Virtual reality adult adventure Wicked Paradise coming for Oculus Rift
"There have been some attempts in the past, but they all have been ridiculously bad."
A team of "seasoned video game industry veterans" is crafting Wicked Paradise, an erotic adventure game for the Oculus Rift VR headset.
Due for release in 2014, work on Wicked Paradise is currently being lead by mobile developer and entrepreneur Jeroen Van den Bosch, who moved from his native Belgium to Irvine, California - the home of Rift maker Oculus VR - to work on the project.
"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," den Bosch told Road to VR. "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."
The eight-strong Wicked Paradise team boasts staff members from projects such as Rage, Call of Duty, Lost Planet, Madden and PlanetSide 2, according to the game's official site.
But it's to another series - BioWare's Mass Effect - that den Bosch is drawing inspiration.
"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."
The game is currently in pre-production and is being designed in Unreal Engine, with full body motion capture used for adult scenes.
Wicked Paradise will be released in episodic form, with early releases focusing on heterosexual content for men. Later launches will add in heterosexual content for women and LGBT-themed sections.