I Want a Drag Race VR Experience
Virtual reality is getting bigger and bigger each year, but can it merge with competitive reality shows to give fans a truly one of a kind experience? Imagine an hour long window where you must walk, style, dance and game FOR YOUR LIFE?!
Listen, every one of us has daydreamed about walking down the runway in front of Seduction’s Michelle Visage and three-time Emmy Award winner RuPaul Charles. Unfortunately, some of us don’t have the C.U.N.T. (charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent… get your mind out of the gutter) to make it past preliminary casting calls, and outside of cheap, quick one-shot competitions in dive bars across the nation, none of us will ever get to fight for the chance to be dubbed America’s Next Drag Superstar.
But what if there was a way to put yourself in the world of RuPaul’s Drag Race from the comforts of your very own home? I’m talking about a Drag Race virtual reality experience! Imagine booting up your Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR and immersing yourself in a world with so many bright colors, sexual innuendos, glitter and old pop songs that you power-barf into a trash can. Whether that’s from the motion sickness of the VR headset or the attack on your senses from the drawing room is completely up to you.
It would be a simple game, really. You can select your outfit, wig, make-up and accessories with real-time motions on the controls, and of course the walking and posing portions of the game would mirror how you move in your living room or bedroom. Pre-recorded critiques from the judges would play based on well you moved and a random score generated from your look, and if you fall into the bottom two, you get to lip-sing for your life to a tune you choose a la Dance Dance Revolution.
The biggest question is: is there a market for this kind of game? RuPaul’s Drag Race is executive produced by RuPaul, obviously, and in recent years the show has traveled overseas to countries including England and Thailand. In America, the show is on its eleventh season (fifteenth if you count All-Stars) and the ratings are holding steady in its key demographics. This means that Drag Race is still as popular as ever thanks to a push at VH1 and RuPaul is rolling in dough if he chooses to invest in a video game.
Only time will tell if a virtual reality drag race game becomes a fandom’s biggest break from reality.
A mobile game, RuPaul’s Drag Race: Dragopolis, is currently available on Android and iOS.
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