Okay, so yesterday I got to talking about a recent realization I've made in my life, that has me rather excited - that I can reasonably expect by January 2007 to be paying all the bills in my life through the various businesses I own, as well as other freelance work I'm doing. Those who missed the details can of course go back to that original entry to read them, but in a nutshell it boils down to this: that I'm expecting about half the money to come from the various artistic projects I'll be producing (the arts center, the Second Life events, general freelance work); while a full other half will be coming exclusively from a virtual sex club I'll be eventually opening, again for fellow players of Second Life (SL), but with an intriguing mix of real-life (RL) activities thrown in there as well.

Yeah, that's right, you heard me - I'm expecting to make between $15,000 and $20,000 next year altogether, doing nothing but running a swinger club for cartoon characters. Outrageous? Perhaps. Outrageous-sounding? Oh, sure, definitely. In fact, most people I've talked with now about this tend to have the same reaction to the idea; a certain rolling of the eyes, a certain scoff in the back of the throat, a certain carefully-worded response that usually amounts to, "Yeah, well, good luck with pulling that off, buddy." I understand that a number like that is one that defies logic when first hearing it; and I also acknowledge that only a complicated plan could even theoretically generate that much revenue in the first place, with the whole thing falling apart if even one detail is gotten wrong. So, instead of slipping this idea onto the end of yesterday's entry, which was admittedly wicked long to begin with, I've decided to dedicate another entire entry just to it today. Please, I beg you, save both judgment and questions until you've reached the end.

So, let's start all this by first acknowledging the following, which is important I think to acknowledge; that there is no real way to make a profit in SL, simply by charging people money to attend a sex club, despite there being an almost epidemic interest in sexual activities there. (In fact, among those who follow such things, it's generally accepted that somewhere between 125,000 and 200,000 players of SL are engaging in some sort of sexual activity there on a regular basis, whether that's explicit IMing, voice or webcam.) And that's because there already is a plethora of free sex clubs in the grid, available to anyone in the general public to visit whenever they want; so that tends to poke a hole in the "charge them because we can" business model.

No, the secret to making money with a club in SL, I think, is to do the same thing many RL danceclubs do as well; simply open a free place for the general public, one that's extremely cool, that eventually gets so popular that some people will want to pay extra, to either gain access to things the general public doesn't, or to avoid some of the hassles that come with the free public section. It's undeniable, for example, that most of these free clubs have a certain amount of brand-new players in them at any given moment - running around in their crappy, unsexy beginning avatars, bumping into people, too busy asking how everything works to bother actually having sex with anyone. And I don't mean any offense to new players when I say something like this, because obviously everyone is a new player at one point or another, which like I said is the whole point of having a free section in the front for the general public. But yeah, if you're a veteran, a horny veteran one night who's simply trying to find a decent sexual partner, dealing with all these 'newbies' can definitely sometimes be maddening.

And then, of course, the free clubs are filled with a plethora of bad lovers as well; those who are bad at flirting, those who have a hard time forming complete sentences, the same people putting up ads at Craigslist every night saying, "HRNY STR8 DUDE LOOKIN 2 BLOW LOAD W/BUDDY HIT ME UP ***HOLLAH***." And there are mean people at the free clubs sometimes too, known in the grid as "griefers;" those who think that the entire concept of sex in the grid is perhaps the stupidest fucking thing they've ever heard of, who literally show up to the clubs each night for no other reason than to humiliate and make fun of the people who take it seriously. (What? Anonymous cowards on the internet? Who instead of having their own life, obsessively fixate on people they're jealous of, then spend every waking moment trying to make that person's life as miserable as humanly possible? This shocking news has appalled and angered me, really it has.)

Well, and then there are the clubs themselves; after all, they need to be designed and constructed just like any RL building, and it's a fact that most sex-club owners have taken neither practicality nor aesthetic beauty into consideration when doing so. Many of the people at SL sex clubs, for example, enjoy first sitting around and simply talking with their fellow clubgoers, chatting and flirting and deciding which of these strangers they should fuck that night. But of all the clubs in the grid I've now visited, not a single one provides such a space, or at least one that encourages intimate flirting instead of discouraging it; and so what these people end up doing, then, is having such conversations in the actual sex rooms themselves. And this just leads to longer rendering times for everyone involved, more crowded conditions, more people saying things out loud like, "If you're not here to have sex, will you kindly please get the fuck out?"

Oh, and then there's the entire issue of "pose balls," which takes a bit of explanation for those who have never been to the grid. See, it's not just physical objects that playes in SL have a chance to create, clothing and furniture and skin and genitals and whatnot; you can even create customized gestures for avatars, animations that actually show an av engaging in some physical activity, designed in a popular RL program called Poser and then imported into the game in a specific format. There are two ways, then, to activate such a pose within SL: you can either own the script outright, at which point you can use it whenever and wherever you want; or you can embed it within an object, say a chair for example, so that any av who clicks on that chair will end up looking like they're "sitting" on it, without having to actually own a copy of the script themselves.

This being SL, of course, there have been just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pornographic poses now created; and so what many of these sex clubs will do is embed specific ones inside "pose balls," literal orbs that float in the air in a fixed position, aligned with other balls so that all who click on them will end up having animated sex with each other. But there are problems with such a system as well; say, for example, that only one pose can embedded in any given ball, leading to only maybe a few dozen being available in any given club. Or the fact that these pose balls actually take up physical space there, whether or not they're being used, leading to a cluttered and ugly situation at these clubs even in the best of times.

So this, then, will be the first thing I can offer, as a way of enticing people to pay US$10 a month to be a VIP member of my own club; simply a better club experience, while they're actually in the grid. My plan, in fact, is to build a club that not only allows sex in the back half, but which will also have a hipster lounge in the front for the general public, where sex isn't allowed but nudity is, minimalist in design and with a constant stream of ambient, techno and drum:n:bass being streamed in. And the point of such a front half, of course, is two-fold: not only to provide an appropriate "flirting room" for those who are there to sexually play, but a "safe" room as well for non-players, hipsters who are there just to hang out. Oh, you know who I'm talking about; the kids with the funny haircuts, who do shit in RL like hang out at bars where porn is playing on the overhead televisions, who would enjoy hanging out at a sex club in the grid on a Saturday night, simply so they can tell their friends on Monday, "Yeah, I was hanging out at a sex club this weekend."

So that'll be fun, I think, having a front room that's all hipster and cool and underground, where people can at least feel naughty even if they're not being naughty; and then actual sex rooms behind that, for those who are indeed being naughty. Ah, but see, there will be an entire back third of the club as well; the VIP section, that is, where only VIP members are allowed, even with a separate entrance for those who value their privacy. And what I'm hoping, then, as this autumn progresses, is that I'll be able to work with some existing scripting experts there, to see if we can't figure out a better way to make those damn pose balls work. What I'm hoping, for example, is to figure out a way to let customers actually move the pose balls around, without being able to keep a copy for themselves; that way I could simply hang them all on the walls, right up near the ceiling where they're not in the way, and be able to offer just hundreds of animations for customer use instead of the couple dozen you see at most club. (And of course I'll also be commissioning certain scripters to create special complex animations for the club as well, not available anywhere else in the grid; and this will be yet another reason to become a VIP member.)

Oh, but I can hear what you're saying right now, in fact: that if I mix swingers and non-swingers together in one club, how will clubgoers possibly be able to tell them apart? In fact, this is a complaint that many of us have about real-life bars and clubs too; of how impossible it is to successfully hook up with someone at them most of the time, since everyone is running around with their own desires that may or may not conflict with your own. Wouldn't it be great, my friends and I have drunkenly suggested in the past, if patrons at bars could simply wear some kind of giant personal ad? You know, like a temporary tattoo on their forehead, or maybe a sign magically floating above their head, that says something like, "I'm a straight woman who loves oral, seeking a straight man tonight who's good at dirty talk."

Ah, but see, that's the ultimate beauty of sex in SL; you can actually have such a thing! I have, in fact, recently coined the idea of "halos" for use in my club; a simple little object, that one picks up at the front door for free, which really does glow like a neon halo around your upper thigh whenever you wear it. And they'll be color-coordinated, you see; so if you're looking for a man to have sex with that night you simply wear the blue one, pink if you're looking for a woman, one that glows both if you're bi. And some of the halos will have fetish icons floating along their front as well; so if you happened to be a dom/master, say, you could wear a halo featuring a little fist, or perhaps one with a little phone if you're into voice chat, or a little camera if you're into trading real-life photos. And if you're into more than one of these things, of course, simply wear more than one halo; they're able to be worn around any section of the body you want, after all, meaning that in theory one could walk around wearing ten or more. Differentiating between players and non-players, then, becomes ridiculously simple under such a system; simply create a special bright-red halo for those who are just there to watch or hang out. And even better, you can have a rule at the club as well, that anyone who repeatedly propositions those with red halos will be permanently banned; and hopefully the mere fear of such a ban will keep most people at the club on their best behavior.

Well, okay, Jesus, only halfway through with the plan at this point, and have already filled up an entire page. So, I'll let you digest all of this for now, then tomorrow I'll be back yet again with the other half. Believe me, it's this second part where things start getting a lot more intriguing.