May 10, 2007
Outside, fifteen or so people are on the open-air dancefloor, talking, moving to a beat, enjoying themselves. It’s a nice evening. The sun has yet to set, music plays, and couples are gradually drifting indoors. From the outside, this is a conventional party and one of many similar social gatherings currently taking place in the online world of Second Life. The view from inside the house, however, tells a radically different story.
This is one of Second Life’s numerous free sex clubs, a never-ending party where people can meet, dance and, if they happen to hit it off, move swiftly on to the next stage. Poseballs - switches that trigger character animations - are everywhere. But while these are normally used for animating everything from eating to playing pool, here they enable up to four people to join together in an array of lascivious combinations. I’ve come here to start my journey through the world of virtual sex: to find out where it happens, how it happens, and why it happens.
Second Life is a world apart from most MMO games. For a start, it’s not a game. With no goal and no specific mandate, developers Linden Labs have instead created the tools necessary for users to make their own fun. The community has created the architecture, the clothes, the animations and the code that make SL such a fascinating place to visit.
Where such freedom exists, sex is sure to follow. For most, it’s not a concern, merely another oddity in an already colourful world. For others, it’s the entire reason for being here.
There are those who write the code that make it possible, and those who become strippers and prostitutes to make it easy. There are those for whom it’s a way of life, and there are those for whom it’s a genuine, emotive expression of love. Mainly, though, it’s a community of explorers and fetishists, and of curious gamers looking for a cheap, thoughtless thrill.
Sex in Second Life is more than mere mimicry of the real world: it’s an entire industry unto itself. Here, in the bottom floor of this mansion by the sea, among the finely coiffed and immaculately undressed, my avatar looks gormless and crude. Designed primarily by hitting the randomise button too many times on the character creation screen and infused with life by clumsy, default animations, I look like an overly-stretched man stumbling with the wandering gait of Frankenstein’s monster.
It’s with this lumbering momentum that I’ve approached a naked man I don’t know in a house I’ve never been to before, and it’s with dead eyes that I’m enquiring about where I can purchase genitalia.
Let me explain. While Linden Labs haven’t discouraged sexual conduct, they haven’t encouraged it either. Avatars are as anatomically correct as Ken and Barbie dolls. If you like your salacious simulacra to be as accurate as possible, you have to purchase one of the many available devices that turn your empty plate into a full meat and two veg.
The man I’m talking to has his equipment in full view, and I’m banking on him being able to help me. “Where do you get the cock and balls?” I ask again. He explains that they’re sold in stores around the world. I’m aware of that, but don’t know where any such stores are. Luckily, he then offers to sell me one. Or a pair. Or a set. I’m not sure. A plate-full, anyway.
He suggests 400 Linden dollars - the in-game currency. That’s around 75p. It seems more than reasonable, until from the other side of the room another man, decked head to foot in leather, speaks up: “I’ll sell you a penis for 350 Lindens.” Sold! I can’t resist a thrifty bargain. We make the exchange and I slip off to an empty room to try it on for size. But my frugality did not serve me well: my new genitalia are a mere novelty, seemingly struck with a permanent case of rigor mortis. To have such a thing in real life would cause you to pass out from lack of blood to the brain.
You want a piece of me? Huh? Do ya? That’ll be £5, please.
Putting it away, I look for the original seller. Much to my relief, he’s still downstairs in the living room, as naked as the day he created himself.
I make my purchase for the original price of 400 Lindens, and return to the back room. This time, the landing gear is down in the proper position when attached, and upon clicking on my new friend, a message appears. “Graham Vantongerloo’s ‘FuckStick’ Xcite! You are playing with FuckStick. What would you like to do?”
Xcite! are a team of designers committed to bringing to Second Life an entire range of products meant to aid the act of coitus. They’re not the only ones working on such things, but their products are some of the most advanced and popular available.
Below the message is a series of buttons, each clearly marked: Adjust, Masturbate, Stop, Options and Ignore. I choose Adjust, since in its current placement my testicles hang not between my legs, but somewhere around mid-thigh on my right leg. Shifting them to one side slots them perfectly into position.
The Options button reveals even greater customisation: everything from changing its name, sounds, colour and visibility, to making it numb. But what’s most impressive is the realism. For one thing, it’s limp until touched, and gradually stiffens as you or someone else grapples with it. For a second thing, it actually climaxes, with suitable particle effects and all. Following that is referred to in the manual as a “refractory period,” during which standing at attention, while not impossible, will be far more difficult.
My previous attachment was static, but this? This is a beautiful piece of engineering; a fully functional, tantalising, romanticising, surprising, her-prizing interactive love machine designed to simulate, stimulate, and titillate. It is, in every sense, the very model of the modern Major General.
Or so I thought.
The free party I arrived at is just one of the numerous popular locations that show up when you search for ’sex’ and related terms in Second Life, and whether you’re looking for toys, escorts or strippers, there’s always plenty available. To continue my quest, I decide to look for something else I have heard about but never actually seen - hooker malls.
The one I teleport to is open air, and looks like an E3 convention floor with the games removed and only the booth babes left. In three-walled compartments, girls stand around poles, throwing poses and attempting to get the attention of a small, wandering group of people. Flashy posters advertise girls not present who are nevertheless available for hiring. A dynamic bar at the bottom of each picture lets shoppers know if the girl is on- or offline.
It’s here that sex is most clearly commoditised: women turned into merchandise for the sake of visiting shoppers. But while seemingly dehumanising, it is also the perfect picture of modern consumerism. This is not a seedy backalley or a street corner in a rundown part of town. It’s a brightly lit shopping centre: a clean, consumer paradise with sunshine and flowers. The setting is the antithesis of traditional ideas of where the sex trade should take place, and it’s an obvious reminder that the ins and outs of virtual sex are not the same as the real thing. How dehumanising is this really? After all, these aren’t real humans on display in the first place, they’re avatars. But where do the boundaries between a person’s first and second lives lie?
“To a large extent I feel she’s me, and vice versa. I can’t feel through her, but there’s a definite vicarious thrill with everything in SL, from exploring, to shopping, to yes, even sex.” This is Gwyon Stockton talking. In her first life she’s 28 years old, married and a self-described “dismally boring secretary.” In her second life, she’s chosen a different profession.
“The first thing I did when I got in-world was look for a job. I looked at the options available at several different clubs and finally decided that I’d make a pretty good escort,” explains Gwyon. “After all, I’ve been having cybersex (in BBSs, Webchats, chatrooms and IMs) since I was a teenager - I should be good at it by now!”
To Gwyon, there’s nothing dehumanising or demeaning to what she’s doing, and the exploitation that exists in real world prostitution doesn’t cross over into SL.
“I’ve heard stories about girls who said that [prostitution] was all they were capable of, but most of the girls I know don’t do it for just the money, but because they enjoy it. It’s not like there aren’t other ways to get money here. You could camp, or go into real estate, or retail, or even just buy the Linden Dollars.”
It’s a fair point. The in-world currency is in plentiful supply, and it’s actually possible to get a job sitting down. Plus, if you don’t feel like even that kind of work, presumably anyone who can afford a computer and a broadband internet connection can also afford the relatively cheap price of the Linden dollar.
Some things, however, do carry over from the real world. “Misogyny exists here to some extent,” says Gwyon. “Some clubs treat their girls like meat, and it can be a bit harsh.” For all the technical chicanery and benefits, it’s the bigotry people bring with them that makes sex in Second Life so disappointingly recognisable.
Poker? I hardly know ‘er! Boom boom.
Back at the escort shopping centre, I select one of the women currently advertised as online on the posters. Blonde and around five foot tall, she is one of the more generic looking women available - possessing neither the gothic dominatrix nor wilting flower look that seem equally popular among the other pictures on display. She is traditional, in a white top, short skirts and boots, and her name is Lola.
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Lola will be my first, and to date my only, virtual sex partner.
After we talk for a little while and agree a price - 1,000 Lindens for 30 minutes with her, or just under £2 - she teleports us back to her place. It’s another large mansion, the second I’ve been in this evening, but this time there are no other people around. It’s just the two of us, and while I have seen many naked digital women on my journey so far, and even a daisy-chained foursome of mostly men at one unfortunate point earlier in the evening, I am now faced with having to do the do myself.
We move upstairs and into a large bedroom that I can’t imagine anyone sleeping in. The bed is floor level and equipped with straps and poseballs, and around the edges of the room lie a number of frightening looking contraptions that all appear to involve some form of bondage.
Lola leads me over to a large, commanding chair in the centre of the room, and directs me to sit. I use the poseball, and my character relaxes. “Is it an Xcite?” she asks. I reply that it is, and she gets to work. Or at least, she tries to.
Between my legs a head is bobbing away, but nothing is happening. I’m completely limp.
Uh oh. This is not what is meant to happen. I know what is meant to happen; I’ve read the owner’s manual. After a lascivious road trip through the twisted carnival world of Second Life, I have finally arrived in an upstairs room of a call girl’s mansion, I’m surrounded by stocks and swings, and I bought genitals from a strange naked man especially for this occasion. The latest addendum to my avatar should be responding. Why is it not responding?
“I keep clicking it and… nothing,” she says.
Not what a man wants to hear. I’m impotent. I am less than man. I am sitting in an office chair, slouched in front of a computer, watching a £2 call girl try in vain to get so much as a twitch out of me. WHY IS IT NOT RESPONDING?
Then I check the messages. She’s being rejected. Not by me, by it. I’m being cockblocked by my own e-penis. Lola isn’t on the permissions list, and in an attempt to dissuade would-be grabbers and pokers, only authorised people may excite your Xcite!. “Hold on,” I say, “I think I can fix it.” I dive into the script that handles the core processes and quickly add a line, with appropriate syntax, that allows Lola full and unreserved access to me and my little me.
She tries again. “Still nothing,” she says. Arse. But it’s too late now anyway, time is running out and if I want to salvage anything from this attempted coupling then we’re going to have to resign ourselves to my condition. There is no viagra in Second Life.
So that’s how we continue, moving from position to position, from swing to stocks, from straps to chains, with my most important position still firmly unfirm. We’re dry humping, and for all the sex talk, enthusiastic on her part and awkwardly meek on mine, I’m still slouched in front of my PC, looking depressedly at the screen.
Setting aside issues of gender bias, of misogyny and mistreatment, of the vagaries of first and second life boundaries, the one, clear thing I’m earning about all of this is that sex in MMO games is absurd. I can objectively understand how someone might enjoy this, how if they were to commit themselves to the fantasy then perhaps, yes, this could be exciting. But I feel detached, and silly, and self-conscious, and even a little bored. Were I to know this person, have an actual connection to them, then I can imagine this might be fun, an emotive process or an extension of our relationship. But it’s not. I don’t know this woman from Eve, aside from the fact I’m fairly sure Eve didn’t do it from behind.
I even introduce a poseball I had brought with me in the hopes of feeling more involved, but although she gladly participates, I feel completely disconnected from the process. My avatar is not me.
It’s not until 40 minutes in, ten minutes after we’re meant to be finished, that a realisation hits me. It’s never going to stop. My Xcite! Cock can’t reach climax, because it’s limp and Lola can’t interact with it. There isn’t going to be any disappointing sunlight for the particle effect to mourn. There isn’t going to be a particle effect at all, and while I’ve manipulated Lola’s own Xcite! devices so she could climax, I never will. I’m just trapped here, in this monotonous, repeating animation. Forever. Unless, of course, I end it.
So I do. I don’t disengage or sign-off. I fake orgasm. Through a series of even more awkward messages sent moaning through the in-game chat system, I bring the session to a close by pretending I’m satisfied. I feel like we both need the closure, but I can’t help but be reminded of what Gwyon had said earlier, when talking of how much her acts in Second Life actually affected her in the real world.
“Do I actually ‘get off’? Hell yes. For the most part, I do get excited and… entertain myself. That’s the point, for me at least. To have fun at it.”
Technically I have been entertained, but perhaps not in the way anyone had in mind. Certainly not in the way I had paid for.
Not only could my supposedly modern Major General not stand at attention, but he couldn’t salute either. This is a virtual fantasy. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen. It’s the enlightened new world and the last sexual frontier; no rape, no disease, no exploitation. Yet despite all the differences, it turns out that even in a digital world you can still give up your dignity in pursuit of the big O.
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