I just watched High Score, a docuseries about the history of video games. It got me curios about the intersection of video games and sex, because sexuality is present in every part of our lives.
I'm not super familiar with the video game industry but I do know of Gamergate, the online harassment campaign primarily targeting game developer Zoë Quinn and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian which centred on sexism in video game culture. This is worthy of a whole series of posts in and of itself, however there are several other interesting ways that video games and sexuality overlap.
For example, if men have high levels of hostile masculinity traits and play violent video games, they may be more at risk for sexually aggressive behaviours (Ealer, 2015). Beyond that, men who play violent-sexist video games and highly identify with the game character may increase certain beliefs about women (Gabbiadini et al., 2016). Sexualization of female characters in a video game can also be a sufficient condition to provoke online sexual harassment toward women (Burnay et al., 2019).
When it comes to sexual function, compared with non-gamers, men playing video games for more than 1 hour/day may be less likely to have premature ejaculation but more likely to have decreased sexual desire (Sansone et al., 2017). Gamification could also help men overcome premature ejaculation. For example, Spanish sexual health startup MYHIXEL has paired a masturbation device with a program which unlocks new levels via real-life exercises that cultivate muscle awareness, habituating the penis to maintain control during real penetration.
Beyond helping resolve function issues, similar gamification strategies can be used for educating. For example, Gross (2005) suggested video games could help teach sex education, particularly for differentiating fact from fiction, stereotype from truth, or appropriate from inappropriate behaviour. Eleftheriou et al. (2017) also found that engaging in computer simulations can impact student's confidence in evaluating sexual risks.
Another intersection of video games and sexuality is the notion that they can empower marginalised folks. In her book, Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture, game studies scholar Adrienne Shaw notes most video games are implicitly or explicitly heteronormative and rarely include non-heterosexual characters, usually presuming a straight male consumer. Thus, some LGBT folks feel disconnected from their identities as gamers (Krobová et al., 2015). But games like Caper in the Castro and GayBlade helped uplift the LGBT community during the AIDS epidemic by celebrating LGBT themes.