Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture
“A stimulating look at two of today’s most controversial subjects. . . . Sure to amaze and titillate anyone who’s ever hoisted a videogame controller.”—CNN Tech Correspondent Scott Steinberg\ No book until Porn & Pong has explored how pornography and video games have influenced America’s sexual mores and technological compulsions on a massive scale.\ The first Atari systems and their phallic joysticks began to sell by the million along with the rise of the VCR and the modern porn...
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How the very male industries of video gaming and pornography grew and developed together. Publishers Weekly Brown, a journalist for Playboy and The New York Post, maps the course of sex in video games from the Atari era to the present in this slim, fun read. Asserting that video games fulfill the cultural need for "dark sexual thrills," Brown's roving (occasionally rambling) exploration looks at the young medium in context and finds that, even in its infancy, video games were already as influential, potentially dangerous, and worthy of dissection as any other art. The first mainstream porno game, 1982's "Custer's Revenge" for the Atari 2600, spurred debate over the non-consensual nature of its crudely depicted virtual sex, culminating in crowds of protesters, lawsuits against the publisher, and the sexual assault of a Native American woman by thugs verbally invoking the game. Despite his graphic description of games many may find abhorrent, Brown comes off as neither a libertarian geek nor a moral custodian, and he keeps his history lively with personalities like Toby Gard, designer of video gaming's all-time "It Girl," Lara Croft. The talented programmer's admission that "maybe subconsciously, Lara Croft was my sister" is just one of the quirky insights Brown unearths, revealing the digital artistry and skewed lust that fuel the industry's ever-expanding reach: in erotic content, artistic merit and culture at large. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
\ Publishers WeeklyBrown, a journalist for Playboy and The New York Post, maps the course of sex in video games from the Atari era to the present in this slim, fun read. Asserting that video games fulfill the cultural need for "dark sexual thrills," Brown's roving (occasionally rambling) exploration looks at the young medium in context and finds that, even in its infancy, video games were already as influential, potentially dangerous, and worthy of dissection as any other art. The first mainstream porno game, 1982's "Custer's Revenge" for the Atari 2600, spurred debate over the non-consensual nature of its crudely depicted virtual sex, culminating in crowds of protesters, lawsuits against the publisher, and the sexual assault of a Native American woman by thugs verbally invoking the game. Despite his graphic description of games many may find abhorrent, Brown comes off as neither a libertarian geek nor a moral custodian, and he keeps his history lively with personalities like Toby Gard, designer of video gaming's all-time "It Girl," Lara Croft. The talented programmer's admission that "maybe subconsciously, Lara Croft was my sister" is just one of the quirky insights Brown unearths, revealing the digital artistry and skewed lust that fuel the industry's ever-expanding reach: in erotic content, artistic merit and culture at large. \ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.\ \
