In a few hours a friend of mine will give birth to her second child.  I thought about what she’s about to go through and what she’s already endured as a pregnant woman when I read Joystiq’s hands on impressions of Mommy Tummy at the Tokyo Game Show.  It’s a game that uses what can only be described as a belly peripheral to simulate the joys and just plain awkwardness of pregnancy in a supposed effort to elicit empathy from husbands and baby daddies.  What I’m unclear on is if it injects you with hormones and swells your ankles as well.  Now that would be a realistic simulation.

As a woman who’s never gone through the joyful nine months of hell that is pregnancy, I think it would be great to see what the sensations were about.  I’m not sure a game that simulates pregnancy in the course of an afternoon can realistically replicate what the feeling must be like, but it’s probably a darn sight closer than those pregnancy stomachs you see husbands walking around in on Doctor Oz.

But thinking on the subject of maternity video games (never really thought I would say that phrase) I wonder at the limits of gaming technology – not the physical limits, but the moral ones.  Are there any boundaries we shouldn’t cross in gaming?  Are games like this going to help society or hurt them? I put it to you fellow Game Geex:  What games should we not make in our effort to simulate life?  Or do no boundaries exist when it comes to electronic entertainment?