Sex Game

May 9, 2012 2:43 PM

Psychotherapist and Game Designer Nicolau Chaud talks to Kotaku about his RPG Polymorphous Perversity. He has chronicled his experiences creating the game on his blog He has given earlier interviews here and here. Chaud is also the designer behind the controversial Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer. (All links NSFW).
posted by dortmunder (23 comments total)

RPG-Maker turns up in the strangest places, doing the strangest things to people.
posted by The Whelk at 2:48 PM on May 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Chaud? Eponysterical.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:52 PM on May 9, 2012

According to Freud, before we teach children how to be ‘civilized,' they achieve perverse gratification through the body. Such tendencies are repressed in our attempts to create an upright citizen...

It's funny how conservatives feel the same about the 1950s vs. the model "politically-correct" civilized citizen of today.
posted by AlsoMike at 3:31 PM on May 9, 2012

His description of all the fetishes his audience was suggesting to him reminds me of the book "who's been sleeping in your head" which catalogues people's most common sexual fantasies, and the particular categories they fell into.

Popular favorite, btw, was Margaret Thatcher.
posted by modernserf at 3:31 PM on May 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

god, the fact that he calls them "perversions" makes me discredit his title as a psychotherapist. And the excuse that the name comes from Freud's work makes me discredit his title even more.
posted by rebent at 3:38 PM on May 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

And the excuse that the name comes from Freud's work makes me discredit his title even more.

Yes because nothing screams quack like "having read the literature."
posted by mek at 3:57 PM on May 9, 2012 [3 favorites]

You don't think just maybe possibly the title is meant as commentary rather than endorsement?

I had not heard of these games -- they sound intriguing. Thanks for posting them here!
posted by ook at 4:15 PM on May 9, 2012

there's literature, and there's literature. Popper said it best, of course, but the TLDR is that nothing he wrote is testable. There are many testable, thoeries that can actually be used to help people these days, but clinging to those decrepit theories just slows down our growth as a culture.
posted by rebent at 4:27 PM on May 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Ohferchrissake. Yes, let's definitely trade personal opinions about the validity of Freudian psychoanalysis here. That'll obviously be much more fun than talking about the weird sex video game.
posted by RogerB at 4:38 PM on May 9, 2012 [6 favorites]

Katwa Shoujo (previously on MeFi); Oblivion adult mods; Second life fetish wear; (All links NSFW) And that's just the more tastefull stuff out there.

From the interview this all seems a like very weak tea compared to what the internet's been getting up too since the days of Multi User Dungeons.
posted by Grimgrin at 5:17 PM on May 9, 2012

I think the joke is that, had Freud been right, the logical extreme of psychoanalysis would look a lot like this game.
posted by LogicalDash at 5:46 PM on May 9, 2012 [1 favorite]

Grimgrin, the game doesn't appear to be simply sexually explicit or shocking, but rather a more thoughtful interrogation of contemporary discourses of sexuality. Which is a lot more intellectually stimulating than Oblivion mods or Second Life. Take a look at the review for his other game in the FPP.
posted by mek at 5:57 PM on May 9, 2012

The dungeoneer game reminds of me of Caroline, queen of the Death Jockeys (from MeFi's own localroger).
posted by ntartifex at 6:19 PM on May 9, 2012

The game is named after one of Freud's concepts. You're way out of line for wanting to talk about Freud! His concepts are not controversial AT ALL. Now shush. The grown-ups are discussing which levels up stamina faster; fucking from the front or behind.
posted by Brocktoon at 8:23 PM on May 9, 2012

Obviously 16-bit RPGs have no right to comment on Freud, because he has been largely dismissed by the contemporary scientific community! Besides, everyone knows that psychotherapy is a monolithic entity I am wholly qualified to define, and that Freud's influence outside of that particular branch of academia is totally irrelevant to pop culture, which this game is certainly not an example of, because I said so.
posted by mek at 8:30 PM on May 9, 2012

Forget the stupid Freudian sex game, that guy made the movie Saw into a video game. Hold on, let me restate that - HE MADE A TORTURE GAME!!!
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 8:52 PM on May 9, 2012

Oh, and in other news: sick fucks get off on crushing animals to death.
posted by Rocket Surgeon at 8:54 PM on May 9, 2012

that kotaku article seems kind of hyperbolic for something that really isn't much of anything

the whole "game became more important than his life and friends" thing seems kind of sensationalist

i am willing to forgive RPG maker for almost everything, though, because of Yume Nikki
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 9:32 PM on May 9, 2012

I wanted to try Beautiful Escape: Dungeoneer out, but it seems like the website that the review links to has its downloads capped (probably thanks to Metafilter).

Is there an external website I can download it off of?
posted by Conspire at 10:17 PM on May 9, 2012

The RPGmaker.net link works just fine for me, Conspire. Maybe give it another try?
posted by figurant at 10:43 PM on May 9, 2012

> The wall filled up with taboo things like ‘rape fantasy,' if not bizarre things, like ‘I want to turn a man into a woman, and then into a statue' and ‘centaur porn.'

Am I jaded for being able to say I've DONE two out of three of these? Multiple times in the case of centaur porn? And far stranger things, in the periods where "spending evenings having seriously weird typesex on Tapestries" sounded like a good idea.
posted by egypturnash at 1:23 AM on May 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Meh. My pen and paper RPG Polyhedral Perversity is based on nothing but Rolemaster style tables and random encounters with gelatinous cubes.
posted by howfar at 1:29 AM on May 10, 2012 [1 favorite]

Looks like it's full of straight white people. Which i guess is pretty common for videogames, but still.
posted by Jon_Evil at 6:30 AM on May 10, 2012