Feature: 'SXSW: My Blue World: Game Experts Give Red Light Talk'

In another of today's main Gamasutra features, we cover one of the final panels on games at SXSW in Austin came with a warning, "If you can't handle explicit images, and explicit discussion, you might want to go outside and cool off. It's going to get a little hot in here, hopefully." The panel in question was called "Secret Sex Lives of Video Games", was moderated by Tony Walsh, and included panelists Julianne Greer, executive editor of the Escapist Magazine, Kyle Machulis of SlashDong, Glennis McClellan of Republik Games, and Mark Wallace, journalist. In this extract, the place of sexual content in games is queried: "Glennis went from working for the Walt Disney company to working on game sex in Spend the Night. “It's a social game. And one of the design challenges was, ‘Do we put sex in the game? Is this something people want? Is this something women want?' We were looking at the dating market, which exploded a couple years ago. It's actually leveling out, because people are finding each other, and hooking up – obviously, they're not users anymore.” “Another design challenge was, ‘Do you let people level up?' We decided not to do that in the traditional sense of leveling up. I believe there were some discussion on chat boards about how men would level up. I can imagine what they were thinking.” Glennis focused on what the best parts of dating are. “If you go on some good dates, and meet someone you really like, sex is kind of the ultimate conclusion.” “If you put people into a world where they can make anything,” says Julianne, “And take away the need for food, and shelter and clothing – all of our basic needs that take up the vast majority of our time in this world and move that aside, and say ‘Here, create.' They're going to act out any fantasy they can come up with. And of course they're going to come up with sex.” You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more on the ever fragrant subject of sex and games (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).