Saturday, May 28, 2005

I can't believe I read what I just read, Section drei

This little gem comes from Canoe (http://wham.canoe.ca/news/2005/05/25/1055645.html)...

Vancouver entrepreneur Brad Abram is banking that people will pay to have sex — at least on their computer — with Jenna Jameson and other porn stars.
Virtually Jenna: The Official Video Game of Jenna Jameson is “an adult sex simulation,” says Abram, president of XStream3D Multimedia Inc.
“It’s fairly sophisticated under the hood,” Abram says enthusiastically. “It’s state of the art.”
Abram has essentially taken the same personalization software that allows sports video game developers to put star athletes in their games and used it to bring porn stars to life on your PC.
There have been other sex games, but Abram says they were more cartoon-like. Abram’s cybersex world is graphic, with almost nothing left to the imagination.
“It gets quite explicit,” Abram said with a chuckle in an interview during a visit to the E3 video game trade show in Los Angeles last week.
“The imagination is a powerful thing and we like to have enough content there that people buy into the fantasy.”
Virtually Jenna is a web browser plug-in which you download. Once you have paid, you can log in and play. The three-day trial costs $9.95 US, and after that it’s $29.95 a month, with additional “sex packs” with new content available as an extra.
The game offers a virtual environment with Windows-like tools that allow you to direct the action, be it heterosexual or homosexual.
Thanks to the wonders of technology, you can even put yourself into the game. A simple passport photo is all that’s needed. The game does the rest.
“It’s very realistic. Photo-realistic,” says Abram.
The game includes profiles for each virtual character.
“You have to use certain combinations,” Abram explains. “As you learn what she likes and dislikes, then her excitement meter rises.”
Abram’s road to cybersex started with 3-D personalization, which he sold to sports video games. The technology allows developers to make characters in the game look like their real-life counterparts.
“I realized that selling tools was not a long-term profitable business and touching the consumer would be a better business,” he said.
He plans to return to the non-adult world once this part of his business is off and running, with virtual makeovers a possibility.
A version of this game has been around for about 14 months, but the one with Jameson was launched a month ago. Having her name attached has kick-started the project, Abram said.
“North America is so brand-oriented that we had to have a major star to get the attention of the mainstream, and she’s got the potential to be one of the first cross-over artist adult entertainers. ...
“So when we come and talk at a show like that, everyone knows who Jenna Jameson is. We just tell them what the game is and their imagination takes over.”
Jameson is an empire unto herself. Apart from her adult films, there’s her book (How to Make Love Like a Porn Star) and her online store. She was recently named No. 24 — between Brooke Burke and Heidi Klum — on FHM magazine’s list of sexiest women in the world.
Jameson also has a flock of adult film performers under contract at her company Club Jenna, including Vancouver’s Jesse Capelli whose first big film title — Jesse Loves Jenna — is due out this year.
“People, once they see it, will understand how realistic it is,” Capelli said of the game, which also features digitized likenesses of her and other adult film stars.
As for her character?
“It looks exactly like me. It’s very interesting. I see myself in a whole new light,” she said with a laugh.
The response to Virtually Jenna has been “overwhelmingly great,” according to Abram, although a women’s gaming site was critical, saying Virtually Jenna was creating more stereotypes of female video game characters.
Abram rejects that, saying everyone is equal in his game.
While Abram declined to provide numbers on subscribers, he says that thanks to wireless technology Virtually Jenna will be more accessible.
“No console company would allow this kind of technology to be sold on their platforms, but with the new PSP (Sony’s handheld gaming system) and wireless they’ve opened the proverbial genie’s bottle. There’s a built-in web browser so we’ll be able to put content on that kind of system.”

No way is this system getting near my computer. Dog the young lad and Dolly the young lady are both at ages where this is NOT what I want 'em to see.
You see, I tend to think like Bev Snider -- the wife of baseball Hall of Famer -- as she told author Roger Kahn in "The Boys of Summer."
"Sex is very beautful," Mrs. Snider said.
"And very private."