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Regina Lynn poses in front of the main plaza in Red Light Center. Females aren't as scantily clad as they used to be, but males still get the better t-shirts. View Slideshow 
*Editor's note: Some links and the accompanying gallery in this story lead to adult material and are not suitable for viewing at work. All links of this nature will be noted with "NSFW" after them. *---
One thing you notice in my line of work is that everyone likes to talk about future enhancements rather than current functionality, even if it took years to get a product to its current state. I suspect this is a universal enthusiasm among creative people, but it seems particularly strong among sex-tech pioneers.
So when I talked with Ray Schwartz, co-founder of Red Light Center, NSFW I did my best to keep us focused on what is rather than what will be.
Red Light Center is an adults-only virtual world that boasts 40,000 members, 10 percent of which are VIPs who pay $20/month for their privileges -- even though Red Light doesn't officially enter beta until September.
In May, I invited a dozen Sex Drive forum members to explore the new platform for me, as I wasn't going to have time to devote to it until late July. Initial reviews were mixed, with the men more patient with the product's flaws than the women were.
The men felt Red Light Center had potential, but was too difficult to use and lacked important features. One said that viewing the porn videos in a browser window killed his sense of immersion. Another liked running around naked but had a hard time finding women to chat with.
Both men and women decried the generic avatars, the inability to customize anything and the clunky user interface. Reading the women's comments, I could see each one pushing back from her computer and flinging her hands up with disgust.
"My biggest gripe is that the guys have actual clothes and women have to walk around in itty bitty slutty underwear and teeny tiny strappy high heels," wrote one. "Do they seriously think this is women-friendly?"
"It struck me as a very guy ideal," said another, who admits that she found the virtual environment difficult and distracting in general. "As for the porn available, there are easier ways to surf for naughty bits."
I finally entered Red Light Center last week, wondering how much had changed since my helpers first saw it. I managed to clothe my avatar somewhat modestly -- she has pants -- and yet the available bodies, skin colors and facial shapes are still woefully limited.
All around me, female avatars minced by in stilettos, breasts bobbing gently in bras and corsets. Men's chests swelled against painted-on T-shirts; the occasional nudist sprinted past, penis conspicuously dangling halfway down his thighs.
I wandered through an erotic art gallery, watched a porn video and ran through the public sex hall before I realized where I was. Along the way I passed a gentleman's club, a bordello and several storefronts that launch websites where you can buy real-world lingerie, porn and toys.
I felt like I was walking through a frat boy's spring break fantasy. And yet, Red Light Center markets itself as an erotic adventure for women. I asked Ray what made him think that this environment had any particularly feminine appeal.
He admits that the in-world focus on porn grew out of his co-founder Brian Schuster's decade as an adult webmaster. His archives were the easiest content to launch with, so that's where they started.
Now, he says, they're adding more features designed to offer women more varied environments in which to act out their fantasies, based on user requests. The latest enhancement: Female avatars can finally take their shoes off.
"The lagoon is opening, and you'll be able to swim in it," he says. Until now, the lagoon has been purely for decoration. "We have caves to explore, and one of the caves has a clamshell bed where people can have sex if they want. And there's a pirate ship." Also, female VIPs will be able to slip into mermaid avatars here.
Next up, also by female request, is a spa where you can get massages, pedicures and mud baths. "It's in a very serene, comfortable, outdoorsy setting," says Ray. "With trees and little rabbits running around."
It's not that the world is unwelcoming or that women wouldn't enjoy it as it is -- but after all the build-up, I was expecting something more balanced. Certainly it needs male pole dancers, and more "working boys" to balance the working girls.
Once I started talking with other people and finding out where they like to go, I began to relax and get into the scene. Like most newbies, I found my way to the clubs and started clicking the dance animations, developing my own signature fusion of ballet, hip-hop and the funky chicken. Soul Train, eat your heart out.
In the past, I've slipped into virtual environments incognito. But this time I let the community know who I was and that I was researching for a column. As I write this, I'm dancing on a bar in Blu's and asking my neighbors if they come here often.
ThickoneMike tells me he joined in April looking for cybersex, but he stays because he enjoys the people he chats with. "I can't remember the last time I had sex in here!" he says.
He asks me if I've had time to try the VOIP; I didn't even know the world had voice chat. I follow him to the hotel and we discover that the VOIP activates automatically when you enter a private room.
I like his voice, and I right-click his avatar to view his social networking profile. He's cute offline, too! I realize that we might be heading for something I hadn't planned on, and I check the time, assess the current level of pain in my wrists and decide that my editor will understand if the column is late.
And then suddenly I'm back in my office and Red Light Center has shut down. I don't know if I lost connection or if I accidentally clicked Quit as I switched between the 3-D client and Notepad.
Unfortunately, you don't return to the world in the location where you last left it. This doesn't seem like a big deal until you get knocked offline at an inopportune moment. By the time I logged back in, ran through the revolving entry door, down the street, through the hotel lobby and to the elevator, ThickoneMike was already on his way out and the moment was lost.
Red Light provides sex bots to help you practice your cybersex positions. Like dancing, once you get into a sex hotspot, you get a list of moves and sub-moves to click. Select Flirting and you can add a smile; select Doggy and you can add a smack or a push back. Orgasms are anti-climactic, but followed by cuddling; a nice touch.
Noche Kandora, NSFW a well-known Second Life dominatrix, likes the way the avatars flow from one sex act to another. "The graceful transition between moves, the subtle fade effect when a couple switches positions, makes for a more seamless visual display compared to Second Life," says Noche.
The list offers a nice variety of vanilla positions and the animation is lovely. Straight and lesbian pairings are supported, with male homosexual options -- including a bath house -- coming soon.
Having now spent several evenings turning the place inside out, my biggest complaint about Red Light Center is that it provides almost no documentation. There's no online help where you can look up how to find partner sex, how to locate the hot tub, how to travel between dimensions to find your friends.
Launching one of the internet's first adult 3-D environments without extensive online help is appallingly shortsighted. People will come to Red Light Center with and without experience in other games or online worlds; many will enter through the social networking portal. Leaving them to fumble around on their own even when they look for help is a major flaw.
See you next Friday,
Regina Lynn
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Regina Lynn can't believe people still think "wanna do it?" is an effective way to get women into bed. How about starting with a nice "hello, welcome to the plaza, can I help you find anything" instead?
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