How Christine Love makes sex in games believable, engaging, and funny
Christine Love wants to make sex in games more realistic, and that means making it funnier.
"Fundamentally, sex is pretty funny," Love said in a recent interview with Ars. "I don't want to play it as a joke. I think there's a big problem in video games where sex can only be funny, or it can only be 'Haha! I wouldn't ever really be horny. We can only talk about titties as a joke!'"
That’s a big part of what makes Love’s Ladykiller in a Bind stand out (another part is its actual full title: My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress As Him And Now I Have To Deal With A Geeky Stalker And A Domme Beauty Who Want Me In A Bind). A sexy visual novel (mostly) about lesbians on a boat, Ladykiller plays kind of like a "choose your own adventure" comic that takes place on your computer. Most of Ladykiller is spent directing the main character's conversations into or out of sexual encounters or guiding the sex itself.
The idea is to make sure players continue to have "an active role" in the in-game sex. Instead of just unlocking a sex scene to watch, players are active participants in Ladykiller's sex, conversations, and conversations during sex.
This is the opposite of the approach that you’d find in BioWare games and the like, wherein players unlock sex scenes and then watch what Love succinctly sums up as "a really awkward, 12-second animation." These games have no input from the player on how that sex plays out, which puts distance between them and the idea of sex they see on the screen.
It feels phony, the sort of thing that, as Love puts it, encourages us to only "engage with [sex] at an irony level." But with Ladykiller, the developers tried to acknowledge that sex itself is plenty silly already. You're meant to be laughing with the game rather than at it. When a character makes an overly loud (and very much unsubtle) discovery about another character’s anatomy, they're just as in on it as the player. The writing draws the player closer to the characters rather than distancing them from what's happening on screen.
Since the player usually has to choose where, when, and how to touch their partner during these scenes, as well as how to react, it's nearly impossible to disengage without shutting the game off. And so the sex, and comedy of this sex, circles back in on itself to say that, yes, "real sex is awkward, and funny, and that can actually tie into being hot," according to Love.
Sexy character building
That design means most of the game’s character building moments — humorous and otherwise — need to occur during sex. Pandering to NPCs outside of the bedroom until a hands-off sexual encounter pops out isn’t even an option.
"The Beauty and The Stalker barely appear outside of their sex scenes," Love pointed out during our interview, referring to two of the game’s three main characters. "So every bit of characterization has to be conveyed during sex, or surrounding it."
The third part of the game’s main romantic trio, The Beast, is what Love calls a "super-cool heroine put unfairly in way over her head,” and her storyline requires no small suspension of disbelief. The player guides The Beast through a week-long cruise while she pretends to be her male twin brother, navigating suspicious and very horny young adults in the process. But the plot mainly provides an excuse for nightly sex scenes, which can be used both to fend off suspicion and to get The Beast closer to a $5 million payday at the end of a game within the game.
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