Toby Gard had a problem.
Back in the summer of 1993, Gard—a famous British video game designer and consultant—was tasked with creating a more distinctive character for his studio's upcoming game, a 3-D action-platform inspired by the "Indiana Jones" films. However, the game's engine could only display a limited number of polygons, the basic building blocks of any 3-D model. Whereas modern game characters are composed of up to 60,000 polygons, Gard could only use a maximum of 230. It was hard enough making a computerized figure recognizable as a human being, let alone one that would stand out against a glut of similar games.
His solution was, uh, well rounded. Adding prominent breasts to the formerly-male protagonist barely bumped the poly count, but tapped into a well of new appeal. The game was called "Tomb Raider," and sexuality became the anchor of its ad campaign, ultimately leading it to sell 8 million copies and making the protagonist, Lara Croft, a cultural icon.
Ever since, video games and sexuality have become indelibly intertwined. Lara's ballooning breasts created a precedent for larger-than-life sexuality that has weighed heavily on gender roles within the industry since. Over time, a double standard developed wherein games proclaim to strive towards greater realism, yet depict a hyper-exaggerated version of the female body.
Take, for example, Team Ninja—creator of the popular "Ninja Gaiden" and "Dead or Alive" franchises—which famously advertised the "jiggle physics" on their female characters.
Even Valve, one of the most prestigious game developers lauded for its exceptional characters and storytelling, focused on the realistic movement of protagonist Alyx Vance's breasts—they lift when she raises her hands—in demonstrations of the power of their latest game engine.
Fifteen years of such exaggeration has lead to surreal characters like SEGA's Bayonetta, a seven-foot tall bombshell with legs three times the length of her body and more curves than a sine equation, whose clothes are woven out of her own hair and disappear every time she attacks. Needless to say, you're not going to see a woman with her features walking down the street.
When I started thinking about this article, I initially planned on challenging the assumption that videogames held any obligation towards depicting a realistic sexuality at all. "Catherine," a recent horror-adventure game by Atlus, first brought the idea to mind as it provides a fascinating meta-commentary on the issue of sexual ideals.
Players in "Catherine" assume the role of Vincent Brooks, whose girlfriend of five years, Katherine, has begun pressuring him toward marriage. Then, on the night Vincent finds out Katherine may be pregnant, he meets a mysterious girl named Catherine. If Katherine can be seen as a realistic woman, Catherine embodies a fantasy; where one is meek, the other is flirtatious, and while the former demands obligation, the latter embodies spontaneity.
I doubt that I'm spoiling anything by saying that the newly arrived siren tests Vincent's devotion to his girlfriend. The catch is, Catherine doesn't actually exist. Instead, she represents the natural fear that accompanies a real relationship and the constant temptation to escape from responsibility. She is Vincent's fantasy brought to life, and through her physicality he is able to come to terms with the issues facing him.
Of course, this sets up an obvious parallel to games as a whole. After all, what are video games if not a similar outlet? Players don't sink hundreds of hours into games like "Skyrim" and "World of Warcraft" because they recreate reality, but rather because they provide a fantastic alternative.
As a result, it is tempting to argue that the sexual fantasies presented in games have no bearing on the reality of the individuals that play them.
One has to look no further than the niche Japanese genre of rape simulators for apparent confirmation of this theory. Games like the notorious "Rapelay" or the less-well-known "Slave Maiden's Rape Hell" allow players to act out depraved sexual fantasies that their social conscience and morality would prevent them from enacting in real life. However, such games do not seem to translate into actual instances of rape. In fact, the data seems to show just the opposite: according to a U.N. study, Japan experiences 3,000 percent fewer rapes per capita than the United States, despite the fact that such games are only widely distributed in Japan.
That was the argument I wanted to make; video games are fiction, and therefore Vincent's sexual fantasies hold no bearing on me, the player.
But the truth is, they do.
I know the way I play video games, and so I know I would be wracked with guilt if Vincent cheated on his pregnant girlfriend with the younger Catherine. In a previous article, I argued that video games hold an empathetic link with their players. Obviously, neither of the K/Catherines are real people, but the emotions they induce in anyone playing the game are unquestionably genuine. I hope I'm not coming across like I have an unhealthy attachment to a fictitious character, but the simple fact that video games present an emotional reality for their players renders any claims of independent fantasy dubious at best.
Video games occupy a particularly troublesome middle ground between objective narrative and subjective participation. While many of a given game's events are determined by the developer's careful script, an equally significant portion of the experience is crafted by the actions of the players themselves. Therefore, while Toby Gard may have intended Lara Croft as a harmless fantasy, the emergent experiences spontaneously created by the player's actions create an emotional bond that can potentially turn her into something very real.
The true effect, then, of those 230 polygons is nearly impossible to quantify, and I won't pretend to have the answer in this column. But maybe the next time someone cracks a joke about how Lara Croft makes you feel, you'll actually stop to think about it.