Nu Vibez and Roleplay Guide Magazine - February 2014 | Page 63

Stroker Strikes Back, Part 2 - p2

Stroker Strikes Back, Part2
SL's Pioneering RL Millionaire Speaks Out
Ar cle by Filipa Thespian
Photos by Wren Noir
In January, we delved into the business mind of this
magne c man who was the second person ever to make a
million dollars (USD) from his Second Life sales. In this
second half of our interview with Stroker Serpen ne,
creator of the SexGen sex pose ball and sex bed system, we
take a look way back into his start, learn a li le more about
his thoughts on business and SL – then, we get to dive more
into the personal side that lives behind the monitor. Love
him or hate him, he is a huge footnote in the history of this
exci ng pla orm we call Virtual Reality or … Second Life.
NVM: What was the first thing you did or discovered the
first me you came into Second Life (SL) all those years
ago?
STROKER: The Matrix franchise was very popular back
then and everybody had a black leather duster, Neo shades
and wings ... wings were cool! SL was the only pla orm I
was ever able to fly in so we flew everywhere. Actually, it
was the popularity of Matrix that helped me launch my first
business in SL – sunglasses.
NVM: Wow, that's a very different start than I would have
expected, so tell us Stroker, how did you get from
sunglasses to sex toys and what brought up the idea for the
toys?
STROKER: It all started with a hunt for a plot of land. We
all liked this one sim that was administered by Linden Labs
(LL) and at the me, was the only full damage sim. I bought
this small plot of land right next to a sex club run by Big J.
John. He had posters on the wall of naked avatars in
various stages of sex and I was curious as to how he did it.
He shared with me this scripted cube that went opaque
when you sat upon it, freezing your avatar in a sta c pose
provided by LL at the me. At that point, he told me, the
avatars became mannequins and he'd move them into
posi on for the photograph. It's important to remember
that, back then, anima ons did not exist in Second Life (SL).
I remember thinking to myself that this was reminiscent of
the adult pla orm, Seducity that we'd migrated from.
They had pose “hearts” with 4 or 5 sexual posi ons that
you kept in your pocket (a.k.a. inventory) to rezz when the
me was right. It wasn't as “exci ng” as it was in SL though
as this world was 2D, which meant you could only look at it

from the one angle … there was no such thing as panning or
zooming to see all the interes ng angles.
I got the idea that we needed to combine Big John's sta c
cube with something similar to what we had in Seducity. I
discussed it with a friend of mine, Psych Phaeton, a
programmer in RL who had migrated with us to SL from
Seducity. Together, we came up with the idea for a pose
“ball” that would go transparent and loop the sta c
anima ons so that it “looked like” the avatar was moving.
Back and forth avies would automa cally switch from 2
sta c anima ons like “standing” and “motorcycle sit” to
simulate sex.
I look back at it all now, compared to some of the mo on
capture anima ons we use today and I just can't help but
laugh. Imagine visually in your mind's eye, going from a
sta c standing pose to a motorcycle si ng pose and
switching back and forth repeatedly. What was worse was
the lag they created. They were horrible lag monsters
because they were constantly switching between these
anima ons with only a millisecond between them. Within
a few months, SL was posi vely li ered with these things
and LL realized that we just couldn't have them – the
system couldn't handle it.
By then – some me mid 2004 – we'd go en the idea to
include them in (or on) beds. These things looked like they
had the measles with all those balls over them. For those
who weren't around then, when you were done with one
pose, you and your partner(s) would switch to another set
of balls.
NVM: I remember those, you could go from the head of
the bed on the le and sail all the way to the right side at
the foot of the bed … very good for the mental picture huh?
It makes me laugh to think about it in comparison to now
but I suppose … when in Rome …
STROKER: Yes! Actually, these beds were my first
experience with intellectual property conflict in SL. I'd
showed my concepts to a friend who thought they were
fabulous and wanted to sell them for me. I was fine with
that so I learned how to wrangle prims to make something
that resembled a bed; not very easy back then. Just as we
were about to launch them, I got word that someone else
had also developed the idea to put pose balls in a bed.
When I messaged this person, I was told, “oh yeah, we've
been working on this for months.”
Originally I thought this was all just a coincidence, yet when
I teleported over, low and behold, here were all these beds
Nu Vibez Magazine - February 2014 - 63