What an utterly absurd argument. And the author defeats their own argument by mentioning James Bond. Bond is a staple of western culture and one of the biggest aspects of his character is that he can basically bed any woman he wants.
He sleeps with married women, single women, allied women, enemy women, any and all women. And yet there are no real complaints when he sleeps with one woman only to end up with another by the end of the movie.
The reality is that sex is no longer something that is solely a part of a meaningful relationship. Younger generations of guys and girls know that sex can even be something you can enjoy (on a regular basis too) with a close friend. We understand now that "morals" don't even come into it. That what two people do together is their business and their business alone.
So why should this be any different in a video game? We can reward players by giving them a bigger gun to blow the shit out of people with but can't reward them with a blowjob? No-one gets hurt by the bj, everyone has a good time! Same can't be said of the people on the business end of a shotgun.
I think it really says something about our society that we are still horrified by the notion of sex in a game, but only a lone semi-famous blogger has issues with fucking torture in a game.
Then we come to the concluding paragraph. The stupidest paragraph of them all. The sort of rhetoric and stupidity that makes pretty much everyone hate modern feminazis.
If you had been playing a woman and were able to sleep with loads of men, would this article have ever been written? Fuck no it wouldn't. Instead there would be an article about how we're teaching women to be sluts but that’s besides the point. The fact is, if the game developers want their character to be a heterosexual male, then he can be a heterosexual male and there is nothing wrong with that. So what if he can't sleep with other men? Not all men LIKE to sleep with other men and as this is THEIR game they can choose to do whatever the hell they want with their character. And so what if they don't add lesbians? Who the *fuck* really cares? It's not going to turn everyone into Lesbian haters or something, or magically make everyone forget that lesbians exist.
And then the author ends on a great point: "In addition, it perpetuates the narrative of the Nice Guy (described in Millar's essay, and elsewhere): that men are entitled to sex from women if they follow the rules and do the right things, or in the case of Alpha Protocol, "select your responses wisely.""
Yep. That basically how it works in real life, why should a game be any different? But we're not entitled to it. No-one is really entitled to shit. But we sure as hell can tip the scales in our favour by "selecting the right responses". And you even forget to mention that women don't even need to "select the right responses" to bed men. All most of them need to do is say "fancy a shag?" and they're sorted.
If anything, this game shows that men are whores. Which has been common knowledge for centuries. THERE IS NO ISSUE HERE.
tl;dr: author is clueless.
I find this a perfectly reasonable stance, then again I'm a celibate male so that might be slight hypocrisy.
(for those confused, celibacy does not mean I'm religious, correlation does not equal causation, the reason I have for it is the same as Tesla.)
(EDIT: I realized that could be still be misinterpreted. I am atheist. Also, if there were any actual chance to do anything that would break the celibacy without to much effort I am uncertain how long it'd hold, but I'm a nerd so that'll never happen anyway, and hence it's a good brag factor. :p )