The Call Girl Character Class 108
An anonymous reader writes "And you thought stuff like WoW was addictive before? 1UP has posted a story from CGW about the new character class in MMOs: call girl. They interviewed girls who make up to thousands of dollars a week as escorts in the MMO Second Life. The article even sheds light on virtual pimps and a gentleman's club that takes a cut of the action. Said one of the escorts interviewed, 'Based on my personal convictions, which most people would find beyond offensive, I do not set boundaries in Second Life. I'll do anything, and I'll probably do it better than the client expects.'"
Re:Seriously, I Don't Get It (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically, your avatar can have the current animation be set and changed by an object, either by giving that object permission, or by sitting on it. A standard way of doing such things is to have "pose balls" or similar (e.g. a "sit" on a couch, or a bed, and it then gets to animate you). There are lots of combo pose balls where one person "sits" on one, the other on the other, and it puts both avatars into a posed position, typically sexual.
Since objects can also communicate, and can be controlled by a player (under control of a script), this allows for as complex interaction between two avatars as you can think of. Either or both can select how they want to act or respond, and a script can select the appropriate synchronized animations to do the appropriate interaction.
ALL avatar motion is controlled by such animations, such as normal sitting, standing, flying, jumping, walking, running, falling. You can also trigger animations on yourself, it isn't only through objects. Besides animations, you can also trigger sounds (which can also be uploaded).
Combined with the ability to upload skin details and attach objects to your body (and said objects can now move as well, e.g. twitching tails, flapping wings), and reshape body details (male or female), the possibilities seem fairly unbounded. Certainly for someone who gets off on phone sex, something like this can add a whole new element.
There also seems to be a big market in selling skins, pose balls, animations and sounds to implement all of this, i.e. the support structure behind the sex trade. Gambling also seems to be big in SL; think of it, you could script a slot machine that allowed anyone to copy it, they run it, and it automatically gives you (the programmer) a cut of the action, without even having to put up any money (and payouts come out of the account of the person who is running the machine, not you). You can do that without needing to actually pay ANY real money, just with the basic free account, and if your slot machine becomes popular, you'll start getting game money rolling in, which you can then trade for real money.
Re:sexuality and morality (Score:3, Interesting)
Which I find quite logical (but I'm French).
I suspect that the USA are like this due to religion (blech).