The Oldest Profession

IMAGE: Stacy Sugar

Of all the weird new businesses supported by virtual gold, one of the strangest is related to prostitution. Online, real‑world women (or men posing as women) give gamers text-based and animated cybersex in exchange for game gold. The sex workers then trade that virtual dough for real cash through real-money transaction sites.

Under the nom de jeu of Stacey Sugar, a 25-year-old from England runs a popular strip joint in Second Life, an online ­virtual community where players customize their characters and environments. Industrious players create elaborate strip clubs and brothels. If your ­character doesn’t have ­genitals, no problem, you can buy ­yourself whatever you need in a Second Life store that sells virtual doodads in exchange for ­virtual dollars.

Sugar runs the Club XTC Elite, a virtual brothel complete with “pole dancing, lap dancing, table dancing, booth ­dancing, cage dancing, shower dancing, a champagne room, and four private fully fitted and animated sex suites,” she says. Visitors pay in game cash, called Linden Dollars, so that their game characters, or avatars, can have “sex”—expressed through titillating chat and character animations—with virtual prostitutes controlled by real people. Sugar gets a 20 percent cut. Translated into real money, she’s earning roughly $7 per hour for work that’s less tedious than flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

IMAGE: Stacy Sugar

The people who control the virtual prostitutes get all the training and accessories they need. “All girls who come to us complete an employment application form,” Sugar says, “and if accepted go into our mentoring program [called “Bimbos‑R‑Us”], which provides the avatar with a revised body, sexy skin and makeup, shoes, a large range of clothes, bling, and hair—everything they need to look gorgeous fast.”

One of the most notorious video-game tarts is Khannea Suntzu. In real life, she’s a 30-­something divorcée living on disability checks in the Netherlands. In the game world, she readily parts players from their in-game cash. It’s not just a matter of slinging ­salacious type or ­wiggling her cartoon character on yours. For the right price, Suntzu takes the action out of the game and into real life via the online telephony software Skype.

But that’s where the virtual story ends.