Dean Takahashi over at GamesBeat has an interesting article about the adult based virtual world of Red Light Center : Oculus Rift gets more virtual reality porn with Red Light Center. Now first things first, I stumbled across this article whilst trying to see if Linden Lab were in the news and, there is a reference to Linden Lab in this article, indeed it’s one that is surprising in many ways, although it’s not surprising to anyone who regularly uses Second Life :
Utherverse started development in 2003, and it opened its doors for the first time in 2005. Now the erotic community site consists of virtual nightclubs, hotels, bars, movie theaters, and stores. It also offers parties, classes, meeting rooms, live music with dancing, and art-gallery openings. It’s not unlike the virtual world Second Life, operated by Linden Lab, but this world is all about sex. The site has about a million monthly active users.
See! Dean Takahashi knows that Second Life is not all about sex, whereas I think it’s more difficult to argue that Red Light Center isn’t all about sex… actually that’s their selling point and they are not shy about it.
Now getting back to the article, it’s actually interesting even if you find Red Light Center a bit off, because it talks about virtual reality and Utherverse chief executive Brian Shuster make some bold claims about where Virtual Worlds are going in terms of Virtual Reality and graphics :
You’ll be hard-pressed to tell the difference between real people and the avatars. We use motion capture, and it looks realistic. The idea is that it makes you feel like you are actually there. You walk into a gentleman’s club and you feel like you are there. You can make it rain on the strippers on stage. And they are real people. That gets people worked up. Knowing there is a real person on the other end — that’s more stimulating than just watching porn.
I’m not convinced that this early in the VR cycle that this will be the case. However, although many people don’t like talking about it, adult entertainment will be a selling point in VR and there’s really no point in trying to deny this.
Whereas I’ve heard of Red Light Center, I’ve never logged into it. However I didn’t realise that it had more social aspects other than adult entertainment :
Utherverse started development in 2003, and it opened its doors for the first time in 2005. Now the erotic community site consists of virtual nightclubs, hotels, bars, movie theaters, and stores. It also offers parties, classes, meeting rooms, live music with dancing, and art-gallery openings.
That sounds closer to some of the concepts of Second Life than I realised. Whereas I’ve always felt Second Life was unfairly criticised over its adult content, as there’s so much more to Second Life, it’s also fair to say that Red Light Center’s wider community aspects don’t get much of a mention, even though their main selling point is undoubtedly adult content.
Red Light Center also has subscriptions which apparently cost $20.00 to $30.00 a month. Then there’s the user generated content, the ability to buy and sell the content and the ability to cash out. I’m not sure how big a market there is in Red Light Center, or what sort of content can be created.
As I’ve never been to this virtual world I have no idea how it compares to others in terms of scope or performance to virtual worlds I am familiar with. I can’t really comment much on that front, however I’ll be keeping an eye out for reaction to version 2.0, which is due to be unveiled at the Xbiz 360 adult entertainment conference in Los Angeles this week.
I have been informed that not all of the current userbase are looking forward to the new world, which continues a theme I’ve raised before, new technology will not always win people over when they are perfectly happy where they are.