Tag: third crisis

This is ninth of nine essays contained within the first issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but 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

It is, at this point, a cliche to introduce any topic on videogames by describing their interactivity as a unique element of the medium. Fortunately, it is not yet a cliche to describe how it is this precise quality that transforms players from fucking themselves to fucking their games.

Adult videogames and pornographic community mods have a long and under-examined history in games, and while there is little criticism on the subject, there is even less that uses adult games to investigate the complicated interface between players and games. Players have had sexual interactions with their videogames long before haptic vibrations turned controllers into makeshift sex toys, but recently, the increasing popularity of porn games and the growing presence of digital connectivity between videogames and electronic toys make this relationship even more intimate and intertwined. Examining how adult games mechanize players’ own bodies reveals a particularly potent image of how videogame play is mediated through corporeal presence.

Continue reading “Fuck this Game: Intercorporeality, Erotic Cybernetics, and Becoming the Input” →

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PICTURED: A screenshot from Ghost Hug Games’ Hardcoded.

Welcome to Cohost Re-Runs! The following is a lightly-edited & expanded version of an essay that first appeared on my personal Cohost page in March of 2023. One thing that’s important to remember: I’m still correct about this.

The first thing we need to do is lay down some definitions. When talking about “porn games”, I’m talking about interactive media wherein the primary goal is provoking a strong sexual response in the player. A porn game is not merely a game that features sexually-provocative imagery – Bayonetta, for example, features a lot of T&A along with a lot of playful references to BDSM, but it’d take a pretty advanced case of puritanical brainrot to argue earnestly that it’s a porn game – it’s a high-energy 3rd-person combo-based brawler with an aesthetic that includes a lot of sexualized imagery. A more digestible way of making the distinction might be to say that porn games expect you to masturbate while playing them. It’s important that we’re on the same page with this definition of porn games, because if we aren’t then nothing I say from here on out is going to hold water.

Addendum from Future Bigg: Following conversations I had after the initial version of this essay was published, I’d like to add that the utility of the above definition, which separates “porn games” from “games with porn in them”, is that of establishing design goals. In a porn game as defined in the above paragraph, the desired outcome (and, in a sense, the ludic “win state”) is to inspire sexual arousal in the player, and as such all design decisions need to be evaluated on the basis of how well they facilitate that outcome. In a game that has porn in it, where the intended outcome might be some combination of narrative fulfillment, a sense of discovery, or mechanical mastery, design decisions can be evaluated on how well they support THOSE outcomes. In the abstract I think that there’s TREMENDOUS value in having mechanically-rich games that feature hardcore pornography as part of their aesthetic makeup, as the normalizing influence of a very fun, very popular game featuring pornography like it’s not a big deal cannot be overstated. In practice, however, I think we’ve honestly yet to see very many games with porn in them that could honestly be said to be as mechanically-satisfying as their non-pornographic analogues.

Continue reading “It’s Time To Accept There Isn’t A Better Porn Game Format Than The Visual Novel” →

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