Back in 2013, video game journalist Ben Kuchera was writing for Penny Arcade Report which shut down shortly afterward. All of the articles that were at the Penny Arcade Report have disappeared from the site, including a June 17, 2013 article (mirrored here for reference purposes), The PlayStation 4 controller is just slightly better than the best thing ever.
In the review, Kuchera makes clear that he thinks the overall feel of the controller is very good and likens it to an earlier experience of his.
It felt almost too good, like I was holding something illicit. I was afraid it would be taken away. It felt like the first time I touched a girl’s breast in the backseat of a car with fogged up windows, scared that her parents were going to fling the door open and start yelling at me. I wanted to grab the controller and run. I wanted to nuzzle it against my face and ask it who is a good controller? Who is a good controller?
You’re a good controller, you sexy thing, you.
A number of Kuchera’s critics have referred to this as “creepy,” which I think goes too far. It is certainly not the analogy I would use to describe the feel of a controller, and it helps perpetuate a particular stereotype about videogame players as young, sexually inexperienced men. But it may have been a good way of getting the point across to the Penny Arcade Report audience.
The problem I have with Kuchera’s description is it is exactly the sort of language that Kuchera himself would likely condemn if it was written by anyone else.
Kuchera is part of a prudish backlash against sexual content in video games that insists that the only appropriate sexual content is that which either a) serves some sort of didactic purpose in educating the player, or b) as in this case, is within the accepted norms of the prudes themselves (titillation for me, but not for thee.)