Gold Machine

By investing equally in man and woman protagonists, Leather Goddesses of Phobos neither exploits nor objectifies.

Leisure Suit Larry and the Graphical Gaze

The history of games containing sexual content has interested critics greatly. Jimmy Maher’s writeup on Leather Goddesses of Phobos is prefaced by several paragraphs about games like Softporn Adventure, Dirty Old Man, and Farmer’s Daughter. What makes these games so interesting? I think the answer will vary critic to critic, that that answer will likely be “a lot” or “nothing.” I’ll qualify my answer: they are interesting as important evolutionary building blocks that contribute to the foundation of narrative gaming. They are not, in my opinion, very interesting to play.

Smart people can disagree, of course. I hope we can agree on that! I never liked Seirra’s Leisure Suit Larry games by Al Lowe, for instance, but many people did and do. The LSL series began as an in-universe follow up to Chuck Benton’s Softporn Adventure and featured graphical production values that small or individual authors could not easily replicate. This was a corporate and mainstream product offering laughs via sexual innuendo and satire of the 1970s-style male “ladies’ man.”

What makes these games so interesting? I think the answer will vary critic to critic, that that answer will likely be “a lot” or “nothing.”

Recalling previous discussions here, I assert that both Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Leisure Suit Larry set out to create joy rather than arousal. Isn’t that what laughter signifies within a comedic context? Joy? This important similarity aside, though, these games differ significantly in terms of gameplay, presentation, and, ultimately, in the way they offer up their “sexual” content. How so? let’s begin with the wrong answer, which I recently retrieved from Wikipedia:

Larry aimed for laughs rather than pure titillation, setting it apart in a landscape populated by titles like Strip Poker, Sex Vixens from Space, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, MacPlaymate and Cobra Mission.

People who have played Leather Goddesses of Phobos, must, I’m sure, feel differently. In fact, and this is ultimately what separates Leather Goddesses of Phobos from the rest of the erotic and/or sex comedy oeuvre: there is no essentially male perspective or cultural baggage weighing down the humor of Meretzky’s work. Rather, sex is a source of comic mischief. Leather Goddesses of Phobos is about the joy of harmless transgression. Its protagonists do not go to bars where women characters are essentially locked doors or chests concealing sexual treasure.

Leather Goddesses of Phobos is rather unique among 1980s games with sexual content in that its problems are not problems of conquest. As a final observation regarding Leisure Suit Larry, consider this quote from the MacWorld’s Keith McCandless:

On the reference card supplied with Leisure Suit Larry, under Talking to Women, it says: “Women can be loads of fun…. Women are also fickle. Do not take ‘no’ for an answer.”

…

And while there are numerous (usually sophomoric) traditional-male laughs, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards could have been funnier and somewhat more contemporary if Larry encountered (humorously rendered) women of the eighties. If the fun here suffers in comparison with the raunchy and humorous Leather Goddesses of Phobos or Space Quest games, it is mostly because of the retrograde subject matter.

There are two very important elements of the erotic adventure game that are missing in Leather Goddesses of Phobos. The first is the “gaze,” in which a subject is reduced to sexual object. Leather Goddesses of Phobos never objectifies. There are no exhaustive descriptions of body parts or sexual acts. Characterization of bodies–even sexual partners–typically ape the language of pulp science fiction. They are, in other words, parody. The second missing element, already mentioned above, is the design trope of reducing a human character to sexual treasure object or “prize.”

In fact, and this is ultimately what separates Leather Goddesses of Phobos from the rest of the erotic and/or sex comedy oeuvre: there is no essentially male perspective or cultural baggage weighing down the humor of Meretzky’s work here.

These differentiations are reached via more than one path, but the most important method is Meretzky’s artful use of gender selection. I’ve already written about the significance of gender choice in Jeffrey O’Neill’s Ballyhoo, where I called the choice primarily an “existential” one. That is, very little changes about the game, regardless of the player’s choice. Some critics have said that gender choice in Leather Goddesses of Phobos has similarly little impact. I cannot agree, because a chief effect of incorporating both man and woman protagonists is that the treatment of sex emphasizes pulp mischief over simulation or visual representation. Rather than emphasize quote-unqote “transgressive” behavior, Mertetzky creates a world and tone that celebrates transgressiveness generally. A chief pleasure of Leather Goddesses of Phobos is naughtiness for its own sake, and it doesn’t need CGA images of blonde women in bars to get us there.

Wow, Cool Future

I do not wish to overemphasize comments I’ve already made regarding Steve Meretzky’s post-Infocom graphical games, not only Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2: Gas Pump Girls Meet the Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet X!, but also the Spellcasting 101 series published by Legend Entertainment. It is inevitable that some or many of my readers might enjoy them. So be it! I am not the enjoyment police. However, I believe it is worth considering what, if anything, Leather Goddesses of Phobos possesses that those later games lack. The most obvious answer is already provided: the visual elements of these games can foment an objectifying gaze–even if that is not intended (it’s hard to imagine that the Spellcasting 101 series presents a case of accidental objectification).

These differences are hard to miss. Consider the cover art, for instance.

While I will not busy up the page with it, here is a link to a print ad for LGOP 2. It features a woman in lingerie. Please note that I have no moral objection this sort of box art or promotional artwork. I am hopefully demonstrating that the rhetorical position of the later Meretzky games is different: radically different, in fact.

Ultimately, this is another case in which a text adventure game can only reach the heights it has reached because it is a parser game. In Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the author has complete control over that which is or is not visualized. They can imply that which an image would render explicit. They can drive a wedge between the protagonist’s perception of the beautiful and erotic and our own real-life ideas about what is and what is not attractive. The protagonist, likewise, is freed from the burden of appealing to some other’s gaze. Leather Goddesses of Phobos is ultimately about joy for its own sake, about laughter and pleasure without exploitation or harm or consumption. Now that is a real fantasy! I’m reminded of that Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

That’s not all: given its penchant for surrealism, Leather Goddesses of Phobos is really, really suited for the text game medium. Consider the odd names for the docks, or the mouse, or rabbit, the hole at the south pole, or, of course, the famous tee remover. The bottomless dust at the mall. This is a world of wordplay, half figurative and half real. What other medium could realize it? I think many critics and players misunderstand the significance of the tee remover. As I recently wrote, yes, it ultimately turns up–sort of–in that beloved Emily Short game Counterfeit Monkey, but I find it equally significant that LGOP is a game in which the tee remover can exist at all.

I’m reminded of that Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

That is, it occupies a world so pleasantly surreal that many of us are willing to follow wherever things go. Leather Goddesses of Phobos is a game in which a word is, in fact, the essence of the thing it describes. An angle, which has no physical manifestation, is made real by the power of language alone. We players control the world with words, and words alone can make it turn.

That is another joy on display here: the joy of written language.

Afterword

As delightful and effective as Leather Goddesses of Phobos‘s use of gender choice is, we should acknowledge that it narrowly construes gender and attraction in a way that is both a) innovative and forward-looking for its time and b) not in any sense inclusive or representative for all.

I say this as a fan.

Next

Over at the Interactive Fiction Community Forum, I’ll soon be doing a playthrough of Emily Short’s classic storylet game, Bee. I’ll follow that up with a podcast summary! Please look forward to it. I’ll be sure and link the thread on Bluesky and Mastodon, so follow me if you want news about upcoming criticism and game writing projects. If you’re a member at intfiction, please consider joining the discussion!

Hope to see some of you there.