Writing in the excellent Dean & Nooch game blog, San Jose Mercury tech writer Dean Takahashi reports on Playboy's racy depictions of video game characters in the magazine's November issue.

Tough assignment, Dean, but somebody has to do it, eh?

It's the third year in a row for such a spread in Playboy. With the cooperation of game developers and publishers, a number of game characters are depicted in the November issue, including:

• Sarah Morrison from Tabula Rasa


• Jessica McRae from Scarface: The World Is Yours


• Lida from God of War II


• Persphone from God of War II


• Alica Claus from BulletWitch


• Dr. Jasmine Lin from TimeShift


• Enrica Villablanca from Splinter Cell: Double Agent

Scott Alexander, a senior Playboy editor, told Takahashi:

Hef is a gadget guy and tech is a huge part of men’s lives. The constituency of gaming and Playboy are almost exact... These are all beautiful women in these games. They’re marketed to adults. It’s not like we’re dealing with Princess Peach. God of War is an M-rated game. It’s funny how you can have all this violence and game gets a teen rating. There’s always a lot more violence than there is sex...

The issue is that games are seen as for kids. But they’re so not. The level and intensity of games is clearly not for kids, like in Scarface or The Godfather... The politicians are scoring points by exploiting this. They want to point to easy targets.

Takahashi wonders if Playboy's involvement is good or bad for gaming:

I have to wonder whether Playboy is pushing the game industry forward with its message about the growing diversity of games, or setting it back by emphasizing the sexist depiction of women, which can turn off half the human population and appeal to just a slice of the male population. It's sort of like going to E3 to see a fantastically creative game -- presented to you by a booth babe.

GP notes that high-profile female characters are generally not appearing in Playboy. Are we seeing the game industry equivalent of the starving young actress doing what she has to do to get by? Will the nude images come back to haunt a female character if her popularity blossoms?