This update is seriously Not Safe For Work, or for the sexually prudish. Seriously. This article is one of those. It will be one or two clicks away from porn, and not the hazy filtered Skinemax variety. That being said, if you’re interested in the gamification of man’s most basic instincts, then read on….
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It’s probably not a surprise, coming from a male-dominated industry, but frequently over beers at the AAA shops, the concept of a porn game gets discussed. Usually it’s couched in terms of ‘easy money if you’re okay losing your principles’, often brought up when devs are earning hard money, crunching their asses off for a company who is probably going to lay them off the minute the game ships, so screw principles. I can’t even count how many times while working on Origin someone joked about quitting to go build ‘Adultima’.
Sex in games isn’t exactly new ground: enough people have put sex in video games, or made small indie games, for years, and Brenda Brathwaite even wrote a book on the subject. But there’s always been a sense that you could make a more mass-market game. Usually such drunken discussions end up pointing out that most naked models in video games still look surreally creepily dead eyed, and that the tech has a ways to go before hitting 50 Shades of Gray level of acceptance. But what I haven’t seen is much discussion about coming the other way with it – starting with the film, and gamifying it. Until I stumbled upon Cock Hero, what can be best described as a burgeoning GENRE and art form all its own. For better or for worse.
I’ve long had a deep fascination with the ways that gaming bleeds into other aspects of our lives. It’s little things, frequently, like adding Achievements to Netflix, or putting a score marker on the bottom of the urinal to encourage men to, you know, aim. Things like that. Cock Hero is exactly that – an attempt to make your movie watching time more interactive.
At this point, I should note that I try to research all of my articles as best I can, but actually doing research on the art, design and business of porn is always a challenge because Google is… let’s just say, somewhat useless for the task. I looked, and could find only one reputacle article on the phenomenon, if you want to call Slashdong a reputable source. That being said, I delved into a little personal research, just to see how many gaming tropes I could find. You know. For science.
At it’s core, Cock Hero videos are JOI videos – a subgenre of adult videos where a breathy-voiced woman is directing the viewer on how to play with his joystick. But CH takes this to the next level, primarily by introducing game tropes that are familiar with anyone whose played on an XBox in their lives. The hallmark of the genre is a ‘beat meter’. The goal is simple – match the beat meter, and get to the end of the video without ‘finishing’. Some of these videos are more than an hour long, which sounds…. remarkably ambitious for a would-be player. I described this basic concept to one of my more feministy, SJW friends, and she responded, “I can’t find any fault with guys working on their endurance.”
Every four minutes (roughly the length of a song that’s certainly being used without permission), you get a short break before diving back into it. These are typically signaled with a Boxing Ring Bell, with a Street Fighter Fight Cue (“Round Two… Fight!”) when it’s time to go.
But it’s not just endurance, but ability to adjust rhythm on demand. Communicating beat changes ahead of time is apparently pretty important to the experience, as it appears in all of the small sample I explored.
Another hallmark of the genre is the instructions given to you at the beginning, to make it clear that this is a game and the viewer is expected to follow certain rules – purely on the honor system, but you’ll know that you’re not a real man. Even as the genre matures, and the rules get more complex, you always start with a rules explanation. Sometimes there are about 3-4 minutes of these instructions over several screens. Yeah, yeah, no one wants to read the instruction manual, but I’m assuming the designers have discovered its difficult to engage the player in additional rules explanations midflow.
The beat meter itself is a place of great innovation, as designers attempt to come up with a GUI that allows for more complex information to be communicated without interrupting the general flow of the game.
Some CH videos have female ‘helpers’ to guide or scold you as the video progresses.
Humorously, even a cursory look at the genre (really) have uncovered some classic game design problems. Some have attempted to add story, for example, which of course is an entirely new arena for the ludonarrative debates.
There’s the technologist who doesn’t realize that his very cool technology does not actually result in good… gameplay. (Sorry, this particular screenshot required heavy cropping ).
No single screenshot I could take really did justice to the frenzied stream of notes that inhabited that video. You would need to combine the finesse of a World War 2 morse code operator with the energy of a crack smoking spider monkey to pull this one off – so to speak.
And then there is the classic problem of designers over-designing, as in designing a feature that no one would ever prefer just because – hey, innovation!
I am now obsessed with wondering if any real video game has ever challenged a player to play with their off-hand, which if you think about it, is by DEFINITION asking gamers to play in a less preferential manner. You know, we already have a term, ant-farming, to describe designers and academics who design features that would be more fun to watch players play than to play themselves. This may be a new thing- designing a feature because it’s hilarious to imagine that any players actually WOULD play that way.
At this point, this was about as far as I could go in the name of ludic curiosity.
It should be noted that this appears to be an entirely fan- and amateur-created videos. I’m only judging this based on the fact that many (most?) videos are watermarked from other sites. Some videos ATTEMPT to list the actresses found within at the end, but even those admit they have missed a couple. It’s still a burgeoning art. Here’s a tutorial on how to make your own videos (a site called Milovana appears to be ground zero for the genre). I’m sure before you know it they’ll have GDCs, awards shows, cultural critics, and die-hard old-timers defending the good ol’ days, before off-hand play ruined everything.
Still, it’s a surprisingly huge subgenre: Cock Hero Fail has 4M views on PornHub -few if any others on their Most Viewed tab have more than 3M unless they feature a Kardashian. Not bad for a genre whose entry into Urban Dictionary is only a year old. Clearly, there’s something about making the very private experience of polishing the bishop and making it interactive that seems to work very well.
You just jumped the cock shark.
Damion, I’m not sure what makes us weirder as designers: That we get caught up by tangents like these…or that we’re crazy enough to actually talk about them in front of other people.
Come on guys, you know you all do it.
–Dave
I would also point out that through Skype and Cockhero.info peoeple have been comepting agaianst each other in Cockhero matches. It’s on cam so as to keep each player honest. Not just if they “blew it” but if they r not putting enough effort into their playing. We have even had judges who decide who won if both contestants made it through or both lost at the same time. Contestants r judged on intensity, their abiltiy to keep w/ the beats, and how hard they were throughout. Not in much danger of losing if u were at half mast throughout the video. I myself am the unsung champion and have a torrent video on Milovana where I play a very challenging Cockhero video which will show the level of intensity I bring to the game.
Copy and paste my link below to download my torrent and watch the champ in action.
http://www.milovana.com/forum/download/file.php?id=6013
This comment both amuses and terrifies me.
Also, I decline your invitation. There’s a limit to how far I’ll go for science.
Don’t worry, Crafty weirds a lot of US out, too 🙂
It’s only gay if balls touch sir. I admit I watched his attempt myself and he shows the video of which he is masturbating to in full window, with a video of him doing it on the bottom right corner.
Re “I am now obsessed with wondering if any real video game has ever challenged a player to play with their off-hand, which if you think about it, is by DEFINITION asking gamers to play in a less preferential manner,” this misses the point, as it ignores (understandably, as it’s a bit deep in the sub-culture) that for many who like to play in this manner there is a deliberate element of denial and discomfort. It’s not a feature “nobody wants” nor is it at essence “less preferential” for many players. It does depend greatly on the player.
A brief comment on the changing hands scenario (not encountered that one before), reminded me of the Psycho Mantis fight in Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation. I guess the games is old enough now to reveal that you had to switch controller ports to beat the boss (or if you had two controllers just switch to the other controller 😉 )
I’m surprised the industry hasn’t jumped on board this niche market. It would certainly be an ideal way to recycle their old back catalogue. The backing track wouldn’t even need to be licensed Pop tunes (largely distracting) but a beat track that actually matches the on screen beat meter a little more accurately.
I wonder if there’s been any development on force feedback peripherals!?
In terms of peripherals, for interactions there’s:
– The Interactive Fleshlight, which is now like 12 years old and was horrible
– Vstroker, which is just an accelerometer on a fleshlight
– Ju-C Air, which is a fleshlight that’s also an accelerometer AND has a joystick
And in an interesting mix of things going the other direction, the Novint Falcon haptic game controller is now being turned into a sex toy by a company called Frixion.
Largely a rhetorical question originally.
It comes as no surprise that there are attempts at a hands-off hands-on peripheral, that they are so seemingly crude (considering the amounts of cash people are willing to throw in the general direction of sexual gratification) is more of a surprise.
One funny part is, how the author doesn’t seem to understand the concept behind occasions when a CH tells the player to use the “off” or non-dominant hand to fap. It’s a surprise to me that people new to CH would still need to have that type of instruction explained to them. Some of the comments indicate, that other people (also new to CH) don’t understand in a similarly misguided way. It’s not about playing for a less than optimal experience, duh. It’s about having to follow instructions, and of course if the only instruction is “do what is easy, what you want” then it’s not an instruction at all. The more complex and UN-natural the instructed act, the more difficult to fulfill it. So each CH creator must balance between excess unnaturalness, to the point that the instruction cannot be performed, on the one hand (erm), and on the other hand, excess naturalness, to the point that the instruction seems hardly instructive at all. To me, an obvious concept. To several people, including the author of the article, a surprising and new concept. Well whaddayaknow …
(quoted exactly as commented by me at Milovana.com, the “home” of Cock Hero)
HOW AM I NOT A REPUTABLE SOURCE. D:
Seriously though, awesome article, glad to see this getting more coverage. There’s so little new happening in the intake of porn these days outside of “up the resolution” (though same could be said of some genres of gaming, I suppose), I’m kinda of surprised there haven’t been more game interfaces on this side of the pacific yet. We’re getting there though.
(I mean REALLY I was even /in/ Brenda’s book and was on the IGDA Sex in Games SIG leadership council and spoke on this stuff at GDC years ago. 😐 )
I’m just saying that some people may balk at the idea of putting something with ‘dong’ in the name in a bibliography. =)
Yeah one of the many reasons I’m changing the name soon. 🙂
To what? Slashplug?
(Sorry, I just couldn resist … 🙂 )
I hope you liked my work. I’m a complete amateur. Cock Hero Fail is one of the only videos I’ve ever edited outside of my snowboarding and kiteboarding videos. I am a bit of a perfectionist, but I’m still somewhat surprised that my one and only full length video has still managed to be one of the all time favorites. Pretty cool to be the creator of the only video mentioned by name.
Great article by the way. Let me know if you have any questions.