There have been some bizarre video games that have been made over the years and most of the time these oddities do not sell very well. Every now and then something that is strange manages to actually be a pretty great game as well and I am not embarrassed to say that I really enjoyed playing the Playboy game.
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The game put you in the life of Hugh Hefner which I think is a life that most people can say that they wouldn't mind having. You create a media empire based on having a "classy" magazine that just happens to have pictures of naked women in it and make a ton of money in the process. This game functions in exactly the same way as The Sims. So much so in fact, that I can't believe that Cyberlore Studios avoided getting sued by Maxxis and EA for what is a rather blatant copy of their famous titles.
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You spend your time making your mansion ever larger while instead of managing individual careers for the residents of your household, everyone is working towards the legacy of the magazine instead and most of the friendships that you need to establish only matter towards Hugh Hefner, the rest of people in the game are staff moreso than people you actually need to be concerned about their fitness, career, hunger, cleanliness, etc. Basically, you just order everyone around and hire newer photographers, writers, and Playmates in order to make your editions of your magazine higher quality as time goes by.
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The only reason to have better furniture and entertainment items in your house is for your own satisfaction and also because a big part of the game and also how it is that you meet new people and expand the empire of the magazine is to have blowout parties. At these parties the availability and quality of food and drink plays a major role in whether or not Hugh is able to make new business connections and also lure in new, hotter playmates.
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Now let's make no mistake here, a big part of the game is sexual and not only is it a big part of the game to get it on with as many of the girls as possible (although you can do well in the game without ever doing this) obviously, that is something that you are going to try to do and come on now, let's look at all the wives and girlfriends that the actual Hugh Hefner has had over the years. This is definitely something that he engaged in in his real life.
One of the more interesting aspects of the game is how you are somewhat in charge of the layout of the magazine and I would imagine that was something that Hugh was directly involved in at some point. You choose a centerfold and then go and do the photoshoot and control the action. The quality of the photos are up to you and whether or not the game's AI thinks the photos are "good" or not is largely dependent on the photographer and how much you are paying them.
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The girls move around in a location and you take a bunch of snaps, eventually choosing what you consider to be the one you want for the cover, then you choose articles (because we all know that people bought Playboy for the intellectual articles) finalize a layout and publish!
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Sometimes it doesn't make sense why one edition is considered excellent and others not but you just have to play around with it and see what happens. You can't really do it wrong, per se, but the better the issue, the more money you make. The more money you make the better your mansion is, the better your mansion is the better the visitors will be to the parties. On and on the cycle goes.
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It is easy to get sidetracked into just trying to hook up with as man of the girls as possible and that certainly is one of the game's unpublished "selling points" but if you focus just on this the magazine quality will suffer. The girls however, don't ever seem to get jealous if you are "dating" more than one of them at a time. I know that when I was playing The Sims it was kind of fun to try to hook up with everyone in the neighborhood but in this game, that is actually one of the objectives.
I think that this game would be frowned upon in today's ultra-PC environment and there would probably be complaints about how it isn't possible to hire fat girls for the cover and it obviously would be seen as extremely misogynistic, which is definitely is and that is the entire point. Do you really think that Hugh wasn't a bit of a misogynist?
The game was actually a lot of fun and I think that most people would probably enjoy it at least for a little while. Due to the adult nature of the game it had a limited audience but still sold pretty well. I know that when I saw it for sale I was thinking "you gotta be kidding me.. there is a Playboy game?" I probably sank about 20-30 hours into the game but then, just like The Sims it gets a bit boring because other than banging chicks and making magazines, the game doesn't really have any other objectives. However, it was and probably is worth a look and I don't understand why they never made any after future editions after this. I think a new release with updated graphics would sell pretty well.
If you want to check out this game from early 2000's you can do so with the ROM, for free, HERE