Every June when the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) rolls around, what everyone seems to focus on are the big games — the new “Call of Duty,” the latest major PlayStation 4 exclusive, and so on. It’s “Video Game Christmas,” as they say, even though the only gifts are ads games fans will have to pay for whenever they come out.
But focusing on the big stuff means you’re more likely to miss the real treasures of E3: Obscure independent games that won’t ever get much of a marketing push. It just so happens that
Devolver doesn’t set up in E3 itself. Instead, they buy out a parking lot across the street from the Los Angeles Convention Center, where they park a few airstream trailers for its developers to present their games to press and give everyone free beer and food. In the past, that food was barbecue cooked up by former “Survivor” contestant Jerri Manthey. This year Jerri was unfortunately absent, but in her place was a food truck. They also had the group Polycade set up a bunch of arcade-style kiosks where any E3 attendee could hang out and play games Devolver had on offer.
Along with the arcade was a large TV showing off a game that was, on the first day of the show, being ignored. It was late in the day, and the Devolver lot was full of people hanging out and having a free drink — the arcade stands were occupied, but this TV had been left alone, even though it had an accompanying couch and seating was at a premium.
My friend and I were confused by the neglect because of what was on the screen: eight colored rectangles of equal size, each containing the phrase “press up to consent.”
So we sat down, picked up the controllers, and consented.
What we saw from there was a marvel: four disembodied penises, a couple of which were wearing clothes.
This game, we learned later, is called “Genital Jousting.” It’s the product of Free Lives Games, the small South African game development studio responsible for the action movie parody game “Broforce.”
“Genital Jousting” is a party game, intended to be played with up to seven of your friends, in which each player tries to insert his or her disembodied penis into the butt of the other disembodied penises. Once every penis is, ah, engaged one way or the other, the round ends and the scores are tallied. Each point earned adds to the length of your penis.
You can see a video of “Genital Jousting” in action at the top of the post (and here’s the requisite NSFW warning).
You earn points by by giving and receiving — something that may not be obvious at first glance. This is a competitive video game, after all, and if you made an analaogy between “Genital Jousting” and a more traditional multiplayer game like “Call of Duty,” you’d think that penetrating somebody else’s butt is like getting a kill, and your own butt getting penetrated would be like being killed.
But that outlook isn’t in the spirit of “Genital Jousting,” which is intended as a joke on that mindset.
“A lot of people are obviously offended by
“Genital Jousting” began at an eight-hour “game jam” — in which game developers are challenged to build a game from scratch in the allotted time — in Berlin in 2015. That initial version came from the minds of another Free Lives developer, Evan Greenwood, an indie developer Martin Kvale. Rothman said it began simply as a way “to have a laugh at the expense of other people.”
But after their colleagues played the thing, they realized it was actually a great idea for a game, and it became a full-fledged project for Free Lives. aside from the multiplayer side of it, “Genital Jousting” will also have a story, somehow, that will be played solo once
“We hired a writer,” Rothmann said,”and it’s going to be an adventurish story that you play through as a disembodied penis.”
So far as I know, he wasn’t joking.
Whenever that public release does come about, it’ll be fascinating to see how it’s received. Rothmann said Americans in particular are more prone to being bothered by “Genital Jousting,” and given our nation’s extensive history of hand-wringing over all things sexual it’s very possible it will draw a controversy.
But Rothamnn hopes that won’t happen.
“It’s not a game that tries to be offensive,” he said. “It’s just about penises.”