Sex & Games

The RO Player Community is an online space designed for cybersexers, role players, and gamers to enjoy sensual, erotic, and fun interactive entertainment together (and we are totally vanilla, swinger, GLBTQ, and fetish friendly). I come from an arts background and have spent the better part of 3 years now researching cultural, historical, and biological facets of human sexuality and erotic
romance so that we can offer a "game" that will do adult players' fantasies justice. Just having sex in a game-like-application isn't enough- there is a certain Tao of Titillation to be nurtured in the
experience so players feel they can express their sexuality and that their online sex play is just a natural extension of their own private fantasies and erotic relationships offline. Rapture Online's slogan is Play Your Fantasies, and that's exactly what the gameplay is about: exploring your fantasies in a virtual world tailored to support diverse erotic experiences.

In recent months, several MMOVSG (massively multiplayer virtual sex games) have been announced. Is there a reason for this?

I've only heard of three new projects since GDC this past March that appear to be massively multiplayer. I'm sure it will happen eventually, but funding for MMO games is a difficult risk in a relatively unproven genre like erotic fantasy gaming. High-quality 3D MMOGs aren't made in under a year though so I'm not holding my breath on any of the recently announced projects. We've chosen to build our engine on middleware for a head start, and have been working on RO since mid-2004 (with a tentative release date planned for late 2006). Explicit sex games have suffered from low quality and lackluster production values for too long, and the market for mainstream games doesn't easily accept last-gen graphics in a real-time 3D title so I'm not sure that any of the quickie projects I've heard about lately will be true MMOVSGs like Rapture Online. I hope we do see something soon though because the industry and market are more than ready for it. I think the recent announcements are largely due to the excellent, forward-thinking support for erotic and sex content shown by the IGDA and its Sex SiG community- it's like the green light to start up unabashedly erotic game communities online. Woot!

You've often talked about "sex positivity". Can you tell me how that has influenced you as a developer and how it influences your game?

Sex-positivity is simply accepting sex to be a healthy, normal, and positive force in our lives. Many cultures' take on sex can be quite negative and the proliferation of sex play online (cybersex) and traditional sex media (pornography and erotic lit) can actually help alleviate the unhealthy and negative hang ups people may have toward sex. As a developer I see a good sex-positive game as liberating fun for players to leave the "real world" hang ups of sex behind and just have some fun and fantasy. Sex-positive erotic gaming isn't a substitute for traditional sex or simply a masturbatory aid- it's a supplemental source of erotic excitement and fantasy that can positively enhance a person's total sexual well-being. Rapture Online is aptly named in that we really want our players to not only get off on the eroticism but feel positive about it afterwards. For us,
sex-positivity simply gives us insights to how we can design feel-good sex games.

There are a lot of women working on sexually themed video games, and, at least to me, the ratio of female to male designers seems higher than it does in the standard industry. Do you think there's any truth to this, and if so, why?

I think it's a bit of an illusion that there are more females working on sex games because there are a few of us in the more prominent design positions at newer companies working on some innovative games (however, if you look at shipped sex game titles, I'm not sure I've seen one yet that had prominent female design credits aside from the Playboy game you worked on Brenda, which was more of a Heff-sim and tycoon experience than an erotic game). In our case, Rapture Online was designed by a female and the studio is managed by a leads team comprised of 80% female developers - an anomaly even for an indie company. I think there are more important factors than gender in making great erotic games but having a more diverse team promises the adult game market more diverse player experiences, and (since the target markets for cybersex and online MMOGs skew more female than most people realize) it's a smart move for companies addressing a mainstream AO sex game market to hire diversity-conscious designers of any gender.