Press X for Lust: Sex as Reward in Games

In this chapter, I look at sex in games as reward for the player’s effort. This concerns game examples, in which the player unlocks sex content by choosing dialogue options and/or completing the game or segments thereof. My chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part constitutes an overview of games that use sex content as reward. The second part is a synthetic review of how sex as reward in games has been theorized and problematized. Sex as reward has received considerable criticism for perpetuating toxic behavior and reducing sexual experiences to mechanistic and strategic attributes. Taking this into consideration, the conclusory part of the chapter focuses on suggested ways that these limitations may be overcome.