The Secret Sex Community of Ghost Recon: Wildlands
The latest DLC for Ghost Recon: Wildlands just went live, and with it comes a small rise in a player base that has been dwindling ever since release. While this rise-and-fall pattern is normal for any game with DLC content, what is not normal is that Wildlands is home to a hidden sub-community of ‘military sex’ role-players whose numbers have only grown since launch. This Gonzo reporter ghillied up and took to the bush to uncover the full girth of the story.
I first heard about this unexpected community on the social media giant Reddit, and it was here that I found a link which took me to a clandestine forum, open to members only.
To gain access I had to fill in a form that asked me about general and gaming related experiences, but also whether I had spent any time in the military, and if so, what my rank was.
Then it got into body specifics — my height, my weight, my build. And finally, and most ominously — was I willing to follow orders and submit to myself to a strict chain of command?
Yes. For the sake of journalism.
A reply came quickly. The e-mail contained a three-page long PDF that listed a bunch of rules I was to follow, and also an overview of the hierarchal structure of my ‘platoon’ — all peppered with military jargon that went right over my civilian head.
But either way, I was in and ready to get my rocks on in Bolivia.
At first sight being a member — or a ‘recruit’ as the members preferred — did not make the forum much more accesible — all the post titles seemed to be written in code:
‘LF COC Soft-play,’ was the title of one post. ‘1 More for FC Ghillie Relief,’ another one read.
Not one to be deterred by trivial things like language barriers, I clicked the freshest post and left my PSN username in a reply, adding a winky-face for good measure.
Then I waited.
That night, while playing Wildlands in solo-mode to brush up on my aim, I got an invite from a player named ‘LtndDan1982’ which brought me into a game where two players were readily waiting by the spawnpoint.
Ghillie Relief, as I was told, is a supposedly real military practice where during long scouting operations the spotter will jack off the sniper (and vice versa) in order to lower stress levels and normalize the heart rate, all in quiet of course.
The two men, decked out in full ghillie suits, went prone in the underbrush and soon became one with the Bolivian flora. The play started out like a normal sniping mission:
‘Target is in my sights — on your twelve’
‘Civilians?’
‘Negative’
‘MOA?’
‘2’
But another target was quickly identified, in the snipers’ pants.
‘Mind moving your knife, sir. It’s in my side’
‘That’s not my knife — I’m having a pressure build-up’
‘GR [Ghillie Relief] sir?’
‘If you’d be so kind, private’
Two suspicious bushes started moving and crawling over each other in the underbrush and a muffled moaning filled my headset.
‘That’s an awful lot of pressure, isn’t it, sir?’
The men quickly got into graphic sexual descriptions, in increasingly less hushed voices. I stood at the ready with my rifle and wondered if I was going to have to get involved at some point.
But that point never came.
The ghillie relief changed from heavy petting to a full on bush crawl into each other’s man-chutes, and I was a bystander to this platoonic romance, safe for sniping a wandering sicario who was about to stumble over the mating SEALS.
I silently excited the game and left them to it.
An hour later I messaged the player called LtndDan1982. He was surprisingly open and willing to tell me about the Wildlands sex community.
LtndDan1982, whose real name he did not use for obvious reasons, is an actual marine, stationed in Korea. He is as manly as they come: he completed two tours in Afghanistan and is happily married with a wife and kids.
Gay? No. When I play Wildlands, it is all in the realm of fantasy. I have nothing against gay men, but it is just not me. In real life I enjoy making love to women; this military sex stuff, that’s just a masturbation thing.
Most will not admit to it, but it is actually common among marines to develop some homosexual fantasies, in spite of their real-life orientation. It comes from being around these man all day, and you’re so close to them. It happened in Greek times, it happens now. This bond among soldiers brings with it some new ideas about what sex can be.
LtndDan1982 says that he and others like him used to be active on forums, and later in Second Life, a sim that is incredibly popular among online practitioners of any fetish imaginable because it allows for players to freely add objects, characters and actions to the game.
Most of us came from Second Life, yes, if you want to see your sex animated there really is no alternative to it, but for us, we put military realism first, and so, with the graphics and combat of Wildlands, it just upped the immersion for us.
According to LtndDan1982, some 1500 people are sexually active in Ghost Recon: Wildlands,a big chunk of them actual soldiers from around the world. — Does he know any of them personally?
No. I have made friends in the community who I know are marines as well, but we have never met in person. Most of them are actually like myself — straight, and happily married with a woman, and would not think about taking our play into the real world. Also, unfortunately anything homosexual is still a taboo to a lot of people, especially in the military, and people are just not eager to talk about this stuff in person, you know?
LtndDan1982 tells me that he once tried to get his bunk mate into the game, but they never went beyond shooting sicario’s together.
I played games with him a lot, I still do, and I knew he had these sexual thoughts as well — like I said, many Marines do — but for him, he felt no need to take it beyond just a thought now and then, and that’s fine, everybody is different. But I respect him and he respects me, and so he has no problem with me playing out these fantasies on my headset. It is just a game to us, like when when we play [Rainbow Six] Siege, or whatever.
By now I had gotten my feet wet, but felt like the real heart of darkness was still around the river bend. And so I logged back into to forum and left my PSN under a post titled: ‘Sic Interogation — No Limits’
The ‘No Limits’ part peaked a morbid interest in me, but was far from enough to prepare me for the events that would follow. Events that would taint the Bolivian jungles for me for a long time.
I entered a game with three other players. Two were at the spawn point dressed in detailed SEAL get-ups. The third player was nowhere to be seen.
‘Pat down, private,’ a man who identified himself as my sergeant said, and he proceeded to check my gear by standing behind me and making thumping noises in the microphone. After that a weapon check followed and the sergeant lay out our plan of operations in great detail.
I puzzled together that the ‘Sic’ in ‘Sic Interogation’ stands for sicario, and that we were to hunt the missing player, dressed as a sicario, down and interrogate him, whatever that meant.
After a phantom operation in an already cleared base we found the ‘sicario’ huddled in a corner, clutching a handgun.
‘You will never take me aliveee, gringo’s!’ the man yelled through his mic in a poor Latin-American accent.
One of my squad mates fired some rounds in him with an assault rifle and the cicario entered a ‘downed’ state.
Then our sergeant revived the man and we took him by car to a safe house. The abuse that was hurled at the drug dealer on the way there was an unsettling prelude of what was to come and I should have quit then and there, but a foul curiosity spurred me on.
In a dark and damp safe house the cicario was forced to strip, meaning the player changed his gear to the bare minimum, and he was set down in the corner of the room, where the SEALs gathered ominously around him — Yes, me too (peer pressure).
‘Where are the caches, bean shitter?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘I know notheeeeng, esse!’ the sicario replied.
The men proceeded to brutally beat the helpless Latin street-pharmacist, making this clear by grunting aggressively through their headsets and pounding on whatever objects in their rooms. The cicario wailed and cried so convincingly that I head to turn my volume down for fear that the neigbhors would actually have me SWATted.
After a few uncomfortable minutes of harrowing violence, the Sergeant, panting with effort (or lust), repeated the question.
‘I…know…notheeeeeng…’ the sicario groaned through his teeth.
By now, I wished he would just tell us where the caches were. I wanted out.
For the other players however, the fun had just begun.
‘Maybe you hid the caches up that faggot ass,’ the Sergeant said maliciously.
‘Just beans up there, Sarge,’ the other soldier replied, and they shared an unsettling laugh.
‘We’ll find out soon enough, boy.’
The soldiers got rid of their SEAL outfits and proceeded to audibly rape the sicario — who screamed and groaned with Oscar-worthy conviction.
They described their brutal actions in painful detail, all the while hurling racist and homophobic abuse at the victim:
‘You like to get that pinata stuffed, faggot spic?’
‘Please, esseeee…I have a famileee…!’
At this point I was troubled on different levels, and when the Sergeant demanded I join the assault (‘or are you a poofter?’) I pretended a tunnel was driving over my house and I quit the game and took a shower.
When I loaded up the game some hours later, LtndDan1982 was online, and I asked him about the Sic play —
There is a dark side to Wildlands, sure. But you can find a dark side in any sexual community — gay, straight, furries, whatever — rape play is not an uncommon kink and so it is not surprising that people enjoy it in Wildlands as well.
However, in my experience rape players are only a tiny minority in the Wildlands sex community, and consensual sex between soldiers is mostly the norm. But the rule is that we respect each other and every individual’s kinks, and if you do not like something — skip it. Respect is the base line. That is the Marine in us.
I was happy that LtndDan1982 provided some nuance — for the most part the Wildlands sex community had been incredibly friendly and welcoming and I would hate to leave with a bad taste in my mouth just because I was too squeamish for certain darker kinks.
In the end, I left virtual Bolivia with respect for the dedication and the imagination of the sex players, marines and civilians alike, and I admired the boldness with which they transcend the taboo of homosexual intercourse — especially given the macho culture some of these players live in.
I also have a renewed respect for what a community can do, taking a game that was designed for one purpose and then making it into something completely different. Will Ubisoft capitalize on the sex play with a nude patch or a brothel DLC? Probably not. But as long as the community clings to the game, things will remain hot and steamy in the jungles of Bolivia.
Make love and war, private!
