This is third of fourteen essays contained within the third issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, a collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. If you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!
Written By: MorganH
I started playing pornographic games shortly before I realized I was some kind of asexual, in that chaotic summer of 2020. There was an unmitigated global pandemic, the United States was rioting, I recently moved across the entire continent, from Connecticut to Los Angeles for grad school in the hopes that classes would be in-person by the fall (a laughable idea, in hindsight). And to occupy myself in my empty rented room during those empty weeks, I partitioned my time between two primary activities: playing porn games and moping.
I’ve always enjoyed erotica and pornography — I have a distinct memory of stumbling across those early chapters Alexis Flowers’ fantasy-porn masterpiece I Roved Out in Search of Truth and Love in 2015 and being stunned that smut could also be so skillful. Since then, I’d developed a taste for what I liked and what I didn’t, and discovery of those adult games opened up a new dimension, an entire medium to explore. My first forays, like so many others who discover adult games for themselves, were with some of the most recognizable, the games that had substantial online audiences that would recommend them, or the ones that appeared at the top of the itch.io store in the “Adult” or “Erotic” categories: Third Crisis, Treasure of Nadia, Harem Hotel, and Summertime Saga and its ilk, the endless procession of games seemingly built around a core memory of finding a VHS copy of Taboo II, in which the performance of Kay Parker is a load-bearing structure of pornographic videogames. But the taboo whose violation first enthralled me was itself the intrusion of porn games into my previously un-sexualized digital space.
Continue reading “Playing With Myself: Asexuality At Play In Course Of Temptation”
