Posted on 12/09/2005 9:57:57 AM PST by jb6
He may look like an innocent cartoon bunny, but the star of a new award-winning video game by a Montreal-based designer has sultry intentions in mind.
Lapis, the blue-hued main character of a prototype video game by Heather Kelley, a designer with Ubisoft, wants to help women take a "magical pet adventure'' to their "happy place.''
The prototype teaches how to reach orgasm by simulating the affect of pleasurable sensation on the cartoon. Players tickle, touch, tap, and stroke Lapis using the touch screen of the Nintendo DS, a hand-held video game device. They can also talk, sing and blow on the bunny's fur using the device's built-in microphone.
The more they stimulate the bunny, the happier he becomes until eventually he begins flying through the air. But Lapis is also an unpredictable creature who needs a variety of sensations. Sometimes, no amount of stimulation is going to work.
"Sex is a perfectly natural part of the human experience and there has to be a way to handle it meaningfully and tastefully in games,'' said Kelley, who took first prize for the prototype at the Montreal International Games Summit last month.
Kelley, 36, has helped design blockbuster titles ranging from Splinter Cell to Thief, and serves as chair of the "Women in game development'' committee of the International Game Developers Association.
Her game, downloadable for free at http://www.moboid.com/lapis/index.htm, offers "a stealthy primer'' on female sexuality, and is meant primarily as a conversation piece to stimulate debate around the prevalence of sex in video games today, she said.
"It's not like (sex is) going away, either in the virtual or the real world.''
With record numbers of women and older men becoming avid video gamers, and developers who make the games themselves maturing, sexuality in video games is slowly evolving from the days when the industry catered to an audience overwhelmingly made up of teenage boys.
While impossibly busty heroines wearing slinky outfits a la Lara Croft continue to dominate, the industry is showing signs of incorporating sexual depictions that are more complex and nuanced, and reflect "the full range of the human condition,'' said Jason Della Rocca, a Montreal games designer and the executive director of the International Game Developers Association.
"To date, we've explored more the violence, fear, conflict aspects, and we've not really engaged on stuff like social relationships, sex or love (in video games),'' said Della Rocca. "What we're seeing now is a maturing of the industry.''
The sex-themed game development competition that Kelley won was inspired by public outcry over the so-called "Hot Coffee Mod,'' a downloadable patch created by hackers and released online this summer that unlocked pornographic scenes hidden in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
The scenes were supposedly "extras'' that were never meant to be revealed. But the ensuing controversy caused the game to be re-rated "adult only,'' prompting an expensive recall by the manufacturer.
The International Game Developers Association this fall created a committee on sex in gaming. And in future, the public should expect to see games that depict the full range from raunchiness to romance, Della Rocca said.
"Games are really a medium of artistic expression (that should be treated) like other forms of entertainment, literature, film or art.''
© CanWest News Service 2005
Carpal tunnel is the least of their problems.
Why?
And of course once your little one has learned how to bring the cartoon to orgasm he/she will apply this to his/her playmates. And once everyone has reached orgasm (the need is planetwide) war will end, crime will disappear and everyone will be happy and healthy.
With a 'Che' t-shirt, shredded levi's and a pair of Birkenstock's, Caligula would feel right at home in today's world.
remember when Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards was Looking for Love???
"The more they stimulate the bunny, the happier he becomes ..."
That's what I keep telling her!
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