I Was Young And I Needed The Money

The Escapist this week is running a great article by Richard Bartle entitled I Was Young And I Needed The Money. He doles out the sordid details of his experience developing a never-released sexy text MMOG. From the article: "All we required was some fiendish mind-control system to persuade people to play a text game when they really wanted to play EverQuest. So, that would be sex, then. I'd written a pitch for a sex MUD about five years earlier, but the funding fell through. Now was the time to dust it off! The thing is, sex in a text world has three things going for it that sex in a graphics world doesn't ... "

Re:FULLY naked hairy man

[notanatheist]

Shudder I do. As a PC tech I hate to think of touching laptop keyboards though I do on a daily basis. You just don't know where they've been. With the advent of textual sex it's even scarier because you're using a mouse less and accidents happen you know. Ugh, darn you for bringing that up. Now I'll need a box of gloves for work. Damn you AC!

Re:FULLY naked hairy man

[superpenguin]

Heh. That picture reminds me of some antics from a few years back in the dorm. One of the guys in the room next to mine was very uncomfortable with male nudity. One day, he left the room unlocked, so one of my friends stripped down, sat in front of the other guy's computer and posed with the joystick in a, hmm, suggestive manner. And then we took a picture and set it as the Windows wallpaper. The poor guy came back and fired up his computer and practically had a fit. He didn't want to sit in his chair

Re:FULLY naked hairy man

[superpenguin]

To ease your troubled mind: The joystick was in front. Held in his lap as if were, ahem, 'playing' with it.

Freeform textual sex?

[Opportunist]

Has been around for ages. Where was he hiding when MU* games were created. I'm pretty sure the first line ever said in a MUD is "hey, cool, it's working!" The second: "Wanna fuck?"

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[optikSmoke]

Where was he hiding when MU* games were created.

Writing it? [wikipedia.org]

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[msuzio]

Where's the moderation option, +1 - "Oh, Snap"

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[adam.skinner]

Burn!

I need to put the Bartle Test [andreasen.org] in the wp article...

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[ccmay]

The second: "Wanna fuck?"

Undoubtedly right, and no doubt many people have discovered sexual gratification that way, but it's not for me.

Remember, the Internet is where men are men, and women are men, and 14-year-old girls are FBI men.

-ccm

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[Opportunist]

Eww. Didn't know the FBI had so many sickos.

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[Fred Ferrigno]

The FBI is just pretending. Homeland Security [msn.com] does it for real.

Re:Freeform textual sex?

[CableModemSniper]

He was probably the one saying "hey, cool it's working!"

Was this freeform

[SmallFurryCreature]

I get the idea from his description of some game mechanics that this was NOT just a mud with cybersex. Rather that the sex was a game mechanic. He does after all talk about how he adopted the combat system.

So it would be far more then just chatting "wanna fuck". You would actuallly have to worry about stats. Probably for the male of making sure you stimulate her enough that you don't come to fast. Wonder if male players are disconnected within a few minutes of climax?

It sounds like he was trying for way more then just another adult chatroom. Could have been intresting BUT hard to sell indeed.

Companies got very weird attitudes to sex. Just check phone companies and how they handle porn. THey are happy to rake in the cash from phonesex lines and mobile porn sites but nobody wants to be the assigned to handle them.

But all is not lost. Read the recent article of upcoming MMO's. Naughty America is sex based and I remember another story about an MMO set in London that has sex as well.

I just hope that they indeed have the whole sex/relationship put in as game mechanics. If it is just freeform sex I am gonna suck at it as bad is in real life. Now anyone know how to grind a really big dick?

Re:Was this freeform

[Jearil]

Now anyone know how to grind a really big dick?

No, but I think I have a very helpful email in my inbox. Let me forward it to you :)

Re:Was this freeform

[Level45Batman]

Now anyone know how to grind a really big dick?

A really big mortor and pestel...?

This has to be good

[mackil]

"The thing is, sex in a text world has three things going for it that sex in a graphics world doesn't ... "

Man am I waiting on the punchline for this!

Re:This has to be good

[hal2814]

Just as he was getting to the punchline, the guy telling it fell through the ceiling after climbing up there to get out of the closet his teaher locked him in for acting up during Saturday detention. Sadly, we'll never hear the rest. Oh wait, wrong joke.

I thought...

[Spy der Mann]

Funny, when reading the title I thought it was an RPG about being a prostitute. It would be interesting for a change.

Re:I thought...

[MoriaOrc]

But... if the players are the hookers then who do you beat to death with a baseball bat? Such an MMO would need all the servers to be PvP.

The baseball bat...

[MsGeek]

...would be for misbehaving Johns.

Possible replacement

[I Like Pudding]

Funny, when reading the title I thought it was an RPG about being a prostitute. It would be interesting for a change.

I hear EQ2 sucks a lot of dick

Re:I thought...

[StikyPad]

Yeah, nothing screams interesting like putting out for large middle-aged bald men night after night. It's amazing they're not paying us.

Before the Karma Whores get here

[Anonymous Coward]

The 3 things are: (for the lazy)

1.It's freeform. You don't have to motion-capture every position in the Kama Sutra and beyond, because people can animate it themselves using words.

2.It's legal. You can write about antics that you would be jailed for depicting visually. The word is pornography, not pornotexty.

3.For a basic sex game to work, you need comparable numbers of both men and women. A female-friendly game, by virtue of its having women in it, is male-friendly; therefore, you need to attract women. And hey, guess what? Study after study has shown that, in general, women prefer words to pictures - especially when it comes to sexual fantasizing.

An Aimless Pedant...

[Elemenope]

Although I found the 'pornotexty' neologism really funny, as a point of pedantry, the word pornography comes from the greek words that literally mean 'to write about prostitutes'. The first media that had the label pornography attached to it was in fact written work.

But you are right. It's legal. ;)

Re:Before the Karma Whores get here

[91degrees]

It's legal. You can write about antics that you would be jailed for depicting visually.

Well, that takes the fun out of it.

Re:Before the Karma Whores get here

[sesshomaru]

pornography

1857, "description of prostitutes," from Fr. pornographie, from Gk. pornographos "(one) writing of prostitutes," from porne "prostitute," originally "bought, purchased" (with an original notion, probably of "female slave sold for prostitution;" related to pernanai "to sell," from PIE root per- "to traffic in, to sell," cf. L. pretium "price") + graphein "to write." Originally used of classical art and writing; application to modern examples began 1880s. Main modern meaning "salacious writi

Re:Before the Karma Whores get here

[Paul Crowley]

For a basic sex game aimed only at heterosexuals, anyway.

In a world where men never pretend to be women online and vice versa.

Bwahahaha!!!

[Rob T Firefly]

As for the sex act itself, we implemented it using a modification of the classic MUD combat system.

Anyone else get to this line and laugh uncontrollably for five minutes straight?

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[darkhitman]

I can't resist this, crude as it may be:

It is now your turn.
Your ejaculation hits Kara101 for 32 damage.

Kara101 has died.


Experience gained: 50 points.

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[kin_korn_karn]

blunt puncturing

Offtopic, was Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[kisrael]

What's your sig all about?

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[Famanoran]

Simple.

-1 Virginity.
A death blow to most geeks. :)

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[Builder]

You owe me a new keyboard :D

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[kalirion]

You have gained a level and aquired an extra hentacle.

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[tomzyk]

It is now your turn.
Your ejaculation hits Kara101 for 32 damage.

Kara101 has died.

replace "died" with "orgasmed"... unless you're into the whole necrophilia [wikipedia.org] thing

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[g33uu]

As for the sex act itself, we implemented it using a modification of the classic MUD combat system. This sounds appropriate. Battles in the classic MUD combat system never lasted very long for me.

Actually, I just have to wonder...

[Moraelin]

I'm wondering if that article is some elaborate form of trolling, or what. Even _if_ someone bought a game just to "cyber" (sad as it may be), if I put on my thinking cap and try to think about it with a straight face, it seems like a collection of bad ideas and missing the point by a mile.

E.g., his #1 reason for text-based sex is that it's free form... then he mentions implementing it as a modification of the combat system. WTF? There goes "free form" right out the window.

E.g., his #3 reason is that women

Re:Actually, I just have to wonder...

[plumby]

Chances are higher that the dwarf male with the beard down to his knees or the massive tauren male with a huge mallet are the RL women.)

Although given some of the women who play RPGs, they've probably got a beard down to their knees in real life as well.

Re:Actually, I just have to wonder...

[Soybean47]

If anything, just thinking about some automated macro there seems to me a major turn off.

As a programmer, I find the idea of replacing any repetitive action with a macro very appealing.

That was not my point, though

[Moraelin]

As a programmer I write macros and functions and objects all the time too, but:

- I do not find them appealing in inter-human communications. Sure, I can understand their use in some situations where time is of critical importance (e.g., "pull", "regroup", "heal please" macros in combat), but that's about it. If talking to anyone -- regardless of whether it's on a board, MUD, IRC, whatever -- if the bulk of someone's communication was cut-and-pasted phrases, or macros to the same effect, I'd quickly find tha

Re:That was not my point, though

[Soybean47]

I'm sorry, sometimes I'm a little too subtle in my humour. It was a joke. I was suggesting that since programmers like automating repetitive actions, and sex involves a certain amount of repetitive motion, that a script of some sort would be ideal. Just to beat the whole thing completely to death: the comedy was in the absurdity of automating an act with intimate emotional significance. I utilized the common slashdot comedic form of "self-deprecating computer geek," though I failed to do so with sufficient

Re:That was not my point, though

[Monkey]

Man that goblin fight example brings back some good memories. Many, many hours wasted away.

Re:Bwahahaha!!!

[Alzheimers]

Brings new meaning to "Bunny Hunting" -- suddenly the low-level grind doesn't seem so ... tedious

When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[Chemisor]

I wonder when idiot web designers will stop trying to make the web look like a postcard instead of a text document. The article's formatting has got to be one finest examples on how not to design a web page. Custom controls for scrolling? Background that can't be turned off? (white, of course, just to add some extra whallop of razor pain in the eye to the content) Reading window constrained to about a quarter of my screen area and centered like a postcard? Who hires these people, and why? The fact that the

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[snuf23]

Agreed. Everytime they run an Escapist article someone posts a response like yours. At least they do have a text link on the page.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[macshit]

Yup. In fact with my browser and fonts, it's completely unreadable (half the text overflows the white box and ends up displayed as black on dark blue...).

I suppose it probably displays properly in Internet Explorer if you happen to have exactly the same settings as the page designer ("but, but, it worked for me!!").

OTOH, the page does have a convenient "text" button to bypass the page designer's idiocies. [A lot of sites don't seem to have even that.]

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[StikyPad]

Actually plenty of sites do; they just disguise it as the "Print" button.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[pAnkRat]

Go to this http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/ [squarefree.com] page,
download the bookmarklets in the ZAP section.

If you are bothered by "postcard" website like TFA,
just use "zap->style-sheets", voila!
Picture moved to the top, text was black on a white background.
No more stylish layouts.

These bookmarklets are really handy for reading obnoxious sites.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[DerekLyons]

Yup. In fact with my browser and fonts, it's completely unreadable (half the text overflows the white box and ends up displayed as black on dark blue...).

Yep, silly web designer for actually trying to make a page attractive - it breaks on the browsers of people with utterly no graphics experience who know far better than you who does.

I suppose it probably displays properly in Internet Explorer if you happen to have exactly the same settings as the page designer ("but, but, it worked for me!!").

It render

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[ccollao]

I think the "postcard type" would suit the OMG Ponies theme perfectly, but since it's long from april first, it just sucks big time ... ;)

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[4D6963]

I wonder when idiot web designers will stop trying to make the web look like a postcard instead of a text document.

Personally the only thing that disturbs me about this site is the naked dude on the second page. Had to resize my browser window to get him out of my sight while reading the text.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[The Wicked Priest]

That's more or less how it looks here, too. I don't get why people a) often favor such tiny fonts, and b) never seem to even consider flexible layout. It's not like it's hard.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[Eideewt]

I actually liked the columns, although the text was a little small. It would be nice if there were a way to make text show up in columns but still play nice with scrolling and custom fonts.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[VTBassMatt]

If you use a Mac, there's a great program called Tofu [versiontracker.com] that'll put text in columns. It doesn't work right in your browser, of course, but you highlight the text and drag it into Tofu (no need to even use copy & paste). I'm sure there's something similar for Windows/Linux, I just don't know about them.

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[Myself]

It required lots of horizontal scrolling on my 800x600 screen, and because the text had no contrast until my modem sucked down the background images, I was forced to wait on every page-turn. Eww. That being said, some of the incidental pictures were amusing, if somewhat unsettling.

What pissed me right off was the non-article page in the middle of it. I went back and made sure I'd clicked "next" twice, before clicking "next" again and finding the next page of the article. Infuriating!

Neat content! Absolutely

Re:When will they learn the web is not a postcard?

[MaWeiTao]

I am a designer and I have to agree. I tend to avoid reading anything on that site specifically because it is so difficult to follow. They seem to think they're designing for the printed page, although oddly enough, magazines almost always run vertically.

There are very creative and unique ways to design a layout for the web that still work well and are easy to read. Unfortunately, this isn't one of them. Nor is the design so good as to justify the awkward layout.

I was thinking about running on too

[Sationus]

I was thinking along time about running one, but since I am not a programmer, that kinda made it hard, I was going to run it under the domain darkshores.com which I thought would be a good domain for such a game.. If anyone whats to help set one up and run one, email me.

--A new way to search the InterNet

http://snappyjack.com/ [snappyjack.com]

Writing Code for Sex Games

[Ohreally_factor]

Programming is hard.

Re:Writing Code for Sex Games

[Sationus]

lol, yes programming is hard, I use to be a beta tester for the company Schlumberger Tech years ago... and the problems I found and reported, when they seem to fix them, always caused more "issues"... not a job I would want.

-- A New way to search the InterNet

http://u1i.com/ [u1i.com]

Re:Writing Code for Sex Games

[Ohreally_factor]

Well, spelling it out is going to make a bad joke even worse, but I meant . . . programming is hard like an erect penis.

Re:Writing Code for Sex Games

[Sationus]

lol, ok now I feel stupid lol

Horrible website design

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Grr...

/me hits Ctrl-Shift-S, and the site becomes readable

I win!

Textual

[Anonymous Coward]

"I put on my robe and wizard hat"

Re:Textual

[LordEd]

Here's what this [ebooger.com] refers to in case you don't know.

Last line

[bar-agent]

The article ends with "Still, it beats the hell out of WAP."

It should have ended with "Still, it beats the hell out of fap fap fap [urbandictionary.com]."

Sensory deprivation

[SurturZ]

That part of the article about sensory deprivation was interesting. The old Infocom game "Suspended" had something similar, and this aspect made it the best Infocom game of all time, IMHO.

heheheh

[goarilla]

Hooker tycoon

Hahahahaahaha cranks me up!

tag: sex-bad-violence-good

[ofcourseyouare]

A note for the tagging beta people: I suggest you need a new tag called "sex-bad-violence-good". This article should be tagged with it, along with yesterday's one about the scandalous "sex scenes" in Oblivion, the shocking hot coffee mod etc. It's such a huge issue. It's the elephant in the living room of games culture. Or maybe there are two elephants. And God knows what they're doing together, but you better not make a game out of it.

Re:tag: sex-bad-violence-good

[elrous0]

It's the elephant in the living room of games culture.

I killed a bunch of elephants in "Postal 2". But, fortunately, there wasn't any nudity in the game. I guess someone thought of the children!

-Eric

Re:tag: sex-bad-violence-good

[BoogieChile]

It's right there in the article;

"We can't be associated with sex games, only with violent games" -

an actual quote from a member of the sales team!

Violence good, sex bad. That, in a nutshell, describes so much of this "civilisation" that is just fucked in the head. I want to go live on Bizzaro world!

So basically....

[revlayle]

... someone is creating a new IRC channel... right???

I need a new keyboard

[heson]

Hmmm, just by coincidence Im thinking of buying a keyboard I can use one handed, any one found a affordable model?

Re:I need a new keyboard

[Toba82]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/6c82/ [thinkgeek.com]