Do you ever feel like it would be awesome to combine two of your favourite pastimes? For example, I love eating pizza and also pulling out ingrowing hairs. Wouldn’t it be awesome to find a way to eat pizza while tweezing ingrowing hairs? Hmm, no not really.

While I can understand the urge to combine leisure hobbies, there are some things that probably shouldn’t go together. Eating and sleeping (choking hazard). Eating and having sex (unhygienic, and will mess up your sheets). You catch my drift. 

Now, I’m not a video games person myself, but I can kind of understand how a bunch of Silicon Valley tech types came up with the concept for VirtuaDolls, a system which allows gamers to strap on a virtual reality headset, stick their dick in a terrifying-looking silicone suction sleeve, and bone a video game woman to their heart’s content.

There’s a whole load of guys out there who love to masturbate, and love to play video games. So why not create a device which merges these two pastimes? After all, it’s not like guys don’t fantasise about shagging their favourite video game heroines. There are entire Reddit threads dedicated to it. 

Turns out, VirtuaDolls were right about the demand for a male masturbator-cum-video game controller. After VirtuaDolls’ IndieGogo page went viral the company had to pull the product off the market and take the page down. In a series of tweets, they explained that they would be back, but had to “take steps to prep for a larger demand”. I assume they mean making more of the product, rather than adapting it for particularly well-hung guys, but really, who knows?

To find out more, we spoke to William Spracklin, the brains behind VirtuaDolls, to find out why his silicone suction sleeve might just make him the next Mark Zuckerberg. 

Hi William, thanks for talking to me. Can you explain how you got the idea for VirtuaDolls?

William Spracklin: I started off working in a company that did reality simulations and games and it evolved from there. The virtual reality market is really big, but there wasn’t really a product like this out there that added to that level of immersion in the game. We wanted to make virtual reality even more enticing, and I think that our controller meets that need.

Do you feel like there’s a market out there for this?

William Spracklin: I mean, pretty much every male on the planet masturbates. Even if they have a partner, almost every male partakes in that activity, so – why not make it better? That’s the thing. VirtuaDolls is not meant to be a girlfriend. It’s not meant to replace anybody. It’s for when there’s nobody around, and you feel the urge…it’s there for you. That’s what it’s there for.

Can you talk to me about safety? I mean, it’s pretty much every guy’s worst nightmare that their penis gets caught in a moving mechanical object. Are you confident it’s safe?

William Spracklin: Safety is our number one concern. It’s been a little tricky to find testers, as the product’s a bit risqué, but we’re confident that the silicone holds up through repetitive use and it’s definitely safe. There’s so much padding between you and anything that moves.

It still looks a little scary, though…

William Spracklin: We’re actually working on a redesign. We’ve been hearing from a lot of people that it’s a little frightening-looking, but in reality it’s very safe. We’re trying to improve the aesthetic of it to make it look more appealing.

Do you have any plans to do this for women?

William Spracklin: That’s actually in the works. I wish we could work on a woman’s device to come out along with the men’s device, because we really want to do a multiplayer game. I’m in a long-distance relationship, and I know how hard it can be. If we were able to have something where a woman could use one in one part of the world, and her partner could use if from another location, that would be great.

So you could connect it to your partner’s game console and have virtual sex with them?

William Spracklin: Exactly! That’s the goal.

Is there a danger that people will get so into this that their real-life relationships suffer? Like, why go to all the effort of taking someone on a date when you can go home and fuck a video game?

William Spracklin: I hope it doesn’t. I’m in a relationship, and I love my girlfriend to death. I could never replace her with a device. There’s a lot to be said for actual relationships.

There’s a lot of stigma around men’s sex toys that doesn’t exist around women’s sex toys. Do you hope this device will help break down some of that stigma?

William Spracklin: I hope so, I mean, I’m the creator and it’s a little bit hard for me to talk about. It’s unfortunate. I’m not sure if it’s true or not, I read some posts on the Internet that say that women’s sex toys sell more than men’s. I think that’s something that needs to change, I think it could be healthy for men to explore that aspect of their sexuality a little bit. I don’t know what the cause of it is, I think it could be a little bit of pride. I have noticed a lot of people saying, ‘who’d use stuff like that’? But I would say that’s the minority of people. I hope there are more people saying, ‘I would totally use it’. And I hope that VirtuaDolls will open up discussion about that topic.

Have you tried it out yourself?

William Spracklin: You know what? I actually haven’t used it. I’m kind of overseeing everything, all the testing. If I were in the market for something like this I would be all over it! It would be the perfect thing for someone who’s looking for a device like this. But I want to remain separate from the device; I want to oversee it; I don’t want to be biased and I want to make sure that we’re providing the best experience for our customers.

If you’re in the market for a male-masturbator-slash-video-game-controller (no judgment) VirtuaDolls will be retailing for $149 when the product launches. That includes the game, controller and the silicone sleeve. I’d probably recommend forking out for some lube too, unless you want to get a rash.