Thursday, May 22, 2008

I Lost The Point...

As I said in a comment to someone's post, I found that most of the games' correlated very easily and clearly to their message of social impact. However, there were a few that I found lost that message amidst the play. Not to say that this happened to everyone, this is simply a personal opinion. Now, although embarrassing to admit, I did play the social impact game entitled "Orgasm Simulator" on the Molleindustria site. Now, at first I took a second look at the name and the picture featured on the site's page and chuckled a bit. Then I read the description: "a good sexual understanding with one's partner is essential to be successful in affectivity, in the family, in the job and all the everyday little challenges. Often, we build wall around us, because of our insecurity. These walls defend us but also keep us from communicating with our men."

Targeted primarily at an audience interested in men, this game's entire strategy is to "fake" an orgasm, yet fake it so that your partner has no idea. Right here I lost sight of the game's point, which is to promote effective sexual understanding in order to promote effective communication in the real world. Yet, a good sexual understanding should not promote the act of "faking." It should rather promote a comfort level, in which an individual should be able to comfortably tell their partner what works and what doesn't, so that a "fake" orgasm will be non-existent.

Now, after this initial realization, I reread the game's description. In this description, it is stated that faking an orgasm "takes great sensibility" and it is this simultaneous orgasm with your partner, whether you are truly done or not, is an effective and successful sexual understanding. However, I still do not understand how a good sexual relationship promotes healthy and successful communication in the real world. If the point was to promote the importance of effective communication, I feel like another game would have been appropriate. Is the game entitled "Orgasm Simulator" complete with sexual sounds, the only game that can promote their intended idea? I guess in America, sex sells. After all, I played, which is what the creator wanted. They just want to get you to play, whether you agree with the game or not.

2 comments:

Brittany said...

Don't feel embarassed, I totally played this game too! I felt the same way you did. There is only one screen the whole time, and there are graphic body parts in your face and all you have to do is fake an orgasm just right. I found this game to be really strange, and it definitely lost the whole point to social impact games. Yes, sex is a large part of our society, but I dont feel like people should have to play this game to truly learn how to "connect" with your partner. The idea was funny to begin with but i felt the actual game was a little ridiculous.

Whitney said...

Okay I admit I played this game for a minute too. My perception was that the creator was being ironic. I thought that the intent was to show that "faking it" wasn't really a healthy way of communicating to a partner, and that we rely on falsities to get through our lives. Anyway, this game was definitely not one of my favorites and I don't think that the message was very clear.