Interview 1 Virtuagirl

Interview – Rex from Totemcash

I got the chance to speak to Rex from Totemcash this week about their new product, Strip Saver 2 and the rest of Totem Cash’s products, lineup and plans. For a man from France his English is a lot better than my French, and we chatted at length about his company, Virtuagirl and even the future of video games and adult entertainment. Read on:

Tell us a little about yourself, your company and how you got into the adult business?

I've been in the video game industry for 12 years, worked with Fox interactive in LA on Planet of the Apes (the game). I always felt I bagan a bit too late in that industry, by the time I was really able to do a game by myself the market was already asking for games that had to be made by larger crews and so on. So when Internet started, I jumped out of that industry with the idea to combine video games techniques, Internet distibution and some level of eroticism.

So you are a games programmer who jumped over to adult? That's awesome. What made you come over to the adult industry?

We (I got a partner who jumped out of the video game industry at the same time) had a friend who started a French adult website back in 97, and he was making money with a few photosets. So people were buying porn on the net and if you remember at that time Doom was doing great with online distribution. We created VirtuaGirl in 9 months, there was one single model at that time and we were online by the end of 98.

What language was the original Virtuagirl developed in?

English becasue we knew where the market was, and French because it was easy... Then we had fans who translated it into Italian, Spanish, German, Danish, Japanese, You name it... for free or just to have their name in the credits... The original was all done in C, the current version is all in C++ of course.

Tell us a little about your new product, StripSaver2. What makes it different from your other products and what new features does it have?

StripSaver 2 features girls in full screen, hi def and displays them right into your wallpaper. It also features a full screen video screensaver, but the wallpaper thing is really the new thing that blasts everybody. You need to see it running on your PC to know what I'm talking about. We even added features for the girls to appear in half transparency and that really kick ass.

That's really cool - does the new program use DirectX or OpenGL? Do the customers need to install anything special to run it?

Yes, the new one uses DirectX, but unless you're running Windows 2000 and you did not upgrade your DirectX version, you're fine. Plus surfers that dig this kind of product have the latest Direct X and the latest everyhting, believe me.

Yes most people play an occasional game that requires DirectX so that shouldn't be a problem at all.

What do you offer your affiliates in the way of tools and marketing to help them sell your products? What kind of payouts do you offer for your various programs?

First of all we shoot our own content and we've been doing it since 98. Everything is exclusive and we now feature almost 300 girls, including a dozen of 'known names'. Because we're selling animation on the desktop, our webmaster can freely use all our photos and regular video to promote our products. We feature hosted galleries, banners, buttons, flash stuff, pic of the day, random pic, animated pic of the day, full pages, ready to use free websites featuring all our models...

On the payout side, we mostly work on partnership. We offer 60% to our affiliates and I think we're the only ones in the industry to release our numbers. If you go to here you'll see affiliates made over $43 per signup out of the signups they did 18 months ago. We can't afford to pay that much in PPS plus PPS brings a lot of cheaters and one way or another it has a bad impact on the program and it's ability to give most of the income back to its affiliates. So most affiliates are with us for the long term and love it.

That's impressive! I'm sure this has come up, but is it possible for people to get customized versions of StripSaver2 for their own programs or paysites? Say I owned a program and I wanted a version of your product using my content, would that be possible?

We do custom version of our products for models. It's a special edition featuring only herself that she can use on her website. Instead of having a short window of time to convince a surfer to join, she's on their desktop every day till they uninstall or join. We never did any custom version for anyone else, but this is very open.

That would be an interesting addition for any sponsor or paysite. Hopefully we'll see something like that in the future.

Speaking of the future, what do you have plans for in the future with your products?

Short term: StripSaver. The product has been launched 4 months ago, it's still unknown and it converts almost twice as better as VirtuaGirl. We're also in the process of adding regular adult websites to TotemCash. We have a partnership with Denys de Francesco, a famous French photographer living in Budapest and we're marketing all his exclusive content. This guy has been shooting models for 10 years now and his content is not all over the net to say the least. The first site released was onegirladay a few months ago (along with tons of galleries with never seen before footage), and we're working on the next one. We're also working on a DVD download site (who doesn't?) called www.videohub.com that will open before the end of year with over 300 titles.

Sounds like you have an impressive lineup coming Will you be exhibiting at any shows in the near future (Internext Vegas) for instance?

Nope. I don't believe in exhibiting anymore. For the price of two shows where we were exhibiting, we're attenting a dozen shows a year. We've been around for quite a while, I'm not going to impress anyone in the business with the size of a booth and affiliates won't signup to TotemCash because I spent big bucks for a show. I find it more effective to meet people, plus you need to see your partner often when you live on the other side of the Antlantic...

Do you think that adult video games have a future in adult? With technology and PCs becoming more powerful, could the market be ready for something like a multiplayer adult version of The Sims, or other online game?

Mmm, lots of different subjects here. I don't think adult video games will convert porn surfers, they want to jerk off and it's not the purpose of a game. I think erotic games have bright a future in the game industry, because it's nice to be arounsed while doing something else (playing). As for The Sims, I can see a online dating system based on a 3d persistent world, but when you think of the money needed to release a neat persistant world, I don't think we'll see one soon that makes sense.

Well that about wraps up all the questions I had :-) Is there anything you'd like to add?

nope, thanks for giving us the oportunity to talk about what we do :-)

You're very welcome. Good luck with your sites and products and I look forward to seeing more of your stuff soon :-)

Be sure to check out their stuff at Totem Cash and add their great lineup of products to your profile. Don’t forget to tell them we sent you!

Till tomorrow, pimps!

-- Strippers on your desktop