When Microsoft introduced the Kinect “controller-free gaming and entertainment” add-on for use with its Xbox 360 gaming system back in November, the intent was for the voice- and motion-activated device to make Xbox competitive with the popular Nintendo Wii system that has found parents and grandparents entering the electronic “virtual” game market as players rather than merely facilitators for their kids and grandkids.
What Microsoft executives apparently did not count on was for their system to be co-opted by pornographers to facilitate “adult” games that go as far as simulating sexual activity.
As reported by ABC News, an Austrian company that specializes in “sex simulation” games “announced that it had released a demo video showing how the Kinect controller can be used as an interface for a sex game.” ABC quoted the company’s vice president as saying that the Kinect Xbox controller “became another avenue for us to explore…. We didn’t know where this was going to go but publicity yesterday brought our five servers down to their knees”— which means the company’s X-rated demo is selling like pornographic hot cakes.
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Explaining how Kinect works, the ABC report said that the computer’s “depth sensor and cameras read a player’s arm, leg and body motions to render keyboards, joysticks and other kinds of gaming controllers totally unnecessary.” The report added that the Xbox add-on is “so popular that Microsoft said it sold one million devices in the first month they were on the market.”
But even before the device was officially introduced, underground techno-geeks with access to pre-launch versions were working on ways to make Kinect move beyond fun and games and into the underworld arena of virtual porn, where users can interact with nearly (or even completely) naked on-screen avatars — both female and male — in unseemly ways.
Following the news that porn peddlers were making their wares available for use with its Kinect system, Microsoft issued a strong statement of disapproval noting, “This isn’t the first example of a technology being used in ways not intended by its manufacturer, and it won’t be the last. Microsoft did not authorize or license its technology for this use. Xbox is a family friendly games and entertainment console and does not allow Adults Only (AO) content to be certified for use on its platform, and would not condone this type of game for Kinect.”
The new “game” from the enterprising Austrian cyber-pornographers no doubt represents just the beginning of a tidal wave of perversion sweeping over the virtual gaming world. One software engineer noted that for centuries new technology has been co-opted by those whose motivation is selling sex. “The Gutenberg printing press printed bibles but it also printed erotica,” he told ABC News.
The folks at Focus on the Family (FOTF) offered another way of looking at the issue. “The pornography industry consistently takes new and innovative products and twists them,” said Jeff Johnston of CitizenLink, FOTF’s online pro-family activist site. “As the apostle Paul said [in Romans 1:30], ‘They invent ways of doing evil.’ ”
Johnston added that the latest distasteful news offers a stark reminder to parents of the importance of connecting with their children in order “to teach them about God’s design for sexuality and to monitor the technology and media that come into their home.”
