Three Reasons Why VR Porn Probably Won't Make VR Mass Market

Hoo boy, here's The New York Times recently indulging the "porn might make VR go mass market" argument:

“We’re getting more and more of it every day,” said Mark Kernes, a senior editor at AVN Media Network, which covers the industry. “We are leading the technology in this area. Sex sells, and where there is money to be made, there will be entrepreneurs who want to adopt it and make money from it,” some by offering it for free to increase clicks. Pornography is what rushed along the first printing press, and spurred developments in the internet, online payment systems and other technology. Now it’s time for virtual reality, Mr. Kernes said: “I’m pretty sure there is more porn VR out there than regular VR.”

It's not a completely ridiculous argument, to be sure -- after all, porn definitely helped drive adoption of home video players in the 80s and world wide web usage in the 90s. But there's at least three prominent problems to this train of thought:

VR Porn Usage Seems Very Low Even Among Early VR Adopters

You can see how few VR owners actually use VR porn in the Times article itself:

While virtual-reality pornography may feel like something out of a science fiction movie, it already has a formidable, if underground, presence. According to website Pornhub, views of VR porn are up 275 percent since it debuted in the summer of 2016. Now the site is averaging about 500,000 views [a day]...

Pornhub is by far the largest pornographic site online, but if you check the company's May 2017 stats (link is actually safe for work viewing), usage is even lower than this suggests:

VR porn videos are now being watched 500,000 times each day. Compared to other categories, VR visitors typically watch 2 more videos each time they visit Pornhub (11 pages per visit compared to the average 9), while their actual time on site remains about the same at just under 10 minutes. Perhaps the unique visual experience makes them want to test out more new content.

In other words, less than 50,000 unique users are looking at VR content on Pornhub every day. (A number of uniques that's remained remarkably flat over this year.) That's 50,000 of the roughly 26 million people who currently own a VR device (counting low-end Google Cardboard and other mobile VR units). Which is to say, way way less than 1 percent of VR owners are daily VR porn consumers on Pornhub.

Yes, Pornhub is just one porn site (albeit the very largest), but even if we assume total daily VR porn usage was 10x that number, we're still talking about 500,000 people. Or to put it another way: There are probably more people still logging into Second Life and coming across virtual porn even now, than are using VR headset-based porn.

Which brings me to the second problem:

Virtual world porn didn't grow virtual world usage

There's a number of virtual world sites catering to people interested in porn with ultra-realistic avatars, but Second Life remains the market leader for this kind of content. Thanks to a "(virtually) anything goes" policy, much of Second Life content is erotic or outright pornographic in nature. Just how much content in SL is porn is subject to debate, but roughly half the most visited Second Life sims are Adult-rated, most of which are explicitly porn in nature. But while virtual porn is popular in the virtual world, porn didn't make the virtual world itself popular -- as regular NWN readers know, Second Life usage has remained flat since 2006. If anything, the pervasiveness of porn in Second Life probably hurt Second Life's user growth, causing companies and consumers to negatively (and unfairly) pre-judge the world as mostly being about porn, indelibly marring the Second Life brand. It's unclear why VR porn would fare any better, let alone grow VR as a category.

Finally, one last point that's kind of, well, sticky:

VR porn greatly amplifies the inherent discomfort of VR's form factor

Or to put it much more baldly: Since VR users are already afraid of people walking up on them unseen, just imagine how embarrassed they'll feel if that happens while they're enjoying VR porn. Which is a significant difference to previous incarnations of consumer-use porn. A key factor for porn becoming popular for home video and web browsers is privacy and discretion. But when someone is strapped into a VR rig, they lose so much control over their environment that their VR porn usage is only semi-private, semi-discrete -- and a bright red target for humiliation. Yes, the VR porn experience may be intense enough for a niche to glom onto, but that's likely to be a niche. (And to judge by the data we have, it already is, and hasn't grown.) For most consumers, web and mobile-based porn is likely all they'll want or need for what's basically a short-term, utilitarian activity (i.e. masturbation). And unlike VR porn, you can always quickly close your porn-filled web browser or mobile app whenever you see your spouse suddenly driving home early from the store.

Comments

[Amanda]

VR, whether porn or otherwise, won't become mass market unless a more convenient form factor is developed. Until then it's a niche market. Like the smart phone. Black Berry and Palm were niche before Apple blew up the market.

[tennessee]

Yes. Throw whores at the problem of why people aren't buying.

Very capitalist, isn't it?

[TonyVT Skarredghost]

Ok with point 3, I agree with that completely. But there are also other stats: according to a research by VRPorn, 23 out of the top 50 VR websites are porn ones. And according to my experience, every time that I talk about VR, people tell me "And how it is porn with it?". So, porn is and will be important for VR for sure, IMHO.