Talking video games with Veronica Vain: Vitamin D and sex could fix the industry’s problems

It’s an interesting time in the video game industry. Between the stigma that girls don’t play games (which has been disproved countless times already), the ongoing GamerGate controversy, and the idea that female characters exist in video games for nothing more than being the damsel in distress or eye candy for the male gamer, there’s a lot of perceptions, and misconceptions.

Not too different from our industry are the misconceptions with those involved in the adult entertainment industry. That’s why I jumped at the opportunity to speak with Paige Jennings — perhaps better known by her performing name as “Veronica Vain” — about a number of these issues when I found out she actually plays video games. After all, who better to ask about the idea of female sexualization, possible harassment, and a number of related issues than an adult entertainer — especially Jennings who actually has quite the interesting story as to how she entered the porn industry.

“For the longest time I thought I wanted to do finance and I worked, I did all the schooling, to get to the position I finally got to. And then when I was actually there I was like ‘Gosh, this is really boring and mundane and monotonous and irritating and bureaucratic.’ I am too much an out-of-the-box sort of person to probably succeed here. Like, I probably could’ve done pretty well, but I never would’ve been happy. I would’ve been one of those people who doesn’t really like their career but does it anyway and lives for the weekend. And I just didn’t want to live like that,” Jennings told me when asked about her move from Wall Street to the adult entertainment industry.

“The whole porn thing was just another industry I was researching because I do love sex and I did work as a stripper for a long time. I thought maybe I could be an analyst for the industry and then I could sort of analyze people having sex everyday. Then the more I learned about it, I learned the health risks are really well regulated and unmitigated. So I started thinking about it. I love sex, my boyfriend always tells me I’d be an awesome porn star because he loves to watch me have sex. And I was a stripper so I had no problem performing and getting attention.”

Jennings explained that she auditioned for a porn reality show who were looking for amateurs and after applying she received a call just hours later.

“They called me in three hours, the next day I was Skyping with the producers, then I had my Twitter account, then I went back to the office. Then I thought it’d be a good idea if I posted pictures of me in the office in my sexy office clothes, for that whole fantasy, maybe drum up some following to make the cut for the show. Within one week of that my company found the pictures, fired me, and then like four days later BroBible published their story and Business Insider picked it up and the rest is history,” she said.

Fascinating story aside, Jennings and I started talking about video games. I know this is wrong, but it actually surprised me just how real she was about gaming (not that she should actually feel like she has to prove herself worthy or anything). It was more of a personal thing with me. It’s weird, and admittedly I’m ashamed to admit this, but when you look at porn, it’s hard to think of the actors and actresses in them as anything but their on-screen personalities. But believe it or not, they’re just normal folk who enjoy the same things we do, including video games.

So how does gaming fit into your lifestyle? Have you been playing games for a long time or was it recent? What kind of sparked your interest?

I’ve always been into gaming but when I started getting more into my career and graduating, I didn’t really have much time. I’ve actually gotten way harder with it now that I have a porn star life which basically is like, I have a lot of activity where I’m really busy and then I have like a lot of downtime otherwise. I just got a new Raezr mouse and I got an Xbox One, so I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V.

I played a lot of World of Warcraft. I was pretty hard into raiding during Wrath of the Lich King. I love the Elder Scrolls. I’ve always been a big Elder Scrolls fan. I played back in Morrowind days on the original Xbox. I don’t really like shooters, unless they have RPG elements, so I like Mass Effect or BioShock or Grand Theft Auto. I don’t really like Call of Duty.

But I really get into the MMOs and the RPGs. I really like the strategy and how you build your character…

Yea, I actually saw on your Twitter you were looking for an MMO to play and you actually mentioned those two and WildStar, actually…

I’ve actually played them all. I was more saying, which one should I be playing because I have characters on all of them. I played WildStar. I played ESO. I play WoW, but I keep going back to ESO for some reason.

Really!?

Maybe because I’m an Elder Scrolls geek. I keep trying to get into WoW, but maybe I don’t have a cool enough guild, and it’s like a science with all the add-ons and stuff.

Well, Elder Scrolls is going free-to-play so you won’t have to pay a monthly subscription to play…

I know, and I think that makes sense because they’re putting it on the Xbox so like why would they stick with the subscription model? Like some of these other bad MMOs go free to play. I think it’s just strategic on their part.

Ya know, There’s definitely some crossover between the markets of the adult entertainment and video. You figure the target demographic could be the same. Have you ever thought about livestreaming or some sort of Twitch show?

I’ve been told about the whole Twitch thing, but I don’t want people to see how bad I am.

[laughter]

So I just got WoW and I started figuring out how the add-ons works, like the current add-ons. I knew how to play with the old-school add-ons like Grid, but nobody uses Grid anymore. [laughter]. You have to like relearn the whole thing…

Really, my problem is I have a decent laptop to play WoW and ESO, but it’s definitely not hardcore. So I either want to get the new Razer Blade or an actual rig. I’ve just been playing on a laptop for long, I don’t know how to play on a desktop and sit in a chair. I like to just game on my couch.

I mean, that’s how I like to do it. I have a hard time sitting at a PC to play games.

Yea, but I like a lot of the games that are actually on PC. I love Skyrim on PC because I can download all the mods and wear basically nothing into battle with like the highest rating.

[laugher]

Yea, that’s usually how it works. The less armor, the more armor.

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At this point in our conversation, Jennings actually asked me to omit something she had told me earlier regarding another adult entertainer entering the gaming industry (which I have). It did, however, springboard the interview into conversation about Gamergate and harassment in the gaming industry.

On the topic of harassment, it does happen in the video game industry. But do you find yourself being harassed for being a porn star?

Yea, lots of people will comment on a lot of my media stuff, like ‘Oh she’s just another whore,’ ‘She’s a lazy whatever,’ ‘She couldn’t make it on Wall Street,’ so yea. There was a study that came out that said internet trolls are just like actual bad people in real life. I’ve never been a person that responds well, it just doesn’t bother me. Maybe because I was bullied as a kid and I had a really strong mom who told me to call them a penis wrinkle.

Put it this way, I’m used to being a polarizing personality so people either love me or hate me, and I kind of just ignore the hate. So yes, there is some hate for the fact that I’m comfortable using my body as a sexual career.

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Admittedly, Jennings wasn’t too familiar with the whole Gamergate controversy. At this point, can you even blame her? The whole thing has turned into one giant clusterf*ck, but after talking her through some of the events, she offered the following:

“Speaking to women being sexualized in video games, I think the way women are portrayed in video games is awesome. Pretty much every female character in the game is really hot and sexual and wearing nothing, but also a complete badass who can kill everything in site.”

And that’s part of the argument, because there are some that say that women characters in games exist as nothing more than eye candy for male games.

It’s not. The guys usually want to play as the hot chick, so that they can look at the hot chick and be a badass.

Well, it’s interesting that point of view because you are open and up-front about your sexuality on Twitter, so it’s interesting to have that kind of perspective on it because you do play games and you’re okay with how they portray women.

I mean, I always wear the skimpiest armor if I can. The only reason I only lasted in Guild Wars for as long as I did was because of the armor.

Now do you think that can also be a negative type of thing? Like, because male gamers are seeing these digital, half-naked women, they kind of lose respect for women in a sense?

I never think that of guys because the ultimate male fantasy is the strong, intelligent, highly sexual woman. Guys don’t usually fall all over their sh*t for a really hot dumb chick. They don’t. They get bored of them very quickly and easily. And most of the time you’ll talk to a guy and be like ‘What do you think of this girl, she’s really hot?’ and they’ll be like ‘I don’t know. She’s kind of annoying.’ They talk about girls they dated that were really hot, but they just couldn’t stand dating them because they were just really dumb and annoying.

That’s a really good point…

I don’t meet a lot of guys that aren’t totally infatuated with a girl who can hold her own both mentally and physically. And I think partially that’s why I’ve gotten so popular as quick as I did, and not to toot my own horn, but I’m representative of that dichotomy.

So when you play games online, have you ever told anyone that they’re literally playing with a porn star?

I was playing WoW a few nights ago because I was trying to get into it. I said in the trade channel that I was looking for a guild who thinks porn stars are cool, and I got an invitation almost immediately. Then I get in there and tell them I’m in porn, and they didn’t actually believe me.

As of right now, I’d like to find a cool guild that’s not family oriented, which is a problem with MMOs. I’ll find a good guild and there’s like housewives and kids in it, and I’m like ‘What the f*ck.’.

[Laughter] Yea, you need something a little more adult-like.

Yea, I don’t know where those guilds are.

You’d think there’d be so many of them..

Well, everyone wants to have a ton of people in their guild for achievements or whatever, and it ends up with housewives and kids.

And they don’t get along…

Not that they don’t get along, but I’ll say something overtly sexual or make a bad joke and I’ll get a whole guild backlash. It’s like ‘Okay, getting off now. Bye’

Or the opposite will happen and I’m sexual and funny, and then some dude falls in love with me and starts messaging me, “Let’s meet. I live in Connecticut. We could totally meet and have fun.’ And I’ll be like, ‘No dude, we’re just guildies. We’re friends. We kill things and hang out, that’s the deal’ And then they’ll get all angry and start hating on me because I reject them.

Ah, so you do get the creepers. And that’s kind of what we were talking about earlier with the whole, guys that are inappropriate.

Yea, I just want a cool laid-back guild.

So I was looking, you have a wish-list for Amazon, and I saw that you have Destiny for Xbox One on there. Don’t you know the hate Destiny is getting from everybody?

Nope. I don’t really follow gamer news. I played Destiny and I thought it was cool. Now I just want it.

The real reason I like Destiny is because of this kid, a big Skyrim fan and he desperately wanted to design for Bethesda. So he literally developed his own mod expansion for Skyrim. It made like a whole landmass, had a whole question, and he’s just like a 19-year-old kid. And it was really good. So he submitted it and everybody loved it, and the whole Skyrim community started putting out memes for Bethesda to hire him. They did end up interviewing him, but they didn’t end up hiring, but Bungie called him. They hired him and he actually worked on Destiny — this 19-year-old kid. So ever since I heard of that I wanted to play Destiny. So I don’t know why it’s getting all this hate.

Well, people like to hate on everything. That’s just how the gaming industry is.

I guess everybody just gets angry because they’re not getting enough Vitamin D.

Maybe that’s what it is. You’ve figured it out. That’s the key.

And sex. They need to get more Vitamin D and more sex.

Ya know, I think if the world was getting more Vitamin D and sex we’d be a lot happier.

I’m a lot happier. I’ve been getting more Vitamin D and sex. I’m a lot happier at work, I’ll tell you that.

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On that note, our interview ended after a quick discussion about what gaming fantasy scene Jennings would want to star in. While naming a specific character or location proved quite difficult, we did eventually narrow it down to Mass Effect.

Lesson to be learned from all of this: girls play video games; harassment of any form in any industry is wrong; and more Vitamin D and more sex would fix all of the world’s problems.

For more gaming news and other fun coverage follow @Matt_GZ on Twitter.