Oh my, the reading list keeps growing.

Fellow sex tech writer Damon Brown, currently of Playboy, is coming out with an exciting new book this fall called Porn and Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, and Other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture. Brown specializes in pop culture, so it seems his focus will be on tracing sex content through gaming history, as well as tying it to the influence of the porn industry. A quote from Playboy’s senior editor on his site implies he might also be taking the “pornography is the secret engine that drives the adoption of most modern technology” angle–an idea we’ve talked about around here many a time.

Check in again soon for a Click Me interview with Brown–about his book, his thoughts on Grand Theft Auto IV, and his vision for sex games in the future.

Zivity, the “community- powered showcase promoting female beauty,” may not be the ultimate combination of web 2.0 and sexy imagery it sets itself up to be–but when it comes to presenting alternative bodies, it’s actually pretty impressive.

The site, which I featured in a Click Me last year, posts photo sets of female models–photo sets which, Zivity’s PR insists, are not porn, despite their flirty nature and, well, nudity. The way the site works is this: members buy votes for a dollar a piece so they can vote on which photo sets they like. The models and photographers then get a cut of each dollar voted.

Interesting idea, but since you can see all the photo sets without paying a cent, what’s the real incentive of buying votes? The site is still in closed beta, so it’s hard to say for sure, but it seems the economic thinking may not pan out. For exampe, at the moment the top model has 926 votes–and that’s for seven sets. Since Zivity takes 20 cents of each dollar as commission, that means the model, “Pearl,” and her photographer are splitting between them $740.80: only a little over a hundred bucks a set.

With that said, I have to admit I’m enjoying looking through the 100+ photo sets that are already up. What I like most is the variety of models. While there are plenty of busty, blond beauties, there’s also a nice selection of forms we don’t normally get to see in erotic photography. In a set titled “Breaking a Sweat,” a young woman shows off her lean, muscular body as she trains for a boxing matching. In another, a pale girl with dreadlocks, two lip rings, a polka-dotted dress rolls a collection of marbles across her bed–and her nearly flat upper half.

Of course, not all the sets are perfect. Many could use trimming (no, we don’t need to see the same picture three times from minutely different angles), and some do a better job at telling a story than others. In the overall though, all are well-light, well-framed: high quality. And the number of women I’ve seen in cabaret gear and kinky corsets is enough to make up for a whole slew of other issues…

If you’re interested, you can go to Zivity and sign up for the closed beta. I’ll also be sure to let you know when the site officially opens its doors to the public. Pretty girls with dreadlocks for all!

Yes, it’s true, Jenna Jameson has retired from porn. That hasn’t stopped her from appearing in ridiculous movies about sexy zombies though–and it certainly won’t stop her online likeness from getting it on in Virtually Jenna for years to come. In this week’s Click Me, I talk to Brad Abram, ever a good sport, about Jameson, his team’s other sex simulator games, and what makes their work stand out in the world of adult interactive titles. From the article:

According to Abram, Xstream3D’s North American marketing and business representative, PC-only Virtually Jenna has been in ongoing development for the last five years. In fact, it won’t be officially finished until 2010—despite opening its doors to the paying public in 2005. Add in a two-million-dollar budget, says Abram, and that explains why his game looks better than any other sex sim on the market. It also explains why, for their $29.99 a month, players get regular updates supplementing the game’s simple, self-proclaimed goal of making girls “suck and fuck hard and wild.”

I can’t even imagine the amount of work these guys do, considering Xstream3D runs at least five versions of Virtually Jenna with different “skins”–including a three-dimensional hentai game. Serious props for range, folks!

Grand Theft Auto IV is due out tomorrow, April 29th, and as the latest in a series of games that has inspired enough controversy to keep an entire country of Jack Thompsons angrily busy for decades, the imminent title can’t help but beg the question: what will shock us this time?

GTA IV’s predecessor, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas not only sparked the infamous Hot Coffee debacle–in which parents, politicians, and media members alike made an absurd fuss over a hack-able sex mini game included on the game disc–it also put sex workers up in arms. The violence in San Andreas apparently got directed not only at criminals and police people, but also at prostitutes. According to the Sex Workers Outreach Program, while censorship is bad, “accruing points to players for the depiction of the rape and murder of prostitutes” is even worse. Fair enough.

While I can’t help but think Take Two won’t be dumb enough to repeat Hot Coffee, who knows what their desire for publicity will do. Then there’s the question of in-game sex workers. The GTA IV trailers show the protagonist at what looks to be a strip club. And after playing a preview, The Guardian Gamesblog called it “a game of simply breathtaking scope, filled with wit and smut and beautifully engineered violence.” But just how violently smutty will things get?

-Because the game’s blog gods hear our prayers, we’ve been blessed with this write-up of New York City in video games over the years. Remember how we were talking about GTA IV hitting a little too close to home? Well, apparently home has been hit an awful lot. As for any sort of NYC in games analysis, the write-up may be lacking, but check back soon for some Heroine Sheik-style picking apart.

-Lesbian Gamers has coverage up about We Cheer, a new kind of girl game–specifically the kind where Bratz-loving children flail their Wii-motes in an attempt to look like super-deformed cheerleaders. I’d like to say something convstructive about the Wii and gender, but all I can think about is But I’m a Cheerleader.

-In the cool new games department, The Guardian Gamesblog directs our attention to the perfectly adorable, perfectly macabre World of Goo, an indy physics game that would make Johan Vasquez proud. Must… play…

Happy Weekend!

Angry commenters always love it when I mention sex and children, so let’s see how this goes over…

Regina Lynn put up an interesting post a while back about teens “creating adult content,” i.e. writing erotic fiction and publishing it on the internet. Her point was that angsty teenage erotica is totally normal, and I agree. What I want to ask instead is, is it kosher to read erotica written by underage authors?

When it comes to sex, kids, and age laws, the internet makes things fuzzy. Obviously I don’t condone adults engaging in cybersex with minors, but at what point online activity becomes illegal, it’s hard to tell. Cybersex regulars also know it can be seriously difficult to tell who’s over and under eighteen online. I’ve talked to forty-year-olds who type in LOLspeak and fourteen-year-olds who compose beautiful, coherent sentences.

That problem obviously gets more pronounced when you’re reading a piece of erotic fiction, not talking to someone online. How can you tell the age of the author? Sure, we can assume that immature pieces are written by immature writers. But what does it mean if we get turned on by a story written by someone under eighteen? Does that cross the line?

It’s an uncomfortable question, but one that’s got to be asked. Thoughts?

P.S. Fellow surrealism dorks get extra points for correctly identifying this photo.