Jeff Hoy, American

In an article on the Ars gaming blog, Opposable Thumbs, titled Let’s talk about sex… in video games the author drops this question in the third paragraph of the intro.

But why do people in the game industry get so upset about anything sexual appearing in games, especially when there is so much gratuitous violence permeating the medium? Why doesn’t violence in games spark the same amount of outrage?

Perhaps the author has been living under a rock during the past few months and completely missed the CoD: Modern Warfare 2 terrorist killing innocent civilians controversy.  Or maybe the many Grand Theft Auto controversies.  Or the Soldier of Fortune controversies.  Or the Terminator 2 Arcade cop killing controversy.  Or the Mortal Kombat and Night Trap Senate hearings, which was primarily responsible for the whole video game ratings system to begin with.  And maybe, just maybe he’s never heard of retired Lt. Col.  Dave Grossman or disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson.  That’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

To say people are more outraged by the relatively new phenomenon of sex in video games than they are by violence in video games is to completely ignore the last two decades of video game history.

And if you continue reading the article you see that the quotes he picks out seem to negate his premise that people freak out about sex but don’t about violence.

[Damon Brown] pointed out “For instance, how many mainstream cover stories have there been on violence in video games and the effect on children, à la Columbine? Comparatively, there have been hardly any about adult/sexual content, even during the Hot Coffee scandal.”