Sci Tech Today has a lengthy article on the upcoming release of Naughty America: The Game.
I would say something else here, but really, there's been so much reporting on Naughty America that I'm really not sure what else there is to say. Other journalists certainly keep finding stuff, though.
Yiffstar, the online furry erotica literature archive, has been running a MUCK for quite a while known as YIMU Island. However, they've recently taken steps to start their own 3D client/world, known as Yimu3D.
Yimu3D is a independant client/world based on the Torque Engine (which is why the pictures look an awful lot like Tribes). It's interesting to see a community building their own world from the ground up, I think we'll start seeing more of this once things like Croquet and Multiverse are released.
AVN Online is reporting that Naughty America has been banned from E3, due to "Adult Content". This is a pretty huge blow to any game wanting to get a decent showing in the press, not that NA has had many problems getting press so far. So, E3 has pretty much told adult content developers to fuck off.
Of course, as things usually work out, things like this can garner a product more attention than actually showing up at the show. Bad press is still press, and a lot more people will have their eye on the smaller projects that're banned than whatever poor saps are relegated to Kensha Hall.
And so begins the unloading of the rather massive backlog of posts I have. Conferences have made it a quiet month, so we're gonna be spending some time catching up.
First off is an interview in City Pages with Kelly Rued, lead designer on Black Love Interactive's Rapture Online MMOEG. Lots of interesting information on plans for the game, as well as some background on the design.
Spend the Night, the online dating game/service in production by Republik Games, has suspended development due to funding issues. Whether or not the game will resume production at a later date is up in the air, with the company needing to find new investors before any more progress can be made.
The press release from the company is included in the extended post.
GameDaily has an interview with Tina Courtney, producer on Naughty America (Previous mentioned on MMOrgy here and here). In contains such gems as (and seriously, I shit you not, these questions ARE consecutive in the interview):
Why did you go with 2D instead of 3D?
Well, with 3D you're trying very hard to be realistic, and if you don't succeed in making it totally realistic then it looks really cheesy.
Since you can go to the plastic surgeon, what can you have enhanced?
Your breasts and your penis size.
Now, I'm not sure if that's savvy editing or pure coincidence, but that's comedy gold right there.
Naughty America, one of the new MMOs coming out this Spring, has taken the precautionary step of adding opt-in background checking to their virtual world. Sentry is usually thought of as an online identification verifer for corperations and financial services, and this will be their first foray into the world of pixel sex.
While searching around the web for information on this new feature, we actually found a comment from some of the staff at Safe Escape, the company behind Naughty America.
"Cheers mates, my name is Dusty from Naughty America! I just wanted to comment a little on what I am seeing. Basically, I get the sense that y'all feel this will be some sort of on-line orgy. Not the case. We have taken some serious steps to ensure user safety w/credit card age verification and background checks thru Sentry. You have to understand that this is a dating and networking realm, not unlike those w/o any "game-like" features that we have implemented. The "sex" is optional and must be agreed upon by both parties. There will be a sense of realism here unlike the 'without remorse or consequences' sentiment of some of the other games out there."
After seeing this, I think it's safe to take Naughty America out of the MMOVSG list, since they don't actually seem to be concentrating on it. It seems like they're trying to take over the market currently held by places like Match, or, more likely, OkCupid. I see NA as trying to approach real dating through a virtual environment, meaning that it'll be the sims with hook up features.
How well this will work is questionable. On one end, it does provide an interesting environment that will be a little more friendly than a non-real-time-interactive webpage. People will be able to talk in av form before they talk in webcam/audio, but the world will have both ready and available for whatever people want.
This is where the Sentry issue comes in, though. If someone has a Sentry gold star on their profile, does that make them a star-bellied Sneech? Will this become something of an unwritten social rule within the world? What about all the plain-bellied Sneeches, cast into the same caste as criminals, rapists, and everyone else in the world that Sentry hasn't sniffed the privates of?
So, congratulations, Safe Escape, you beat the rest of the development community to the first implementation of Gattaca. A dating service where customers will be
(possibly unwittingly) concentrating on what they don't know about a set of people that are missing a piece of flare doesn't seem like a good idea.
I'm interested in hearing other people's views on this, since I'm rather biased. Would having this feature make you want to use the world? Is this the end of anonymity in mainstream worlds? Please tell us what you think.
Ren Renoylds at Terra Nova (the blog choosy acadmics choose for their MMOG news) has a post up with predictions on the success of upcoming MMOEG/MMOVSG titles. According to Ren, the outlook for the current line-up seems a little bleak, with everyone getting something right, but no one getting everything right. Will MMOEGs take off, or will mainstream companies bend to the will of the horny consumer?
Boy, it's gonna be a fun year to watch.
Naughty America is a new MMOEG being produced by... we're not real sure. There's no company listing on the page, nor is there much information.
This looks to be something similar to Habbo Hotel, minus the pixelation, same with the isometric view, and plus built in sex. According to the screen shots, it also has a video interface, which lets us assume that there's voice chat, too.
I don't usually make a habit of being harsh to a game that hasn't even been released yet, but this whole idea of avoiding the Uncanny Valley in MMOEGs by going so incredibly cartoony that it feels like you're screwing an animated ad for TRL is a little much. I don't hold out much hope for this one, but I suppose there are people that play Seducity, too.
So yesterday, I bitched and moaned about the use and reuse of the Seducity Engine. This brings up a good question, though. What else is there out there for the developer that wants to ramp up a quick sex environment without writing the server software from the ground up?
This week, the Multiverse Platform made the blog rounds. Basically, it's a middleware layer for MMOG's that will allow developers to quickly ramp a game idea to online fruition, sort of the same way FPS engines work. Where FPS engines are generally made for shooting each other (thus, the "shooter" part of the acronym), MMOG engines can easily be extended into virtual world (or at least, virtual environment, a small scale, genre-ized metaverse), creating 3d social spaces for people to meet, talk, and do other non-gamey things.
Like, say, have sex.
Of course, Multiverse isn't the only thing out there. There's also Big World Technology, which is basically the same thing. However, both of these obviously cost money. So what's the free solution? Users interested in an open source, academic, decentralized platform might want to check out Open Croquet. Based in the Squeak SmallTalk variant (a very, very, very hot language), OpenCroquet is meant to run as a personal server to a personal world. Unfortunatly, it's still in the early development stages, and probably won't be ready for prime time for quite a while.
Really, though, who needs graphics? Remember, there's always text worlds, where the only graphics updates you have to worry about are anti-aliased fonts. The software is free, and the world is as rich as the user's minds. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to turn toward the UK and pray to Bartle.
This is, by no means, a full list of all the software out there. It's simply something to get all of those out there that want to build a virtual world to explore their fantasies in, but have little or no engineering experience. Sure, you'll still need artists, designers, at least a couple of engineers, server space, time, and capital, but those are the only things between you and your new fetish-based world!
As the popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) rises, we see interesting genres appearing through the new independant games. While the bulk of online gaming still lies within the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPG, i.e. World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online, Phantasy Star Online, etc...), we now have Virtual Worlds (Second Life, There, The Sims Online, etc...), Massively Multiplayer Puzzle Games (Puzzle Pirates), and even Massively Multiplayer Spreadsheets (EVE). Sex has shown up in all of these games in one way or another, but there have only been a few games with small player bases that really feature sex as the main aspect Sociolotron is one, but the general topic is outside of the usual gamer or sexually active person's... interests. Seducity is another, but really, who plays Seducity?
In the next year, many companies will (hopefully) be releasing a new type of game known as the Massively Multiplayer Online Virtual Sex Game, or MMOVSG. Here's a list of a few that are currently in the works:
Rapture Online by Black Love Interactive
Spend The Night by Republik Games
Heavenly Bodies by Nest Egg Studios
3Feel by CM-NET
So, what will MMOVSGs bring us that we can't currently get with other worlds? Why should we throw down even more hard earned money when we can just watch a Dark Elf gyrate for a while and then go level grind some more? In this article, we go over some of the pros and cons of what MMOVSGs can present for the lonely/horny(/both) gamer.
