Try it out now:

“Sir, if I could have a moment of your time…”

“Wowee, I don’t know anybody at this party!”

“Hottiepally whispers, ‘u want to do 5 man scholo?’”

“We have no problem with you airing our errors to the world (we do the same by keeping our updates public), but I’d like to think you’d simultaneously alert us to them as a professional courtesy.”

Anyway, Sony is publishing Rule of Rose in Japan, but declined to do so here as well. Luckily for all you “loli” pervs, Atlus decided to pick up the hot, hot slack.

Read – Press Release [Atlus]

Our research revealed that Alyx is too aimed in her design— aimed at the young videogame-playing men who are too genteel to slaver for the plebian oversized and impractically exposed tit or the common man’s leather-swaddled buttock, while still being susceptible to yammering on about whom they would acquiesce to bone.

Figure 1: The urbane male’s perspective.

The asian features, the measuredly tomboyish denim and jersey knit clothing, the de-fetishizing lack of glasses despite the technobabble words coming out of her un-glossed mouth, her faithful giant robot— it’s all designed to make the lonely sensitive boy say, “There’s a pretend woman I can unashamedly admit is to my taste. I will do so now on an internet forum.”

Alyx, to critical ladies in their mid-20s, is still fanservice— just to a different sort of fan. It’s her unending congeniality, mostly. That, and the plucky science girl routine, her pet-like convenience and utility, and probably even her “y”. She’s just too slick and attendant to Gordon for them to believe her as a character.

Figure 2: The uncompromising female’s perspective.

Conclusion: For maximum appeal to women, when Alyx says something unauthentic and pisses them off, causing them to take revenge by chucking paint cans and concrete blocks at her face, she should at least say “Ow.”

And as a plausibility footnote for the plot, the part in the beginning of Episode 1 with the van ride turns them right off as well, even though it is Dog-related. The eyes start rolling and the tongue starts clicking right after the first turn. That might have been some lingering Alyx hate, though.

In her latest “Sex Drive” column, Wired’s sex reporter, Regina Lynn, tackles cybersex, those looking to mix it more heavily with another popular online activity, gaming, and those resistant to the whole idea, namely most gamers and most cybersex…ers. We’re apparently holding back the free spirits by laughing at their demands to put dongs on orcs.

From what I’ve seen in blogs and forums, “real” gamers scoff at sex games. “Go watch porn,” they say, sardonic and superior. Games are serious, cybersex is not, and combining the two is just another example of the entertainment industry not getting it.

Well, if anyone is predisposed to putting something in someone’s mouth, even if it’s words, it’s a sex columnist. But listen, Regina: no matter if you’re a sore loser or not, deep down we all know games aren’t serious. That’s why they’re called games.

As far as the entertainment industry not getting it, well, yeah, but neither do you. See, just because the word “sex” is in the word “cybersex” doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. One is something that’s universal, and the other is a straight-up fetish. And you don’t cater to a fetish by mixing it with something ancillary and big-budget.

You’re in essence saying that all the S&M grocery stores don’t stock as much stuff as Kroger, but if they did they’d see huge success. I know that fantasy is an overactive component of the cybersexer’s psyche, but there’s fantasy and then there’s just plain wishful thinking.

Read – Sex Trumps Game [Wired]