The other day I was given an article that argued that sex workers, specifically those in strip clubs and brothels, should be removed from video games. On the surface, it’s the kind of thing that seems like a positive thing for video games. But I believe that games that include brothels and strip clubs have a much larger problem that, if addressed, would solve the issue with brothels and strip clubs entirely. To those who are about to write comments questioning my masculinity for wanting games to remove brothels and strip clubs or accusing me of wanting to control the content that game developers include, please give me a moment to explain my logic. If I haven’t come up with a convincing argument, let me know where I fell short and I’ll do my best to explain myself or amend my response. Also, the ideas that I am presenting here do not include all games or all inclusions of sex workers. There are some games where prostitutes and strippers are an almost integral part of the story or environment and some where the inclusion of sex workers is included in such a way that my solution simply wouldn’t apply (I will elaborate more towards the end of this comment). Most games that include brothels, prostitutes, or strip clubs suffer from poor writing. That may seem a bit obvious in some cases, but there are plenty of well-designed and popular games that include sex workers because of poorly writing or poorly thought-out sections. For example, Fable 3 gives the player an option to spend money in order to save an orphanage or gain money by turning it into a brothel. This is a fairly effective way to show which act is good and which act is evil, but the game didn’t necessarily need to be as black and white about the entire thing. Each of these choices the player must make are presented as good vs evil in order to keep up with the morality system within the game, but these would have been just as simple to have the player choose whether to perform a good, charitable deed or to do something out of profitability for the kingdom. But if the act had to be something evil, after all the game was trying to convey a dilemma where the player had to choose to permit a short-term evil in order to have a long-term good, the act could have instead been something more appropriately designed. For example, why should a brothel be placed into that orphanage specifically? Were the orphans simply going to be displaced? It would have made more sense to turn it into a work camp for the orphans or into dormitory-style housing so that even more orphans could be put to work in the nearby industries. The issues with writing were present in both obvious and subtle ways all throughout Fable 3, but it isn’t the only game with this problem. Hitman: Absolution is another great example. In one mission the player has to infiltrate a strip club in order to find the assassination target. But the problem with Absolution was that each character and location were irrelevant. If you stripped the game down to bare bones, turning each character into a blank slate, the game still functioned. Imagine that same strip club scene as a nightclub where male waiters serve drinks. The target, originally a horny masochist, could have been slightly modified to be a rich, overbearing narcissist and nothing would have changed. The location and characters were irrelevant because Agent 47 never treated them as people. Everyone in the environment was simply a means to an end, shadows in a crowded room. Internally I argue that this was simply Agent 47. He is the ultimate no-nonsense assassin. He gets in, gets the job done, and gets away cleanly without ever being seen. But the problem wasn’t simply isolated to the strip club mission. Many of the main antagonists are unnecessarily presented as sexually deviant or cruel. The nature of their business clearly indicates that they are not going to be good people, and the way they treat their subordinates reinforces this notion. They are cold-hearted, evil people who revel in the suffering of others. Extending their cruelty and sadism to a sexual degree was cheap and showed no real imagination. But these types of issues aren’t only relegated to games that suffer from poor writing in general. The Darkness II includes a brothel that acts as a front for the main antagonist. The article that sparked this conversation says that these are ways for writers to present antagonists as evil with little effort, but again I don’t see this done out of laziness but out of an inability to properly consider better alternatives. In The Darkness II, the brothel needs to be a location that acts as an effective front for illegal activities without attracting too much attention. It is for this reason that the brothel doesn’t make sense and should be excluded, because a brothel doesn’t fulfill that requirement at all. Brothels attract far too much attention from the local population and from the local authorities. It would have made more sense to set up a legitimate business with constant traffic, such as the now stereotypical “import / export” business. Furthermore, the ultra-radical religious nature of the evil organization contrasted greatly with the immoral acts going on in the brothel. I really liked The Darkness II. It had some sections that made me empathize with Jackie and Jenny’s plight. I could understand the longing that Jackie felt to be with Jenny. But the great writing in these sections contrasted greatly with the end of the game, where suddenly Jenny becomes some sort of evil, vengeful angel. The brothel scene in this game was only a symptom of the fact that the writers didn’t know how to effectively present certain ideas or forward the plotline in a way that fit with everything they had set up (or were planning on setting up). There are a number of games where this simply doesn’t apply. Games like Grand Theft Auto, Duke Nukem, and Saints Row have to be treated differently because the sexual elements are so ingrained in the setting, characters, and story that they have become an integral part of the game. Duke Nukem without sex is just a horrible 80s action movie (granted, Duke Nukem Forever was a horrible game, so maybe a horrible 80s action movie would have been more appealing). Removing the prostitutes and strip clubs from Grand Theft Auto would force the game to exclude some of the social commentary it was at one point attempting to make. There are also some games where the sexuality was such an anomaly that its inclusion can’t simply be explained as poor writing. Metro: Last Light is a perfect example. The game was generally very well written and each section of each level served a very specific purpose. And yet the game still threw in the incredibly awkward brothel strip tease scene. This section contrasted greatly with the rest of the game, casting a massive dark shadow on what was otherwise an amazing concept. My point is that games can potentially benefit from prostitutes, brothels, and strip clubs if they are used properly in order to forward the plot in a way where such a location or character is, without question, the best possible avenue. There are very, very few games where this is the case. The only partial example that I can think of is Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. In Bloodlines, the character can visit a strip club called Vesuvius. The owner of the club, VV, is a fascinating example of the life of the vampire that Bloodlines presents. Vampires are beautiful on the surface, but underneath they are twisted, pained, and cursed. Daniel Ash, a male character in the game, communicates this as well (albeit with most of his clothes on), but the clear contrast between VV’s external sexuality and her internal sensuality is as interesting to me as any work of art. But here’s the kicker, the elements that VV conveyed weren’t effectively communicated because she moonlit as a stripper, but instead the contrast was enhanced by it. Her nature as a stripper meant that she had to outwardly present her sexuality but without being able to actively participate in anything sexual. That is the curse of the vampire; being able to watch everything you desire for eternity without actually being able to participate. I will admit that I might have been projecting, an admission I make mostly because I don’t believe any video game writer could ever be that deep. There simply isn’t enough precedent for it. Those games that make me think more deeply about what I am playing or, better yet, who I am and the decisions that I make, are extremely few and far between. Writing a video game is an extremely difficult task that requires the writer to completely understand the game, the expectation of the developers, and the target audience. But including strip clubs and sex workers in games almost always serves to cheapen the experience and makes it more difficult for us to show that games are an excellent means for storytelling. Unfortunately, the presence of strip clubs is only a tiny portion of the current overall problem with many games. There are plenty of well-written games that don’t include strip clubs. But when we analyze games it’s important that we look to the root cause of the issues rather than simply the issue itself. Inappropriate inclusions of strip clubs, explosions, cheesy dialog, stereotypical characters, or any other major story and character based issue is symptomatic of poor or underdeveloped writing. While it can be useful to call out specific examples, it is more important that we work to identify and address the larger issues.
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The Legendary Carmine
Andrew Clayton (a.k.a. The Legendary Carmine) is SSG's Executive Editor. He toils at the stone to make sure this site brings its readers valuable content on a daily basis. Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
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