Forget everything you think you know about videogames and mobile sex. Chicago-based GOMA Systems Corporation has changed the landscape.
In late July, the company released the first two titles in what it hopes will become an interactive adult entertainment game franchise. GOMA Sex and its gay sibling, Rainbeau Café, challenge users to employ their dexterity and creativity in order to maneuver characters into as many different sexual positions as possible within five minutes. Players are rated on their performance as they strive for perfection in the quest for “Master” status.
The company cites three primary selling points for the products: great graphics that fit even the smallest of phone screens, more than a dozen different sex acts that can be controlled and explored on many of today’s phones, and a breakthrough interface device technology that allows users to exercise direct and real-time control over all virtual characters intuitively, engaging them in a variety of sex acts with just one hand. (Insert your favorite sarcastic remark here.) It is this last point that has grabbed the attention of many in the videogame, adult entertainment, interactive TV, and telecommunications industries, according to the company.
“Because the mobile phone, PC keyboard, and TV remote control all share nearly identical number pads as inputs, our adults-only mobile-phone titles demonstrate how our technologies can be leveraged efficiently and effectively to gain traction in three emerging growth markets: online PC gaming, mobile gaming, and i-TV gaming,” says GOMA Vice President Kevin Lyons. Lyons also is quick to point out that his company’s groundbreaking sex simulators demonstrate just one aspect of the patent-pending Universal Control Mapping operating system. “Our Martial Art Simulator titles [due later this year] will demonstrate the flexibility, scalability, and universality of our technologies for launching other human movement-intensive genres and the applicability of our Universal Control Mapping to all markets, including game consoles and other hand-held devices.”
Lyons and GOMA expect the technology to have a special appeal to the cash-strapped, independent, game-development community. “Indies have a great opportunity here,” he says, noting that the company plans to license the technology. “They can create great game play on platforms that not only have lower barriers to entry in terms of both development costs and online distribution, but also have large install bases consisting of both the hardcore gamer and mass consumer. Regardless of the platform, a videogame title’s gameplay boils down to the level of interactivity it offers the user. That level of interactivity is determined by the quality of two main elements: input by the player via the interface device, and output, or response, by the game to the user’s input, such as graphics, sound, storyline, and [artificial intelligence]. Until recently, the input element has gone largely ignored, but the industry now sees it as an important area of advancement for sustaining long-term growth.”
GOMA views input technologies as one of its core strengths. The company is particularly proud that its technologies enable nearly any interface device to give players direct and real-time control over a wide range of virtual character movements in an intuitive and easy-to-use manner. This is significant, Lyons notes, because the essence of gaming is that the player physically controls and moves his representational character on the screen via the interface device. “Just as videogame graphics made a tremendous leap in providing a greater level of realism when they jumped from 2D to 3D, our input technologies raise the level of realism by making interface devices feel and function like an extension of the player’s own body,” he says. In other words, GOMA’s technologies allow input devices to become truly transparent. “In contrast to the incremental advancements in interface devices by others, our input technologies make videogaming more immediately accessible to the mass consumer without alienating the core audience, similar to the way the ‘point and click’ of Windows and Macintosh eliminated the need for DOS commands and function keystrokes,” Lyons says.
Beyond the developer-speak, the games should be attractive to consumers because they’re affordable. The hetero and homo titles can be downloaded at GOMASex.com for $1.99 each. Blackberry and PC versions of both sex simulators are expected to be released soon.
