Defender of the Crown anyone?

If I think back that was probably the earliest game with any such element for me.

nonononononononononoono
Don't open the bioware box in this thread ! Yes, and the problem is that 'positive' discrimination is really hard to tackle.

Back on topic, to be clear by 'sexy' we are talking about games being alluring ? I think it's still the case, it just comes in different shapes and forms. But as games tend to be more 'obvious', some ways are indeed frowned upon.

I just discover this easter egg on Youtube when I searched a review for Sin gold (this pushed me to wishlist it :P)
http://youtu.be/dR2paiU7ycc

Do you find this scene "sexy" ? It remembers me the sexyness from strippers in Duke Nukem 3D : Politically incorrect !

*looks at Dead Or Alive 5*
nope
it's still there ;)
yes, people frown, have frowned in the past, and will frown in the future. But as long as the rule "sex sells" is valid, "sexyness" won't be removed from gaming.

what will change though for probably a lot of developers is the portrayal of women in general. You will see less women thrown into a game just as a walking playboy poster.

I must be out of the loop, this discussion is really surprising me.

I personally thought it was generally agreed that the opposite is happening. That each generation will lead to a higher level of depravity, until the crescendo of oculus inspired interactive pornography hits under the guise of gaming and it culminates in a few million people dying of dehydration.

Perhaps it's a dry period? I tend to buy games a little while after they've been released so i can't comment on the super-new games. I don't think sexual content in games will die off anytime soon though.

Nope. But it can detract severely.

When the focus is on "sexy" fanservice in detriment of the gameplay, or having no other redeeming features, those "sexy" games tend to be very bad.

For example, the Agarest games.
Or the newest wizardry clone from Atlus, Dungeon Travelers 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7fecOOeKNE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka942d_FfBI

I really like wizardry-likes. This one looks just too skeevy for me. The Etrian games are pretty much borderline, but this one? Too much.
Would much rather play Elminage.

Then again, Wizardry was silly in that regard, considering this enemy type on Wizardry 6.
http://www.oldgames.sk/images/oldgames/rpg/Wizardry.6/wroot_229.png

Basically, I do not mind games having "sexy" elements. But when the sexy fanservice is the first and foremost element, that tends to detract from the games.

Edit: Also, Shadow Hearts was pretty hilarious in that regard. Similar to the Witcher 1 sex cards, but with ridiculously buff dudes. As a collectible to improve a marionette's equipment. Great game, too!

Personally, I think that 'sex' in games isn't really a great motivator to get me to buy the game. If it's there, an added bonus and another reason for my wife to annoyed with me playing it.

However, she's not against seeing a game where some male protagonist or antagonist ends up nude.

As long as banner ads and prostitutes don't enter my virtual realm, I'll be happy as a clam.
I looked at the URLs you provided and all I can say is WOW. It looks as if the artists were promoting pornography, and of young women at that! Maybe their society doesn't see nudity the same as where the society in which I live would really shun this.

It is a damn shame anyways. The Etrian Odyssey games are BORDERLINE acceptable, since the skeevy parts is character/unit art that you barely even have to ever see, for example, the female variant of the yggdroid class in Etrian 3
http://i.imgur.com/btJa4.png

It is still bad on that regard, but less so than, well, that. I really dislike the sexualized little girl aesthetic a lot of the female variants of the classes have.
http://www.chopstixz.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/classes.jpg

They are otherwise FANTASTIC turn based dungeon crawlers.
http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/image_thumb135.png
It is a damn shame that Dungeon Travelers focuses on that aspect so much. If it was less... Creepily sexualized, I would probably give it a try.

As it is? Fuck no.


It is worse than Dragon's Crown at that (great game but rather questionable character designs in all regards, haha)

I am quite indifferent toward sexyness in games and i'd rather have more accent on actual gameplay.

But this thread made me remember Knights of Xentar game. I am surprised how game like that could get past the censorship radar.
Did you see that Incubus enemy in Elminage Gothic yet? :)

Or... did you mean Elminage Ibun (5th game in the series)? Here is the screen :) i didn't play that game much as I have no knowledge of Japanese, but ... I didn't like where it was going :)

Nice reply and I like how you used Asian games as an example of fanservice that for a different audience looks distracting or awkward. Specially the emphasis they have in Asia to use schoolgirl types of female characters. I accept it as part of the culture over there and they have very little penetration in the Western markets because of that.

Dragon's crown is probably the most hilarious example of going too far in a non-specifically sexual game.

The Incubus was pretty hilarious! The Shin Megami Tensei Incubus is more explicit, though.
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110925205727/megamitensei/images/3/3f/Incubus2.jpg

Then again, the SMT series has this.
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101119233025/megamitensei/images/a/ae/376.jpg
And this.
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100527202617/megamitensei/images/thumb/8/85/Ometeotl.jpg/252px-Ometeotl.jpg

But they are by and large not the main focus and (I hope) not meant to be masturbation fodder.

I mean yeah, I find a goddamn penis chariot less creepy than everything I've seen in Dungeon Travelers. At least in SMT those things are supposed to be horrifying,

Edit: On one hand, I like the background, and that particular style for the enemies CAN work very well. It did in Okami, at least.
On the other, the generic anime highschool protagonist the player character has CLASHES HORRIBLY WITH IT.

Edit2: Having googled images of Elminage Ibun, goddamn, Those combat /monster designs are FANTASTIC, but the character design is so goddamn terrible.
Okami and Muramasa had fantastic monsters drawn in a similar style and they worked so well there.

You are giving them far too much credit in that regard.
My interpretation is this: Shit is niche. To get an edge, they target a SPECIFIC demographic, which alienates the rest of the public even more, then, in order to continue to have at least a modicum of success, they have to FOCUS MORE on the aspects said demographic likes.

In this case, it is sexualized girls first and foremost. That is why "moe" anime is/was prevalent. They found a paying niche , and tried to exploit it.

It is a ridiculously creepy niche, and personally, I think it drives away FAR MORE than they attract.

Game is quite different from Elminage. You start with 2 characters in a middle of dungeon (which happens to be school). I gained couple levels but found no training grounds. i didn't know what to do or where to go, so my characters succumbed to their death in the school...

With Elminage Ibun being so different it was also a Finish for Elminage series as I heard. It got a lot of negative reception because it was too different in spirit to Elminage.

What concerns Agarest, I heard that fanservice is purely Agarest 1's "feature" (and Agarest 2 probably), I am playing Agarest ZERO now (with some breaks), and I saw no fanservice (outside of Eugene hitting on every girl in sight, but that doesn't count). Wonderful game, if you loved Elminage, you might like Agarest ZERO. it is not dungeon crawler though, it is SRPG with lots of interesting features, and it is quite unforgiving.

Definitely not. But there have been changes.

We see less flaunting of body parts in AAA titles now. As an example, Bethesda's earlier works like Arena and Daggerfall included a considerable amount of pixel cleavage. Then, in Morrowind, modders who turned the game's crude humanoid models (which wore ugly brown diapers) into much better looking anatomically correct alternatives, were forbidden from even linking to their work from the game's official forum. Later, in Oblivion, Bethesda's marketing director Pete Hines vilified modders because some mod activated an unused asset which showed nipples.

The reason for this is that gaming _is_ a mainstream hobby now. When it was a niche/nerd thing, games could get away with a lot of weird stuff (in the eyes of the general public) because the rest of society simply didn't really care about them. Nowadays, games are multi-million dollar projects which have to be sold to a wide audience in order to yield a profit. If the ESRB gives a game an unfavorable rating, it means less sales. If Walmart (which has become extremely prude) decides to not carry a game, it means less sales. Thus, developers of AAA titles have become very careful about sex in their games.

Modern AAA games that do try to include sex, often do so in an absolutely pathetic way. A good (or rather, bad ...) example is GTA 4, where you can visit a night club and watch a stripper doing a completely non-sexy dance while your character cannot do anything. You can also have a girl-friend, have sex with her, and the game camera will shyly move out of the window while you hear the girl shouting "Oh yes, you're so good, you're so good". Players probably have to be 14-year old boys with zero Internet experience to find any of this sexy; as I said, it's pathetic.

You will find more sex-related games coming from developers that do not have to rely on the US market. Lots of Japanese games focus on sex, but they are often of questionable quality as well.

If you want to have 'sexy' games, you'll need to look at Indies - i.e., games where the developer's vision doesn't have to be compromised to the least common denominator of whatever the game's target audiences consider acceptable.

A good example is "Embric of Wulfhammer Castle", a free game that is on one hand an RPG parody, but on the other uses sex in very explicit ways. It's audacious in many ways, but succeeds due to its excellent writing. Note, though, that male characters play a very minor role in that game.

Another example is "Luxuria Superbia". This game is very overtly about sex, but dodges criticism by using abstract graphics and poetic allegories. This game is probably not "sexy" in the way you meant, though. But I think it's a very interesting way of approaching the topic. :)

The problem is that the cover of The Witcher 3 has a picture of a woman tied up with Geralt shoving his gloved hand in her face. If Geralt had been the one who had been tied up it would have been fine.

You know, there really is a fine line between clever and stupid.