Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know:

  • Majority of adult websites visitors are made up of young males below 25, with a third of them being students.
  • The different relationships that exist in hentai games include the normal heterosexual ones, the homosexual ones (both male and female) as well as the strangest, relationships with imaginary creatures with phallic-shaped tentacles.
  • The number of pornographic websites has gone up by a whopping 1,800 percent since 2001.
  • July 2003: Over 28 million pornographic web pages were uploaded unto the Internet in that month alone.
  • Type ‘Hentai Games’ on Google.com and a massive 2.4 million websites will be listed.

His parents don’t know it, but John, 19, has raped over 20 women, and has taken part in threesomes, sometimes engaging in sadomasochistic sexual acts with minors who are below the legal age of 18 years.

Of course, John (not his real name), hasn’t done any of these things in the real world, but in the more than eight hours a week he spends playing free online hentai games, the ex–junior college student ventures into a virtual world where he gets to pretend to be anything from a sexy stud, to an attractive flamboyant student, to even a serial rapist.

Hentai literally means “pervert” in Japanese while hentai games refer to online Japanese erotic animated games. Their user-interactive features and erotic and busty animated females have proven to be particularly popular among young local males.

“These free online [hentai] games are usually based on either science fiction, fantasy or in a setting of a school,” explained John, who is in National Service.

John fits the profile of an avid porn gamer, as, according to the findings of Singaporeans’ Internet surfing habits from Internet statistics website, NetValue, “visitors to the …[adults sites] are generally young male adults below the age of 25,” with students making up a third of the numbers.

Hentai games often belong to the role-playing game (RPG) genre, and often contain romantic elements. While most hentai games are about heterosexual relationships, an array of them on the Internet, as supported by John’s experience with these sexually explicit games, belong to subgenres; namely, yaoi (male homosexual relationship), yuri or shoujo-ai (lesbianism) and even sex with imaginary tentacled monsters or creatures, otherwise known as “tentacle sex”.

However, with many also promoting taboo themes of masochism, beastiality and violence, it isn’t hard to see why the easy accessibility to free hentai games is a worrisome, disturbing issue among several parents with whom hype spoke to in phone interviews.

“Those [gamers] are sick,” said Agnes Low, 55, in an angry outburst in response to the popularity of hentai games. The housewife is a mother of three girls, two of whom are in their late teens. Though she is very concerned with the danger of impressionable youths playing such games, she admitted that she has been unable to keep track of her tech-savvy daughters’ Internet activities as she doesn’t know how to use the Internet.

Some of the popular foreign websites with pornographic games that John frequents are Newgrounds and Hentai XXX Games, which host free and highly accessible mini clips and flash games.

The Internet is a hotbed for free downloadable pornographic games. An article on the Centre for Internet Addiction Recovery website states that findings from Internet filtering company, N2H2, have shown “the number of commercial pornography web pages on the Internet has increased by nearly 1,800 percent compared with five years ago”, with 260 million pages classified as pornography by N2H2.

A startling “over 28 million new pornographic web pages” were uploaded in that mere month of July in 2003, while a search on Google for the term “hentai games” revealed a whopping return of over 2.4 million web pages. Already, 53 pornographic games websites have been issued a warning in November 2005 by China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) for providing downloads of online raunchy sex games.

Having played hentai games for more than two years, John finds such pornographic games an outlet to express his sexual needs. “These games help me to escape my reality… [and] help to fulfill every man’s sexual fantasy,” said John. He continued by mentioning an example of a common theme in hentai games – harem, which features a single male character surrounded by several adoring females.

He defended the notion that these games are a source for information about sex. He said, “these games [allow] me to know more about sex”, and he is not alone in this dangerous thinking. According to an article in The Straits Times(February 20, 2000), a survey conducted by the Singapore Planned Parenthood Association on 2,369 teenagers between 12 to 21 years of age revealed that “four out of five teenage boys” refer to pornographic materials to learn about sex.

John said the biggest draws to these games are the players’ burning curiosity about sex and the games’ fine graphics. He prefers hentai games to conventional pornography due to the alluring aesthetics of the games. He said, “The bodies [in the games] are “perfect”… it’s more sculpted compared to the real thing. [The virtual world] has an element of fantasy in it compared to reality which can be quite boring”. He also added that these sexually-themed games’ interesting storylines and interactivity are appealing to players.

Another player of such erotic animated video games, Andy (not his real name), a 25-year-old polytechnic student, feels that, “Pornography and hentai games are about the same.” Andy has been hooked onto hentai games since he first stumbled upon it on a video pornography website a few years ago. He’s also drawn to play because of the plots.

Guy Robbins, a psychologist of IPS Worldwide (Innovating People Solutions) at Raffles Place, tells hype that the evident fantasy element in pornographic games isn’t only an agent of escapism for the player, but that it also enthralls the player by placing him or her “in a powerful position”.

He cited an example of a guy’s common erotic fantasy – sexually attacking an unsuspecting female, which, like most sexual fantasies of pornographic games, gives its player a “sense of control” over his circumstances. He added that players tend to find it difficult to disassociate fantasy with real life due to the body’s physical reactions that they experience – such as ejaculation – as they immerse themselves in their game’s fantasies.

Viewing these games as “corruption to the innocent mind”, Mrs Chew, 48, a mother of two sons in their late teens, added, “[As the youths] are playing such games, they tend to get sexually excited – which isn’t good”. She fears that the habitual playing of erotic online games may lead young people to commit crimes of rape.

Mr Robbins warns that while there’s no direct correlation between deviant sexual behaviour and playing online pornographic games, “it becomes a problem when players start acting out in real life what they had seen in the video games”.

“Viewing pornography either online or in other ways such as in VCD format or on TV, for most people, doesn’t present too many problems. But there are those who are vulnerable to serious psychological problems from pornography,” said psychologist Brian Scott of Scott Psychological Services . While this isn’t a valid excuse, Mr Scott also explained that youths can be more prone to succumb to the allure of pornographic games if they come from a dysfunctional family, have a parent who has kept their own pornography secret, or were isolated as a child.

Another parent, Paul Arnold Low, 59, a businessman and father of three daughters (the youngest child being 17), thinks that these pornographic games “only [attract] the curious and naïve audience or those who are actually looking for it… Nothing happens if you choose to ignore [the links to websites with sexually-themed games]”.

He acknowledged that being a parent, he had warned his children of such “inappropriate games and websites”, but he finds it difficult to shield them from all of the Internet’s prevalent online pornographic materials. “I trust that they will exercise caution when surfing the Internet,” he said, “ [but] it’s [ultimately] up to their personal discipline and desire to be righteous.”

Offering forbidden fruit certainly adds an edge to the games. Players can perform illegal sexual acts, such as having sex with a minor, or realise impossible dreams like having sexual intercourse in outer space or being intimate with a movie star. No wonder young players get hooked.

Some of the gamers hype spoke to admitted to spending over an hour at a time playing hentai games, and research cited in an article on NetValue has shown that local visitors to pornographic sites spent an average of “63.7 minutes” on the sites.

Mr Robbins noted that avid players tend to be desensitised to the crude pornographic content they are exposed to after a period of time, resulting in an unquenchable desire to acquire more pornographic materials that are of higher stimulation.

Lilian Tan, who is a counsellor at Touchline Community Service, said that online pornographic gamers are likely to read pornographic magazines, too, as they usually feel that “they [can’t] get enough of [pornographic materials]”.

This view is supported by the National University of Singapore (NUS) Psychological Studies undergraduate, Chang Yi Jin, who feels that there’s a high chance these players “started off with pornographic magazines before graduating into pornographic games”.

Some of the possible adverse effects of frequent playing of online pornographic games that Mr Scott pointed out were “premature sexual interest, development of unusual sexual objects of desire, possible sadistic or masochistic tendencies – if these are the themes of the pornography [which the player uses] – and a preference for online virtual sex over real sex and intimacy”.

He also warned that playing pornographic online games “can become a serious addiction with the same negative consequences as any other addiction”.

However, fellow psychologist Mr Robbins pointed out that it’s the feeling of excitement and pleasure associated with the exposure to the pornographic materials in the games which lead to habitual play of online pornographic games.

The dark effects of habitual play of erotic games may be serious, but don’t expect a major clamp down on all students’ personal Internet activities in school any time soon.

“So far, I haven’t heard of students being caught in school for downloading pornographic games,” said Mr Brian Lee, a lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. But he’s aware that the playing of such games isn’t uncommon among Singapore youths based on the popularity and high accessibility of such games on the web. Viewing the content of such games as “potentially harmful”, he emphasized that the onus is on the students to be aware of sexually-lewd games on the Internet.

“One of the ways to stop [the popularity of online pornographic games] is to rely on parental control… and by introducing [Internet content filter software] such as NetNanny”, he suggested.

Perhaps some parents may want to take the lead of Mrs Chew. To stop an influx of pornography in her childrens’ internet intake, she said that in her home, “the computer is placed in a place where I monitor my children’s Internet activities. Hence, there’s no privacy to download online sexually-explicit materials”.

An interesting point to note is that online pornographic games appeal mostly to men, while women usually form only a small minority of players. Mr Robbins believes this is because sex is often viewed by males as more of a physical act while it’s more of an emotional act to women.

In seeking treatment to break free from the addiction of sexual online games, Mr Scott suggested seeking professional help from psychiatrists and counselors and attending a support group.

One such support group that deals with pornography-related problems locally is the Sex & Love Addiction Anonymous of the Centre For Addiction Recovery & Education. This drop-in centre also provides counselling to pornography addicts by those who had successfully overcome similar sexual addictions.

“Peers at this age are very important,” stresses Ms Tan, who has experiences with such youths, “hence those who want to break the habit of playing online pornographic games should hang out with friends who don’t participate in online sex games.

“This will discourage the addicted person from falling back to his old addiction.”