"I've always been interested in telling stories about connection - to land, to a person, to a thing, even to a point in time. Exploring connection is the focus of so many areas of creativity - especially film, art, and music - but much less so video games. Why is that, I ask myself." says Katie Gall of The Blushbox Collective, a group promoting the exploration of intimacy, love, and sex in games.

Games possess a unique power to place the player into a different headspace, having them become the role of another for a time. There is a special power to empathize in this, tasking the player with feeling what that other person is going through as they go through their actions and live out their lives. Like a form of acting, the player becomes this other avatar and exists as them for a time, and in this action they are brought into intimate connection with the thoughts and feelings that come from living these lives.
This unique ability to live and empathize with, moreso than books or movies or other forms of passive media, can make the player truly feel what the characters are going through. Gall's work with The Blushbox Collective, as well as their annual Heartbeat Symposium - a three-day event where they seek to bring developers together for days of game jams and speakers from various disciplines working in love and intimacy - looks to capture and explore that connection.

"I think there is something powerful about the prospective opportunities you have in ...