Originally written by Isabelle Pavlova for mmorgy.com

We're opening a new category here on MMOrgy, called Experiences. It's something both qDot and I have been trying to avoid, trying to keep the blog a place for news and interviews. However, it seems like we're really missing out on the view of the most important being in virtual world, the user.

So, why, as a user, would anyone be interested in writing a blog? I certainly tried to do it myself, but time isn't exactly abundant due to life, so my personal journal has consisted of one post since November. We've also been eagerly watching ApogeeVR, as they're off to a good start as one of the first MMO Sex Blogs.

Even though my blog hasn't seen the attention I would've liked, I'd still like to go into the reasons I decided to start a sex blog in the first place, so that others might pick up new ideas and start their own. To say that we here at MMOrgy launched a million Anais Nins would certainly be a gold star in my book.

qDot has even been nice enough to write up an overview of the current state of Real World Sex Blogging for us, to give those of us that are "reality-challenged" a head start.

The World of Sex Blogging - By qDot

Hey everyone, qDot here. I've been mulling over this topic for a while, and when Isabelle said she was interested in opening up MMOrgy to diary type entries, I figured this would be as good a place as any to put down some of my theories.

So, Sex Blogging. Since blogging (and any other thing on the internet, ever) began, there've been people using the medium for sex. It's simply another way to be an exhibitionist, to be a teacher, to shock others, or to share with others. The internet has spread all sorts of wacky fetishes far, far beyond the bedroom or garage they started in, and blogging has been a major proponent in that.

Let's take a look at the taxonomy of sex blogging:

• The News Blog. A blog with sex news. Porn releases, sex legislation, star gossip, you name it. Doesn't have to be specifically about sex, can be about a subset, like, say, tech sex or video game sex.
• Examples: The Experience Blog, or SexBlog
• A sex diary. Do something sexy or sexual, write about it, post it for the world to see. The new Experiences section on MMOrgy can be considered a multi-writer Sex Blog
• Examples: The Babe Log Blog
• Pictures. Nude pictures of all kinds, for all fetishes. Usually free of charge.
• Examples: The Aggregator
• Why make content when you can host everyone else's? Some aggregators (like sexblo.gs) do a good job of picking up the best posts of the day so you don't have to clutter your rolls, while others simply throw raw posts up and call it done.
• Examples: The Hybrid

Now, when I use those terms, you'll know what I mean. Now I have a nice, public place to reference them too. Wheee. I love self publishing.

Anyways, that's pretty much all I had to say. Not a lot to extend on there at the moment, just setting down some guidelines for what we're refering to when we talk about this stuff. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Isabelle post.

MMO Blogging - How and Why?

Now that qDot has laid out some guidelines for exactly what sex blogs entail, we can delve a little deeper into why MMO Sex Blogging will be an interesting phenomenon. Since there are no unified MMO sex blogs as of yet (both the Alphaville Herald and Second Life Herald (which predate MMOrgy by a matter of years) have had multiple one offs or short series that could be considered MMO Sex Blogging, and the DarkNest site has some WoW erotica), I am speaking from a combination of opinions, predictions, handwaving, and astrological charts.

MMO Sex Blogs will probably fall into one of two of the categories qDot mentioned: Sex Blogs or Hybrid Blogs. Sex Blogging from MMOs will be people who go out and have sexual experiences, but don't have the means to take pictures of them. This could be due to lack of knowledge of the client (though, in terms of relating personal experiences, lack of experience in the world should not stop one from blogging, it may even allow others to guide or add to your experiences), or the fact that there may be no pictures of the world available (MU*s, for instance).

Though I'm sure we'll see at least a few text-centric blogs, I'm betting they will be highly outnumbered by the Hybrid MMO Sex Blog. Many people (and possibly companies) will use Hybrid blogs as an advertisment for their world, a way to say "look at this experience I had here, you can have it to!". Not only that, it will be necessary in some situations to have pictures available in order to explain something that happened in terms of game mechanics that is integral to the story (qDot Note: The first game to make game mechanics sexy totally, totally wins).

The same ideas that were stated in the Wouldn't, Couldn't, Shouldn't article hold true here, also. Virtual worlds will allow people to interact in their fetishes and then document them in blog form, possibly with pictures. This brings me to the reason I planning on beginning a sex blog.

(qDot Note: Personally, something I would like to see but unfortunatly I sux0rz as a sex writer is an MMO Sex Blog using real, found pictures instead of in-game/in-world pictures within the situation descriptions. Like A Softer World, only like, you know, porny instead of dreary and soul crushing and yet somehow funny. If someone decides to do this, please email us.)

Teaching Myself

Before the crunch of school and life ended up squashing my blogging dreams down to whatever I can do for MMOrgy, I was planning on (and still plan on, someday) using Pavlovian Behavior as a way to teach myself how to write erotica. Virtual worlds provide a non-virtual experience. Instead of wandering out into the world and dealing with people, you deal with avatars and whatever communications routes the world provides you. As the tagline of my page says, "What happens in Second Life, stays in First Life". While, from the abstract standpoint, we are experiencing animations thru polygonals, there are real people behind the avatars, and the experience leaves an imprint on their psyche. This could be of passion, of lust, or of hilarity, but no matter what, the experience has changed us in some, possibly large, possible small way. What happens in a virtual world follows a very tenuous definition of fictional, since the people involved are real (Those of you having intimate relations with ALICEBots excluded).

Virtual worlds can allow one to teach themselves how to write erotica by handholding them through a situation. Instead of having to go out to a sex club, I can simply visit one in world, and write from that experience until I am either comfortable writing about my own real experiences, or else writing completely ficitional events. It may also prepare me to go out and try new things, though keeping in mind that what happens in a virtual world may in no way reflect the real world equivilent, assuming there is one.

Having knowledge enough to ask questions and being reasonable about possibly unlearning some things and relearning others is a good trait to have, though. Who knows, you might just bring something new to the table, too.

Originally written by qDot for mmorgy.com

In looking around the internet, there seems to be a consensus of people that taking the stance that trust fetishes couldn't be completely actuated through a virtual world, due to the fact that there is no way to transfer physical feelings, or more importantly, pain. While this is a misguided dillution of a deep and interesting socio-sexual environment, at MMOrgy, we aren't here to adjust people's understanding of fetishes. We're here to report the facts on what can be done in virtual worlds.

Pain in games actually has a history, though it is usually one wrapped in art projects and game shows. However, games don't have to be about positive feedback. All a game is, is an environment with goals. The goal could be to cause pleasure, or pain. A controller could just as easily shock you as it does vibrate. So why doesn't it? Well, that's a mainly a matter of litigation, but at the design level, it's also a matter of ethics.

The Current State of Games and Pain: More Relief than Cause

Researching in google for "pain" and "video games" is pretty much a lost cause. If you're looking for reviews of games that are simply painful to play, that'll get you a lot of information. However, there were quite a few articles on how gaming helps relieve pain. VR Pain Control is a project by the University of Washington that uses VR helmets and virutal environments to keep burn victims occupied while their bandages are being changed. In horribly basic terms, immersion in an outside environment takes the brain away from processing pain signals, making the situation more pleasent for the changer and changee. There are also multiple articles from other hospitals outlining how video games are used in childrens hospitals during painful medical tests.

A lot of work is being put into relieving/ignoring pain through video games, but what about causing pain? I took a poll of some people that I trust to know the history of video games, and between all of us, there's really only one group we could think of that created environments caused players pain; the interaction research/art group //////////fur////.

The Painstation v2.5

The Painstation is one of their most famous projects. The game is one everyone knows, Pong. To play, users are required to put their hands on metal pads before the game will commense. In each round, a new type of pain will be inflicted up on the loser of the round. Hot, cold, electric shock, and whips are the reward to the losing side. The game doles out punishment that must be accepted in order to keep playing. Adding pain to the game ups the play value, with adreniline and endorphine rushes not usually associated with Pong within at least the last two and a half decades.

The Chair. Reminds me of the Dream Love Chair.

What about other types of games involving pain? Mainstream US Media (usually the last place for interesting things to appear, long after they've run their course in Europe) have already picked this up, in the form of ridiculously short-lived gameshows. In 2002, the American ABC TV network had a show called "The Chair". Hosted by tennis great Jon MacEnroe for some weird reason, this show was based purely on pulse control. The player sat in a dentisty type chair and answered questions given by the host. During this time, different "surprises" would happen around them, i.e. loud noises, fireworks, etc... If their pulse went above a certain point, the game would pause, and if they didn't bring their pulse back down within an alloted amount of time, the game was over. No physical pain would ever befall the player (outside of loud noises and an increased heart rate), so this was a totally psychological game, and actually somewhat interesting to watch.

The Chamber. (I miss American Gladiators, the people were way more fun there)

Not to be outdone in the realm of XTREME shows, Fox came out at the exact same time with a show called "The Chamber". This followed the idea of the PainStation, except as a trivia game. Contestants were strapped to a wonderful, only-Fox-could-do-it melding of a St. Andrews Cross and a Lethal Injection Table, put in a metal chamber with a variety of extreme temperature changes happening, and would have questions shouted at them. All sorts of crazy graphs and statistics were put on the screen while the people were in the chamber, and they would usually wail and lament about how horrible it was in the chamber between questions.

It lasted 3 episodes.

So we have relief through immersive virtual environments, pain through fairly simple pick up and play gaming environments, and bondage and domination with (cue Smash TV Annoucer Voice) BIG CASH PRIZES. What about the board game, for those playing at home?

Pain Based Game Feedback and Plot Mechanisms

Starting off simple, there's my specialty, the already covered world of hijacking force feedback signals. We've already proven that once we have access to the signals we can do pretty much anything. However, before we did that, there was the XShox controller. The safety of this is very, very, very questionable, but it proves the point that as much as any game can pleasure, it can also cause pain.

The types of games that could be used for this setup vary between places where they would fit, and others that would require a rather vivid imagination. There are games where the pain is passed onto the player through the avatar on the screen, i.e. fighting games. This is originally what the XShox was invented for. However, repurposing of feedback would require games where the only reason for haptics is pain. Sure, you'll be feeling pain whenever you get hit in a driving game, but unless you really enjoy that idea of getting scrapped along an electric road at 180mph, playing a driving game with this would not be fun.

This brings us to games built specifically for the idea of both positive and negative physical feedback. In order to do this, you'd need some sort of flag that says that a bullet event triggers pain, while a sex event triggers pleasure (because video games are only sex and violence, ya know). The more specialized you get, though, the more hardware is required. I know how much all of us ubergeeks enjoy the idea of "suiting up" before playing a game, but I don't know how well that'd fly with the rest of the world.

The games that I'll focus on for the rest of the article are ones based purely on pain, though. The simple fact that some people enjoy pain cannot be denied, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this right now. So how can you have a game that involves but pain as feedback? How about torture.

Looking at it makes my hands hurt.

Torture isn't a new idea in games by any means, as anyone that's destroyed their fingers on the god damn torture scene from Metal Gear Solid will remember. Torture has been a part of games for as long as games have had plots that have needed torture. Dungeon Keeper was purely about building a prisons and torture chambers, however much in a tongue in cheek manner it was. None of these games have reflected the pain directly on the user, outside of your hand seazing up from having to pound on buttons.

Design Ideas

Taking away the pretiege of screaming like a little girl when fireworks pop in front of millions of people in order to win $25,000, as the aforementioned game shows provided, when we talk about pain-based video games, we refer to people that are willing to PAY for the luxury of hurting themselves somehow. This affords us all sorts of room to do new and interesting things.

Now, before I start with my ideas, let me state that this is by no means a new idea. Uncle Abdul, master of all that is electrostim, had written on essays on Computerized BDSM (1, 2) years ago. It's usually fair to assume that, when talking about the world of fetishes, that someone has already done something before you, and most likely talked about it on the internet.

Let me first state that I DO NOT RECOMMEND YOU DO WHAT I AM ABOUT TO SAY, as it is stupid, and could ruin you, and more importantly, your computing equipment. The most obvious would be hooking the XShox controller to your computer, and using the SL Interface I built. It's force feedback controlled, therefore it shocks you when a remote person tells it to.

Proof of concept reached. Now really, was that all that difficult?

If we wanted to get innovative, something like the Journey to the Wild Divine interface, only, well, not for relaxation. Same idea as The Chair show. Monitor pulse and reflect positive/negative feedback and relay this to electrostim equipment, vibrators, electronic locking mechanisms, you name it. The body of the participant becomes the control mechanism, with the "dangling carrot" idea driving them to do something possibly painful in order to extract pleasure from the game. Computerized Dom/Dommes, online interaction, there's a ton of ways this could go.

So Why Aren't We Doing This?

Ok, if all this is so easy, why aren't all the wacky people that think online BDSM is so great shocking the crap out of each other?

Simple. They're experimenting with trust fetishes in a safe environment. Physical play is done with multiple people present for a REASON. BDSM is not about the pain. It's about the trust. That's it. There's no hardware limits telling us what we can and can't do at the moment. I could rig up a big ol' internet controlled nut kicker with the parts I have sitting in the room with me right now, but you don't see me doing that. Why? Because, it's irresponsible.

There are many parts of BDSM and other fetishes that people don't find out about until they have proven themselves trustworthy and ready, in a real environment. Otherwise they could hurt themselves or others. The last thing those of us participating in this need is damaged people, and to a lesser extent, damaged image. You shouldn't vac bed by yourself. People do, but they're experienced. Most of you probably aren't even aware of what a vac bed is, and I'm sure you're googling right now.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

Putting remote actuated pain hardware out there for the general public is a bad idea for that exact reason. Just because you've played online doesn't mean you're ready for the next step, especially alone. Pain for pleasure is not something to be experienced alone, it needs supervision, before it becomes pain for /pain/.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who builds these things, that's why you don't see me posting up some of my BDSM projects. You want to know about them, believe me, if you're in the right place at the right time, you'll find out. There's a lot of things publically available on the internet that people will use the wrong way. A metaphor that I use pretty often is that I make guns, but don't talk about the bullets. Now sure, other people do, but that's their perogative. I'm doing what feels right to me.

And Another Thing

So is that it for trust fetishes online?

Hell no.

These fetishes are about trust, something intangible. There may or may not be pain, there may or may not be power trade. Who cares if there is or isn't. This is about the player's trust in something, letting down some barrier they have in their head for something on the other end, be it a person or a piece of code or some amalgamation of both.

If you're strapped to a table and not feeling it, well, then you're just tied up and annoyed. And that's not sexy. Letting down those barriers is by far the most powerful thing anyone could do for anyone else, and in that is where the sexuality lies. We can spend thousands on equipment, but it's never going to replace that feeling.

That's where this comes from. That's why it's popular in virtual worlds, even though we don't have crazy hardware. People can let go over a machine as well as they can in real life, all it takes is a brain.

All that hardware? It's just (slightly salty) icing on the cake.

Teledildonic Conception

I just wrote an article that some of you over here that don't read MMOrgy might be interested in. It outlines the idea of Teledildonic Conception, or using teledildonics hardware and face morphing software to make virtual babies more real.

I'm not really hoping to get into the habit of linking to myself on my own sites, but since this sort of crosses the border between MMOs, games, and hardware, it seemed like a good idea.

Originally written by qDot for mmorgy.com

My head is not a nice place sometimes.

Sure, I come up with neat things like hooking video games to sex toys, and exercise bikes that play games. But then there's shit like this that comes up, and I really start to wonder about myself.

This time around, it's Teledildonic Conception.

So, join me and the bottle of wine that I'll be taking pulls off of frequently throughout writing this, and together let's explore one of the most deeply emotionally impacting, gut-wrenching (at least, for me) MMO game design ideas I've come up with in my stint as whatever the hell it is I am these days..

The Concept

As Isabelle already talked about, people are not only interested in, but are actively involved in making pregnancy and the birth process happen in virtual worlds. However, there's a lot of storkage in that process. Sure, the happy couple may bump polys and then send a notecard off to the "Doctor" that they've become pregnant, but really, where's the love? There's a ton of suspension of disbelief happening there, especially when you come out of the process with a baby that looks something like this.

So, what can we do to make this process a little more real? Well, let's take our happy couple, John and Jane VirtuDoe, and their experience with BabyCorp, the ficticious leading company in virtual conception. Everything I state here currently exists in some form, which is why some of it will sound a bit less lackluster than it could if I decided to go all Neal Stephenson on it. This isn't about Sci-fi, this is about the fact that this could happen right now.

1. John and Jane decide they want to have a baby in their virtual world relationship. They contact BabyCorp.
2. BabyCorp requests that each of the parent-cusomters send in a real picture of their faces. After this, the more the couple spends, the more they can customize, otherwise it's left to "nature" (Nature being the name of BabyCorp's server farm).
3. As part of the package, the couple is sent the BabyCorp hardware/software package, consisting of male and female teledildonics equipment. In this context, female teledildonics equipment refers to a vibrator that is controlled by internet communications, while male teledildonics equipment refers to a manual use penetration device, in this case, similar to the Interactive Fleshlight. This device can relay rate and depth of penetration using pressure sensors.
4. The couple copulates, using the BabyCorp package. The software relays the depth of the male stroking, which controls the speed of the woman's vibrator. For sake of argument, lets say the vibrator also contains a pump, fluid storage unit, and heater. At the time of the John's orgasm, the pump goes to work in Jane's side.
5. Over at BabyCorp, the servers pick up that conception has happened, and Nature goes to work. Combining the pictures sent in by the couple, along with aging algorithms and a few mutations thrown in for good measure, the baby's facial textures are formed.
6. After the gestation time selected by the couple (Once again, depth of immersion in gestation time (ultrasound, virtual la maze classes, etc...) is figured by parental monetary investment), a bouncing virtual baby is born, possibly with mom's nose, or dad's eyes.

So, John and Jane have their child to raise. Of course, aging textures are built into the baby, meaning that the face will age properly as the child grows. This is where our concern about the process, at least in this article, ends.

It's also where the questions begin.

A Personal Investment

What the process above adds to the current virtual baby creation market is the idea of personal investment. In virtual worlds at the moment, babies are as abstract as the characters. There's no biological/chemical links between you and your pixel kid, you just pressed some buttons, possibly wrote an email, and there it was.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I've perfected some sort of sperm or DNA remote transfer protocol, either. There's no biology in the solution I just gave. However, we've just made the jump from Pole Position at the arcade to Forza Motorsport in a full surround sound environment with a really nice steering wheel. It may not be real, but instead of just typing and holding on to suspension of disbelief, we've added two things that will catch even the most mentally balanced of people: the event of physical reproduction and facial recognition.

First off, let's look at the event of physical reproduction. Here comes that term that I love to use so much even though I have no place doing it... BRAIN CHEMISTRY!

Your brain makes up your reality. Emphasis on that second "your". Just 'cause your brain thinks that the stack of waffles on the front of the Village Inn menu is leaking syrup all over the table doesn't mean it actually IS (I can feel every person who's ever done acid and then gone to a Denny/IHOP/Village Inn/etc... nodding sagely with me here). Fuck with your brain enough though, and things can easily become real to you.

Technically, that's what we're doing with the teledildonics part of this. He's really thrusting. She's really feeling the effects. He's really coming, and she's at least feeling inseminated. At the end of this process, they are very aware that they have made a baby, because that was the guarentee that came with the package. They have engaged in the biological act of reproduction, remotely, with each other, and since they're already buying a virtual baby, there's no telling what either of the user's state of mind is. They could be realizing that this is all fake, but it takes a MUCH higher level of cognisance to deal with the fact that the fakeness just made you orgasm, versus the old days of the fakeness having you fill out a form and then manually stimulate yourself while watching your avatar crudely bump into the other's avatar.

Then, there's facial recognition for parent to virtual child. When you look at the picture I posted above, well, I'm not really aware of anyone that looks a lot like that. However, if you look at a avatar that's been textured with a lgorithmically generated image having your face as a base, then you're going to be able to pick out things about you in it, somewhere. This will lead to a whole new feeling of ownership, because unlike your light saber or your teacup car or whatever other crazy shit is in your inventory, part of this will really be YOU.

One could question why the user couldn't just do this themselves in photoshop. Really, they could, but it wouldn't be the same. You don't get to send your kid back 'cause his nose didn't turn out right. Having BabyCorp use Nature (the servers) randomize the generation means that it feels like a real conception, like they let nature (the nebulous idea) take its own course.

Now, to take a quick tangent into the "Boy wouldn't it be cool" world, assuming you're in a world that allows webcam support, you could, technically, have the baby recognize the face of its owner, possibly their emotions.

-- Sounds weird, don't it? Even being caught up in these terms shows you how powerful this idea is. Remember, we're talking a virtual baby here, this is not a parent<->organic being relationship, this is a code on a server somewhere<->customer relationship. Not an easy thing to abstract. --

Anyways, this means that if the user leaves the computer for too long, their image will not show up on the webcam, and the server triggers the baby's crying event. If you thought Everquest was bad for addictions, just think: it didn't cry for you when you left.

The Company's Investment

What about BabyCorp, though? What's their business plan?

Let's say they want to stay specially a baby maker. No deal with baby furniture or raising issues or anything else, they just make babies, ship them out, do warrenty support on them until some predetermined age (When ToddlerCorp, a sister company of BabyCorp, takes over), and that's it.

In the baby building process, this is going to follow the same idea as buying a car. Some people will want a baby with air conditioning and all leather interior, while others will want the economy model. This is what I was refering to earlier as the Gattaca concept. Basically, the more you can pay, the more you can customize. There's also the "Go onto the lot, close your eyes, point, and pick a random car" option, which is basically letting Nature/nature take its course. I'd honestly be interested in seeing statistics of what people would take between these two choices.

Now then, recurring income. There's a nice way to do this, and a naughty way to do this.

Let's go with the nice way first. It's pretty simple, really. Provide a good service, and people will come back for more. If BabyCorp plays their cards right, people will want the experience again, creating virtual brothers and sisters. It's going to be all about making the age range a good experience, though, otherwise people will go BabyTech or BabyTrdoe, or hell, straight to ToddlerCorp and start at the age they enjoyed more and already have experience with. Yes, popularity could have us birthing instant 3 year olds.

Now, the naughty. Kids die. It's that simple. I'm not trying to make light of anyone's real, personal situation by stating this, but it does happen. The question is, do we want to build that into our utopia? There's a few different mechanics for this.

The first I will refer to as the Cigarette Excutive Solution. The more the pay, the less chance the baby has of catching a virtual disease (virtual diseases manufactured and distributed by BabyCorp). Not ethically cool, at all, but we haven't gotten to the ethics part yet, so we're just gonna ignore that.

Moving from questioning ethics to questioning sanity, there's the Customer's Choice Solution. A customer could, at no difference in cost, actually /choose/ to be part of the Natural Cycle. They could do this to add to the immersion and reality quotient of the situation. They could do this because they're the type that likes to grieve.

I dunno, I don't analyze the people, just the ideas.

Ethics

This section should technically be the longest, but it's probably not going to be, simply because I don't have the experience to even begin to analyze the ethics of all the situations this brings up. I'm hoping this will light up the forums. I'll go over my thoughts on it, though.

The major question here is, when do we stop doing the Dungeons and Dragons blame game (The "D&D turned my kid satanic, even though he was listening to metal and carving pentagrams into his arms 2 years before I bought him his first D&D book, but I was too busy watching TV to notice" argument), and start saying "Ok, this is too much". When we start actively playing with events that we know trigger chemical reactions of ownership and emotion (but, unlike our tenuous grasp on that idea with medication, we have no way to tell how they will effect everyone, no clinical tests), does it become the product/manufacturers fault?

From the corperate perspective, BabyCorp can't offer psych evaluations to every customer, and even then, telling someone they're too nutty to have a virtual baby is just not something anyone can easily judge. With product prices expected in a virtual world (We're talking maybe $200-250 for the whole kit here, most of the cost being eaten by the hardware), there'd be no way to fund that in the first place. The stakes here are obviously lower, but instead of terms of human life, BabyCorp will be considering the terms of emotional damage and ensuing litigation from a baby that doesn't work out "right".

From the player's side, well, just because you can physically immerse someone in a game involving baseball bat beatings doesn't mean you should (I've taken to refering to ideas like this as "Baseball Bat Immersion" because of that analogy). While game companies work on graphics and poly counts and OHHHH SHINY, the idea I've just talked about will take people farther into a world constructed on bits and databases and processors than the prettiest, reflectiest car game you can whip onto an HDTV at 1080p. Unfortunatly, until pretty graphics, this has more side effects than epilepsy. The game that cries for you idea is just one of them. This isn't just something you want to play, it is programmed to want you to play it. The same could be said for something like Nintendogs. Games are now presenting situations that, if not taken care of in a timely manner, will degenerate your standing. No one wants a dirty dog, or a hungry baby.

Not what. Not how. When.

Everything I've mentioned here could probably be implemented in the next 6 months for a current MMO by a team of decently knowledgable people. We've already got the hardware (minus the pump idea, that's a Aerowolf/qDot special right there), so it'd be mostly software and scripting.

That's it.

Now that you've read this, go back and read isabelle's article on why someone would want a virtual baby in the first place, with this idea in your head. God, it's scary.

Thanks to that thought, I'm going to go spend the rest of my evening in the bathtub, crying. This is a crazy world we live in, and it's just getting crazier. It's hard to deal with this shit when other people do it, much less be the one coming up with it.

I'd quit this stuff and go make flying cars, but people would just crash them.

Handjob Machine: Mystery Solved, with ENGRISH!

Update: Sometimes, we (well, me) at Slashdong make mistakes. This is one of those times. We have just been notified that Fleshbot had this link, like, 2 freakin' years ago. Therefore, our snarkiness was unfounded, but unlike most other blogs on the net, we realize when we've snarked wrongly, and are willing to apologize. So, To Fleshbot:

Slashdong: Here's the 'very sorry song'

Slashdong: Won't you help and sing along?

Slashdong: Bum bum bum

Slashdong: I blew it!

Slashdong Backup Singers: He's sorry

Slashdong: I knew it!

Slashdong Backup Singers: So sorry

Slashdong: I'm very very sorry that I took your precious flaaggg! 2 year old link and called it new.

Fleshbot: Just don't do it any more, you scurvy scalawaagg!

Now, as part of our penitence, we leave the original post in tact, though it is now wearing a dunce cap. We ask that you still enjoy the brochure and engrish content.

HAH. All you bastards go to AEE and we're the first people to post about this? SLASHDONG FTW, BITCHEZ.

A friend of mine who did make it to AEE picked me up this flyer:

Page 1 (2404x1612, 500k)

Page 2 (2240x1624,300k)

Look familiar? Sure it does, it's the Japanese Handjob Machine! Er, excuse me, "High Performance Onanie Machine". Now we know who makes it too, SOM Japan.

Honestly, it's a neat little machine, very versitile. The brochure is filled with engrish, which makes this even better.

Now, I'm assuming "We are planning virtual type linked to visual" means they're either planning video synchronization control or possibly teledildonics. More on this once our other writer who can speak Japanese stops being AWOL (LGM, where art thou?).