Sex in Games is the Worst

It’s a slow Sunday, so I thought I’d just post this Wired Blog poll post that’s been getting some chuckles everywhere. The What They Play survey that’s references to is not a real survey, just another internet poll, but it seems very apropos of our cultural stigmas.

According to the poll, images of sex — be they of a heterosexual couple getting it on, or of two men kissing — are more offensive than images of a severed human head.

Bad language seems to be no big deal at all, lagging far behind at a tiny 10 percent.

This is, of course, an unscientific sampling of a few hundred respondents, who may or may not be answering truthfully. That said, it’s an interesting snapshot of our cultural taboos.

This poll reminds me of an encounter I had in a game store once. A woman was trying to buy her 12-year old daughter some games for Christmas, and overhearing me talking about games, asked me for advice. She picked up one of the Resident Evils and asked me if it was any good. I told her that it was an excellent game, but quite violent and scary. “Oh, that’s no problem,” she replied. “But there’s no, you know, people having relations in it, is there?”

Interesting if you view it as a “what has the most perfidious influence in copy-cat behaviour”-poll. Obviously, you’d rather want your kid swearing his mouth off or killing someone than having sex or – God forbid – kissing someone of the same sex. И прости нам долги наши, как и мы прощаем должникам нашим!