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I'm *not* planning to include the well-known First Person view, in part because we're implermenting several other ways to view the game environment and characters, but also to avoid what's know as Simulator Sickness. While this view has never been an issue for me, I know several other players that are bothered by this view. Testing a more stationary mode for the camera is going well, except that for some reason, in that mode the hair and clothing on our Crash Sex Dummy seem to lag behind when she moves, so apparently I need to tweak a few things with my movement code *grin*

One of the more amusing areas to test so far as been the elevator. Yes, we're including a fully functional elevator where the players can... go for a ride if they want. I wonder if we can play Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" in there instead of the typical muzak??

I have several other technical irons in the proverbial fire, as there are many areas that we're working on, including networking, the chat system, lighting control and more, but for now I'm eating, sleeping, and breathing Camera Control code because it will be such an important feature in Rapture Online.

Until next time!

]]> gaycrawford Wed, 06 Sep 2006 19:07:44 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=22 GameBizDaily interview with John Smedley

Sony Online CEO John Smedley says that 'parental controls' are a possibility in their online worlds.

"I'd like us to implement a parental control that would allow parents to receive an email once a day of every piece of chat that their child was able to see that particular day."

Now, if done in a way that notifies the player they are being monitored (to prevent abuse by spouses, siblings, etc.), I think this is an excellent tool. As a parent myself, I know that it is my responsibility to monitor "where my kids go and who they are with" wither it's going to a place in the physical world to hang out or going online from our living room (where the two family computers reside). Since I have a home office I am a *heck* of a lot more in touch with what the kids are doing online (most kid naughtiness online happens when they are home after school before parents get home, fyi, or if they have a computer in their bedrooms). Still, I'm up here in the office and they are downstairs. I don't have time to poke around in their accounts every week or stare over their shoulders and check buddy lists so I just don't let them play anything with player to player chat. Even puzzle pirates has people soliciting sex play (which happened while I was co-playing the game with my 8 year old!) so multiplayer with chat is completely out until they are a bit older.

But that is the problem: you can't ban tweens and teens (mine are still young enough that my MMOG/virtual world ban isn't crippling their social and tech skill development) from virtual worlds though because it's a communications, work, and entertainment medium of the future. People *will* telecommute more often and will use online virtual spaces for education, employment, and important socializing (making friends and getting dates isn't just 'optional' to anyone with a healthy happy adult life). Banning tweens/teens from these places online is only going to foster more media illiteracy (i.e. the kid goes off to the real world and college a lot more vulnerable, uninformed, and isolated than need be when they DO inevitably get into online worlds). So *something* has to be available to bridge the gap between "no MMOs at your age" and "the privilege of total unsupervised freedom in MMOs" based on an individual child's needs. Some 14 year olds can be trusted to tell you everything and stay safe online. Some 17 year olds take too many risks and learn everything "the hard way." Individual parents need to be able to make a call based on their individual kids' needs and the tool Smedley suggests might be a partial solution. A kid will think twice about engaging in sex play, sharing personal info, or lying about their age/life if they know mom and dad are monitoring the talk. It doesn't stop the kid from playing the game and having fun, flirting, swearing, talking smack, etc. It just stops things from going too far, imo.

However this is spyware. And I don't like spyware in MOST applications so I do have reservations. What do other people think of this?
]]> Kelly Rued Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:28:57 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=21 fairly balanced article from PBS' Frontline for more information). I wish that was common knowledge but seeing how it gets "breaking news" coverage at least once a year (and maybe always will), I thought I'd get it out of the way here at the start of this ongoing series about marketing sex games to women. Porn excites people physiologically, in fact it seems to also work for other species.

Most human bodies react because we are wired to respond to sexual stimuli but what those studies don't always emphasize is how important thoughts and emotions can be in *processing* those physiological responses. So what if our biological baby-making bits say "hot damn!" to a hardcore scene if our mind is thinking "ew, I can see the surgery scar and crinkles on those fake enorma-boobs" or "wow, how can she put those 2-inch press on nails up her..." and yeah, this is a reality for males too. It's crucial to understand the supremacy of the brain as *the most important sex organ* because it can let pleasure unfurl or be a huge party pooper depending on the thoughts and emotions it conjures even during times of arousal and sexiness.

Because frankly, thoughts and feelings happen. They happen at the grocery store, they happen during sex, and they happen when a person is trying to enjoy erotic media. Designing games that bring the player into a fantasy state, suspending disbelief and engaging the player's thoughts, emotions, and full attention is obviously pretty important in squashing those intrusive and unsexy thoughts or feelings that explicit images and sounds can sometimes provoke. But this article isn't about game design, it's about marketing: getting people interested in what you're selling and leading them to your sales tools, which most likely includes a web payment processor (if you're selling an AO game). Sales aren't made by web stores and 'buy now' buttons; they're made by the marketing materials, ad copy and graphics that grab the customer's attention and lead them eagerly to the point of sale.

So how many women are biting the bait and getting reeled in to sex games online? It's hard to say, as this new market has very little available in terms of market statistics and sales data. But one thing is certain: many women like sex, romance, erotica, and online sex play. If we aren't selling to them, we are missing out and they are going elsewhere-- likely to free chat services and other forums supporting text-based adult or cam play online, phone play, or offline play (dating and hookup sites). How do we attract these women to our sex games, especially the avatar-based MMOs like Red Light Center and Second Life?

First we should look at how sex games are currently marketing themselves. Second Life relies on word of mouth and letting players promote the sex attractions, and parent company Linden Labs does nothing to explicitly target the adult entertainment market. They are the exception. The rule for other sites is to use porn-like "landing pages" to try to pull conversions from surfers/traffic and use of affiliate programs (banner and text ads that pay affiliate partners a percentage of sales to bring in "clicks" and "conversions"). Conversions are site visitors who actually buy something. Most of these ideas are gold online, and will work well so long as the messaging is good: word-of-mouth trusts the bloggers and players to present the right messaging to the right audiences and banner/text ads rely on affiliates to choose the most appropriate "creative" or banner graphics/text links for their site's traffic. Where you run into problems trying to market to females though is if you're an affiliate or blogger (I'm both) trying to market these games, this whole genre, to females.

So far, no one is making creative that appeals to a primarily female erotica consumer. In fact, no one is using anything except the visual language of porn to advertise sex games that don't actually have much in common with the usage scenarios we associate with porn consumption. Let's take the most popular banner ad I've posted as an example: the DreamStripper ad you see on the right side of this site (black background). So I put up an add of a girl in a bikini bending over with a comely over-her-shoulder glance and nice light reflecting off her bum... what female is going to click on that? It's not that women don't have an interest in the idea of watching a sexy stripper or *being* a sexy stripper but... seriously the ad does nothing to create interest and compel a click for more information.

If porn-like banner ads don't seem to attract a strong female intrigue or click-thru rate, what could a company use instead? What works? What doesn't? Where can you get more info *from women* about what they find sexy in advertising and marketing?

I'll be trying to answer all of those questions over time because I think they're important for any sex game that wants to attract a mainstream volume of adult entertainment customers (which includes a lot of women, probably even a *majority* of women for certain forms of erotic media).
]]> Kelly Rued Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:13:59 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=6&postId=20
This here first entry begins what I hope to be an entertaining and informative blog about the wild and crazy office called the Art Department, run by none other than "The Art Dude", aka Chris "Bossgator" Jackson. (that would be me!)

While I'm not at liberty to divulge our super secret in-house dev stuff, I'll be sharing the latest news, thoughts, and anything else I can make up. You can be sure though, as I get the ok to release something, it'll make it in here. If you find anything in here that you find interesting, by all means feel free to jump over to the forums and drop us a post. Nothing better than a good, healthy, on-going dialog to stir the imagination!

I don't have a set schedule for entries here, but suffice it to say it will be regular, and on-going. Man, that is such a completely non-descript statement I should go into politics! On that note, I plan on sticking to RO art stuff, and not venture into off topic subjects, so if you see me wondering (I do tend to ramble at times!), by all means, make sure to scold me in the forums for the error of my ways!

So, grab your favorite beverage, sit back, and enjoy.
]]> Bossgator Fri, 14 Jul 2006 15:32:29 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=19 Second Life, I've downgraded my SL-ego Lotte Twilight to a basic free account. Having sold off our BLI land and dissolved our BLI commercial group this past spring, I really didn't have any more reasons to keep paying for my SL access. Everything I do now in SL, I can do at the free account level.

Why is this blogworthy? Well, you have to understand that I saw SL as this panacea of innovative virtual world goodness back when I first wandered around newb hill trying to fly without crashing into things in spring 2004. Cut to today, and I have my SL av name printed on my business cards... well, severing a paid game account relationship is a bit like reaching that point in a romantic relationship where you just admit the magic is gone. You're seeing other people. The potential you used to see is now dwarfed by all the annoying little quirks you didn't notice initially:

• Casinos? Fun, but totally unfair to the rest of us in the USA corner of the internet. It's illegal for me to run an unregulated casino on *my* web server using USD real money transfers to my casino tokens, but anyone can run a casino in SL using their L$ payment processing solution.

• L$ exchange to USD? Also cool, but what if LL bans your account? Did you know they just delete all your L$ credits and all that USD you deposited and any L$ you earned in-world has the legal status of Monopoly Money (or so it seems by the SL TOS)? True, you have to violate the TOS to get banned, but it still raises interesting questions such as what happens if there is data loss, fraud, etc. as LL is not a payment processor in the traditional PayPal/CCbill sense. I think if you get burned, you have little recourse. Seller beware.

• Affiliate program? Awesome, since I refer hella people to SL and still will. For 3D avatar based sex play online you can't get any better right now (though Red Light Center is shaping up to be a competitor in that arena). But due to some major hypocrisy issues, you can't be an SL affiliate if your site has adult content so blackloveinteractive.com can't get any credit for sending them sex play traffic for their SEX GAME. Emergent sex my ass. One third of their economy (which is what they reportedly make the most money from) is related to sex/adult entertainment. Yet they won't allow their game to be promoted from sexually oriented adult web sites? I thought the adult grid was 18 and up... what's the problem?

• The adult grid has kids on it. Not cool, and completely unavoidable. The world is essentially open to all ages with some access to a credit card (including bank debit cards with the CC logo), with the SL TOS merely dealing with what happens when an underage user is found out. Responsive, yes, but it won't prevent the problem. Why are underage users a problem? Don't I remember being a teen wanting to play with the big kids? Um, yeah, quite vividly. But that's just it: I'm now an adult and I want a reasonable feeling of security that the person I'm cybering with is another adult. Most adults online want to play *exclusively* with other adults, so this is more an issue of giving the market what they want than anything else. SL does have a teen grid too, which is great. But remembering being a teen makes me think most teens would prefer to be on the adult grid at some point, at least occasionally out of curiosity (the teen grid has the perk of promising other teen hotties to you versus loads of creepy old people hitting on you).

• Harassment? Not a problem for me, but from what I've read in the SL forums over the years, it's pretty obvious there is a lot of drama in-world. If they don't keep any personally identifying info or user logs, it must be pretty hard to manage harassment. They can ban accounts but not the people behind them. I suppose that's a universal issue. But it bothers me less in a game than it does in a shopping mall/payment-processor that encourages users to do real business in-world. The opportunities for fraud and crime are pretty mind-boggling in any system that mixes real world commerce with anonymity.

• Speaking of which... how much money can you keep in L$? How many free accounts can you set up to store money in? If someone is looking to hide money, why not put it in SL? A simple (but felony-invoking) example would be someone putting cash assets in SL rather than a bank so they don't have to report those holdings when determining assets for a court decision or applying for public assistance like emergency funds, etc. Most bank and gov forms will ask if people have other accounts but how many inquire about RMT game accounts? This isn't an issue unique to SL, or even to games-- Paypal is equally "off the record" for most places that require full asset disclosure.

• Corporate marketing tools. Admittedly, BLI was fully intending to lease an island in SL to create a portal/marketing presence for RO because we know many SL residents would also be interested in trying other sex play experiences online. However, this idea was hatched a couple years ago when there wasn't as much of that in SL. Like myspace, SL is getting enough credit in the mainstream press to attract corporations like Wells Fucking Fargo, my most-loathed financial institution (I can curse their mothers, having banked there too many years, paid too many BS fees, and jumped through the flaming anuses of many a bitchy bank teller just to cash a check drawn on their bank without depositing it into *my own account*). Most of SL is already a sprawling strip mall, neverending commercial ventures stitched together in a patently American and ugly visage of eLust. We even chase money when we are playing, in our free time there is nothing left of our hopes and dreams but trying to amass more funds to buy more stuff. Now the stuff you don't need but can't live without isn't even REAL, or really yours, it's VIRTUAL and can be deleted unceremoniously by the metaverse owners when you decide to let your own kid do something useful and harmless on your paid account.

Now, I will still be enjoying SL, and I hope to see them grow and prosper in spite of the above concerns, but I don't have any reason to pay for the account/land any more. And in spite of them claiming that isn't how they make their payroll, I still think there is something sad about having to admit that my initial attraction to SL has played out like so many RL flings: better in wanting and fantasizing than in actually having and holding. *sniff*

The downside of adopting a nomadic lifestyle in SL is all that no-transfer furniture. Not that I can really find it all in my inventory mess.
]]> Kelly Rued Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:58:04 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=18
Even still, I was cautious because the roster had quite a few people who didn't appear to know much about games and I wondered if the information they brought would be helpful or appropriate for developers, players and publishers. There were almost as many journalists, sex educators, and lawyers as game devs! Would it be burning with insight, or just blow a bunch of smoke up my skirt? Turned out to be pretty damn good for a first-of-its-kind event.

I later found that Brenda Brathwaite, chair of the IGDA's Sex SiG and all-around "sex game lady" had personally selected almost all of the panelists and speakers (along with advisory help from Kyle Machulis of SlashDong, MMOrgy, and Nonpolynomial Labs), which probably accounted for the high quality of contributors (though some of the moderators were a bit underprepared due to last minute changes). The range of presenters served the content and scope of the conference well. Next year, hopefully there will be a game expo showing more sexually-themed games and a track dealing with education and "serious" games.

I was thankful for the experience, networking opportunities, and goodwill apparent between developers at the event. We're a small group, but it's obvious we are all carving out our own unique niche and tackling the opportunities and challenges of erotic and sexually-themed game content in inventive ways. I have a lot more confidence in some of our competitors now, and the way that all of our products will round out the genre and develop the market over the next few years of exciting innovation.

Some enthusiast press writers bemoaned that the conference wasn't "sexy" enough but I am glad the conference organizers eschewed ridiculous E3-style glitz in favor of substance and focused on the conference tagline "the Business of Digital Erotic Entertainment" rather than pandering to a press thirsty for pointless T&A so their readers can make fun of it or declare it a threat to the public image of their wholesome gaming hobby. The one greeter girl was very sexy though, and I PROMISE to never show up to one of these again without my Heff-like bevy of lusty boy toys.

The tight focus on business, design, legal, and ethical issues (and two sessions devoted to specifically to pleasing the players) actually helped attract an impressive crowd of decision-makers (the executive ratio in the crowd was a bit staggering most of the conference- one in maybe 4 people were high-ranking management or independent contractors in their field).

The press that did show up (especially the ones who stuck around for the second, less star-studded day) were of a much higher calibur than the average game press, including Annalee Newitz (Wired, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Salon.com, AVN Online, and Popular Science), Bonnie Ruberg (Wired, Heroine Sheik, and the Escapist), Daniel Terdiman (CNET, Wired, Time) and Damon Brown (Playboy, Spin, PlanetOut). If IGN was there, I didn't see or talk to them, so maybe we were all spared the inevitable mocking write-up full of adolescent innuendo and little animations of Mario boffing Princess Peach. You know you're in the geekiest circle of hell when even hardcore gamers perceive your products as for "losers" (a stigma that won't likely be broken until we have a breakout hit sex game with a visible and large player base).

Even the bloggers and book-pimps were top-rung for their niche: Regina Lynn (Sex Drive Daily, Sex Drive column, and sex tech author), Noche Kandora (ApogeeVR), and Violet Blue (TinyNibbles blog, sex author, and nastygram writer of the pastiche of slanderous pastiche).

Hee, I shouldn't have linked to that but it will amuse everyone who knows me (or listens when I open my mouth and sounds come out) to find out that I'm dated, judgmental, and narrow-minded. So don't let this whole working on the most gender and sexuality inclusive game to date thing fool you guys- I'm really not sex-positive at all. Creating truly comprehensive sex education games, working to promote the rights and responsibilities of developers of interactive sexual media with the IGDA Sex SiG, and running the first feminist SEX game company *known to planet earth* is all a sham to distract people from my heterocentricity (and loathing for Second Life, my favorite MMO of all time, which I've played for 2.5 years). Oh noes, she found me out! And who says bloggers aren't journalists, what with all that fact checking, and the use of memory over the trivial accuracy of a recorder.

I just wonder if she hears claps and whistles in her head every time she says fuck and *shocks* the world's balls? But seriously, everything was cool at the con and I left liking everybody there, including miss Blue. Everyone was sweet, and there was no conflict on or off the panels, simply a civil debate and (so I hear now) a mild misunderstanding (I was in a hurry to grab a drink and get back to watch a panel, not trying to blow miss Blue off, but now I know that no one walks away (!) when they're done chatting with a celebrity blogger).

Luckily people in the game industry are always cool. Will Wright, when you see him at GDC, is cool and will say hello and listen to you gush like a simtard. Adult game developers are just as down-to-earth and friendly. The developers who spoke at the con were sincere, serious, and thoughtful about their craft, projects, and responsibilities. It's always a shame that the public doesn't have any image of 'sex games' besides thinking we're opportunist porn companies swooping in to make bad, interruptible pr0n. The conference highlighted the little-known fact that most of the people in the space are trying to create high-quality titles in their specific niche and that given the restrictive budgets and social stigma we labor under, we could all use the support, respect, and shared resources of any other development or creative community. I thought Brian Schuster and Ray Schwartz (Red Light Center), Ken Heidenreich (FX Interactive), Noah Dudley (Naughty America), Brad Abram (Virtually Jenna), and the guys at the Virtual Hottie 2 booth were all friendly and approachable. It's not the skeezy den of exploitation hounds the uninitiated might expect. People want to make money, sure, but they also want the kind of success you get with a credible game- something that gets good reviews and better word-of-mouth. A legit hit sex game is everyone's goal, and I hope we see that level of mainstream gaming success soon. My money is on FX Interactive's Erotasy Island as the late-comer with the budget to do big things.

So while it wasn't as hot and horny as many people outside of sex in games would have liked, the conference was an intellectual and creative turn on for those of us in this rapidly growing genre of games. Oh... and we got investor hook ups... more on that in a later post



]]> Kelly Rued Fri, 16 Jun 2006 01:04:11 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=17 Knocking Pixels, ended on an eye-rolling note for me. I understand the impulse for a writer to want to end the piece on some deeply profound statement that leaves the reader breathing a Keanu-esque WHOA, but the conclusion has to ring true to support such a grand finale. Unfortunately, Wallace's final paragraph drags an otherwise vibrant article into the dark forest of bloggoffery (editorial content in its ickiest larval form, such as that which you're currently consuming... mmmm, biaslicious).

Teledildonics are not moving cybersex into the "area of intimacy" and cybersex is not just "coming into its own as part of some relationships." See the past decade for more information.

People have been falling in LOVE in chat rooms, from newsgroups, from any form of online chat/meeting/interaction you can possibly think of for a very long time. The people who married from meeting in Everquest, Ultima Online, etc. in the 20th century would be pretty surprised to hear that teledildonics was the key to their intimacy. ;p Hell, I'm in yet another relationship right now that started online, and I was practically in love before I even laid eyes on him. That was all through email too (not even real-time chat, gah, what nerds).

I'm not even sure cybersex is about sexual thrills most of the time, because the types of emotional validation and engagement one gets from cybersex online are thematically and sensually so different from real life sexuality. Online, you can have great sex without actually masturbating or physically getting off- it's not uncommon for people to just enjoy the imaginative parts of the sensations, the interaction, the attention and utility they give/get from the other participants. Cyber's most basic premise has much more in common with the real life experiences of flirting and romance than with sex or lust because of how it actually goes down.

There is an intimacy online even that is almost impossible (at least impractical) with a one-night fling in real life *because* of the means of expression (the actions go from my mind/words directly to you and can not be gone through as passive motions because that's just what you do when you're having sex). I'm just saying that a lot of people have enjoyed cyber FOR the intimacy factor- too many to discount with the notion that this is a new thing, or that it's being ushered in with remote-control sex toys.

Cybersex has always had the beautiful, inherent capacity to facilitate intimacy, love, romance, and real caring. The technology we add to it are only bells and whistles because the basic underlying principle is human-to-human communication. When lovers use a technology to express their feelings, it really doesn't matter what technology they're using, and I hope that game developers trying to facilitate erotic and romantic experiences always remember that the players are the key "technology." We're just giving people more tools to do what they're already doing with more options, efficacy, style, and pleasure.

If no one ever makes another online game world, people will still be cybering- the games industry is coming to a culture and phenomenon that already exists and is thriving so it's important that we respect that reality and not get all heady about what we really do bring to the table. Some cool UI/graphics and neat games to help people meet/have fun with their online lovers is all well and good, but they were going to do it anyways. And they've been doing it pretty amazingly well without so much as a specialized doo-dongle for it. The sex toy industry, in general, is overzealous sometimes in promoting toys as the solution to sexual boredom or the keys to sexual exploration, when really we all have those solutions and keys *in our own minds and bodies* that will do a lot more for sexual happiness than a whole closet full of sex props. ;p

I like toys, but they're just toys. Sex with toys is mainly about SEX. Masturbation with toys is mainly about MASTURBATING. And cyber with toys is still about CYBER. Sex games like MMOEGs can be considered software toys (much like all of Will Wright's sim toys) because you use them to play a game of make-believe; a player-driven sort of game like children play (seldom do adults engage in pretend or role-play games outside of the bedroom so I find the best analogy is to think of the kinds of made-up games you played as a kid where you all decided the rules as you played and seldom ended up with a winner/loser).

But even cyber with sex games will still be CYBER. In many ways, games are just now realizing what makes online social networks *really* tick. Second Life is going to absolutely *blow up* in the next 2 years because they actually GET IT. When they step up promotions and marketing (now that they have the funds to really scale and do that), the 6 million mark WoW set is going to look as puny to the games industry as it already looks compared to the rest of the online communities/social entertainment scene.

MySpace weighs in at over 73 million registered users to date (even if you're super skeptical about duplicates, inactive accounts, and commercial accounts (versus individuals) you can cut that number in half and still say "36.5 million... DAMN, they are so much better at online communities than we are!" and be pretty much humbled by the implications). Game designers can definitely build a better mousetrap, but doing so requires a humble nod (no, not to the MMO classics! think bigger than that...) to real life; to human sexuality and the communication and exchanges that really make sex, romance, and cyber fun. Games are just excuses for us to play together so don't sacrifice your community vision for the sake of being a hardcore gamer's hard-on. Core traditional gamers are not the MMOEG bread-and-butter market no matter what the casual observer thinks about testosterone-pumped young adult males and cybersex (cyber is about intimacy, remember? This should be a clue who composes the "core" cybersex market).

If you want to learn how to facilitate intimate connections in your online sex game, don't look at most MMOGs! They are based on established computer game genres, only with a persistent world and lots of other players. While MMOGs do foster intimacy, it's a much more hard-won sort of intimacy that plays off the same odds/crap shoot as real life dating and mating (as you go about your business, you experience attraction or bond with others and develop relationships organically from there... it works but it's unreliable, slow, and either too gruesomely methodical or entirely random to be good sex play OR game play). Social networking and dating sites are all about *speeding nature the hell along* and helping you get more intimate, more quickly, and more directly. This may not appeal to everyone, but players will collect more of the value they came for from the people-shopping and curiosity of having a social networking vibe in your MMOEG (modeled more from Friendster than Final Fantasy XI).

If you want to make an adult MMOG that is primarily another genre yet happens to have sexual content, that's fine, but it's not an MMOEG. The MMOEG market is for worlds and play focused on sexuality and delivering a high-quality and specialized player experience. Ideally, MMOEGs will be played as "second places" for players from other games to continue their relationships in where there are more intimate options that their other MMOG can not or will not ever support fully. But in the end, the Unique Selling Point of an MMOEG is the erotic content and a traditional MMOG concept of allowing intimacy to build at it's normal life pace (which certainly doesn't let you log in and find hot sexy action in a few minutes time on most servers) will not satisfy players coming to MMOEGs primarily for sexual intimacy. If anything, a MMOEG will be the opposite of other MMOGs (where sex is emergent play) by having players come for the sex but stay for the additional features (which might ironically turn out to be more traditional game mechanics).
]]> Kelly Rued Tue, 02 May 2006 17:06:09 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=2&postId=16
It might just be that no one thinks erotic, sensual, engaging sex can be done well using gaming technologies. If you're here reading this though, there is a good chance that there is at least a tiny hope in you that some people somewhere are doing their damnedest to design an erotic game that is actually engaging for more than a few minutes of cheap thrills or giggles; a game that women and men of many preferences, moods, and kinks can play alone, as real life couples, or as internet-only play mates with every expectation of fulfilling their specific and personal fantasies.

That's what we've been working toward with our MMOEG, Rapture Online. The design problems we've uncovered and attempted to solve make for one hell of a humbling learning experience. Everything you think you understand about human sexuality, about eroticism, eventually gets demolished and reconstructed in such complexity that you end up with rich fractal images replacing the simplistic cartoons of what passes for erotica.

For instance, have you ever considered how much being wanted really turns you on in an intimate encounter? Is that graphically explicit in any way that could translate to a pornographic image? Is it verbally explicit in a way that could be fully captured in erotic fiction by anything more than a pale symbol? Or is it something that fundamentally requires an interactive experience- an exchange or communication- with another entity to really enjoy, to actually feel? There are powerfully erotic experiences that the expressive vocabulary of all the non-interactive arts can not communicate fully. These experiences are neither simple nor "base" but are deeply emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual. A relatively small portion of the world's population frequently uses traditional erotic materials (pornographic images, movies, and stories) but almost all of us have sexual, sensual, and romantic fantasies. What has traditional erotica been missing? It's my proposition that interactivity is the key to creating erotic works that communicate the more complex and most enjoyable aspects of eroticism.

If interactivity opens up so much potential in the erotic arts, why have the masters of innovation in interactive entertainment arts, game designers, forsaken the erotic drama in favor of the violent drama and the competitive or combative drama? I think it has as much to do with the sex-negativity of our culture (and the taint of leaving eroticism to the domain of pornographers, who've largely bungled it up for so many decades) as it does with the primacy of a narrow range of existing game genres in interactive entertainment. Another barrier to quality eroticism in games are the notions game designers learn about what experiences make something fun (hunter instincts are discussed with an almost mind-boggling disregard for what exactly pushed the hunter to hunt at all: sustaining life for mating), and overly restrictive theories of what makes an interactive play experience a game. If your whole view of multiplayer gaming is based on human versus human conflict it makes envisioning cooperative erotic games all the more unlikely.

But when you get right down to it, it's a lot harder to evoke feelings of flirtation, flattery, anticipation, courtship, romance, lust, arousal, passion, sensuality, sexual rhythm, climax, release, and intimacy than it is to simply challenge a player to a math or geometry based puzzle or target practice. With software mediated experiences, there are just some experiences that are easier to translate to algorithms and UI controls. All that erotic potential is still out there waiting to be discovered and tamed for a whole new kind of interactive entertainment experience because, honestly, it's a bitch to design erotic play mechanics with enough variety and depth to provide effective and consistent erotic experience potential.

I'm learning as I go. There are no masters of erotic game design to learn from, no "erotic game design" books or pundits, no college programs or crib notes. This doesn't mean there isn't a motherload of materials out there that can't be mined for relevant clues to solving our erotic entertainment conundrum, but there is a certain investment in time and perseverance required from everyone trying to connect these dots. So starting with my next entry, I'll be blogging here to reveal some of the biggest problems we face in erotic experience design, along with suggestions and revelations about possible solutions erotic game designers can consider, challenge, or build on to make better games in the erotic fantasy genre.

The exact details of some of our solutions might not be apparent until we launch Rapture Online (and there are 2 unique features of RO that can't be disclosed because they're far enough ahead of the curve that it would be almost cruel to tell you about them before you can just sit down and enjoy them). But I have learned a lot in the past 3 years of studying and working exclusively on sex game design and it's getting to feel like I'm not going to glean much more insight without bouncing these ideas of players, erotica fans, cybersex and ARP enthusiasts, and other interactive entertainment designers.

I don't have a complete list yet of topics I hope to cover but as I brainstorm them I'll add them below (and link them to future posts that explore them in detail). Hopefully it will spark some thought and discussion, or like the minimum hope for anything related to sex in games, maybe it will just make you giggle like an ass.

Erotic Gaming Design Problems:

• Facilitating hook ups: connecting like-minded solo players online
• People shopping: an in depth look at successful personal ad systems
• Creating the mechanics and reward structure of flirtation
• Player Identity: Giving all players painless tools to control content preferences and establish viable characters
• Avatar Efficacy: Make those graphics work for the player- provide deep character customization to promote high quality role playing
• Keeping offensive or repulsive content out of the UI (adaptive UIs)
• Special Interest Groups in MMOEGs: erotic games need player-run groups too- maybe in more parts of the game than you realize
• MMOEG mixers: Players need different kinds of social events from extremely casual to highly structured for different types of personalities
• Romance as a system for solo play (with NPCs)
• Romance as a system for couples hotseat play
• Romance as a system for networked real-life couples play
• Romance as a system for networked online-only play
• Harnessing the power of nostalgia and memory as positive factors in exceptional erotic play
• Exploring intimacy in online social spaces
• Guided intimacy for real life couples play (hotseat or networked)
• Guided intimacy for networked online-only play
• Ice-breakers: Giving players tools to overcome shyness and social barriers in the MMOEG environment
• Creating the mechanics and reward structure of visual sensual exploration
• Creating the mechanics and reward structure of auditory sensual exploration
• Creating the mechanics and reward structure of verbal sensual exploration
• MMOEG skills systems: mandatory fun for the achievement-oriented player
• Economies in MMOEGs: the pros and cons of introducing various forms of currency
• Paid sex work in MMOEGs: managing the inevitable
• Infidelity in MMOEGs: real and virtual commitments and betrayals
• Marriage and commitment features of MMOEGs: managing the inevitable without trivializing its essence
• Alt lifestyles support: If you think MMOEGs attract primarily vanilla players, you haven't been around the internet much
• Fetish support? Do you even have to ask?
• Good grief: how Ebay inspired me to quit worrying and love the griefers
• Action systems pointers: yes, the nuts and bolts of putting sex acts on screen in real-time 3D with some semblance of a graceful control scheme
• Action system mistakes: what everyone else is doing incredibly, wholly, disastrously wrong
• Voice acting for erotic games: "more" is incredibly better- it's not that different from the premise of what makes a good MMOEG character editor
• Chat feature: help your players give good text
• Story system basics: give the power of erotic words to people who routinely replace letters with numbers and type in ALL CAPS during cyber
• Story system advanced: give the power to design the damn game to your creative and verbally skilled players
• The dark side: worst case scenarios of addiction, predators, and other abuses of erotic MMOEGs and their players
• Humor: face it, sex is pretty fucking hilarious so where does humor, satire, and parody fit in a MMOEG without pulling the whole thing into the Leisure Suit Larry locker room?
• This isn't porn: how to fulfill all those porn-based fantasies people have by translating what makes the standard elements of pornos work to an interactive experience (aka what they generally did wrong in all those crappy interactive FMV porn games)
• Making porn is the *player's* job not the game designer's: the need for screens, movies, and stories from your player's MMOEG play and the primary uses players have for these records
• Is a MMOEG even a game? People ask so I'll give it a shot (my answer is a definitive yes- making it a "world" is a bad design choice and I'll use SL as an example to illustrate the down-sides of erotic "worlds" vs. games)

That's not even half of what I got kids, so stay tuned and gimme some feedback every once in a while- I can't be the only person who finds any of this interesting.
]]> Kelly Rued Fri, 03 Mar 2006 08:07:14 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=5&postId=15
I remember when we were first discussing the concept of this game that we had been discussing shooter-type games in which points are assigned for kills, you get bonus items off the corpses, etc. and that it would be interesting to try to sell a game that is more a STORY than an opportunity to "score points" and "win" based on points scored. I suppose we COULD have the object of our game to successfully bed X number of people or something like that... so "scoring" (in this case, succesfully bedding another player) would add to your points and you could "win" the game. But, to be a successful game, do you have to keep score? Does there have to be an objective criteria that determines who a "winner "is? I think one of the reasons that I shy away from a number of games is that there is a competitive element that turns me off. I LOVE games like the CSI games... where you collect evidence and put together the pieces and figure out what happened. There isn't really a scoring system, you simply either get enough information and solve the case or you don't.

When I first logged into Second Life, I know that the objective of many Second Lifers was to acquire as much land and wealth as they could and those people were "winners"... but, honestly, it wasn't a race and when someone acquired more than everyone else the "game" wasn't over... Second Life continues. I don't know how other people utilize the game, but it serves as my social life (sadly enough) and I have met a number of interesting folks there. Some of the people who were there when I first logged in are still around. Some I talk to outside of the game. Some are long gone... When I was first there, hanging out at the club was "the big thing" that people did. Now, there are "camping chairs" and "Slingo" and the clubs are pretty quiet. But I remember the days when sometimes you couldn't even get into the sim where a club was located because it was so packed. Second Life continues to evolve. And I know that, at least in my mind, that's what RO will do... It will evolve... it will be different things for different people.... it will serve a number of different needs and desires. And I think that makes EVERYONE involved a "winner"
]]> lldm Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:54:33 +0100 http://blackloveinteractive.com/84/tiki-view_blog_post.php?blogId=5&postId=14
That isn't, by the way, a complaint. Being busy is good. I've been enjoying reading comments posted even if I haven't been posting any replies. I do keep up with things around here, just in a pretty quiet way. So, if you have things you want or need to ask me, simply let me know. I am here, I am puttering around behind the scenes, I am reading the forums even if I am not always visible or vocal.

And your comments about what you'd like in a game are all things we do discuss at team meetings. So, keep the comments coming!

Right now, duty calls, but I'll probably check in a little more (as time allows) in the coming weeks.
]]> lldm Sat, 18 Feb 2006 17:38:27 +0100