Japanese VR Hostess Café Lets You Drink With Anime Girls
One of the most interesting aspects of the Japanese culture is its harmonious blend of the modern and the traditional and of its little quirks and idiosyncrasies. The hostess culture is particularly deeply embedded into the Japanese social fabric and one developer is about to take it a step further by offering a compensated hostess experience through virtual reality.
This is not the first time that a Japanese company has created a compensated VR experience. The previous creations have however relied on delivering the experience through compensated virtual reality romance games.
◆VR空間で一対一のコミュニケーションを楽しめる新プロジェクト「ユメノグラフィア」始動！！◆
いちから株式会社は本日4月3日より、主にVR空間において新たなエンターテイメントを提供する新規プロジェクト「ユメノグラフィア」(Yumenographia)を始動します。 pic.twitter.com/dRRkldcZI0— ユメノグラフィア公式 (@Yumenographia) April 3, 2019
Given the impersonal nature of the hostess bar experience where there are no “real” feelings involved between the customer and the hostess, it lends itself easily to a virtual rendering of the same experience. In your traditional hostess bar, the male customer gets their ego massaged by pretty young women who shower them with attention and girlish laughter but who aren’t really in love or interested in them. The emotions aren’t really 100% genuine even though some of the women and the men immerse themselves in this experience with such élan that the feelings, and the overall experience, may momentarily appear to be real, even to the participants.
In the latest virtual reality project, a Japanese media company Ichikara has created a virtual café where customers can sit and chat with young ladies while playing games and sipping drinks in the digital space.
Called Yumenographia or Yemenographia, the virtual café enables customers to get compensated companionship via virtual reality. The user puts on a virtual reality headset (Oculus Rift) that immerses them in a store or café where they can choose from a cast of cute anime avatars that they want to talk to or play with. Depending on the time, users can pay a small fee and enjoy spending some quality and fun time with the virtual cast.
A major difference between Ichikara’s Yumenographia and other Japanese virtual reality dating simulator games is that in this case, the girls that the customers will be spending time with virtually aren’t pre-programmed or controlled by some artificial intelligence engine. Instead, the avatars in the VR creation are actually those of a real Yumenographia employee that will be interacting with the hostess bar customers remotely in real-time.
The developer has also included several games like the rock-paper scissors in its list of available services on Yumenographia that the participants can play together. The list of games is an indication that VR experience will lean more towards the chaste interactions at its virtual café as opposed to the typically innuendo-laden conversations associated with the real hostess bars. The more nuanced and less explicit approach may be designed to appeal to the otaku demographic that the virtual reality experience will likely attract which typically frowns at spending time in a hostess bar.
The developer has not yet revealed the launch date for Yumenographia although it has scheduled various pre-open preview dates on April 19th, 20th, 29th and 30th which will be held at the Kanda neighborhood in Tokyo.
https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2019/04/09/japanese-vr-hostess-cafe-lets-you-drink-with-anime-girls/https://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yemenographia-600×341.pnghttps://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Yemenographia-150×90.pngAdult GamesAdult VROne of the most interesting aspects of the Japanese culture is its harmonious blend of the modern and the traditional and of its little quirks and idiosyncrasies. The hostess culture is particularly deeply embedded into the Japanese social fabric and one developer is about to take it a step…Sam OchanjiSam Ochanjisochanji@yahoo.comAdministratorVirtual Reality Times
