PORN & PONG: HOW GRAND THEFT AUTO, TOMB RAIDER, AND OTHER SEX GAMES CHANGED OUR CULTURE
By Damon Brown. Feral House. 230 pp. $16
***1/2

The first thing freelance journalist Damon Brown admits is that an entire book about porn and videogames is kind of an awkward sell. Most people don’t think those two industries have much in common, but over his years covering sex and technology for Playboy and the New York Post, he learned that that assumption was wrong. For one thing, the modern porn and videogame industries both started around the same time, in the early ’70s, both grew into billion-dollar operations, and both of them have irrevocably changed North American culture. Or at least, that’s the thesis of Brown’s new book, Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, and Other Sex Games Changed Our Culture.

Brown spoke to SEE recently about his book, what the phrase “modern technology” really means, and how society need a serious shift in perspective.

SEE Magazine: The book covers the porn and videogame industries from 1972-2008, and in those 35 years, the standards of what society deems appropriate in terms of sexuality has greatly changed. How has that shift affected the way sexuality is approached in games? For example, you talk a lot about Tomb Raider and Leisure Suit Larry, and over time the former became less about sexuality and the latter became more about gratuitous sexuality.

Damon Brown: Well, to a certain extent. I think that’s an interesting comparison. One thing I found when I talked to the creator of Leisure Suit Larry, Al Lowe, he didn’t intend it to be a sexual game, but actually just a funny game. His blueprint was Blazing Saddles, you know? He wanted to do the Blazing Saddles of videogames, which he came pretty close to doing. And so sexuality, just like a fart joke around a campfire, ended up being the medium for that. As you look at the Lara Croft chapter of the book, you see that parallel as well, where [creator] Toby Gard did not imagine Lara Croft sexually. She was just this cool, badass woman who shoots guns, goes on adventures, and plays Indiana Jones. So you see kind of a denial, originally, of including a sexual element.

I think what does not help is this lack of acknowledgment, at least in America, that videogames are becoming sexualized, and that games are not just for kids anymore. I mean, before she was taken out of the running, Hilary Clinton used Grand Theft Auto as her soapbox. Back in 2005, she made Grand Theft Auto a big part of her platform, saying that these videogames were a big part of what was wrong with society, even though that same year the Electronic Software Association said that the average videogame consumer was in their 30s. So there’s definitely a disconnect between those two things. I don’t think that’s making it easier for designers to step up and say, “Oh yeah, I want to have sex in my videogames.”

SEE: Your books also covers parts of pop culture that have user input in them, like reality TV shows, and games like The Sims. And it seems like the more people got their hands on them, the more those games and shows became sexualized. Do you feel like there’s a need for us to sexualize things, and to push sexual boundaries?

DB: Definitely. One of the patterns I mention in the introduction, a cliché, is if you want to know where technology is going, follow porn. I think there’s a natural need for us to go ahead and sexualize things. I think it’s particularly exciting for us to do that with technology just because it really extends our reach. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, then you can use the internet or Skype to talk over the internet for free. You can use webcams to do something erotic with your partner. New technologies are almost like extra appendages for us — they kind of extend our reach. As the world gets smaller, I think technology is going to become a huge part of our sexuality, just out of necessity.

SEE: But before the Internet, our sexuality wasn’t exactly being trampled on. Some would say that revolution started in the ’60s. So what is it about technology that allows our sexual expression to explode in that way?

DB: Well, actually, it goes back much further. It all depends on how you define technology. If we go back a century ago, many of the first movies were actually blue or stag films. They may have been two or three minutes long, black and white, and no sound. It could be a couple making out, or a woman showing her breasts or a little leg, or what have you. This was really the first opportunity for us to really see other people having sex. If you think about it, we really couldn’t see it before that in an animated way.

Before that there was the printing press, and pornography was available on those. That pattern to sexualize has always been there. I think it’s been increased many times over the past 40 years, just because more people are actually using technology in our modern day lives. I mean, at the time, the Gutenberg press was expensive as hell, so it wasn’t something you could do in your home. Now, we’re all of a sudden watching movies at home instead of in the theatre. We’re playing games over the Internet now instead of heading to the arcades with our friends. It’s not that technology suddenly exploded and we want to sexualize it. I think suddenly technology is becoming affordable and available enough so that you and I could make pornography, or play videogames together. There’s a level of empowerment that we have now that we didn’t have in human history.

SEE: Something you mention early on is how, after the Lara Croft character began posing in magazines like Maxim, her unattainable appeal disappeared. Then, later on, you talk about the Maxim generation, which you describe as having a much greater openness with sexuality, at least on the surface level, than the Playboy generation. Is there a generation gap when it comes to new media and sexuality?

DB: That’s actually a really interesting question. I think the key difference is the medium. Movies aren’t interactive enough for us, because we grew up with videogames. With movies, there’s no accountability for the person watching; it’s a passive experience. We’re still exploring those sexual mores with games, whether it’s prostitution in Second Life or S&M or LGBT culture. Whether it’s a blue-skinned, cornrowed alien and a butch female marine in the game Mass Effect, or Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly in the movie Bound 10 years earlier, there’s nothing that different between them other than interactivity.

SEE: A good way to end this may be to talk about the last point in your book, where you say that in order for games to be taken seriously as an adult medium, there needs to be a shift in perspective. What would games need to do to shift perspectives?

DB: For games to be taken seriously as a cultural medium, I think, there needs to be a change in the general media, whether it be a small effort with my book or other efforts out there from other journalists, to say that videogames are not a subculture, they are culture. Much like pornography, the videogame industry is a fairly young, billion-dollar industry that no one really wants to talk about. But it’s something that can’t be ignored anymore, so we definitely need to go and take a look at it.