Where did the outrage go?

Way back in the forgotten past of January 2008, Fox News ran a story warning parents of graphic sex scenes running rampant through a video game marketed directly at their children...called Mass Effect. Conservative pundits, who readily admitted they had not (and would not ever) play the offending game, angrily mike-checked industry defenders and held the moral line at all costs. Even when cooler heads finally denounced those arguments, the pundits’ retreat was strategic rather than complete. Sex in video games? Bad. Full stop.

Shepard. Please go back to your home on Whore Island.

Well, I just checked my calendar. Standing right here in March 2012, nobody’s made a peep about Mass Effect 3, which has roughly four times the sex and 500 percent more homosexual sex than its predecessors.

What happened? Have we finally acknowledged that the majority of gamers are well past the age of consent, and a growing segment have kids of their own? Or did the industry quietly scale back from depicting adult scenes? A little of both, for the wrong reasons.

Oh, I’m not saying the industry’s sex-scene per capita dropped in the last four of five years. If anything, the pseudo-scandal that Fox News stirred up just emboldened developers to show more skin. Why not? BioWare, the company behind Mass Effect, got a ton of free advertising, and nobody convened a congressional hearing. Win-win. Certainly, sexing up a cutscene isn’t the dare it used to be.

But then, you won't find much that's actually daring anymore.

Arguably the hottest sex scene in Mass Effect 3 -- a lesbian tryst between a female Shepard and Specialist Traynor -- teaches us that, in the future, women will shower with their bras on. Wonderful. Something to look forward to...for men and women alike. More often, ME3 fades to black after a few kisses and fades back in with everyone fully clothed. Shepard might even be standing in an entirely different room when the lights come on.

That's quite a switch from Mass Effect 2, where the ladies tended to jump Shepard before we discreetly panned away, much less the transgressive quarter-second of bare ass in Mass Effect 1 (which Fox News repeatedly showed on a taped loop during their expose).

They're just good friends.

Say what you will about The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, but at least when people do it, they do it. They get naked, and they have some serious sex. Somehow, that's far less crass than collecting pinup cards of each sexual conquest...your reward in the first Witcher game. Probably because it doesn't reduce every single female to the level of a softcore collectible.

To be clear, I'm not advocating in favor of more gratuitous T&A. Trust me, the industry that gave us Bayonetta, Dead or Alive, and Lara Croft doesn't need any convincing. Hell, Miranda Lawson's ass gets more screen time than a few entire species in Mass Effect 3. But since the majority of gamers are well past the age of consent, I think it's valid to use sex as a legitimate storytelling device, the same as violence or humor. And like violence or humor, the payoff on a physical tryst must stick to the standards your game sets.

She also wears a parka at the tanning salon.

When the Witcher entices some comely wench into his bed -- and it usually takes less convincing than a James Bond pick-up line on fast forward -- it results in a casual fling that doesn't mean a thing. No lead-up. No commitments. No relationship. Just a bit of fun, on both sides, and that's perfectly fine. But Mass Effect revolves around deeper relationships, and I no longer see those raw emotions reflected when those relationships become physical. Particularly given how often those moments happen just prior to the doomsday mission, where both people know they might die...or worse, lose one another.

And honestly, when the sex really means something? When you can't just write it off as gratuitous, banal, cheap, or as harmless slap-and-tickle? That's when it gets dangerous.

You got a sense of two people finding a desperately needed oasis in the middle of a hopeless situation in Mass Effect. That's missing in Mass Effect 3, because the oasis happens off-screen. And considering how the emotional toll of his mission starts eating at Shepard, that should've been a signature moment in the series. Instead, it's a blank screen. Not acceptable.

So let's not pretend we're pushing the envelope here anymore. Games incorporate sex. Good for you, edgy developer. Now make it actually mean something in the context of the experience you're building. And if you don't have the balls to do it right, stick to cheap fan service...where it's safe.