The website for Wicked Paradise tempts potential players with dirty talk. Line by line, it invites you to imagine entering a “highly realistic” virtual world, seducing a “beautiful lady”, and finally “having passionate wild sex with her”. As long as you're attracted to women, this kind of virtual-reality erotica sounds like a dream. But like so many affairs that involve the potential for “sexual adventures”, it could just turn into a nightmare.

For all that the Oculus Rift seems to have melted away the industry's scepticism around virtual reality, the device still has issues. Nate Mitchell, VP of Product at Oculus VR, gave a talk at GDC Europe this year in which he explored what he said was “easily one of the hardest challenges in VR”, which most people who've tried virtual reality are definitely familiar with: Simulator Sickness.

Loading

As Mitchell explained it, Simulator Sickness is like Motion Sickness in that it's caused by a disjunct between what your eyes see and your body feels, but in this case your eyes perceive motion and your body feels still. Whatever the cause, the effects – as Mitchell explained – are unfortunately similar: “Although the two are inverses of each other, they really do have the same consequences at the end of the day, which is dizziness, nausea, fatigue, all the things that you want to avoid as game developers.”

“ Simulator Sickness is like Motion Sickness in that it's caused by a disjunct between what your eyes see and your body feels.

Presumably, players will want to avoid these consequences too, and there's reason to believe that should be especially true for erotic games like Wicked Paradise, thanks to a psychological effect called classical conditioning that leads people to subconsciously connect two previously unrelated events.

If there are certain alcoholic drinks that you just can't stomach anymore because of one terrible night years ago, then you've experienced the effects of classical conditioning for yourself. Think of Pavlov's dogs, who heard a bell ring every time they were brought their supper and ended up salivating every time that bell rang, even when there was no food. Psychologist Elisabeth Blagrove (PhD) explains that this effect is so powerful that it's even used to treat alcoholism:

“Where an individual has a problem with alcohol addiction, they can be given a drug which reacts with the alcohol to produce extreme sickness. In a similar way to Pavlov's dogs, over time the individual will learn to associate drinking alcohol with a really unpleasant reaction, which hopefully reduces their inclination to drink.”

Loading

This is the same principle behind the treatment given to the violent protagonist of A Clockwork Orange, who ends up feeling sick both at the thought of violence and – as a side effect – at the sound of classical music. Being forced to feel sick at the same time as he experienced one of his favourite sensations put him off that sensation in future. In his case, it was the pleasure of listening to the likes of Mozart and Bach. With the combination of Wicked Paradise and the Oculus Rift, a player could theoretically be similarly put off a different kind of pleasure.

“ Being forced to feel sick at the same time as he experienced one of his favourite sensations put him off that sensation in future."

The idea that a game could have an adverse affect on a player's sexual arousal seems hard to believe, especially given how core to our existence and necessary for our evolution that experience is. But the varieties of mental illnesses that people suffer show that our brains can overpower even our most natural tendencies. Not so long ago, doctors banked on this possibility for their attempts to “cure” what at the time was perceived to be a problematic abnormality: homosexuality.

An issue of the British Medical Journal from 1962 describes the case of one man who was given this treatment. He was placed in a darkened room and given regular injections of apomorphine, which induces vomiting, and brandy. The resulting sickness was paired with an event that his doctors hoped would then cause an adverse reaction in future:

“On each occasion when nausea was felt a strong light was shone on a large piece of card on which were pasted several photographs of nude or near-nude men. He was asked to select one which he found attractive, and it was suggested to him that he re-create the experiences which he had had with his current homosexual partner. His fantasy was reinforced verbally by the therapist on the first two or three occasions.”

Loading

Intentional nausea aside, this situation sounds like the best version of something like Wicked Paradise that could be designed 50 years ago: naked photographs instead of naked digital women, but with the same desired end result. The man in the case study above reportedly lost his attraction to other men and got himself a girlfriend with whom he enjoyed “heavy petting”, though it's entirely possible he did so at least partly to avoid judgment. Other papers have looked at groups of men who've undergone similar treatment and found that while it's unlikely anyone was “cured” of their homosexuality, at least some of the patients experienced lowered arousal as a result.

Of course, the men who underwent these treatments often did so with some coercion, which hopefully won't be the case with players of Wicked Paradise. Dr Blagrove explains that people would have to play the game and experience that simultaneous nausea and arousal several times for any adverse effect to take hold:

“This link has to be solidified or trained into people in the same way as it was with dogs, but if you play this for long enough, if you do this repeatedly, then the chances are this link may build up.”

“ Oculus VR seems to be encouraging players to push through this simulation sickness in order to acclimatise to the experience, like sailors with seasickness."

It's likely that anyone who feels seriously ill on using the Oculus Rift will stop, whatever the game. But Oculus VR seems to be encouraging players to push through this simulation sickness in order to acclimatise to the experience, like sailors with seasickness: “Users do seem to acclimate over time. So it may be that five years from now we all have our VR legs, very similar to how people get their sea legs. Or frankly, it takes about a couple of days of playing.”

So some players may feel ill and carry on anyway, and end up feeling simultaneously sick and aroused enough times to produce an adverse effect when aroused in future. You don't want to feel lowered arousal when having a “non-virtual” (“or as we call it, real,” Dr Blagrove laughs) sexual experience. And even if that doesn't happen, just the memory of feeling sick while playing Wicked Paradise could ruin the mood.

Given the novelty of this technology, the developers of Wicked Paradise may want to take note of some of the suggestions Mitchell floated during his talk at GDC, for example that backwards and sideways movement is much more likely to make players feel ill, and that players will want to be able to look down and see a body rather than be a disembodied head. But with people unable to predict what their individual sensitivity to Simulation Sickness might be, it's important to be aware of the potential risks, and to remember to practise safe simulation at all times.

Jordan Erica Webber is a freelancer who writes and talks about games for the likes of GamesTM, Family Gamer TV, and the Observer, the latter of which is the one she mentions when elderly relatives ask what she does for a living. She is probably the only journalist who doesn't drink coffee, eat pizza, or Tweet about cats.