Hmm, but it's not just the UK that video games are viewed as generally 'too influential' on the young to allow sex - except Japan perhaps (even though if something has an 18+ rating on the box, the young shouldn't be able to buy it anyway and the game-makers and game stores have done their part in being responsible toward minors - they shouldn't be responsible for the failings of parents or the fact kids can end up playing this stuff if they really want to through their friends or relatives anyway). I thought the UK wasn't too bad about it at first, but there are a lot of games from other countries I realised that don't get a sniff of a release here because they never make it past the censors.
It's not too suprising though - back in the 60s more violent comics and collectible cards were seen by some as corrupting/subversive entertainment that kids loved... and then later in the 80s it was 'video nasties' thought to be turning our children into would-be killers... and now the latest medium of entertainment are the new threat to our kids' sanity. Blargh.
Someone needs to do a comprehensive study into just HOW influential video games really are and how 'dangerous' they are - instead of anti-video game rhetoric always coming from the same kinds of people, who more often than not can be made to admit they've never played the games they are slamming, and thus have no idea what they're really talking about. (Mass Effect Alien Sideboob incident springs to mind. "Virtual rape at the touch of a button" was the criticism from a guy who had never played it and was 100% incorrect).
I say that because I'm curious just how much videogames affect adults. I imagine they don't affect most adults negatively at all because most people know the difference between reality and a videogame, and don't rush out to immediately re-enact what they just did onscreen. Kids shouldn't be playing adult themed games anyway, but we know they will try to play banned or restricted games if they've been in the media for containing sex and violence, so the best way to stop the games having a bad influence on kids is to bring your kids up properly with a strong sense of right and wrong, so that even if they play games, they know better than to copy them IRL. Oddly instead, the general reaction from American parenting associations and the likes of Jack Thompson is simply to call for a ban on these games, or make them even more infamous by jabbering about how full of sex they are (way to make them more popular, dude ¬_¬).
What really needs to happen is for games to lose the label they have in the West for being 'just for kids'. Games are not just for kids any more, but like with anime, the residual association of cartoons and video games with children here just won't quit. If films can be viewed as a medium with defined adult and child audiences, and contain sex, why can't games? The answer is they can, it's just the general attitude (often held by non-gamers), some parents and censors toward games that is hindering the potential and maturation of games into a truly diverse, exciting and less juvenile medium of entertainment.
Many games now are just like interactive movies in a sense, so why it is taking so long for people to distinguish between one kind of game for all ages and another that isn't it beyond me - it's not like films haven't been around for a long, long time and are distinguished and accepted with a simple age rating.
The sex issue isn't restricted to videogames though, it's something countries are generally anally-retentive about almost across the board and it all comes down to current attitudes. Take films - a film showing female nudity may well be rated 15 depending on the nature of the nudity, but throw a full frontal nude male in there and you've got yourself an 18+ without question. We just can't handle naked men, apparently... but a naked woman is all right for under 18s to see, because society has been exposed to the idea of naked women (and happily sexually objectified them) for a lot longer than naked men, and accepts it more easily. And yet - it would rather accept people being shot or things being blown up than allow a pair of boobs before the watershed. It's almost hilarious.
