Teach a man to draw a penis, and he’ll laugh for a second. Give a man a pen with which to draw penises, and he’ll laugh for a lifetime. Just because the maxim hasn’t been widely repeated doesn’t mean it’s not true, and Valve has helpfully provided a fresh example of the pen to penis quotient in Half-Life: Alyx.
In one of the opening rooms of Alyx, there’s a window overlooking City 17, and a bunch of smart, sciencey stuff about the city’s layout is drawn on the glass with dry erase markers. A number of multicoloured markers sit on a nearby table, practically begging you to engage in a little virtual reality graffiti.
So, of course, people have drawn penises. Hundreds of thousands of Twitch viewers tuned in on Alyx’s launch day to watch streamers run through the new VR game and, naturally, hundreds of thousands of people watched streamers make obvious use of those Half-Life: Alyx pens in VR.
Literally. Hundreds of thousands. This clip of Quin69 screaming “this is the future” while drawing a cartoon penis has been viewed nearly 300,000 times.
Truly, VR games have arrived. Though, in fairness, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first VR game to feature penises…