Exploring the Sexual Play of Gay Adult Video Games

This doctoral research sits at the intersection of games, play and (gay) pornography. It explores the concept of sexual play - actions that are motivated to fulfilling or satisfying one's desires (Paasonen, 2018) - within single-player gay adult video games. It conducts an analysis of a selection of single-player gay adult video games by focusing on their game content, representations, and gameplay experiences. As adult video games contain explicit sexual material that is aimed at titillating and pleasuring adult game players (Brathwaite, 2013), it explores the mediation of sexual affective experiences. In its exploration it interrogates how these games allow constructions of the sexual self, gameplay designed to build sensations of intimacy and pleasure, and acts of deviancy in constructing sexual identities. The main question it asks is how (gay) adult video games provide affordances for sexual play that mediates the sexual actions of video game players. Rather than be from an objective position, this research explores player experience and the affordances to experience sensations of pleasure from a subjective perspective. The researcher's own play accounts are used to provide nuance to the analysis and shift away from prior objectivist viewpoints (Newton, 1993). The personal play accounts become interventions in analysing these video games and invites further exploration into them in relation to other perspectives. It further reflects on some of the methods that are used to study sexuality and the relevance of subjective-based research. This research concludes that gay adult video games afford the sexual exploration and navigation of subjective sexual desires.