SEX IN GAMES

Since it revolved around a killer's psychosexual development and subsequent paraphilia, in theory at least, it all fit in context. I did find myself falling into what I'll call the 80's trap though. Since domination/bondage was an aspect of the killings, the detective did take a trip to a place called "The Kitten Club", which was basically women in revealing catsuits acting as waitresses, with a dominatrix and her girls operating out of the top floor for vip clients. I thought the dominatrix character was interesting, she was a former medical student who had a relationship with one of her professors. He turned her onto the whole domination/pain scene, and she discovered that she liked causing pain more than healing, coming to the realization that of the ways she could help people, she stuck with what amused her the most. Of course, she was also a red herring for the detective to get sidetracked with, due to her medical knowledge and the fact she used the same type of scalpels for cutting as the killer did.

Of course, as per the 80's trap, I also had the detective traipse through a mafia owned brothel. I framed things in such a way that there was always more implied to be going on than the player ever saw.

The detective also had a bit of the Gillian Seed disease, which is to say he tended to lech after every female in the game - but this was more of a gameplay convention. If the player put the hand icon over the chest of one of the female characters, the response was something along the lines of "You're not required to check them for ripeness." The 'action' icon usually reported, "She's not that easily operated." Every now and then, I'd throw in a ringer, where the person in question would respond as if they'd been groped/kissed/'operated', instead of it just seeming like another section of the detective's inner monologue. I also tried to have the characters react to the player's prospective pervert behavior. In one scene, if you click the eye icon on a woman's breasts, she suggests you take a picture as it will last longer. Since the game included a camera, the player had the option to do just that. Later, the tech assistant would comment on the player taking a photo of the receptionist's chest. If the player then takes a picture of HER, the response was 'What are you, twelve years old? Three women were brutally murdered and you're collecting glamour shots?"

The justification for me writing all the stupid little one liners was that the player's ending was effected by how many times they did it. If they perved their way through every conversation they had with a female victim or suspect, they were on a path the the ending that actually implicated them as almost a co-killer.

Also, the detective was not entirely stable. An email the player could read early on indicated that he had been in counseling after his last case. Some his of flirting/behavior was not player optional. Him being kind of an ass was part of the story, since he was trying to cover up for feeling out of his depth. Instead of letting on how much he was messed up, he was covering with sex and bravado.

In any case, when I was thinking of releasing a demo of the first three days of the investigation, I put in an option to view the scenes either cut or un-cut. The uncut version was all the original art, with the cut version toning down the gore and nudity. It made a hell of a lot of work for me, remaking almost every scene. I think that was another nail in the game's coffin. I was willing to water it down for release. Then, I figured out how to change the story so that the victims could justifiably be found clothed instead of nude. Since it altered the killer's method and psychology, I decided that the cut version of the game was the REAL version.

There was also a focus on female/female and male/male relationships. Since the killer was trying to transition from female to male, at least in her mind, this included the half-steps: girls who liked other girls, and guys who liked other guys. It seems kind of embarrassing looking back on the fact that discovering one of the victims was a lesbian was a "big" part of the case. Also, the way the gay male victim was killed was probably one of the most brutal murders in the game, at least display wise, his face was hacked into a hash and his genitals were removed, leaving him tied up by his neck to either choke or bleed to death after the killer left. The in game explanation was that it happened that way because he discovered the killer, whom he had been seeing, was actually a woman pretending to be a man, and she flew off the handle because it was the first rejection of her new male persona. She hadn't intended to kill him, but he'd forced her hand and made her angry, which was important because the passionate nature of the crime contributed to her first real mistake. When I wrote it, it fit with the story, but looking back it seems like an unfair attack on homosexuals.

I think maybe I was just too young to make the game at the time I started. Years later, by the time I did the final upgrade, which was the new art style and new control mechanics, it felt like I was constantly making changes to try and apologize for what the game was intended to be.