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MMOGology: Sex games
Can you feel it coming? With less than a month until Conan's release, the pressure cooker of excitement building for the new MMOG by Funcom is about to blow its load. At least part of this excitement stems from the fact that Age of Conan deals with mature themes. Unlike the cartoony World of Warcraft and cutesy Hello Kitty Online, Age of Conan is embracing what they call a "dark, decadent, twisted and corrupt version of Euro-Asian history." Aside from the prominent head lopping and blood letting we're also getting a side dish of sex; something we haven't really seen before in a prominent, commercial MMOG.The idea of sex in video games is not new. You can go as far back as text based adventures like Farmer's Daughter on the Commodore 64, crude, arcade-style games like Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600, or the multi-platform adventure game series Leisure Suit Larry that first kicked off back in 1987. Many early titles were so graphically crude that they left absolutely everything to the imagination. But as technology has evolved, so have the dirty minds of developers. And where dirty minded developers have come up short, many gamers have created modifications to fulfill their fantasies. Would you like some hot coffee while you wait to download the Lara Croft nude patch?Given the heavy censorship present in the games industry it's actually surprising that Age of Conan will ship with a few lewd features in tact. With an M rating, Conan is one of the first MMOGs that's pre-screening its playerbase and tossing out the kiddies (along with the associated revenue stream from their parents). So what are the risqué features in Age of Conan and what will their implementation mean for future MMOGs? If Age of Conan is successful can we expect other developers to push the envelope further, or has someone already beaten them to the punch? If you're easily offended you may wish to skip what follows after the break.
Sex Worker Alliance: GTA normalizes violence against sex workers
On this fifth annual "International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers," we remind you to tip -- but not to kill -- your service providers. According to The Toronto Sun, Anastasia Kuzyk of the Sex Workers' Alliance of Toronto believes that games like Grand Theft Auto feed into the "subculture of allowing the violence to continue," and that violence "against sex workers should not be normalized, but it is." Although she doesn't mention GTA by name in the quote, it's the only well-known game we can think of that lets you "run down prostitutes and kill them and beat them up and take their money."Kuzyk has cause for concern, as 171 female sex workers (no stats on men given) were killed between '91 and '04 in Toronto. This is also not the first time in recent memory that GTA has received flak from sex worker advocates, though there's no word yet on whether GTA IV will allow for the ironically health-enhancing activity of picking up a prostitute like in other installments in the series. So, Happy International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers everyone! Boy, that's a mouthful.[Via GamePolitics]
