Princess Berpl and the business of cosplay porn

Originally published in the Pittsburgh City Paper.

In 2014, Princess Berpl was working full time as a nurse and would come home from work only to start her side hustle: making independent amateur pornography clips and working as a cam model. After about two years into these double shifts, she had an idea.

Berpl, who is also an avid gamer, thought it would be fun to play one of her favorite characters from the game Overwatch, D. Va, during a video. “She is a sassy gamer girl that kind of is full of herself and really into playing the game,” Berpl explained. “D. Va has this entire persona that is kind of adjacent to making porn and the cam world; she is a model actress and professional gamer. I really liked her style and I felt really passionate about recreating her.”

Compared to her work since, the bubble gum clip seems fairly basic. “It was gonzo, it was obvious I shot it on a webcam,” she says. “I feel like if I look back at it, it would be kinda cringy, but at the time it was the coolest thing I had ever done.” And people seemed to love it. Portions of the clip are featured in tons of YouTube compilations and it helped to catapult her cosplay porn career.

Today, Berpl is a well-established cosplay model. She supports herself entirely with her pornography career, has played dozens of different characters (she lost count at 25), and is widely recognized as the top of her field, having won ManyVids Fetish Star of the Year 2018; ManyVids Cosplayer of the Year 2019; XBIZ Cosplay Clip Artist of the Year 2019; and ManyVids Gamer of the Year 2020.

As her work has evolved, so has cosplay porn.

She sees herself creating fantasies her fans can connect to. “The people who view my stuff want porn that has a beginning and an end and a story. They know who the character is, and they want to see all of these different aspects of them. It is pretty much fan fiction.”

Creating and acting these stories out for her customers is a lot of fun, but also a challenge. She is quick to point out how much work goes into it.

“Anyone who watches porn thinks that it is easy to masturbate on camera. But it is also spending an hour getting ready; a day’s worth of putting together a costume; and three hours of anal prep every once in a while.” And if that isn’t clear enough, she says, “Imagine wig hair poking you in the head over and over again, and you still have 20 minutes of fucking yourself in the ass while looking over your shoulder!”

Cosplay porn is serious business.