Joan Irvine, the executive director of the Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection, is scheduled to moderate a panel examining ethical questions raised by digital erotic entertainment at the upcoming Sex in Video Games conference in San Francisco.
Titled “Morals & Ethics & Sex & Games,” the panel will be one of many during the June 8-9 conference, which will focus primarily on the design, development and technology of sex in videogames. The first of its kind, the conference is expected to become an annual event.
“The people designing and marketing adult games face some unique dilemmas,” comments Irvine. “But they’re also up against many of the same challenges that the adult entertainment industry has been dealing with for a long time. ASACP is used to helping adult companies balance responsibility and good business practices with freedom of expression and evolving technology, so I hope to bring some of that perspective to the discussion.”
The Free Speech Coalition’s Tom Hymes and attorney Lawrence Walters will be featured on the panel, as well as game ethicist Ren Reynolds and Deb Levine, executive director of Internet Sexuality Information Services. They will discuss censorship, sex crimes in virtual spaces, keeping kids out of online adult games, and other issues.
The SiVG conference will be at the Kensington Park Hotel. Other topics on the agenda include selling adult games, the future of technology and sex, games as intellectual property, integrating the adult and game markets, what emergent sex can teach developers, and creating successful games with erotic content.
