I spend a lot of time looking at Pornhub for my job, and there’s one type of ad on the site that I can’t get out of my head. The visuals change, but the copy is often the same, presenting me with a kind of challenge or dare, perhaps with a hint of hostility: “Try not to cum while playing this game.”
This challenge is typically paired with either a Dungeons and Dragons-esque big titty goth girl or some other animated character. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of Elsa and Anna from Disney’s animated hit Frozen doing terrible things in these banner ads. They mock me. Try not to cum, they say. Just try.
The insinuation is that these games are so titillating—their horny Disney characters so sexually potent—that a player would not be able to play them for long before uncontrollably climaxing.
In the spirit of public service, I decided to try to go down the rabbit hole of porn game ads, and try not to cum in the process.
The first thing to know about these games is that they’re not exactly free, and that you can’t buy them like you buy a game on Steam. These ads are selling subscriptions to adult game websites. All of the ads on Pornhub’s network of sites (YouPorn, Redtube, etc) are managed by TrafficJunky, which is owned by Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek. It’s an ouroboros of advertising money, eating its own dick, endlessly. Telling me not to cum.
According to the TrafficJunky website, these ads rake in three billion impressions a day. Conservatively, hundreds of millions of people are confronted, each and every day, with the taunting of an animated woman commanding them not to do what they came to this website to do.
I start my porn game reviewing quest at home as opposed to at VICE’s open floor office because I don’t know what will unfold on my screen. I begin by clicking the first video that appears in the “Hot porn videos in the United States” section on Pornhub’s homepage, “TEEN GETS HER YOGA PUSSY LICKED BY MOM’S BFF.”
The first banner ad next to that video is for Cumshots: The Game. This says it’s a “Family affair simulator” but when I click through, it takes me to a page rotating short clips of 3D animated porn of fantasy characters, blowjobs of two-dicked men, and what looks like the rabbit cop from Zootopia.
I click through and am asked to take a questionnaire, one full page per question, with those animated porn characters rotating in the background. It asks me to:
- Choose my gender. I choose male.
- Choose my sex partner, Leliana or Vereesa. I choose Vereesa and wonder why this assumed I’m a straight male.
- Choose my dick size: Small, medium, large, or massive. I choose massive, which is the width of a skateboard according to the helpful visual aid of a CGI person.
- Choose my sex partner’s breast size. I choose “massive,” which is like a set of beach balls on a woman who shouldn’t be able to stand.
After gathering this basic information, the questionnaire begins asking more serious questions:
“Anything can happen in these games, including aggressive sex, is this ok with you?”
“This game has been called the most addicting sex game online, do you have what it takes to play?”
“To prevent any problems. This game includes a lot of domination and female submission. Is this ok with you?”
“Do you have any medical conditions that could arise from playing games? For example: seizures, addiction, or aggressive behavior.”
“What turns you on in games?”
It goes like this until I finally reach a screen that asks for my credit card.
“People from New York need to provide a form of age verification (you will not be charged). We are required by New York law to verify the age of players,” the site said. There is no law in New York or the U.S. that requires adult websites to age-gate their services using credit card information.
There’s no way I’m inputting my personal credit card information, so I wait until I’m back in the office to start the process all over again with a VICE credit card.
This time I start the process by clicking on an ad featuring Elsa and Anna from Frozen. Anna’s staring at Elsa’s boobs, which are spilling out of her bra. Disney did not respond to a request for comment about Elsa’s boobs.
I click through the same questionnaire as before and am eventually asked for a credit card again. The entire process was a setup to get me to sign up for a two-day trial of MyGamerVault.com. Nowhere is it made very clear that this is a short-term trial, except in small print, which explains that at the end of this two-day trial, the credit card will be charged $39.95 per month, and that the charge will show up on the bill as BRANDHELPSVCS.COM, a customer support and billing services provider.
Anyway, whatever, not my money!
I give the site my credit card and finally enter the MyGamerVault site, which features a menu of dozens of porn games that parody popular video games, like Call of Booty and Grand Fuck Auto. I used to play a lot of Call of Duty when I was a teenager so naturally that’s what I’m going to play first.
Call of Booty
There’s a short intro using still images that explains my assignment is to extract Sarah, who is wearing a camo thong, from a group of terrorists. The game itself is a simple first person shooter which looks like it was made with free assets from the Unity asset store. I’m dropped into a rocky terrain with an assault rifle and soon find extremely dumb terrorists to shoot. The entire thing runs in the browser, poorly.
The controls are terrible and I can’t figure out how to reload, and also my aim is bad to begin with, so I die three times in five minutes. I’m sorry Sarah, I failed you. I don’t have time to git gud at Call of Booty.
Final review: So far, not only have I have not cum, I have not even had to trynot to cum.
Grand Fuck Auto
Here, my task is to “find the hottest babes around, fuck them Grand Fuck Auto style.” Hilariously, it’s in the style of the early GTA games, with a top-down 2D view of a car. Also true to the original, I drive around looking for sex workers to pick up (which happens in visual novel cutscenes), talk to them in the most abhorrently abusive ways possible, then run from the cops. I hit a car head-first and the game is over.
Final review: Definitely did not cum.
World of Whorecraft
This is an endless runner, where I’m an orc who can’t stop running at full speed—all I can do is jump, slash, dive, and die. I die six times. Twice was because the jump lagged and I ran headfirst into a large rock.
Final review: No cum.
Titris
I tried to play Titris, but it required Flash, which Motherboard’s Guide to Not Getting Hacked clearly states hackers love “because it’s had more holes than Swiss cheese.” I got all the enjoyment I’m going to get out of that game from the title alone.
Final review: Didn’t cum, or attempted not to cum, and nearly endangered my computer.
CyberFuck
CyberFuck, which seems like a riff on the board game Cyberpunk 2020, is off to a better start: The instructions are about pleasing a woman. Maybe I will cum today.
Despite these very sexual instructions, this is a goddamn puzzle game. I’m awful at puzzles. Somehow I die trying to solve one. I’ve had it.
Final review: Did not cum.
Samantha Cole – Read more on vice.com
