It almost didn’t happen at all, but now that it’s over, the organization behind the first Sex in Video Games conference already is planning the second annual event.
“It went really well for something I thought about canceling because it was so challenging,” reveals Cynthia Freese, chief executive officer of Evergreen Events. “I learned a lot just by sitting there and listening to people speak.”
Apparently, so did the other 163 registered attendees, who ranged in age from “21 to 73,” Freese says. Comments about the conference from both adult and gaming insiders who attended and in the international mainstream and adult press have been overwhelmingly positive.
Although she admits she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from the conference’s first appearance, Freese was pleasantly surprised with the quantity and quality of people who attended.
“As a woman doing this event, I didn’t want it to be raunchy,” she says, adding that no “pervs” hid out among the very business-oriented audience. “Part of me was very shocked at how many women were there.”
In fact, Freese notes, the majority of attendees seemed to hail from the distaff side of humankind, and “it was a very open-minded crowd, which was refreshing.”
The crowd also was fairly straightforward about its agenda and the conference’s subject matter. Early speakers and panelists were tasked with feeling out the gathering’s comfort level with colorful language and imagery. Wired sex-and-tech columnist Regina Lynn and others stopped themselves in mid-phrase occasionally in order to sanitize their language, and they dropped images from their PowerPoint presentations in case the audience wasn’t quite ready for the up-close-and-personal approach to adult content. Their efforts were appreciated by the mainstream television crews on hand to cover the conference, but the rest of the audience appeared amused. The tone changed abruptly, however, when legendary game developer Dave Taylor (one of the creators of seminal multiplayer games Doom and Quake) took the podium about midway through the conference’s first day and led attendees into some very graphic territory. After that, all softcore bets were off.
One of the more fascinating dichotomies revealed by the conference was the disagreement among developers, players, and observers about which type of games will become most popular with the masses. Of the two types of games currently incorporating adult themes, multiplayer or immersive role-playing games seem to have taken an early lead over “first-person shooters,” which allow a single player to interact with virtual hotties. That’s due in large part to so-called “emergent sex,” or sexual content that arises spontaneously in games created for the mainstream market. World of Warcraft, Second Life, The Sims, and a number of other massively multiplayer online role-playing games have developed thriving sexual sub-worlds completely independent of their developers’ intentions or—for the most part—control.
That issue, as well as some legal and marketing uncertainties, may come into sharper focus by the time the second SiVG conference rolls around next year. Freese says her company is finalizing details now and plans to announce them in July or August.
