I was looking at Steam again, where up top they’re advertising some Xbox sale, where prior to that it was that Clair Obscur French Persona game, and before that it was Oblivion 2. Somewhere in the recent big sellers part further down the page was some game with a very obvious porn-driven title, not quite along the lines of “Big Boobs Hentai 87” or whatever “AI slop” that would be, but obviously some kinda furry porn.
Disappointingly, it didn’t take long for me to figure out it just was the “clean” version of a game where someone has to visit some horrible site such as Twitter to find the definitely-not-virus link to add the “funny content” to whatever ends said content is. I’m not here to discuss the implications of certain kinds of certain content, but rather that I was more hoping it really was a completely clean game with no porno involved that just happened to have an unfortunate name, because that would make it actually interesting and funny instead of a not even thinly-veiled attempt at having a porn-optional game on there.
So I was thinking about a scenario where a game comes out with completely wholesome and well-designed gameplay and content, not even any skimpy attire, or something like avant-garde indie art content that would make the title obviously ironic, and it’s just called “Gigaslut Boobfapper” or whatever absurdly pornographic name. And that name is just played completely straight up as if it was just a cool name they came up with that also isn’t mentioned anywhere within the game itself, and anyone who calls out the name for being clearly porn-ish is just shut down by saying that there is nothing actually wrong with the name, it has language or lore reasons or something. Essentially a game that could have gone with a more marketable name entirely but chose not to for important reasons. Even better would be to later develop language and lore that actually justifies the name from an in-universe standpoint.
Some potential followups to this involve false rumors of a secret official patch that turns the game into porn that never lead anywhere, or some word of a sequel or add-on that will be definitely “adult” that ultimately ends up being tax or business software, the most adult thing imaginable. Then of course there’s the potential to have a game’s age rating go far into the extremely adult category in a number of regions just by adding gambling minigames while the rest is generally family-friendly fun. Alternately, see how low the rating can be on a game while having as much intense bloody violence within the pre-teen rating range, such as E10+ or PEGI 12 at most, or aim even lower by claiming that everyone is just filled with red paint and only red paint while it’s clearly implying otherwise.
In a time only years at most away from total societal collapse or something likewise, where phone game ads are just blatant shock value rather than actually advertising something present in their respective Skinner boxes, there’s still room to screw with people without needing an ulterior motive behind it, as well as not just stabbing random people as a “prank”.