn programming on the Apple II. Softporn Adventure has a text parser interface, which means that player interacts with the game by typing commands. Think ‘touch rock’, ‘lick elbow’, etc. Softporn Adventure didn’t really have much in the way of plot (a thirsty man tries to seduce three women), and in hindsight is pretty tame (aside from a general approach to gender and sex that is very Yikesy through modern eyes), but was pretty scandalous when it was released.
One of the first sex games to use graphics was the game Night Life (or ナイトライフ), released in 1982. Interestingly, Night Life was marketed as an educational tool for couples, and included features like a menstrual cycle calendar, and descriptions of a handful of different sex positions. It’s honestly quite endearing. Night Life is cited as a precursor to the modern eroge game genre (more on that later), but its publisher now denies ever making this game.
Another early sex game that included graphics (although it probably shouldn’t have) was the 1983 game X-Man. Unrelated to the Marvel comics, this game involved steering a naked man through a maze, dodging teeth, crabs, and scissors, as one does. On reaching the door in the centre of the maze, the player is rewarded/punished with a pixelated animation of some sex, during which they can wiggle the joystick to increase their “sexual excitement meter”, and score bonus points. I’m mostly mentioning X-Man in this article so that I’m not alone with this horrifying joystick knowledge.
The Late 80s : The First Smut Boom
While graphical limitations definitely impacted sex games for a while, there was a late 80s boom in sex video games. The NSFW game mini-genre of ‘completing a task and being rewarded with a naked picture’ that I recognise from Newgrounds games in the 2000s/2010s. The earliest mention I can find of this type of game is the 1986 Samantha Fox Strip Poker, in which players played 5 or 7-card stud poker against a digitised version of pin-up model Samantha Fox, who slowly took off clothes when the player won until she was topless. A similar game was the 1987 arcade game Super Real Mahjong PII, where the player’s opponent Shoko would remove an article of clothing if the player won a round, but put one back on if they lost.
The 90s: Rise of the VN
While the genres and mechanics of adult games pioneered in the 80s continued and continue to be created, one of the largest shifts in the genre I could find came from 1992’s Dokyusei. This game placed emphasis on story choices, with multiple narrative paths available depending on which woman the player romanced. The first Japanese eroge game to be officially translated into English- Cobra Mission: Panic in Cobra City– was also released in 1992.
While it’s not really influential on adult games as we know them today, I couldn’t help but mention the 1997 game Riana Rouge. Games that used full motion video as a way to get around graphical limitations were A Thing in the 90s, so it makes sense that somebody made an adult FMV game. That doesn’t stop what I’ve seen of Riana Rogue being incredibly cheesy though, with an incredible nineties alt-metal soundtrack to boot.
The 2000s: The Rise of MMOs and Browser Games
I don’t think I could write about sex in video games without mentioning MMORPG games. Following a genre boom, games like 2003’s Second Life and 2006’s Red Light Center allowed player to engage in intimate and sexual activities with each other.
Browser based games also boomed in the 2000s, allowing a space for adult content that hadn’t yet been eked out in mainstream gaming. Games using Flash in particular were very popular. Flash could be used to create experimental games than could be allowed onto console, as well as create games that would struggle to find distributers due to their content such as adult games. The height of Flash games’ popularity was the mid-2000s, and they declined in popularity as mobile gaming became more ubiquitous.
The Present Day
Most sex games currently seem to be smaller, indie projects rather than big budget AAA productions. The indie game boom of the 21st century included and includes sex games, with alternative distribution methods like itch.io allowing developers to share 18+ work. With titles like Hardcoded, Ladykiller in a Bind, Blood Pact, and The Tearoom, games about sex and sexuality outside of cisgender heterosexual norms are more prominent than they have been.
That’s not to say everything is going swell. While SESTA-FOSTA is primarily targeted at sex workers and it’s sex workers who bear the brunt of its effects, it has caused many web-hosts to become unfriendly to 18+ content, including games. Even services that are friendly to 18+ content in general have removed or targeted particular kinds of kink content, with several Patreon users who create erotic hypnosis content claiming their accounts were targeted by the site.
Despite the impact of SESTA-FOSTA, there does seem to be some change in how sex games are viewed. Until recently, itch.io was the only digital marketplace that would allow 18+ games, which has changed recently. There’s still issues of censorship, but the times are changing. And while some web hosts have become less NSFW friendly, browser based erotic sex games are still very prevalent. Hentai games, which during the 90s suffered from a lack of official translations and struggles to distribute are going strong. In some ways, despite the difficulties that SESTA-FOSTA has brought, it’s a mini golden age of porn/sex/erotic games.
2019 onwards: Where do we go from here?
The first thing that people jump to when talking about the future of porn games is VR porn games. There’s been some experimentation with VR porn games already, with the release of the demo for Dominatrix Simulator. I’ve written about my experiences with VR porn before, and while I think there’s a lot of potential with VR technology, I don’t think it’ll be mainstream for some time yet.
What I personally think will be the driving force of porn games in the future is the new ease with which people have access to game development tools. With tools like Twine, people with little or no programming knowledge are able to make games, democratising the whole process will allow people whose relationships with sex are less depicted in the mainstream to create games that reflect their experiences.
Of course, everything is still completely up in the air. What do you think the future of porn games is?
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