A couple of years ago I played Mass Effect, and as things went down, I went to bed with Aria. Right now I'm wondering why that made so much of an impact on me. Well, not the graphic aspect of having video game sex, because that was quite poor in that game, but the factual relationship with a video game character. It may have just been the "dazzling new dialog technology" of ME, but I think that the reason I still remember it is partly because of the relationship accumulating in sex. Especially as the relationship was carried over, or at least hinted to, in ME2.

In other games, such as God of War, sex is just a thing because... Well, sex. There sex in video games loses quite a lot of meaning to me. When you have it in there because the age rating already is "M". I doesn't make sense to me, because if you ever needed to let of "steam", there is the internet, or real girls/boys. Even in GoW, the graphic aspect of it isn't much to talk about. The sex there is trivialized beyond meaning, just to be a bit macho.

On the other end of the spectrum however, you have a game like Catherine, which tries to take a more serious look at sexual "problems". Looking away from the fact that the game has the most appalling ending, that is quite an interest prospect, as (I think it was) Vinny talked about on the Bombcast before Christmas. I would love to see more games handling those problems, although perhaps not too many focusing entirely on it (as I don't think it makes for very engaging, or meaningful gameplay. At least not with the controllers of today). It is a topic that the growing gaming population would probably be interested in, I would think.

So,

in somewhat of a conclusion, games like Mass Effect show how an action-oriented game can have some nearly meaningful video game sex. At least meaningful for me, and I think if it became a bit more sophisticated (in terms of handling it a bit more, in stead of just one cutscene), it would perhaps have lasting appeal. I don't know.