Polymorphous Perversity

Nicolau Chaud holds Randy Pitchford’s “there is no line to cross” mantra to heart–if it wasn’t obvious with the controversial Beautiful Escape, which put you in the shoes of a serial killer, then it should be cemented with his latest project called “Polymorphous Pervesity.” Chaud describes the premise of his latest endeavor as follows,

“You are a young male with an unknown sexual disorder captured by some mysterious agency and thrown into a bizarre parallel reality where everything gravitates towards sex. You’re set on a sexual quest to explore unknown lands, meet strange people, and learn more about your sexuality.”

Ultimately the purpose is to take us on an exploration of sexuality and the many facets of the libido–this includes fetishes, paraphilias and perversions. To this end, the game has mechanics like “fuck” instead of “attack”, with skills relating to sex to be included, a “horny meter” which you must keep low in order to stay alive, and an adaptation to your “performance” and sexual preferences, just to name a few things.

The concept behind the game is Freudian in nature; children are “polymorphously perverse” –meaning that they do not attempt to restrain or repress their sexual desire like adults who have undergone societal conditioning. This conditioning “suppresses the polymorphous possibilities for sexual gratification in the child, eventually leading, through repression, to an amnesia about such primitive desires.” These concepts are in line with Freud’s many hypothetses on  societal-wide repression.

The reaction on the forum is woefully predictable, which only goes to show the necessity of such a game pushing buttons which we are uncomfortable with. Chaud, a psychotherapist with 4 years of experience under his belt, responds to the skepticism as follows,

“sex is very powerful;
sex is very strange;
sex varies immensely among people

I just felt like approaching these things in a game. Why not? You’re right, most people don’t know anything about sex other than what their own hand tells them, or beside what they see in standardized porn movies. They like this aspect of sex, while they think rapist and pedophiles and corpsefuckers are sick people, even though their drives are very similar.

But no, this is not an educative game at all.

And yes, it may come out funny. Sex is often fun, so I don’t see why the game shouldn’t be. Sex is not “OMFG SO SERIOUS”, and neither should the game be. But I can’t help if people think dicks are funny. I mean… it’s just a dick. If you’re a guy, just drop your pants and you’ll see one.”

C’mon sushi dick. You can run over hookers, indulge Kratos in a QTE fling, or bed an Asari but you can’t handle the idea of something like this?

The game is still in development though the release date is uncertain. The development blog can be found here. Further reading: Jordan Rivas has also written about the game in a thoughtful writeup here.