Video games are very popular. So is porn. If you ask game designer, Metagame co-creator and NYU Game Center founder Eric Zimmerman, they have some fundamental things in common.
Today, Zimmerman tweeted the above one-liner, pointing out that both games (particularly mainstream blockbusters) and porn centre around repetitive activities premised on “visceral pleasure and spectacle”.
He followed up on that thought, saying: “I’d prefer to hypersexualize games, rather than de-sexualize them. Why not use Clockwork Orange and Macho Sluts as models for game design?”
Porn may have “bad” connotations in Western society, but Zimmerman was quick to point out to fellow NYUer Charles Pratt that he has nothing against porn per se — “Porn is strange & wonderful,” he wrote. “Beyond its politics of representation, it’s a cultural form based on corporeal pleasure.”
What do you’all think? Are games like porn? Is porn at all like games? If you had to give up games or porn, which would it be?
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