April 15, 2005
New For Your Hard Drive
We knew it would happen… what took so long, really? Virtually Jenna is, I believe, the first fully explicit, hard-core 3-D animated virtual sex game. Billed as “gamerotica”, it’s more like lewdology. Ostensibly the goal is to get Jenna’s Excite-O-Meter to the max, but based on the graphic sample videos on the website, I suspect players may be content to just, well, screw around. According to a review in Wired you can control male or female sex partners for Jenna, sex toys and a disembodied hand, as well as a camera for pornographic photo shoots, in all their high polygon-count, texture-mapped glory.
The developers, xStream3D, have plans to increase the photorealism of the animation as consumers purchase more “hot graphics cards”, which will allow players to put images of their own faces on the avatars, and order customized audio so Jenna can call out your name (hey, I already thought of that…). They plan to eventually build a larger action/adventure game that encompasses the sex play.
As a developer of directly-interactive virtual characters, I wish I had more time to write about this, but commentary from me will have to wait until we ship… for now, keep your hands above the keyboard, folks!
April 16th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
April 16th, 2005 at 12:23 am
The 3D part may be new (I have neither the Wintel hardware nor the inclination to investigate the matter further) but – not to be too fetishistic about new media history – the concept of gamerotica has a long heritage. Some of the modern Japanese “sim games” ask the player to go on and pleasure the schoolgirl after she’s been wooed. But this isn’t only a modern phenomenon. I think this sort of game may be older than your father’s Wang.
For instance, MacPlaymate (complete with disembodied hand and sex toys) was developed in 1986 by Mike Saenz, who went on to create Virtual Valerie, definitely one of the venerable ancestors of Virtually Jenna. It’s unlikely that was the earliest computer game of this sort, though. Martin Minnow wrote in Risks Digest 9.68:
April 16th, 2005 at 12:44 am
My stars and garters, you really went out of your way to slip “your father’s Wang” in there.
April 16th, 2005 at 8:26 am
This looks like a very slightly enhanced version of 3D Sex Villa, which has been out for awhle. We would have covered it on our site, except I don’t think there’s much “game” like about it… Virtual environment, yes, but, in execution, a serious snooze fest. Give me some hentai dating sim over this any day.
What looks real sad is that Jenna is just a new head put on their existing model, and placed in the same lame room as the original 3D Sex Villa. No fluffy pink pillows or even a Jenna poster added?
The 3D Sex Villa simulation is interesting probably only because of it’s massive homophobia. It’s like actually reading the Marquis de Sade — nothing quite like it to make sex seem tedious and boring and a little offensive.
April 16th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Yup, I do remember (fondly? handily? just kidding, I’m joking, I’m totally joking) MacPlaymate and Virtual Valerie, and let’s not forget the recent Orgasm Girl, the subject of the all-time longest running commentary thread on Water Cooler Games (“discussion” has continued on that post regularly for about 8 months now).
But if those older 2D games took interactive virtual sex with virtual women to first base, you have to admit the bump-up in fidelity and moving camera of Virtually Jenna (or actually 3D Sex Villa, thanks Shawn) is an attempt to steal second. Or, depending on your sensibilities, maybe they’re all just foul.
Although porn doesn’t need much sophistication to be successful as porn — and I think interactive porn will be a big underground hit when implemented well, with the choice of either female or male virtual partners — it could be these initial 3D products, due to simplistic execution and somewhat robotic behavior, qualitatively may not be much different than non-interactive video — in fact, it’d be a bit like watching two mannequins getting it on.
Hey, I’ve got the perfect title for the next xStream3D porn game: The Uncanny Valley.
Sorry.
April 16th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
Although there is something disturbing and embarrassing about the redlight bot district, I think it’s worth addressing the erotic side of chatbots (as you do) as something other than an aberration or abomination or a locker-room joke (but did you hear the one about the chatbot and the half-back?). In some ways, this is an image of the bot that has been driving A.I. since Pygmalion.
You may also want to look at virtualfem although its makers seem to have no trouble plugging it themselves. From its web advertisement, this set of bots seems to speak to Andrew’s last comment on animated bots being more like video porn. By contrast, the use of actual images, I would imagine, makes VirtualFem seem more “interactive” than the 3d graphic versions. In some ways, the images also make the exchange more disturbing to me with their indexical relationship to their objects, as a case of object fetishism. How do you all respond?
That said, it’s ironic and apparently unfulfilling that these bots are built around responding affirmatively to input (robotic wish-fulfilment), which isn’t quite what we look for in a partner. At least, when I was looking for a rl chatmate, I sought out and found a one, with keywords of her own and entirely unexpected responses, not to mention, the occasional “keyword not found.”
Is that enough of a move from the sickening to the sickeningly sweet?
April 22nd, 2005 at 1:28 pm
Hmm, no one seems willing to touch this topic with a 10-inch, er, 10-foot pole.
Mark, good question about actual images vs. animated ones; I would argue that while the level of agency in both 3D Sex Villa and VirtualFem seem overly simple (based on what I’ve read about them), at least the animated one is set in a simulated 3D world, where there is the *potential* for more procedurality, and therefore more agency. That is, video-branching games, pornographic or not, are doomed to be very limited, because the content is obviously canned, with very coarse-grain-sized pieces; animated games at least have the possibility of more fine-grain-sized, intermixable content, and therefore the potential for more richness and responsiveness. Even if a specific animated game and specific branching-video game had the same amount of content, and of matching grain-size, experientially one might believe in the potentiality of the animated one more, even though the animated one’s imagery may be cruder. Again, agency and procedurality go hand in hand.
Anyhow, following a few links from the VirtualFem review reveals that 3D Sex Villa itself is a sequel, to its predecessor 3D Slut — perhaps that was actually the first fully 3D porn product. For the sake of completeness, there exist several similar, mostly technically cruder products listed here, here and here. One exception is the new eGirl, that appears to be a slightly more tasteful, high image-quality virtual stripper.
Actually, the most eye-catching 3D virtual female I’ve seen to date is NVidia’s Dawn, a few years old now.
May 17th, 2005 at 6:19 pm
Here’s a Fleshbot article on removing the pixelated blur for creating nude Sims 2 characters. Go crazy.
July 22nd, 2005 at 5:13 pm
I wonder if they serve hot coffee at the 3D Sex Villa?
November 3rd, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Check out Softporn Adventure from 1981! Text-based.
November 29th, 2006 at 11:35 am
We actually review these games on our site. Haven’t done virtually jenna yet, but VirtualFem and 3D SexVilla have been reviewed in detail. I’m fairly certain VirtuallyJenna wasnt the first or second or even 3rd 3D computer generated adult game to exist.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
[…] in Games roundtable, a vertiable orgy of ideas and opinions. There I met the producer of Virtually Jenna, who was more interested to talk about my experience making P […]
March 30th, 2007 at 2:22 am
Ya i Think it shold be easyer to find a frikon Free vershon of this
December 29th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
There are tons of games like this! There are Sexvilla, Virtual Hottie, Cherry Dolls, and the list goes on and on. You can check out a detailed review with screen shots for Virtually Jenna at this link, along with tons of other similar product reviews.
My favorite is Velvet Express!