Sex and violence.

Both exist in nature, both are necessary for the survival of any species. Anyone who tells you otherwise, as the adage goes, is trying to sell you something... And yet, despite the fact that both acts are mundane, commonplace and necessary, violence sure seems to get the spotlight a LOT, while sex is whispered about, implied or simply left unsaid.

In Mass Effect, which I love dearly, there is a grand total of two "sex" scenes in about 40 hours of gameplay. The first (with the Asari consort, on the Citadel) is more implied rather than portrayed: there's a "bare shoulders to forehead" closeup, an outstretched hand presses against some glass – thank you ma'am; like magic, everyone is fully clothed. The second comes at the 39.995 hour mark, right before the conclusion of the game, and is supposed to represent the culmination of emotional investment with the player character's chosen paramour, but – in reality – looks like a sequence of choppy, disjointed vignettes meant (to borrow a phrase from Mr. Ó Briain) "to flush out any latent epileptics in the room." In between, there's a dearth of any hormonal activity.

And yet, by the time you arrive at the first scene, you will have seen people die in fairly graphic ways (inluding one man gunned down, another one caringly impaled and a third executed at point-blank range); you will have killed scores of sentient beings, disarmed bombs, dodged rockets, fired hundreds – if not thousands – rounds of ammunition and generally put most action movies to shame.

By the second scene, the tally of people left dead in your wake is enough to make Stalin stammer and Pol Pot blush and the list of violent acts (committed or observed) will include executing civilians, condemning technicians to death by bomb blast, making two alien species extinct (the Rachni and the Thorian) and, possibly, killing an ally in cold blood (personally or by Ashley-proxy) during a terse verbal exchange...

Now, to be fair, Mass Effect is a military-centric game, so the balance between the two acts will naturally be shifted in violence's favor. But rather than the prevalence of the two acts, I would like to focus how they are treated and why.

For my own part, given the options, I'd say sex is the more natural. Broadly speaking, everyone does it and no-one gets hurt (rise above the easy kink puns). Recreational aspects aside, it's an innate, built-in mechanism necessary for the continuation of a species. And yet, in games and popular culture at large, it is treated with some kind of weird mysticism – shrouded in obscurity and innuendo and not discussed outright like the natural bodily function that it is.

It was hot today. I had a salad for lunch. My boyfriend went down on me. There — see? Easy.

Violence, on the other hand, played a formative part in structuring human civilization, sure, but waaay back when less drastic means of communication were Simply Not Available. A few hundred years ago, if you were crossing the Apennines and you ran into a (gasp!) foreigner, neither of you spoke Latin but both of you had swords – yeah, it's easy to see how baser human instincts could take hold and dictate an unfortunate outcome...

Today, though? In the age of globalisation, Google translate, UNICEF and a public ban on anything longer than a pen knife? Violence still exists – of course it does: just look at pervasive police brutality, a random day in Africa (or Alabama) or Russia's invasion of Ukraine... But it is now an exception rather than the rule. When people encounter violence, they do so with resignation or dejection or outrage – not glee.

And – news flash – violence harms. It can even kill.

So, given the stark contrast, how is it that a natural bodily function is obscured, suppressed or vilified, while the worst thing you can do to another living being is treated as banal and commonplace?

In games, a substantial part of the reason is demographical. Even though, little by little, the landscape is changing, games are still predominantly the domain of the Human Male of A Certain Age (15-35, if I remember correctly). And, by and large, males are the more violence-prone of the two genders. It's their thing. So if you want to market to people who will buy your game, going the violent route is a Sound Business Decision.

Thing is, though, Human Males of A Certain Age are also very into sex – and yet games involving sex or ones that are sex-centric – are either fringe endeavors or vastly under-represented. The reason for this is still demographical. If you are hoping to attract the largest audience, you censor to the Smallest Common Denominator. So even if the majority of your demographic is just fine with Sex From The Male Perspective – if you intend to cater to women, the LGBTQ+ community, or simply people outside of the hormonally-inclined age bracket – toning down content they may find offensive or unwanted is also a sound move: in doing so, you ensure the new section of your audience is appeased and the remaining majority is so horny, toning-down sex won't be a deal breaker so long as they get to shoot somebody...

Another part of the reason for the sex/violence imbalance, is legal. Gaming studios have to abide by the Laws of the Land and violence is generally (though not always – eh, Australia?) an easier sell than nudity or sex. But the way the laws are structured is what puzzles and perplexes me.

Despite the fact that I do not, particularily, enjoy violence or find violent imagery gratifying, throughout my gaming "career," I have Seen Things, Man! – things bad enough which, with a slightly less firm grasp of the reality/fiction divide, would guarantee some industrial-strength PTSD.

I've seen people shot, dismembered, set alight, blown into meaty chunks, melted, frozen and shattered, devoured, stabbed with a needle in the eye (thanks, Dead Space 2!), disemboweled, decapitated and impaled... And in all that play time, yes, I also might have glimpsed a boob.

For whatever reason, the governments of the countries I was living in at the time said all that was FINE. Excessive violence was allowed. Sex, though? With bits showing and heavy breathing and all!? Not on my watch, sonny!

The legislative aspect of the issue is somewhat harder for me to understand. Game developers obey laws – I get that... But how is a game like Mortal Kombat, with its pervasive, almost comically anatomical, violence easier to navigate through all the legal hoops than one scene with a butt-naked Asari? Where does that start to make sense?

Leaving aside the fact that some parts of the world are more puritanical than others (cough, U.S. and U.K., cough) – surely – if you are the governing body of a nation, you want your populace to be more informed, aware and okay with sex rather than violence, no? I'm just a small-town farm animal of average intellectual capacity and no sociologist, but I think people who like sex are easier to manage and at least slightly less prone to acts that, shall we say, Contravene Societal Norms.

I don't think violent games contribute to real-world violence, but I do believe that with enough exposure to anything you can get used to it. And in a world where Short-Sighted Idiots selling semi-automatic firearms to Morons with Poor Impulse Control spells "good business", I don't think getting either party more deadened to violence is the smartest move...

So, for my own part and the gaming industry at large, I hope we gradually start moving away from FPSs, wargames and graphic carnage and give nudity and sex a bit more exposure (or at least equal representation). I hope writers will craft narratives that – like venerable, old Fallout – give you the option to talk or shag your way out of a dilemma or at least some means of resolving it in a non-violent or circumspect way. I hope emotions other than anger will finally have their day in court. And I hope, one grand day, it'll be okay to see nudity in a game without some member of the (Fox News) public having a coronary...

Which is not to say I hope violence in games goes away altogether. It's a valid topic, safer than the real thing and, oftentimes, a salve, of sorts, to the everyday frustrations that life chucks our way. Just shift the balance a bit. Push it out of the spotlight. Give players the option to make out with a guard, rather than shivving him in the kidney... He'll be happier, you'll still get ingress — no-one gets hurt. Win-win.

Dampen the violence and ramp up the sex, I say. I think the gaming world and, by extension, reality will be all the better for it.