Everyone remembers what happened with GTA's Hot Coffee and Mass Effects famous sex scene, the media practically thought games were raping our childrens minds.

So outrageous is the idea of depicting sex in games for alot of people that its safe to say it wont ever be a significant part of most mainstream titles for a very long time. At least not until the industry truly matures and becomes respectably treated as the widely spread enjoyable by anyone past time it really is, or until the weirdos stop making us look bad.

The key problem is that the media and people who aren't heavily invested in gaming culture aren't aware of when a game is trying to depict the act of  emotional physical expression or when its just being blatant 3d porn (see Japanese 'dating' simulators).

To some degree I think they almost have the right to be objectional, off the top of my head I cant think of any games that have come out yet where a sex scene would have added anything.  In Mass Effect it kind of made sense because you were trying to be emotionally involved with another character but that was really more of a 'I picked the right buttons to click to make you want me' situation.  As anyone whose ever had a real relationship knows sex generally doesn't happen right when you get involved with someone unless they really like you or they're you know, easy.

Sex didn't really add anything to Mass Effect but more importantly I personally liked Tali the most anyway but I didn't want my Shepard to bang her, Bioware apparently didn't want me to either.  I thought of my Mass Effect crew as 'my awesome team of buddies' while Tali was the 'bad ass and mysteriously hot alien friend' I always wanted by my side when shit hit the fan.

Still I'm glad someone is trying to bring classy sex to games, after enough attempts some developer will hopefully get it right.  Hell maybe Bioware will do it in Mass Effect 2, of the many reasons I'm excited to play that game, thats one... I guess.

Maybe its simply an issue of context, say you're playing a game where you are the new guy, the person no one knows and your job is to prove to the world you're awesome.  Assuming you're the typical male protagonist, having some friendly lady jump on your lap after a few dialogue scenes is hardly an accurate depiction of anything except maybe the simple mind of a teenager where the end result is more important than the process that lead to it.

Now if you were on the other hand playing a character that had already developed an intimate relationship with another character, say for example like Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher did in Uncharted 1 it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see them 'expressing' themselves in the sequel.  I doubt that will actually happen in the game but it wouldn't be out of place especially considering how realistic and believable the characters are.

Looking at it from another perspective however, sex for most people is something very personal, that they dont want to see depicted by polygons no matter how logical it may be for the characters to be doing because its almost like creepy voyerism.  As gaming progresses and we get closer and closer to realism maybe that will change and it will be accepted as part of games just as it is accepted in tv and film by everyone.

We are talking about virtual characters in virtual worlds compared to real people in mostly real worlds so perhaps it will never be 'right', at least not until we're all jacked in to the Matrix and... yeah I should end that trail of thought there.

You cant really tell a highly emotional realistic story without the old love sub plot which generally involves more than talking.  If the popularity of romatic comedies is anything to go by alot of people out there, especially women love a good love story. 

Maybe thats the bigger problem, that we simply dont have enough games that are interested in telling that kind of story, you could probably relate it to what I talked about in my other article about most games needing violence to sell.

When is sex in games going to be anything more than a bad internet joke or an excuse for politicians to rant about gaming, no one knows but hey look at the bright side; if thats all you want in your games Japan has been delivering the goods for years.  Just dont tell anyone your playing those games.