This is fourteenth of fifteen essays contained within the fourth 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: Croomfolk
From Sex in Video Games (2007) by Brenda Brathwaite:
At the “Sexuality in Games: What’s Appropriate?” roundtable at the 2005 Game Developers Conference, one developer noted that he had no real problem with sexual content in games provided that it wasn’t “just sex for sex’s sake.”
“What’s wrong with sex for sex’s sake?” asked another developer. “Why else have sex?” she continued. “That’s the best use of sex.”
This essay is a look at a moral panic that took place around late 1993 – a panic surrounding, among other things, the release of Night Trap, a non-adult videogame that nonetheless sparked a massive public discussion on the place of adult games within the industry that still has effects to this day, having directly led to the creation of the ESRB, the content rating association still in use by the North American video games industry. Through it, I hope to offer some insight on specific brands of puritanism and their impacts on the games industry.
Continue reading “Culture Carnage: Night Trap & Witch Hunts”