CYBERSPACE – Lapis the blue cartoon bunny wants to take women on a “magical pet adventure” to their ever-so-euphemistically named “happy place.” Once they arrive there, Lapis hopes to show them how to reach orgasm.How can a cartoon character – especially a blue bunny – achieve such a laudable goal? According to 36-year-old Montreal-based Ubisoft game designer Heather Kelley, it’s a simple and rather adorable process. Her award winning game encourages users to pleasure Lapis and thereby learn how to pleasure themselves.

Game players tap, tickle, stroke, and otherwise touch Lapis by using a responsive screen on the Nintendo DS, a hand-held, portable video game device. By using the built-in microphone feature, users can also talk and sing to Lapis, as well as blow on the bunny’s fur. The more Lapis is stimulated, the happier he becomes – until he can no longer contain his joy and flies through the air in ecstasy. Like humans, however, the sensual bunny isn’t always interested in the same kind of sensation. He likes variety and if he’s not getting what he wants, no amount of it will satisfy him.

Kelley, who took first prize for the game prototype at the Montreal International Games Summit last month, believes that “sex is a perfectly natural part of the human experience and there has to be a way to handle it meaningfully and tastefully in games.” Her game can be downloaded for free from www.moboid.com/lapis/index.htm.

Kelley is no stranger to blockbuster game success, having helped design winners including Splinter Cell and Thief. She is also the current chair for the “Women in Game Development” committee of the International Game Developers Association.

More women and older men than ever are enjoying video games – and even those hooked while young are becoming adults or are now well into their adulthood, meaning that they’re not only interested in more intense gaming concepts but are also quite likely to be grappling with an assortment of real world issues, some of which can be successfully addressed in the gaming arena. Kelley’s came comes complete with a “sexuality primary” with information about female sexuality that is meant to inspire conversation on the topic of sex in video games, which, as she sees it, isn’t going to go away any more than sex in the “real world” will.

Meanwhile, the gaming industry as a whole has not yet embraced game designs that deal with such nuanced topics as sexuality, although there are plenty of big boobed heroines, maidens, and side characters appearing in an increasingly violent assortment of action games designed primarily for men and teen boys. Kelley’s work is part of what Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, calls “a maturing of the industry.”

Ironically, Kelley’s work was inspired at least in part by public outcry against the “Hot Coffee Mod,” which could be downloaded and installed into the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game. The secret gaming “extra” caused so much controversy that it was recalled by the manufacturer at great expense and had an Adult rating affixed to it. Della Rocca expects future games to include more sex – as well as romance.

“Games are really a medium of artistic expression,” he explained, “like other forms of entertainment, literature, film, or art.”