It's an odd scene to be a part of. I was sitting on a couch in
the penthouse of a Manhattan hotel, a guy who works for video
game publisher Sega at my side. A bunch of other men stand near
us.  Everyone is watching the TV, which runs a video game that
is mostly, but not entirely, about beating up people in the
Tokyo criminal underworld.  I've handed the controller off to
the Sega guy because the part that we're playing, a sexual game
of table tennis, is too difficult for me. I can't master the art
of staring at my virtual female opponent's chest, an action for
which there is quantifiable benefit.  This is a classic video
game moment.  On the one hand, the "table tennis date" mode I
saw in Yakuza 4 during a Sega press event last week is just
another video game perversion. The interactive arts are at the
forefront of depicting actions on your TV that would make some
people shield their monitors or draw their drapes. Games do
extreme violence and, to a lesser extent, sexual weirdness, in a
way that feels differe