One of the many great lines in A Christmas Story described a lamp in the now-familiar shape of a female leg, high-heeled and fishnet-stockinged, as “electric sex gleaming in the window.” A new Indiegogo project, meanwhile, illustrates the notion of electric sex gleaming on our game consoles in the form of VirtuaDolls, a highly outlandish controller powering a fairly straightforward game.
Fair warning: it is impossible to describe VirtuaDolls without at least some note of explicitness. The game itself—titled Girls of Arcadia—is somewhat limited in nature, allowing players to have sex with a variety of potential waifus in the making. Based on the trailer, the ladies in question appear to at least have first names, and may be appearing in a variety of simulated events including “trapped in a maze protected by a minotaur”. A software developer kit (SDK) also is set to be involved, that will allow users to produce modified versions of scenarios in much the same way that the Elder Scrolls and the Fallout series do.
The game is a bit pedestrian, and little more than license for virtual sex. The controller is where this takes a turn for the nigh-obscene; featuring such selling points as a “soft-touch gripper” and “optional vacuum attachment” which adds “suction capabilities and an easy-clean system”, the controller is designed to precisely approximate on-screen events. The videos demonstrating the system is both compelling and disturbing, and watching it for even a few seconds will drive its point home…repeatedly.
The system as a whole is billed as “extremely safe,” complete with an array of “fail-safe” mechanisms built into the hardware, as well as the software, to prevent injury. The motors involved aren’t particularly strong, reports note, and the dimensions—11.8 x 7.5 x 11.5, all in inches—make it readily hidden in closets.
Based on the system’s design, function, and software, the bad news is that ladies will be left in the cold on this one, as it is literally unable to function without the proper, so to speak, input mechanism. VirtuaDolls is clearly a male-only system, and in so doing has fundamentally limited its audience.
While the audience is inherently limited to males only, it isn’t slowing the system’s popularity a whit. Indeed, the Indiegogo page itself was taken down a matter of days after its launch, not due to its content, or any kind of moral, legal, or similar objection, but rather due to its sheer popularity. Bill Spracklin, owner of the Eos group behind the project, noted that the “huge response” the page generated pulled the Indiegogo page as the controller was slated for release within the next three months. The sheer demand exhibited by the Indiegogo response would have shattered the studio’s distribution capabilities. The page will return, Spracklin promises, but for now, it’s clear that demand is simply too great for the company to handle even with Indiegogo support.
This represents one of those advances in haptic feedback—feedback based on touch—that were required to advance the notion of a Sword Art Online-style game in real life. While it’s just one part of many that needed to come together to produce that completely fictional artificial world, it’s certainly an important part, at least to its target audience.
It’s also the part that could have the biggest ramifications. How many 17-year-old boys out there would cheerfully step over their own mothers to get this? How many of those 17-year-old boys’ mothers are going to be up in arms about this system’s existence? Not just moms, either, but parents’ groups, religious organizations, and a host of others will likely come out against this thing, and potentially, against video games in general. This could be the match that starts the biggest moral panic gaming has ever seen; even Jack Thompson’s bluster about “murder simulators” seems almost quaint by comparison. This is a game that’s purely about having sex. It’s clear, it’s unambiguous, and it verges on the obscene, which is a recipe tailor-made for the anti-gaming community to get news cycles and popular opinion.
Worse, how long before the SDKs get involved and mod the game in directions we may prefer not to go as a society? Take a Mad Libs moment and replace that first noun in Girls of Arcadia with a few other possibilities; do so until you’re entirely too revolted to continue, then see how long it took you to get there. In a world where gamers are all trying to be more concerned about the female role in gaming, does a game strictly about having sex with random women advance notions of inclusion or set it back? If we were to bring out a game that goes the other way, allowing women to have sex with random men in game, would that better things or simply compound a problem?
Perhaps that’s overstating things. Perhaps this will be regarded as a simple toy for lonely men, a refined version of a concept that’s existed since the days of Onan and his brother’s widow. It may even be considered a stepping stone to a more immersive form of virtual reality. Just which form the fallout of VirtuaDolls and Girls of Arcadia takes on remains to be seen, but considering the clear popularity of the device and its software, it’s going to be a very big part of the gaming world, and soon.