Interactive entertainment has never quite made it out of its troubled adolescence. As far as we've come — all the way from simple, chunky blocks of primary colors — gaming has always been the surly teenager, obsessed with kill-counts, bust sizes, and ruthless profanity. A brief glance across store shelves demonstrates how seriously most games take themselves, from the endless parade of grimacing space marines to Kratos tearing the wings off Harpies with a scowl and a snarl.
Ubisoft attempted to rid We Dare trailers from the Internet. They failed.
It's a stereotype we've been trying to break out of for the past decade. Despite the increasing numbers of gamers over the age of 18, the industry has struggled to find a place for titles that target the adult market. Enthusiasts insist that the hobby has grown up and demand the critics grant it the same respect afforded to older forms of entertainment.
But in their fervent desire for acceptance, consumers and developers may have reached a little too far, amateurishly aping the tropes of precedent media. And yet when a title attempts something new — something specific to games that reaches for a niche of the adult market — the Internet explodes with adolescent mockery.
Which brings us to the much-maligned We Dare: In case you missed the furor, We Dare is a Wii and PlayStation 3 title that Ubisoft announced in mid-February. The company marketed it as a "sexy, quirky, party game." A horrifically miscalculated series of trailers followed, sparking an online firestorm which soon caught the attention of the mainstream media. This led to rabid scaremongering that only intensified when We Dare garnered a PEGI 12 rating [editor's note: PEGI is the content-rating system used in Europe], which lies in stark contrast to the unabashed titillation of the trailers. In an attempt to extricate themselves from their own blunder, Ubisoft struck the game from its release schedules in the U.S. and the U.K.
As ridiculous as the trailers were, I think We Dare has a place. Why not? With a growing audience of consenting adult gamers, why isn't there room for sexy, fun, flirty games to be played in the comfort of your own home? The board-game industry has an entire specialty market for these types of products.
Part of being an adult is understanding that frivolity and fun have a time and place. It's the adolescent-minded gamer who struts and scowls and insists on being taken seriously at all times. We Dare may not be a revolution in adult gaming, but surely it's a positive step forward when compared to the Rez trance vibrator, the mountain of identical Xbox Indie massage apps, or the Japanese rape simulators so beloved by tabloid headlines.
I suspect most people would have no objection to the existence of We Dare on principle. You might giggle or find it hard to take seriously — even in the best circumstances, it's a niche product — but it was Ubisoft's mind-boggling decision to announce We Dare's existence with a series of swinging-themed trailers which raised the ax over its release.
Ubisoft's marketing team wildly misappraised the average Internet user's sexual proclivity. In doing so, they permanently tied up their product in the stigma of group sex, a taboo more likely to be associated with an edgy HBO series than a fun after-dinner game with friends. Whether it's a fair association or not is immaterial once public perception forms, and while the risque trailers certainly got the Internet talking about We Dare, it was undoubtedly negative publicity.
The association colored what could have been a fun distraction for a pair of consenting adults. Once Ubisoft attached the connotation to the game, pulling it out during a dinner party with friends became a loaded proposition, indeed.
Despite everything, the finishing blow proved to be the PEGI 12 age rating (followed by an equally puzzling Australian Classification Board "Parental Guidance" rating), with the obvious knee-jerk implication that the publisher was targeting a sex-themed plaything at children. The media leaped on this scandal, and Ubisoft had little choice but to pull the title from release in two major markets.
The truth behind the rating is a different matter entirely. From the tone and positioning of the marketing materials released up to that point, We Dare clearly targeted sexually liberated 20- or 30-somethings, and while the 12 rating seems inappropriate, a limitation of the PEGI system is that the ratings are based exclusively on the content of the game, not the wider implications of behavior promoted by a title.
Since We Dare did not directly promote or imply sexual activity — just interactions that are precursors to sexual activity — and contained only the briefest suggestion of bare flesh, the board couldn't award it a stricter rating no matter how much Ubisoft might have desired one. Without the watchful eye of the media scrutinizing We Dare suspiciously, perhaps it could have survived, but with the Internet already riled up, it was enough to put the tumultuous final nail in the title's coffin.
We Dare released with as little fanfare as possible in mid-March, making its way into stores around Canada, Australia, and continental Europe. At the time of this writing, no sales figures were available to see whether its baptism by fire and subsequent notoriety helped or hindered its prospects, but whichever turns out to be true — and I suspect the latter — the industry loses. We Dare tried to do something different: offer a fun distraction for adult gamers. In doing so it invoked such controversy that any publisher in their right mind will think twice about trying something unique of their own in the future .
Why bother, when they can make a whole lot more money from beige marines scowling their way through uninhabitable terrain?
Originally posted at Generation Minus One, the webcomic of last-gen gaming.