Offbeatr Blog

Offbeatr Featured on Mashable

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:07:35 -0700

Look where Offbeatr showed up! Kickstarter for XXX projects. Reblog to help us spread the good word :) We’d appreciate it.

Press Release: Offbeatr Crowdfunds Over $280,000 for Adult "Porn" Projects

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:41:28 -0700

Los Angeles, California - Offbeatr.com, the only crowdfunding website that allows people to raise money for sex and adult creative projects (“porn projects”), has raised over $280,000 in 9 months for its adult project creators.

Since launch in August 2012 Offbeatr has seen more than:

100 adult project created
4000 pledges for rewards with an average pledge amount of $61
10,000 registered users with over 2.5M page views

12 projects have been successful including:

Flesh Cult - a web-based RPG where you play as a succubus or incubus
Grace Alley Mural Project - a public art project on the exterior of the Center for Sex & Culture that highlights San Francisco’s sexual history and culture
Jurassic Beauties Collection - a DVD-Rom based portfolio showcasing Cherri Topps, one of the sexy dinosaurs in the Jurassic Beauties lineup of characters.
Venus Rising - a MMORPG which features ancient bordellos, private orgies, and barbaric battles.

“When we tell people we built a crowdfunding platform for adult projects they immediately think, just as we did when we started, that our projects would be all porn movies,” said Offbeatr.com CEO, Ben Tao. “While we do have film projects, what’s been surprising is many of the successful projects don’t feature live humans as the main subject. Instead we have sexy succubi, thoughtful dragons, and Jurassic beauties. Projects that are art related and in the form of adult games, comic books, and murals.”

A big part of the success of Offbeatr has come from the hard work and perseverance from its project creators. Creators who not only have to overcome the challenge of gathering support, but also overcome rejection from “mainstream” service providers because adult content is prohibited.

“We work hard to bring a quality product to our customers, and that’s made more difficult by printing companies who refuse to print adult material.” Said, Seppel, the creator of the Furoticon Online project. “Our campaign centered around bringing our card game to an online format for a reason — online, people will be able to play with friends around the world. Sex is a part of most adults’ lives, and the celebration of sex through images is just as natural as that through text — but 50 Shades of Grey is in your local library; Furoticon will be difficult to get into your local gaming store.”

“Our goal when we created Offbeatr was to give project creators a chance to make their adult projects into a reality through crowdfunding,” said Tao. “These are project creators who have devoted fans and interesting projects. The only problem is they’re not welcomed on other crowdfunding sites only because their creative projects involve sex. Is it fair? No. That’s why we’re here to help, and so far it’s working.”

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About Offbeatr.com:

Offbeatr.com, a non-equity based crowdfunding platform for sex and adult related creative projects. In addition to offering rewards in exchange for support, project creators can sell digital content to raise money for their projects.

About Extra Lunch Money:

Extra Lunch Money is the company behind extralunchmoney.com, a social marketplace for models to market and sell custom and pre-made digital content, and offbeatr.com, a platform to allow people to crowdfund adult creative projects. Extra Lunch Money is dedicated to creating innovative and safe platforms to allow people to explore sexuality in positive ways.

Offbeatr Interviewed by Flayrah: Furry porn sweeps Offbeatr

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:19:20 -0800

The kind folks over at Flayrah (one of the premier news sites for all things furry) interviewed us recently about the success of furry projects on Offbeatr. They asked some great questions including:

Why do furry projects do so well on Offbeatr, compared to others?
Does Offbeatr see [the success of furry projects] as a good thing, or a potential problem?
Has Offbeatr done anything to attract furries? Do you plan to?

Check Out the Full Interview

Press Release: Offbeatr.com Adult-Only Crowdfunding Site Raises Over $60,000 for Projects

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 06:01:14 -0800

Los Angeles, California - Offbeatr.com, the only crowdfunding website dedicated to sex and adult related projects, celebrated it’s 5 month anniversary by raising over $60,000 for its project creators. Thanks to Offbeatr’s unique voting phase, whereby only projects who receive a minimum number of votes can go on to raise money, projects have had an 80% success rate compared to 40% on other popular crowdfunding sites.

Since launch in August 2012 Offbeatr has:

Raised over $60,000 in contributions ranging from $5 to $2000 for 5 projects
Raised over $10,000 in one day for the project Fantasy Sex Game: Furoticon Online, which went on to raise $39,000 in total exceeding its goal of $25,000
600 financial supporters who pledged on average of $100 each
Received over 4000 votes for over 70 projects. Projects like Bipartisan Slash (political porn comic), Venus Rising (World of Warcraft with sex), Needle Play Video (BDSM educational video), Football Parody (gay parody film), and the Grace Alley Mural Project (erotic mural painted in San Francisco)
An 80% success rate for projects who met their vote goal
Received over 200 project pitches including ideas like Virtual Reality Porn Glasses, Sexy Hipster Girls, and Oppan Gangbang Style (porn parody of Oppa Gangnam Style)
Over 4000 registered users and over 1,000,000 page views

Seppel, the creator of the Furoticon Online project said, “One of the main things that sold us on Offbeatr was that they would handle all of the financial and organizational aspects of fundraising. Having the tools (organized pledging, updates, digital products, surveys post-campaign) made this an exciting and dynamic experience for our customers, and would have been much harder to do with our own resources.”

“What’s been amazing is seeing how passionate people are about supporting projects they care about even if they happen to be adult,” said Offbeatr.com and ExtraLunchMoney.com CEO, Ben Tao. “Supporters care just as much about bringing Furoticon online as the people who wait hours in line to get an iPhone 5.”

A big part of the success of Offbeatr has come from the hard work and perseverance from its project creators.

“We work hard to bring a quality product to our customers, and that’s made more difficult by printing companies who refuse to print adult material. Our campaign centered around bringing our card game to an online format for a reason — online, people will be able to play with friends around the world! “ Said Seppel. “Sex is a part of most adults’ lives, and the celebration of sex through images is just as natural as that through text — but 50 Shades of Grey is in your local library; Furoticon (TM) will be difficult to get into your local gaming store.”

“Our goal when we created Offbeatr was to give project creators a chance to make their adult projects into a reality through crowdfunding,” said Tao. “We’re thrilled we’ve been able to follow through.”

To pitch a project idea or explore projects visit: http://offbeatr.com/

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About Offbeatr.com:

About Extra Lunch Money:

Rejected Pitch: Oppa Gang Bang Style

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 17:39:35 -0800

We’ve decided to start posting some of the interesting pitches we receive that we’ve rejected. This one sounds like a great idea, but we rejected because the project creator wasn’t really qualified to make the project happen (he said even said so himself). But it was topical so we’re sharing his pitch.

Pitch Title

Oppa Gang Bang Style!

Project Idea

The Korean sensation PSY has swept the United States and many other countries with his famous song and dance titled gangnam style. My mind was wandering and I came up with the Idea of a great adult film “Oppan Gang Bang Style”

“Oppan Gang Bang Style” would be the working title and you can easily work PSY’s cheesy clothing and dance into an adult film. Female actress’s can even moan OOP OOP OOP OOP like the song.

The storyline could be something like, An up and coming artist (Based solely on PSY’s cheesy get up) is performing a concert and he picks a girl out of the crowd to go back stage. When the girls get back stage she is waiting for the Singer to come back stage. When the door swings open there is singe along with his Posse of poorly dressed back up dancers and stage crew.

This is just a rough idea and a great way to cash in on this one hit wonder that is sweeping the nation.

Why are You Qualified to Do This Project?

I am not qualified or have any means of making this project come to life. However I came up with the Idea and hope someone out there can see where I am going with this and would like to take the Idea and run with it.

If you do decide to take my idea all I ask is please list me in the credits and compensate me fairly if it becomes a success.

Keep in mind if you do happen to create a Psy porn parody to credit our user appropriately. You’ve been warned.

Tips for Creating a Successful Offbeatr Projects E-Guide

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:56:19 -0800

There are already many great resources only for how to run a successful crowdfunding project on sites like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. Many of the information written in those guides apply directly to Offbeatr. However, some of you may not have all the time to track down all the information that’s out there. For those we created a simple guide that distills the information that we have found. We’ve embedded it below and if you want to download it you can do so by clicking through to Scribbed and downloading it there.

Successful Offbeatr Project Tips

Good luck!

Feature Updates: Embeddable Project Widgets & New Progress Bars

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:11:08 -0700

We’re happy to announce today 2 new features and updates to Offbeatr. The first one is an update to the visual look of project progress bars. The second one is the ability to embed a project widget on any website or blog.

Embeddable Project Widgets

For any project on Offbeatr you now have the ability to copy an html code snippet which you can paste and embed on websites that you control. Adding a widget is a great way to add even more visibility to your project and help promote the projects you want to support.

How to embed

1) Locate the “embed” button beneath a project’s main project image. Click it.

2) Select the size widget you want.

3) Copy the code for the selected size:

4) Paste the code on the page, blog post, or website that you would like (keep in mind the website has to allow for adding your own html … and iframe tags):

There are 4 different sizes so play around with all of them to see which one makes the most sense for your website.

Updated Progress Bars

We’ve “sexified” the progress bar on projects.

The old progress bars (if you remember) looked like this:

After “sexification” the progress bars now look like this:

Also notice that a project ideas’ progress bars are different from active projects that are taking funding.

Project Ideas look like this:

Live projects that are taking funding look like this:

Meet the Project: Fantasy Sex Game - Furoticon Online

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 09:32:39 -0700

Today we sat down with Seppel the founder and creator of Furoticon a popular “furry” card game. Seppel shares how the game got started, what it takes to be a furry card character, and his hopes for the card game by bringing it online by raising funds for his Offbeatr project, Fantasy Sex Game - Furoticon Online.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

Furoticon, the adult-rated card game, is ready to make the transition to an interactive online experience. People from all over the globe will be able to connect online to play and have fun!

So Furoticon started out as a card game. Where did you get the idea or inspiration to make such a game? How did you know people would be interested in the game?

I’ve been thinking up games my whole life. When I started writing down a new game system, I knew it would need a unique niche and hook if it were to be successful. I also love the artwork and talents of “furry” artists, and I wanted to see them gain popularity. One day, it just hit me — combine the game with the artwork! I didn’t want to make the game violent, either, so I established early on that the game should be about good, clean, sexy fun.

It’s amazing to see how the game has grown in popularity, but in the beginning it must have been difficult to get the word out. How did you grow Furoticon?

We initially grew through word of mouth, followed by advertising on the internet and attending conventions. During the first year that Furoticon was out, I personally attended seven conventions across the United States. Furries are a tight-knit group, and word spread fast that we surpassed simple porn, and had actually created a fun game that was extremely playable.

What determines what characters will be made into cards? Does it always have to be a real animal or are mythical creatures or made up beings OK as well? Is there a rule or guideline in the furry community that specifies what is OK or not OK?

Variety is key. Canines and felines easily make up the majority of the fandom. But people also want to see crocodiles and squirrels — and yes, mythical creatures, like minotaurs, nagas, and satyrs have also shown up. We even have our own brand of animal-type robots: “constructs.” As long as a character embodies some animal aspects, it can qualify as furry. The only exceptions are characters based on any trademarked species designs, such as Pokémon.

What is it about Furoticon that fans and players like? Are there any other similiar kinds of games? And if not why don’t game makers focus on producing games for the furry community?

Fans and players love the gameplay and the art. There’s also our ability to poke fun at our product, and our desire to bring the community in and make the development interactive. We get it, we’re a furry porn card game — but we’re damn good at what we do, and our fans know it.

There are a few other products that are furry-focused — but they’re also almost exclusively furry-produced. I feel like this market is where the anime/manga market was 10 years ago; it’s a force to be reckoned with, but no one really knows it’s there. That’s fine, though; we know what our fans want, and we have no problem doing our best to deliver a quality product.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

If Furoticon Online succeeds, We will be able to reach a larger audience. Not everyone wants to invest in a game that they can’t easily try out — we’re hoping that Furoticon Online not only puts those people in a position to play it and sign up online, but that it puts them in a position to want to invest in the physical product as well so they can play with their local friends.

Beyond that, we hope we will be successful enough to release more quality games, both adult and G-rated!

Furoticon Project Live...Check Out the Project Video

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 21:10:22 -0700

The Furoticon Project has not only collected over 1000 votes to transition from the voting stage to the live funding stage, but it has a really well done project video. Congrats and best of luck.

Learn more about the Furoticon Project

Meet the Project: Mirror/Mirror comic starring Tabitha Stevens ... and YOU!

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:58:03 -0700

Today we sat down and talked with Andrew Zar, the founder and owner of Darkbrain.com. Darkbrain.com is an independent studio which produces comics with no restrictions on content (ie censored). We get the inside scoop on their Offbeatr project, Mirror/Mirror.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

Mirror/Mirror is an adult graphic horror novel starring adult film star Tabitha Stevens. Our Offbeatr campaign is an unique opportunity to put yourself IN the comic as a main or side character.

How did you get started doing XXX comics? What was the inspiration?

I wanted to tell some dark and sexy stories that have been haunting my brain for years… but not be limited by the mainstream, heavily censored comic industry or fall into the trap of “lightweight porn comics” either. There just is not much comic material out there for adults who like both sexy and deep stories - we aim to change that.

What makes your comics different from other comics out there?

Unlike many other adult comics, DarkBrain comics are focused on the story itself - each comic series is a complete novel written by experienced writers and editors. DarkBrain also utilizes talented people of many races and genders for a deeper experience. For example, it opens some people’s eyes (or challenges their sexist thoughts) to realize that female writers can get into the “dirt” and kick as much ass as the male writers do. DarkBrain is also a fully independent studio and shoves the middle finger up to the prevailing censored comic book industry.

How long does it take to make one of your comics? How many people are normally involved?

The process is intense and takes years for each story. Typically a dozen people are part of each comic series from writers, editors, pencillers, inkers, colorists, letterists, assemblers and in some comics also voice, sfx, and music.

How are you able to attract well known adult actresses to collaborate on your projects?

This campaign will allow us to create up to 12 additional short stories to flesh out some of Brenna’s (our cursed dominatrix) past. There are many juicy and interesting experiences to showcase here, also influenced by the reward winners in the campaign itself.

Meet the Project: Come to Me When You Are Ready

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:26:28 -0700

Today we spoke with independent adult film producer and director, Erika Lust, about her Offbeatr project, Come to Me When You Are Ready.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

It’s an indie adult movie about a woman and her rediscovering of her body and her sexuality. It’s going to be emotional, passional, sexy, funny, kinky… Maybe my most personal work.

Where did you get the idea for the story of “Come to Me When You Are Ready”?

From a divorced friend with two kids who lives in Barcelona.

How do you come up with your movie ideas? Are they based on real stories you hear from friends? News you read?

Real stories based on real friends! That’s my modus operandi.

You’ve said before that the feminine viewpoint is vital to the porn genre, what changes to a film when a female perspective is added?

A lot of things change. The story, the characters, the music, the sound, the casting, the decorations, the values, the story, THE STORY, THE STORY. Ther’s a story, finally me and other woman are showing that other kind of porn was possible.

Many of your films are shot in Europe. Are there strict rules and regulations on how porn films are made? If so, what kind of regulations?

NO special regulations, but I try to follow my own rules, based on respect and care of all women and men involved in the project.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

I will shoot in March 2013!

Meet the Project: Three XXX CG Animated films Interview

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:00:37 -0700

Today we spoke with animationbyjc about his project, Three XXX CG Animated films, a project to create 3 adult animated films. We learn more about the process and some of the advantages and disadvantages of doing animation versus live action filming.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

Three all-original XXX films is the kickoff of a new animation company that uses entirely computer generated humans, sets and environments to create its stories. From adventures on the high seas, to the far reaches of the universe, this company will create exciting new movies for both the XXX and R-rated mainstream markets.

How do you go about making an XXX computer graphic animated film? Where do you even start? What kind of tools are involved?

The first and most important place to start when making a XXX CG movie is the same place you start with any movie: the script. Once I have the script completed, I find actors to voice the scripts. This is one area where CG animation is different than live-action. The audio always has to come first in animation so that timing of the scenes can be set. This is important because you want to avoid over-animating, especially in CG, and you always want to try to keep the character actions very specific and short. This reduces render time, which can easily take days for a single scene.

Once the script is written and recorded, I begin formulating the visual approach to the film by placing the audio clips in an editing timeline to determine the best timing for the film. I use very lo-resolution rough characters to block out the action and lo-resolution renders to create a storyboard. Reallusion’s Icone is a great program for this. It’s a real-time animation program so render times are fast. Remember, in an animated film, EVERY action must be accounted for. Every eyeblink, every head turn, finger point, walk, sit, frown, laugh, etc. must be created individually.

After that’s done, the backgrounds (sometimes called layouts) are created. These are the environments where the actions take place. Very much like a live action film, the locations are determined first, before actors and lights are brought in. At this point I do my “casting”. CG characters are created, clothes, given hair styles, facial characteristics and so forth. The textures for these characters and backgrounds are often created in Photoshop. I use stock characters that I purchase online, or else create my own.

The animation begins using Poser, Cinema 4D, and the editing happens in Premiere Pro and After Effects. Even with motion capture, many scenes still need to be keyframed, meaning motions that are created one frame at a time.

You say it takes 3-4 months to product a 30 minute film. What is it that takes so much time?

I’d say it takes about a week or so to write a single script, a week or two to find actors and record, another 2-3 weeks to lay in the clips for the storyboard, create rough character motions, build or find the environments, and get the timing of the show down. That’s over a month just to get to the storyboard stage. It’s hard to do any animating until I have the voices cut and timing determined. I could waste a lot of time by jumping too far ahead in the process. From there, it’s a matter of creating the characters, applying voices to the CG characters, finessing their motions, facial expressions and so forth, doing more test renders at a lo-res, and seeing how it lines up with the storyboard. Then I place these characters in the environments and start lighting and shooting with different camera angles. This is probably the longest part of the process and can take at least a month. Rendering is slow, even if you go through a renderfarm (which I plan to do with this funding) because the motions are rarely right the first time around. It takes a lot of tweaking and coming up with visual shortcuts to make the animation appear as seamless as possible. The final month or so are spent in post-production editing, adding visual effects, compositing elements together in After Effects, finding appropriate music and doing the audio mixdown.

What’s the market like for XXX animation? Is it popular? Is piracy an issue as well?

In my experience in adult, the market for XXX CG animation is growing among adults, thanks in large part to the influence of games. People are getting more used to seeing CG characters in movies, too.These audiences are more interested in artistic films and well-told stories set in unique environments, and CG is a perfect fit for that. I think that part of the reason for this is that over half the viewers of CG movies are women.

The thing holding it back is quantity. That’s why it’s important for me to raise enough money to do a series of films. The audience is there, they just need to see more films.

It’s difficult to do even a single CG film, but when one is posted online, it always gets tons of hits.

Piracy is a problem with any XXX production these days. Part of what I want to do with the money I raise is to work with some of the companies in XXX who specialize in piracy takedowns. I haven’t been aggressive thus far because it costs money and legal fees to chase down pirates, but many XXX companies such as Girlfriends Films have been extremely successful in plugging the piracy holes for their work. I plan to protect my work as much as possible and once my animation studio is set up, be very aggressive in tracking down pirates through whatever legal means are available.

What advantages / disadvantages do you see from doing XXX computer graphics animation versus shooting live XXX films?

The main advantage is that you aren’t limited to where you can set your films. You can control things like the weather, time of day, etc. pretty easily.

The big disadvantage is time. You can crank out a live action film in a week. In that week, I’m still trying to finish a script and find voice actors, and still weeks away from actually making the film.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

I really hope to create a slate of films that are XXX as well as R-rated horror, comedy, etc. for the mainstream markets, and sell these films worldwide through major outlets beyond just the web. These three films, with their improved motion capture and environments will set us apart from other companies doing the same kind of work. I want this animation company to become a premier company for CG animation worldwide, with an emphasis on quality storytelling and animation technique.

Meet the Project: Venus Rising Interview

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 09:59:48 -0700

Today we spoked with Alex Allen of Foxy Soft to learn more about her game project, Venus Rising, a massive multiplyer online role play game (or MMORPG… think World of Warcraft). This is not your run of the mill MMORPG. This is an RPG game that not only features mythical beasts and battles, but healthy amounts of sex. Something that caught us off guard is we assumed that Alex was a man, but we were pleasantly surprised to learn that we were wrong.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

Venus Rising is an online role playing game that combines popular mainstream game play with adult themes and content. We are filling the gap between the gaming and adult industries.

How did you come up with the idea for Venus Rising?

I play a lot of massively multiplayer online role playing games. Most of them set in a fantasy world like Guild Wars and World of Warcraft. I, like most other MMO players, enjoy the depth of story, the combat action, and the character development through quests. But the biggest draw to such games is the community. Players form circles of friends and personal relationships with each other. A lot of these relationships and interactions are sexual, flirty, or romantic in nature. But being in a game that censors certain words and does not provide outlets for such things, it all has to be done on the down low. There are code words and emotes that represent what they really want to say and do in game. I thought, ‘why not have an adult only game where they can actually express themselves freely and provide game mechanics to represent their romantic gestures. Surely there are games like that right?’ So the search for adult games began. I found many sex games and I’m sure you all know a few of them. But those games focused solely on sex. It seemed like they forgot to develop the GAME part. So if you were not getting laid in the game then there wasn’t anything else to do. Nothing that was as fun as slaying dragons and following a quest arc anyway. I found, when it comes to gaming like an adult, if you didn’t want to be steeped in pure porn, you were kind of stuck at the kiddie table. There doesn’t seem to be anything in between. Not being able to find what I was looking for in an adult game I decided I would just have to create it myself. And thus FoxySoft was born.

The graphics and gameplay look very professional, how long have you been working on this project? How much longer will it take to complete?

I have been developing the prototype demo for 4 months now. I have a created 90% of the artwork myself and built the virtual world which consists of a small city and couple of small woodland areas. I have 2 programmers implementing the basic game play mechanics. We have a character create system where you can choose your sex, clothes and hair styles. We have a chat system in place. We have a basic market system where you can buy and sell in game items. We have sexual interactions working and a questing system in place. Up nest is a grouping with friends where players will be able to invite other players to be part of their group, once accepted, the sexual or combat activates will ensue. We also need to implement combat and health status meters. The next two months will see a complete Demo with some more character customization options and polished game play systems. The Demo is scheduled to be released to supporters by Late October.

Once we have the demo complete it is just a matter of scaling it all up to create a full fledge game to be launched Spring of 2014.

You used to work for Sony Online Entertainment making mainstream games, why did you decide to leave and focus on making adult games? Were you nervous about making this switch?

Decide to leave? It wasn’t my choice. Sony had mass layoffs last year. Unfortunately, well no actually, fortunately I was one of them. A sad event at first, it turned out to be a good thing. It freed me up to pursue this. I got contract work with another company while I wrote design documents and business plans for FoxySoft. When it came time to do some actual development, I jumped in with both feet and used my savings to develop Venus Rising full time from home. Yes I was nervous and still am. After all, I am putting everything on the line here. It’s like swinging on a trapeze without a net. But as I see the game develop, and my vision come to fruition, I am more and more confidant that it will be a good, fun, and successful game. Also, showing it to people like you and your community who are excited about it really bolsters my confidence. I don’t always get positive feedback though, in fact some people hate it and really pooh pooh the whole idea. But there is a saying in the game industry. “If you don’t have haters then you’re not doing it right.” So even the negative feedback is reassuring. It means people are talking about it and that’s always a good thing.

Do you know of any other adult games who are going after the scope of what you are trying to accomplish? Have any been successful? What do you think will set Venus Rising apart?

No I don’t. But that doesn’t mean that something similar isn’t in development as we speak. They may just not be on the radar. I do know that Second Life is quite robust and Red Light District is wildly popular. Both those games are huge and have millions of players. I would say they are the most similar to what I’m doing.

But what sets Venus Rising apart is:

World setting
Cutting edge graphics
Popular mainstream game play
Close male to female ratio of players

It seems all adult games are set in modern times. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but if you want to live a fantasy, why not live it in a fantasy world. A world full of fantastic creatures and beautifully lush environments.

Other popular adult games tend to have very outdated graphics. I don’t want to bash any games here but I never found any of them to be particularly good looking. Venus Rising uses all the latest technology to create the most realistic and stimulating artwork for the best immersion possible.

And game play. We are actually going to have some. Most adult games are nothing more than sex simulators or glorified chat rooms. Now there are exceptions of course, Second Life offers a ton of things to do. But it’s not the kind of fantasy entertainment that most MMORP players enjoy. You can’t fight a gang of Orcs for instance, or form a hunting party to take down a mega medusa.

And that leads me to male/female ratio. The biggest complaint I get from the naysayers is that adult games are just sausage fests. Meaning only men are playing. Well that is true of many sex games because they don’t offer anything that females would be attracted to. It’s not that women don’t want to have sexual encounters online; it’s just that they want a lot more substance to it. A game that has actual game play and lots of role play opportunities is very attractive to the female game player and the proof is in the demographics of MMORPG games. Over 40% of MMORPG players are female. On my forums alone we have a ratio of 10 females to every 15 males. Heck, I’m female and I’m building the game.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

Well the ultimate dream would be to have millions of players and grow to a fortune 500 company. But honestly, if I have a small community of about 5,000 loyal players who really enjoy the game then I would consider that a huge success. It would be enough to sustain a small team of about 6-10 developers and still turn a profit for investors. I can’t think of anything more fulfilling than to have my job be building a fantastic world enjoyed by so many others.

I want to thank you and the Offbeatr community for being so supportive of this venture.

XXX CG animations anyone?

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 09:55:38 -0700

XXX CG animations anyone?

Meet the Project: Japanese Porn Cultural Exchange Interview

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:00:38 -0700

Most Japanese adult films are made in Japan are made for their own domestic audience. Digital J Media is looking change that by creating and bringing high quality videos featuring popular Japanese adult video stars to an American audience.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

It is about connecting Japanese porn with fans outside of Japan. I want to give westerners the ability to interact with Japanese AV stars and have their feedback be heard while producing the highest quality porn that I can.

How did you even get started shooting porn? And more importantly how did you end up doing it in Japan?

Being in Japan came first. No actually, watching a lot of Japanese porn came first and when I got to Japan I thought how awesome would it be to participate. Already a fan of the content, style, and of course Japanese women I applied to do extra work, “soup man” jobs. You know, bukkake, occasional blowjobs, or any other standard group content where all they need is a dick in tighty-whities, the soup man uniform. Not being Japanese, the response was a resounding no from just about everywhere, even if my Japanese was spot on. They assume no foreigner could possibly understand their customs and manners and they probably have stds anyway. Since then I’ve always had a frustration with how closed off things are from outsiders here (hence this project!). Being persistent and mostly luck I eventually got some jobs with some smaller, fetish productions. After a couple of years one production hired me as a set assistant. I had a direct influence on the end product, but it was still very limiting and I was still frustrated with how I was treated as a foreigner. So I created my own production. Years later, and many mistakes later, I’ve got a solid team that I trust and can really help me push the limits.

Why aren’t there more US porn companies who film in Japan?

Because it’s expensive. Travel, accommodation, sets, staff make it prohibitively expensive to even consider. On top of that Japanese actresses cost at least twice as much as their US counterparts, and stars cost 3 to 10 times more. I believe the first time Maria Ozawa did a foreign production her guarantee was about $40k, don’t quote me on that. Then there are the Japanese censorship laws to contend with. There was one foreign production, Pink Lotus I think, that came in 2007 and went all out. It was a huge expenditure, and it fell flat. They got mediocre female talent and the communication barrier made it difficult to create a product worth the cost. Model agencies generally don’t deal with foreigners and don’t really speak English. The ones that will are usually involved with a particularly unsavory group of people I won’t name. Fortunately with my connections I was able to avoid that and get proper access to female talent. But things are changing and opening up to productions outside of Japan. Because I am the only US based director in Japan I will be playing a direct role in plans within the industry here to become more international.

What are some of the differences between porn production in the US versus porn production in Japan that are surprising?

To be honest, I haven’t filmed adult in the US so this is based on my assumptions of how it works in the states. I think the biggest difference is that the contents of most DVDs are shot in one day. One long day.

Almost all Japanese actresses are cover girls - most actresses that sell get a chance to be the sole actress in a film at least once. And most get swept up into contracts with one maybe two producers from the start, work for 1 to 3 years and quit after it ends. In other words, getting good female talent is difficult unless you are an established production in Japan.

On the set, the actresses are pretty much worshipped. One or two staff are constantly tending the needs of the actress from the instant the director says “cut.”

The porn industry is where you end up if you fail in Hollywood. The porn industry is a doorway to the film industry in Japan.

How is porn and porn actresses viewed in Japan? Are they celebrities? Are they looked down upon, etc…?

Some actresses are celebrities who appear on late night TV. Most don’t make it that big, but being in porn does not preclude them from moving onto bigger things. As I mentioned, if anything it’s a doorway. But the stigma of working in the adult industry is as it is anywhere else in the world. I’ve had mixed reactions from people and in some cases you cannot be a member of certain communities if it is known you do porn because it will bring shame to the group. I learned that the hard way. Japan is an intensely conservative country, but has had a long history of openness towards sexuality. So porn is not viewed negatively in appropriate situations.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

I hope to do it again and again! Of course. But on a grander scale I hope to bring western fans of JAV closer to the stars and production community in Japan. And on the opposite side I hope to create a conduit for Japanese producers to reach their audience outside of Japan. This all in time of course

Feature Updates: Newsletter Updates, Project Idea Updates, & Filtering Ideas from Projects

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 21:46:08 -0700

Thanks so much for all the feedback. We’ve been listening and we’re excited to announce 3 new features we’ve added to Offbeatr. Without further ado… here we go!

1) Newsletter Updates

The newsletter update is once a week email that gets sent out that updates you with information about projects you might have voted on or supported as well. In addition we list new projects that might be of interested to you. This newsletter is our way of keeping you up to date with Offbeatr projects without you having to come back to the site.

If you don’t want to receive these updates you can change it by going to the bottom of the email and clicking the “change email settings” link.

You also can customize the types of projects to be included in this email by setting it in your edit notifications screen. Here you’ll be able to choose the types of projects to be notified about.

2) Project Idea Updates

We now have added the ability for projects in the idea phase to write updates about their project. When a project creator writes an update everyone who voted on the idea will be email notified. This is a good way to keep people in the loop about the project and ask for feedback. We should caution project creators from getting too update happy as we’re sure that the voters and potential supporters wouldn’t appreciate that.

3) Filtering Ideas from Projects

Now you can filter Project Ideas from Live Projects. Project Ideas are projects that still need to undergo the voting process where Live Projects are projects that have already passed this phase and are currently taking funding.

The Offbeatr.com Interview that Was Too Sexy to Publish

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 09:57:21 -0700

Since our launch we’ve been fortunate enough to have been approach by several news organizations and blogs who were interested in interviewing for us for their publications (view the press we’ve received). A smaller tech blog contacted us and asked us to if we’d be interested in being featured on their site. We thought, sure, why not? We’re a startup, they’re a blog that covers startups.

The interview itself is a generic questionnaire of 27 questions they have you fill out. Not only are there 27 questions, but they require you to answer a minimum of 300 characters for each answer. It took a long time to answer all the questions, but we figured since these guys approached us we would put in the time.

After sending them our answers we heard back from them:

We extremely apologize for the inconvenience caused but unfortunately we won’t be able to feature your start-up “Offbeatr.com” as it is related to porn material and as per our policy we don’t promote any adult content on our blog.

To which we can only scratch our ends and wonder “wtf?” How did they not know we were adult related? Most everyone has called us “Kickstarter for Porn”. It’s not like we tricked them.

Rather than let this interview go to waste, we are featuring it below. While we don’t appreciate them wasting our time thanks are in order. Thanks to them we are able to share this with you.

Since their interviews are formulaic we will be able to present you with a version which most likely would have appeared on their website.

———— INTERVIEW BELOW ————

Today, we [startups.co] have interviewed Mr. ‘Ben Tao’; Founder of the US (Los Angeles – California)-based start-up ‘Extra Lunch Money’ about his company.

‘Extra Lunch Money’ is the company behind extralunchmoney.com, a social marketplace for models to market and sell custom and pre-made adult digital content, and offbeatr.com, a platform to allow people to crowdfund adult creative projects.

Below is the full interview that we have conducted with Mr. ‘Tao’ regarding his start-up company ‘Extra Lunch Money’;

1. What is it exactly that you do and what your start-up is all about?

I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Extra Lunch Money. Extra Lunch Money is the company behind extralunchmoney.com, a social marketplace for models to market and sell custom and pre-made adult digital content, and offbeatr.com, a platform to allow people to crowdfund adult creative projects. Our company is dedicated to creating innovative and safe platforms to allow people to explore sexuality.

2. When has your startup been founded? And what stage is your startup currently at?

We officially launched our first website, extralunchmoney.com (the social adult marketplace) in April of 2011. Then in August of 2012 we launched offbeatr.com (crowdfunding for adult projects). We’ve been self funded / bootstrapped ever since the beginning. Right now we’re focused on continuing the growth of extralunchmoney.com and getting the word out to people about offbeatr.com.

3. What is your startup’s business model and how does it work?

Offbeatr’s business model is very similar to many of the other crowdfunding platforms that currently exist in that if a project reaches its funding goal then we take a percentage of the total money raised. Part of that money covers our credit card transaction costs and the rest helps us continue to grow and improve the site.

4. How did your team meet? And who in your team does what?

Eric, my co-founder, and I met many years ago at a young professionals networking event. Back then we both discovered we had an interest in entrepreneurship. We kept in touch and it wasn’t until a few years later that we teamed up and started working on different projects which ultimately lead up to us creating Offbeatr. Eric handles much of operations and technology portion of the company whereas I handle more of the marketing, business development, and product management.

5. What, exactly, makes you different from existing options, what will make your product and/or service stand out in the marketplace? In other words what’s unique about you and what’s new about what you make?

Offbeatr is one of the only websites dedicated for helping people raise money for creative projects of an adult nature. The more “mainstream” crowdfunding players in the space prohibit such projects. Not only did we want to create a platform that gave people who want to work on adult projects a way to raise money, but was also wanted to innovate in the space as well. To that end we do two things differently than other platforms. First, Offbeatr projects all undergo a public voting period before being allowed to accept funding from supporters. Only after a project receives enough votes will it be allowed to start collecting payments.

Second, Offbeatr projects have two ways to raise money. The first way is through the selling of rewards similar to other crowdfunding sites. The second way which is unique to Offbeatr is through the selling of digital products. Project Creators can upload digital content they own like movies, ebooks, and photos, and supporters can purchase this content and download it immediately. Even if a project doesn’t reach its funding goal sales from digital products are paid out to the creator.

6. What is your growth like? And what milestones has your startup achieved so far?

We just launched in August of 2012. Prior to launching we made an announcement of the platform in February of 2012. From that announcement we had over 2500 people signed up to be notified when we launched. After launch we’ve been growing steadily both in gaining new users and as well getting new project ideas pitched to us daily.

7. Who are your competitors? And what is your start-up’s competitive advantage over them?

There are many mainstream crowdfunding platforms that exist. The best known ones of course being Kickstarter or IndieGoGo. However, we wouldn’t classify ourselves as a competitor to those sites since Offbeatr is really focused around adult creative projects. So far we’ve been lucky as there aren’t any competitors that focus on the adult aspect of crowdfunding. That’s not to say there won’t be competitors who will come in later. We expect there will be copycats, but we’ll differentiate ourselves from them by focusing on quality projects and continuing to find ways to make project creators successful when they run a project on our site.

8. What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

One of the biggest challenges of launching Offbeatr was knowing if it was even going to be possible to do crowdfunding for the adult industry. The main reason for the doubt was figuring out how to handle payment processing. Because we were an “adult” site that immediately disqualified us from using popular payment services like Paypal or Amazon. Even popular “hip” services like Stripe wouldn’t work with us either. This meant we had to come up with other ways to accept payment. The process took close to 8 months, but we searched high and low for payment processors that not only would process for adult, but also understood the crowdfunding business model. It was discouraging each time we got rejected, but we persevered and tried any lead we could get which finally worked out for us in the end.

9. What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?

There are a few things. The first is payment processing for adult is not as straight forward as regular payment processing. Because adult is considered “high risk” (meaning there are higher cases of fraud and chargeback) most payment services will not allow you to use their services. The second thing is 2257 compliance. 2257 compliance is something all adult website are legally supposed to display on their website which states that any models or people depicted in images or videos on the site comply with US law that they are over the age of 18.

10. Why are you going to succeed?

Not only do we work hard (which we think is a basic requirement for any startup), but we also work smart. The “smart” part to us is prioritizing and working on the things that will push the business forwards. There is always something to do, but the challenge is to figure out what things are worth doing first which will have the greatest impact. Since we are bootstrapping this business that means even more to us since we don’t have the luxury of solving problems by throwing money at it. Instead we have to be creative.

11. If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?

We joke around that if we’re able to be successful in the adult industry that we will attempt something we have yet to see in startups… the porn to mainstream tech startup cross over. So in addition to crowdfunding adult projects we’d end up crowdfunding independent music. We would be the Sasha Grey of the tech world.

12. Why did you choose this idea and concept to build your start-up based on?

Like a lot of people, we assumed the porn / adult industry was a gold mine. That if you did an adult type of website you were going to make money hand over fist. However, after more careful observation, we discovered while that might have been the case a few years ago the current climate is the opposite. Many adult companies are not doing that well due to piracy and the proliferation of free porn. Because revenues are dwindling we saw many companies hold back from investing in innovation or taking bigger risks. Since we were outsiders to the industry we thought we could experiment and do things differently without the baggage of what had worked in the past. So we decided to give it a shot.

13. What have you learned so far from launching your idea?

It’s important to get things out and in use as soon as possible. Spending months internally designing and working on a product is very different than actually having real users using it. The benefit of having people using a site earlier on is that you can observe and learn very quickly what’s working and what isn’t and take steps to fix and improve.

14. Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?

The biggest problem will be coming up with ways to help ensure more successful projects. In a perfect world we would like to see 100% success rates with the projects that go through our system. It’s still too early to tell or know how we can improve our success percentage, but there’s no doubt there will always be room for improvement. The problem will mostly magnify as well as we get more projects into the system.

15. What’s the benefit for the customer/user?

There are two groups we consider customers: project creators and supporters. The benefit of Offbeatr for the project creator is we give them a legitimate way to raise money for a project they care about. Not only do we give them a way to raise the money, but we give them tools to help manage the process along the way.

The benefit for supporters is they get to interact with project creators in a greater capacity than just a “fan” who might consume the project creator’s content. Now they can be part of the process and feel part of something that previously the couldn’t take part in.

16. How did customers / users find out about you?

We were fortunate and having some early press coverage when we announced in February that we were building and planning to launch our platform. Because of this we were able to get a lot of people to sign up to our launch email list. Fast forward a few months later when we did launch we were able to follow up with the people who initially wrote about us to cover our official launch. This greatly helped get the word out. A good thing that helps as well is that sex is inherently viral.

17. Who are your current customers / users? Who are your target customers / users?

We have a variety of project creators who’ve created projects so far. We have former male escorts, furry community artists, independent lesbian porn producers, and more. A lot of the project creators come from communities which would be considered more fringe than the average porn peddler you might think of. This makes sense since these smaller communities are typically not marketed to since their niche or fetish is not a big enough market for larger studios to target.

18. Where do new customers / users come from and what makes new customers/users try you?

So far a lot of it has been word of mouth when it comes to getting new project creators. A lot of these creators have been shut off from traditional means of raising money so when they hear of a way to get access to capital they are curious to check it out. Why they would give us a try is simply because we give them an opportunity to make a project they care about into a reality. In other words, as cliche as it sounds, we give them hope.

19. What do your customers / users say about your product and/or service?

The feedback so far has been really positive. Users like the look and feel of the website. I also like to think they like how responsive to feedback and questions they have. One thing that has helped us a lot is having a chat tool installed on every page of Offbeatr. This works great when users have questions or when we are trouble shooting bugs with users.

20. How are you going to scale?

That’s a good question. We’re not sure how large our market is. People have said that the adult market is as large as 27 billion dollars, but when you look at where they came up with that number you realize that they pulled it out of nowhere. For us it’s about finding serious project creators and encouraging them to run their project through Offbeatr. If we make them succeed they will either come back and use us again or they will tell other potential project creators. We are skeptical, however, if all these projects will add up to 27 billion dollars.

21. What’s the biggest missing feature? The one thing customers/users keep asking for?

We’re still pretty new (it’s been a little over a week since launch) so we’re not sure what we might be missing. There’s definitely things I think we could add, but without more real world usage it’d just be me guessing. I have no doubt with enough time we’ll be hearing from users what they would want added.

22. Are you going to internationalize? And if yes how are you planning to expand your start-up’s operations accordingly?

Technically we allow other countries outside of the US to use our platform as project creators. That being said it is still limited to countries where English is the predominant language. Before we consider moving into other international markets we want to make sure everything works well with the markets we are currently targeting. If that goes well then China here we come! (In case you didn’t know China has a strict zero porn policy)

23. How big do you think you can get? Why? And how you are planning to achieve your goals?

We think there’s a lot of potential with Offbeatr. Will we be able to fund 300 million dollars with of projects like Kickstarter? No, we don’t think so. What we do think is we will be able to attract a variety of interesting sexual projects. So while money-wise we might not see as much go through our system like Kickstarter, what do think will happen is that the project themselves will be interesting to browse through and consider supporting. This means we believe we can be a top trafficked website. How we get there is through focusing on curation and helping to make projects successful.

24. Are you looking to hire a new workforce? And if yes, what job vacancies do you currently offer and where can potential applicants contact you at?

Right now we’re still in a lean phase of our company so this means we’re not actively seeking new employees. That being said we are always on the lookout for good people (for as we know finding good people is tough!). If someone is interested in what we are doing or wants to learn more we would encourage them to contact us at info@offbeatr.com.

25. Are you looking for partnership opportunities or funding from Venture Capitals (VC) or other funding sources? Or your business is self-sustainable? And if the first option applies where can potential partners / investors contact you at?

We knew from the beginning that traditional venture capital firms would not be interested in investing in our business. The exit opportunities in adult are much more limited than mainstream companies. Because of that we’ve focused on building a site and platform that can make money relatively early on. We have to be self sufficient otherwise we’re dead. While VC’s might not be interested in us we wouldn’t mind them contacting us. They or angel investors can reach us at info@offbeatr.com.

26. What advice do you have for fresh entrepreneurs?

It’s not only important to ask questions, but to ask the right questions. A good example is getting honest feedback from users. Stop asking “what do you think” when showing to a user. Instead ask them “what is wrong?” Not only will you get honest feedback, but you’ll be able to improve.

27. Finally, do you have any other comments that you would like to add?

Thanks for interviewing us. Be sure to check out either extralunchmoney.com or offbeatr.com

luckypan: ontahb: Unigan Caravan Print Drive - Offbeatr If...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:32:55 -0700

luckypan:

ontahb:

Unigan Caravan Print Drive - Offbeatr

If ever you wanted to do me a favor ~ Reblog this if you could!

Hey guys. I need your help to vote my project through offbeatr (think adult kickstarter). The voting part is the first stage of the project. Once the project is voted in, it will be able to accept money from donors. The project page has a bunch of info on the specifics of the projects.

Some of the artist involved in the project are

Comics:

Onta

Peritian

Powfooo

Slyus

Gnaw

Tokifuji

Chinpo

Pinups:

Po-ju

Kitora

LOOK! LOOOOK! unigans , adorable unigans everywhere. Please think about voting for this book! I’m not a part of this one (mostly from time constraints and lack of ability) but I really wanna see it get finished, the art is goregous, the comics are wonderful. SIGNAL BOOOOST! (Also PO-JU? WOW)

Meet the Project: Double D Erotica Interview

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 09:55:01 -0700

Double D Erotica is a company that’s looking to bring authentic “real” lesbian sexual experiences to a market that has been traditionally underserved and misrepresented. We sat down with them to learn more about their project and background.

How would you describe your project in 2 sentences?

Double D Erotica LLC, is a multifaceted company that produces adult entertainment and products that cater to a special niche of the lesbian community that is untapped and underserved. Through film production, media via the internet, adult novelty products/merchandise, events and adult literature.

Your project targets the urban black lesbian, are there not studios or companies that cater to this group?

Our project shows real lesbians having real sex, the way we have it and want to see it. Not the way that our sex is generally commercially portrayed. There are companies out there who are trying to cater to the niche, however our approach is to cater not just to the niche but also the industry as a whole, giving a fair glimpse into the real world of lesbians.

How did you end up starting the company?

I am a writer, I wrote my first erotic story 12/17/2009 after arriving home from a serious car accident. I put the story up on a blog and my writing caught on virally. From there an idea evolved to cater to and showcase a viable niche within the adult industry that is underserved.

What has been the biggest challenge starting this company?

Finding the proper amount of funding has been the paramount challenge for the company. We also have some issues with acceptance as far as what we are trying to do from within and without the LGBT community. But we strive to overcome the challenges and present a product that anyone can enjoy.

Because your niche is smaller how do you go about finding models and actors?

We have a vast social media network that allows us tap into models and actors who are willing to perform both on and off screen without hesitation for the company.

If your project succeeds what do you hope will happen?

The exposure that Offbeatr has given us is incredible already, but when our project is funded our intention is to hit the ground running with filming a video and the completion of our website. We will use this first video as the spring board to launch a long term campaign of providing the best in real lesbians having real sex! As the ladies say: Double D Me Baby!

Are there any plans to allow producers to add multiple projects to the site? The site does seem a little barren at the moment..

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 17:06:40 -0700

Right now we are still sticking with one project at a time. It’s already a lot of work to gather interest for one project, but to allow multiple projects would make it even more difficult. We would rather producers focus on the project they feel the most passionate about than just throw out a bunch of ideas at the same time. For us it really is quality vs quantity.