The Erotic Engine by Patchen Barss

Author:Patchen Barss [Barss, Patchen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-37599-5
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2010-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

And so it goes from there, with increasingly sexual actions and descriptions, along with a generous sprinkling of “ummmm”s and “YESSSS!!!”s. The blurry relationship between the actions of two entwined avatars and the reactions of two physically distant real people highlight both the ambiguity over whether this was pornography or sex, and the related ambiguity of how much reality can reasonably be attributed to a virtual environment.

Like Usenet, MUDS were for the most part free of charge for anyone connected to the Internet. MUD creators did not make money from the sexual content that appeared in their games. Emergent sex, though, drew thousands of people into these games, and kept them there for hundreds of hours. They came to experience this new form of social and sexual intercourse.

In addition to creating demand for new, faster, better technology, the sex in these games had a second, equally powerful influence over the spread of the Internet. A by-product of so many people spending so many sleepless nights unlocking the technological secrets of virtual intimacy was that users became comfortable with computers and the Internet. These sex-driven early adopters formed the core group of users who would go on to be the market for non-sexual Internet use. When mainstream news and entertainment outlets turned their attention to the Internet, they found a devoted group of users who already were familiar and adept with the technology.

The Internet was only part of the story. Non-Internet-based video games had become big business in the late seventies and early eighties. The personal computer had done for video arcades what the VCR had done for cinema—moved the entertainment from public spaces into people’s homes. The two technologies were not completely parallel, though. Videotape created a massive pornographic film industry. Yet no such analogue sprang up for video games. Games with built-in sex were few and far between: whereas the videotape revolution changed both consumption and production, home video-game consoles changed only the consumption. Producing a video game still required skill, expertise and monetary resources—elements that did not lend themselves to massive amounts of low-cost, low-quality pornography.

Sex-based games were rarer than movies, but they certainly existed. In October 1982, a company called Mystique released a title for a popular home gaming console called the Atari 2600.

The game was Custer’s Revenge. It was the worst of a number of adult games on the market at the time. The player controlled General George Armstrong Custer, who wore nothing but a hat, boots and a huge erection. Custer had to avoid arrows and other projectiles as he crossed the screen to where a naked Native American woman (named Revenge) waited, tied to a post. The object of the game was to repeatedly rape her.

Naturally, this game outraged feminists, Native American groups and anyone who found racist sex fantasies to be an objectionable form of entertainment. Custer’s Revenge also happened to have terrible graphics and gameplay even by 1982 standards. Yet eighty thousand copies were sold. (And that is not including a subsequent

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