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The Call Girl Character Class
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.'"
Aight. I put on my robe and wizard hat.
"Hard like a rhino..."
- Vanilla Ice
The video game industry and the world's oldest profession are caught in the virtual bedsheets! News at 11!
Will the call girl class cry after the first time they level up?
virtual money for a virtual "escort"... kids these days. pimps and hookers can use this to hone their skills before going out and doing the real thing
It's only a matter of time before you have virtual crackwhores whose avatars stumble into your pad, and after they give sex for money, they ask if you want to try a hot new drug called "snow crash". (If you are in the 0.001% of Slashdot users who don't get the joke because you haven't read Neal Stephenson's , you don't know what you've been missing).
Somehow I misread that as the "tall girl character class" and thought it suited me. However, call girl...I think not.
So, the people who pay these call girls, how do they even know they're girls? I'm guessing the don't care. The article says these call girls make $5000+ a week sometimes, all virtual - crazy.
The one thing I am not getting is why SL is such a great medium for this, as it seems that even though you can add sexy new models and stuff, there will be no real interactive animations or anything actually controllable beyond the most basic stuff (walking around, sitting, etc). So how does this equate into a non-laughable cybersex medium? I personally find the idea of cybersex to be hilarious and in the end, something of a self-parody, so how is this any different from your average #TeenChat cybersex session on IRC? Is it no less laughable, because from here it looks like someone is using static models & scenery to look at while said session is going on, but otherwise nothing is different or any less ridiculous.
Someone who plays SL, tell me, does the system allow for the interactive type animations you'd need to make this something more than just glorified, equally amusing cybersex? Or perhaps theres something else at work beyond peopls imaginations.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
Soon enough some kid will start hookin' and blame it on this - and Jack Thompson will rear his ugly head.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
.... There's nothing like this article to remind you that there are a lot of really stupid people in this world.
:)
Can we please stop calling Second Life a game? It's going to give the industry a bad name
(Massive-Multiplayer Transmitted Disease)
With virtual hookers, at least it's only your *computer* that'll get a virus...
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
At least SL is true to its name.... second...life.
...i prefer my inflatable doll :)
would you expect anything else from a game mimicking real life ?
Although I find it strange and wouldnt use that service, I have to admit if those people find satisfaction using those services, so be it, good for them.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
I read the article last friday and was shocked because it wasn't a joke!
I've recently started playing an MMORPG that's very roleplay-oriented and I have a lot of fun interacting with all the different stories each character has but I find that some folks take the game WAY to seriously. I don't know, I'm firmly and happily planted in the real world and I escape to the virtual one for a bit of entertaining psychodrama at the price of a few hours of my nights.
I'd love to whip out the old cliche "it's just a game" but it would be an oversimplification of the situation but the article shoots the argument down.
There are folks that participate in online gaming as a means of escape - life is hell and they want another chance elsewhere and they live these lives online.
Boy, psychiatrists and psycologists are making a fortune these days!
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
What's life anyway but a big game? Some play to get rich, some play to get happy, some play to get famous, some play just to play.
How is it weird some people prefer to fill their daily gaming with role playing games? It's not escaping, it's just a different type of a game.
If MMO players get what they're searching for from MMO games, sounds like a great deal to me. Probably saves a lot on the shrink bills too.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Obviously there is a market for Cybersex
Yeah, but who guarantees that D34dly's cyber-girlfriend is a girl in real life?
18.20 lets say that is for a 30 minute session. travel time 0.
18.20 time 2 is 36.40 an hour. Lets figure on a 40 hour week or about 2080 hours per year. That's $75.712.00 The more you work the more you make.
I also don't know what the exchange rates and fees are. I also don't know if there is taxes involved. (income tax for one.) These girls are making a little less than strippers but have 0 physical risk.
Just some math
JACEM
DOC Disinformation Obfuscation and Confusion
The carrot to FUD's stick
Tom DeLay? Is that you modding my previous comment "Flamebait?"
American politicians ARE whores: They accept campaign contributions for favor in execution of their office. If that isn't the definition of a whore, I don't know what is. Certainly, though, it isn't Flamebait.
Who did what now?
MMOrgy is a blog specializing in the naughtier side of MMOs.
I see your point but I cannot agree with it.
Real life is real and it is not a game based on chance.
The RPG genre (of which MMOs are the newest incarnations) are not real and they are a game based on chance.
A few crude examples:
- When you drive to work every day do you roll a d% to see if you make it there alive?
- When you eat a sandwich, do you roll a fortitude save to not get poisoned?
- Do you buy tons of flour, yeast, sugar and salt to grind your way to making a perfect roast? (I loved that cartoon, wish I had a link to it right now)
It is escapism because it's not real. It's a way to pass through life without facing it and it's a very common situation now a days. Add a touch of narcisism and denial with the real possibilities to escape from the real world and you have yourselves our times.
I'm sorry to shed such negative light on it but it's a social problem and denying won't do us any good.
I threw the wikipedia links in there to show I'm not making this up, virtual-selves is a problem and "it's just a game" or other cliches are oversimplifications to a greater problem.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
Not level grinding games like WoW or Everquest.
An MMORPG is not like a single player RPG. You will never be the farm boy/girl who saves the kingdom and marries the princess. You can't be the hero in an epic story that changes the fate of an entire continent.
An MMORPG is instead about living a live in an alternate universe.
Those who complain that some people are using Second Live to escape their real live are idiots.
Because of cause that is why people play games especially computer games. You don't think Michael Schumacher plays F1 games do you? WW2 veterans do not play Medal of Honor (or if they do find it boring and unrealistic to the extreme) and so on. People with exciting lives do not watch TV and do not play games. That is something for the rest of us to do. TV/Computers games, the opium of the masses.
An MMORPG is a second live for escaping your normal live. How deep and in what way depends on the person. To some just "levelling" up, raiding dungeons and looting stuff is all they want.
Others want more but it is a rare game that gives them the possibilty.
I played Star Wars Galaxies (Before combat upgrade made me leave) and later Everquest 2 (anyone feeling the need to recommend other MMORPG's please check wether they can be paid without a credit card first) and after that Guild Wars.
The last two don't hold a candle in respects to "role" playing.
I probably don't mean the same thing with roleplaying as most people. I am not talking about those people that roleplay a scout or a wizard in Everquest. Or those that roleplay rebel scum or a imperial scriptkiddie. (Oh be honest, have you ever met a mature imperial?)
No, I mean those who went beyond the title of their character sheet and roleplayed a trader or a explorer or a outfitter.
I played a trader, I liked exploring the planets and this often led me to unvisited shops wich usually had some stock going unsold. Easy to buy it and then resell it at hotspots for a slight margin. Food and drinks (buffs in swg) were espcially good. Few players had the dedication to prepare by stocking up before a mission so typical SWG fare was.
Player1: "All ready to go to the most lethal planet in the galaxy to go hunt the most lethal critter known?"
Player2: "Yeah yeah yeah lets go already enough time delaying"
Player1: "Okay we arrived, lets move out to the first lair"
Player2: "Give me some brandy I ran out"
Player1 + 3-9: "we are all on our last bottle too"
Cue my little character stocking the bazaars at the out of the way destinations with quality, pricey but quality brandy. Oh and in 1 bottle portions so as not to overtax those who spend all their money on a overpriced weapon.
It was in a way a lot of fun. Others I knew got a kick out of constantly checking what resources were being dropped. One guy seemed to be very good at finding players for missions. If you were missing a doc or a bio engineer etc for a raid, he could find someone willing to join.
In short the game allowed you to play more then just the "hero" prototypes.
If you ever wonder why SWG fans bemoan the New Game Experience it is because they removed the freedoms to play those other characters.
SWG was a girl heavy game with a lot of them having a sideline in dressmaking. I was better dressed in game then in real life.
So to me, hookers and pimps and johns in a MMO game doesn't sound bad at all. Not because of the sex but because these people found a way to play the game wich goes beyond what is in the manual.
Anyway it is nothing new. The sims online had an article about an underaged hooker.
A good MMORPG will be more then just grinding levels and raiding dungeons. Not that there is anything wrong with that but DDO to be fair can be seen as nothing mo
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wonder how long it will take before the third world cheap labor comes into this market? It sounds more profitable than killing orcs. Maybe the required Engish skiills would be too tough though.
Snow Crash was awful.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
The MPAA rates much harder on sexual situations than violent ones. Can have hundreds of people killed, still get PG-13, but get a couple too many boobies showing, rated R. Male nudity, pretty much Adults Only, or release unrated. The theory i've heard is "people know the violence is fake, but the sex can be more easily confused with real life, therefore influencing unwanted behavior". Lets say we pretend this is true, there's something about a bare breast that makes people unable to see that it's a construction on not reality, where do virtual worlds fit in? We've already seen the uproar with Hot Coffee and GTA. Here you're in the same environment (so no confusion reality vs. game), seeing a highly pixellated "woman" and that's immoral. But the violence in the game gets a rating sticker and is ok.
Not asking for an answer, just confused...
It was pretty bad.
I did hear one guy talk about reading it three or four times and discovering "depth" in it. Come on! You should not have to read a book 3-4 times before you discover depth in it. It just wasn't that good.
While the odds may be much higher or lower than a d6 roll how much of life is chance? There is a small risk that you will not make it to work on your trip (else insurance would be free). How did you hear about your last job? Did you scour every listing service, (newspaper, monster, or did you have a friend of a friend or someone grab your resume off your web page)? How did you meet your last significant other? My last was a planned introduction by a mutal friend, but the one before that was a girl who was headed for the same pair of seats on the subway as I was (while she may have been planning it it was certainly chance that had both of us on that trip of the subway. Next, what is a game, really? Most of the time they are a simulation modeled on an aspect of life and sped up so as to provide results in a short period. Chess, Go, and Risk greatly speed a war to a few hours. Monopoly is something like a business, etc. Why wouldn't they be expected to become more lifelike as our ability to simulate improves? Finally, how much of life is an optimization (that you really don't always know the score or equations for most of the time)? Once some basic rules and structures are set, business politics popularity and happiness etc are just optimizations of the available resources. What if there were a perfect simulation of life (where a roast required that someone raise a domesticated calf, butcher it, ship it to you, you needed an oven, spices, etc) and when you were completed it could tell you how you had done? Perhaps it could even be transferred as a completed roast from the virtual realm to the real realm (or conversly what if your mind believed you had just eaten it)? Would that still be a game?
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
"I'll do anything, and I'll probably do it better than the client expects."
So I says "Even this one I have where Jesus Christ is jackhammering Mickey Mouse in the doodoo hole with a lawn dart as Garth Brooks gives birth to something resembling a cheddar cheese log with almonds on Santa Claus' tummy-tum?"
grep '[callgirl]*' /usr/share/phonebook
I wonder what exactly this is supposed to match, or why it is so interesting.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
No, the rolling of the d6 is part of the action.
- When you eat a sandwich, do you roll a fortitude save to not get poisoned?
Again, the die roll is part of the action if you eat a sandwich you found on the street. Though most people avoid the die roll by making it from their own raw materials, hunted from the shop.
- Do you buy tons of flour, yeast, sugar and salt to grind your way to making a perfect roast?
Yes, if that's what you're studying (cooking). Or to put it another way: Do you hunt bugs day in day out, grinding your way to the perfect code? Play an instrument every day? Run around a track?
Real life is a game based on chance, moreso than MMORPGS. Do you get to choose your character? Your parents, starting location, or faction? Games are escapism only because they have simpler rules. Make a game with complex enough rules and it will be another life, and it already seems to be.. Remember also that socializing in that life isn't artificial, you're dealing with other human beings.
That's not saying that it's a better place to be, not now. But how long will that be true? Is it still a problem when it's a better place to be?
Oh, and there's a lot of time spent in transitional stages and loading screens in real life. Not to mention 7-9 hour server downtimes every single day.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
The RPG World has a main character of that class, Diane: here and here.
That is not what I did. I bought bulk from out of the way places then distributed them to key spot and sold them in small portions.
So I provided two services. I helped people avoid having to buy 20 of something wich they could not afford. AND I put it in locations they were at.
In real life that is what a distributor does. Or perhaps the term is wholesaler. A supermarket chain buys potatoes by the ton from a remote farmer then sells them in handy 5 kilo packages at a shop near your home.
In return he ads a small percentage. In my case 10-20%. Those who didn't want it could always go to the farmer/chef themselves and cough up the credits for a crate of 20 units themselves as well as take the 20 minute round trip.
So I think it is a little different what I did from what you describe. I admit I got a handfull of emails crying foul but far more positive feedback from people who appreciated not having to do their own shopping. Same as most people like their supermarket despite the fact that 30 minute trip will get you potatoes at half the price.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.