[From Road to VR, where the story includes additional images and a 0:53 minute video]
Exclusive: Sneak Peek and Interview — Wicked Paradise, The World’s First Erotic VR Game (video: NSFW)
June 12, 2013 | Posted by Ben Lang
Recently I spoke with Jeroen Van den Bosch, CEO and Founder of Wicked Paradise, the world’s first erotic virtual reality game. Bosch updates us on the game’s latest progress and shares some early prototypes of the game’s vision.
Notice: portions of this article contain sexually explicit content and is not intended for viewing by anyone under 18 years of age.
Jeroen Van den Bosch actually began this project as Sinful Robot, which made the rounds a few months back. Shortly thereafter, the project’s biggest investor vanished, along with their funding.
Bosch and his crew are back under a new name, Wicked Paradise, and are intent on creating the “world’s first erotic virtual reality adventure game.” Bosch tells me that the team is in “negotiations with several funding options so things are looking a lot better…” The work of Bosch and his team could be the beginning of a virtual reality pornography industry.
Wicked Paradise Interview with CEO and Founder Jeroen Van den Bosch
Notice: All visual content contained in this interview are technical tests and not representative of final game quality.
Road to VR: Tell us a bit about yourself, how did you get to where you are now?
Bosch: I have been working in the game industry for almost 20 years now but I’m actually an Electronics Engineer by degree. I have been a huge gaming fanatic (Playing Pong!) since I was a little boy growing up in Belgium but my biggest passion has always been Virtual Reality. I’m a big fan of science fiction books and movies so the endless possibilities of virtual reality always sparked my imagination.
Road to VR: How did you find yourself working on an erotic VR game?
Bosch: How did I find myself working on an erotic VR game? I was always fascinated by the fact that we have hundreds of beautifully crafted shooter games but not a single well designed erotic video game. Sure there have been some attempts in the past, but they all have been ridiculously bad. There is nothing sexy about unrealistic models that move like rusty robots with faulty servos. If you want to genuinely create an erotic atmosphere in a videogame you need to convincingly cross the uncanny valley.
Also, story and setting is everything. The non-explicit sex scenes in Mass Effect are much more erotic than current available explicit adult video games. This is because you care about the characters in Mass Effect. A player will never feel very attracted to a virtual character if he or she doesn’t care. I believe that virtual reality is the perfect medium for an erotic video game because you can make the player feel really connected to your computer characters.
So when the Oculus Rift kickstarter happened, I realized the opportunity has come to put my plan in motion, so I did. I moved to Irvine, founded a company, secured financing and started developing the world’s first erotic virtual reality experience.
Road to VR: What’s your previous VR or game development background? Have you worked on other erotic titles?
Bosch: I haven’t worked on erotic titles before, but I have been a product manager for various gaming titles, mostly in the mobile gaming space. One of my titles was NFL Rivals (Backbreaker), a game with very realistic animations. Working on that title made me realize that the animation technology that is currently available is powerful enough to produce animations of such a quality that it looks lifelike, which is what I was waiting for!
Road to VR: Can you give us a summary of the development journey of the game so far? I understand you were on your way to development before you ran into some unexpected funding issues and eventually changed names.
Bosch: The life of an entrepreneur is never easy, especially when you are trying to create something that hasn’t been done before. Early this year I was up and running with Sinful Robot but suddenly my main investor disappeared from the earth and froze all funding. I don’t know what happened but it left me in a difficult situation. It took us awhile to bounce back but I’m happy to announce that we are currently very much alive and kicking again with Wicked Paradise!
Road to VR: What’s the current status of Wicked Paradise?
Bosch: We are in pre-production, basically doing lots of research and trying out different techniques to see how we can achieve optimal immersion inside a Virtual Reality environment. It’s difficult, because it hasn’t really been done before. I don’t think there are many people walking on this planet that have seen a naked woman inside a virtual reality before, so it’s pretty much uncharted terrain we are wandering into. But, so far we learned a lot and it has been tremendous fun!
One of the biggest questions I had before we started on this journey was: “Can a virtual woman inside a virtual world actually make you genuinely horny?” Well, I’m happy to let you know that the answer to that question is “yes”!
Road to VR: How big is the Wicked Paradise team?
Bosch: In total we have currently 8 industry professionals involved with this project ranging from 3D modelers to motion capture experts. We’ll be hiring more people in the coming months once we go into full production. Keep an eye out on our website if you are interested in joining our team!
Road to VR: What game engine will the final game will be based on?
Bosch: What you have seen so far is done in the Unreal Engine. We are still experimenting with different engines, including our own in-house engine. It’s too early to tell what engine we will end up using.
Wicked Paradise Technical Test Video (Warning: Explicit Content, 18+)
Road to VR: The animation looks great — are you using motion capture?
Bosch: Thanks! We are definitely using full body and facial motion capturing for our animation, it’s very expensive but it’s the only way to do it right.
Road to VR: Is the model (seen in the video) a pre-existing asset or was it built specifically for this game? Are you using any sort of body scanning to ensure anatomical accuracy?
Bosch: The model we are using in the test environment is a pre-existing asset we bought from Lee Perry-Smith, who is doing very impressive work on creating lifelike human replicas!
For our final models we will be using the most advanced body scanning systems that are available to us to make sure we get as close as possible to real human replicas. It’s difficult, but I believe it can be done!
Road to VR: Will the game cater only to heterosexual males, or will content be available for LGBT as well?
Bosch: We are actually going to deliver the games in episodic format, just like The Walking Dead game. So we will have different series offering different experiences. The initial series will be from a hetero male pov but we will also deliver series from a hetero female pov as well as series with LGBT themes. It’s my goal to eventually make erotic VR experiences that everyone can enjoy.
Road to VR: What kind of reactions have you seen to the concept of the game?
Bosch: Well so far I only had positive reactions, and that really gives me extra energy and excitement for this project. One of the more unexpected comments I got was from the disabled community, where a caregiver said that these erotic VR experiences could be an amazing asset to help disabled people obtain a more exciting sex life.
———–
Thanks to Jeroen Van den Bosch for his time!
We’ll be following along with the development of Wicked Paradise. There are bound to be different reactions to this concept. What do our readers think? Is virtual reality pornography good, bad… inevitable? Let us know in the comments.