enVie Interactive President and Co-founder Philo Northrup told XBIZ that the company considered several analyses on women’s online habits when developing the VIE virtual world — and among them, women’s preferences when it comes to adult content.
“VIE offers women a safe environment to engage in intimate contact if that’s what they choose,” Northrup said. “It’s not just sex that women prefer, a large quotient of fantasy also plays a role.”
The game’s setting features an exclusive island getaway offering its guests a fantasy “rock star” lifestyle many people in real life cannot enjoy.
Additionally, since there will be another person attached to the avatar participating in virtual sexual activity, women will enjoy connecting with a like-minded person, Northrup added.
VIE users will have access to erotic animation that they can control. Northrup said the graphics are hi-res and highly designed.
“A lot of virtual worlds that offer adult content are vulgar and feature bad graphics that take away from the experience,” he said. “We want to be as least distracting from the experience as possible.”
To cater to savvy spenders, Northrup said VIE is free to try and adult content will be offered as premium content for a fee. Adult content will be isolated to an island or within the virtual homes of users.
“There’s definitely a demand for erotic play,” Northrup said. “We’re going to empower it.”
He added that enVie is interested in establishing partnerships with high-end brands within adult, as well as mainstream, for content and to establish virtual boutiques.
“It must be consistent with our elegant, high-end design,” Northrup said.
A company spokesperson told XBIZ that VIE also engages women by allowing them to build their own world complete with unique shopping experiences, high fashion, art design, episodic content and mysterious adventures in a tropical island setting.
“A lot of online games target teenage boys — ‘kill or be killed’ kind of games,” the spokesperson said. “This game allows users to create their own experience.”
Northrup said VIE supports the theory of “productive play,” which allows gamers to explore and expand their creative and artistic sides as well as their social interaction in a virtual world by playing with reality and taking on new personas.
"We believe that productive play is essential to everyone, but especially to this underserved market," Northrup said. "Sometimes we work so hard that we forget to play and have fun. We want to give our players an outlet where they can have fun and indulge their creative whimsical side and grow from it."
VIE is currently under development with plans to release trailers and B-roll later this spring. The game will officially launch in the summer.