This week, we refined our project’s core concept and the message we want to send. Our journey began with a single, burning question: “What could ‘sexy’ look like in 2026?”. While the possibilities are endless, this post explores our team’s initial reactions and the creative evolution that led us to our current goal of a high-concept installation.
Background:
“Sexy” has been a common theme games for all of time, but particularly within the context of classic pinball. This may come as no surprise, but a lot of pre-2000s Pinball machines can be a bit risqué, suggestive, and do often tend to objectify women. When starting our project our team wanted agreed we would not be building anything akin to pre-2000s “sexy pinball” style. Just to give you an example of this, here is an machine from 1991 called “Bride Of Pinbot”.
As you can see this is a sort of dated blow up doll sexy is not the vibe.
What About Modern Games?
Modern games range in their use of “sex” or “sexy” content and often have different use cases or reasons to add this theme to their game.
Of course there is a range to these categories to take them with a grain of salt, but some common reasons to use of sex in games are…
Selling/Appealing to Gooners: Gatcha games/Dating sims/Visual Novels
Games like this make it their main focus to be “Sexy”. Their reason for being sexy is often just to appeal to players wants, fantasies etc. to sell characters, skins, and cosmetics. There is quite a wide range when it comes to this type of game, but one aggressively sexy example is Gun Goddess Nikke.
Casual Appeal: Action, Adventure, Character Focused
Some games like to add a little pizzaz while you play, this type of sexy often makes no impact on the gameplay but is there just for the player to look at. This is the type of sexy addition that has sparked the most debate online in recent years. One well known example of this is Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.
For Comedy: Multiplayer, Vector Graphic, Short Play
These games are often less “sexy” and more “sex themed”. They tend to objectify the parts and act of sex to the point of it becoming something funny, not hot. I personally enjoy this take on sex in games, although I do think that it lacks some of the challenges of “sexy” when it comes to game design.
Narrative: Single Player, Story Driven, Emotional
These types of games often use sex to drive their story. Sex or attraction in this type of game plays a role in directing the actions of characters and subsequently the outcome of the narrative. These games often can have a wide range of themes, but generally focus their use of sex into the story rather then their gameplay or as a visual alone. One absolutely amazing example for this category is Dispatch (2025), it explores a lot of sexual content but in a fairly realistic and story relevant way.
Our Use Case
So after talking and researching our team we came to realize that the “sexy” we wanted, was closest to the realistic and narrative use case. We didn’t want to steer away from any of the realities of sex. We didn’t want to use it as a joke, to sell anything, we wanted to explore the power and definition of sex, and to do that we needed to know what sex was and a message.
So… What is our message?
Sex as we see it in 2026 is something that is being designed and mass produced as a tool to help people cope with the stress of daily life. We want to play off of the tension between seeing these mass produced items as, what they are, objects meant to appeal, and the things you use them for, comfort, love, distraction, fulfillment, etc.