Making Sense of VRChat, the "Metaverse" People Actually Like

[@RTGame]

Vrchat as a platform has incredible potential. I've a gang of friends and we do a weekly private pub night on it. Public worlds are hell and I wouldn't recommend them in the same way I wouldn't recommend random online chatrooms, and there's huge problems with the lack of moderation there. But hopping on with friends in private lobbies is incredible and has helped keep me sane through lockdown

[@MajoraWaffle]

public worlds are definitely hell at times but i have little to no friends that play vrchat actively, so i'm kind of out of options in that regard. glad to hear it's benefitted you though!

[@aviatornic2839]

Same here, getting to see my girlfriend in VR at the height of lockdown when we couldn't leave our homes definitely kept me sane

[@FeddyGrunt]

Guess you could say public worlds are like the dodgy parts of our citites? Accept with even less filters than in real life XD

[@whoshar-3657]

RT, WE NEED MORE WALTER WHITE IMPRESSIONS, PLEEEES. . .

[@alanyep]

it’s also great for furry erp

[@rampagingFurniture]

the head pat thing becomes so much funnier when you remember his avatar would absolutely be hunching over like gollum when it happened

[@Archflip]

They weren't trying to headpat him, but uncork him.

[@sageeden7274]

The world is quiet here

[@applepie9806]

HAHAHAHA Thanks for the mental image omg I had forgot

[@0v_x0]

Anime girl being nice to hunched over monster. It became a Mayazaki film for a moment. The crouching bottle gives major No Face vibes, (if it's only eaten a couple people).

[@vizthex]

for real, lmfao

[@MrSkerpentine]

I remember once browsing random VRChat worlds, and I stumbled across this one user who creates fully accurate and fully playable 80’s game show sets. There’s 0 automation and little-to-no scripting to it, you have to have an extra person on hand manning an entire backstage control panel much like a real game show production. It’s hella complicated, but the creator has videos on their KZbin channel showing it all working, and it’s *super* impressive for the work of one dude who just wanted to play the 1982 version of The $100,000 Pyramid but with furries over the Internet, and that’s a super-niche of dedicated internet creators that Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t even know or care about

[@LightningbrotherG]

Drop the link!

[@MrSkerpentine]

@@LightningbrotherG GSGenesis

[@pixeljacked8047]

That's so cool

[@luasdublin]

Hey! I ended up being in a stream of one of those games (second chance )! it was great fun

[@jm3267]

These kind of bizarre, super niche passion projects are always so lovely to hear about: makes me happy to hear about someone doing something that means a lot to them!

[@domino8187]

I’ve been developing in VRChat for years now, and it’s refreshing to finally see someone bring out the reality of its impact, for people who feel like they need a space to be themselves. This game has prevented 2 close friends of mine from taking their own lives. And I thank, and appreciate this games existence every day.

[@PeopleMakeGames]

Wow, thank you so much Domino! Really glad you felt we got it right :) -Chris

[@michaellyant]

Interesting people with interesting backgrounds

[@michaellyant]

But he plays roblox?

[@vincent67239]

This video and entire comment section is just so wholesome.

[@leophyte9663]

So that's what a donation with a comment looks like, never seen one before

[@EBhero]

There's something magical about seeing a player open their heart out to why VRchat means so much to them while Quinns sits listening with passion, shaped as a creepy wine bottle

[@Mendoxs_]

26:36

[@dusk2573]

Maybe the fact that it’s a sentient wine bottle listening to a conversation? Lol kidding. Yea it was pretty awesome.

[@cheesecake4648]

uff i noticed that...!

[@NidonocuPoisonBunny]

The one big side effect of VRChat being built the way it is using Unity and Blender rather than a custom set of tools, is that if it died tomorrow, the amount of people it's taught how to do do the basics of game development would see immediately the community coming together to fashion a new one. That in its self is incredibly powerful.

[@fireye3]

It's good to know there will always be a world where this sort of anarchy can reign free, without corporate interest.

[@theexaustedslime]

The issue with that would be infrastructure. You can build all the content you want and it wont do anything without hosting.

[@NidonocuPoisonBunny]

@@theexaustedslime True, that would be the bit which would force some to come together to form a new organisation to pay for initial hosting.

[@PikaPetey]

I don't wanna be that guy but. Um actually... It's not JUST blender it can be any 3d modeling software as long as it exports to formats unity uses.

[@NidonocuPoisonBunny]

@@PikaPetey Oh sure. Just both of those being free mean I imagine they are the most commonly used and learned. :)

[@Straszfilms]

Thank you for interviewing me and giving me a shout out! I really appreciated the respect and honesty you showed the platform in the bits I've watched so far. Super excited to digest the whole thing!

[@FigmentForever]

❤️❤️ wish I could join your world 🏳️‍⚧️

[@uvbe]

When the video started I thought "he should totally talk with Strasz" and... turns out he did!

[@TinyMeatPete]

Great job dude!

[@Crotaro]

@V yeah, absolutely what i thought! I was so pleasantly surprised to hear my favorite voice when it comes to anything VR

[@TheOneOfLostSouls]

good job on your interview.

[@ashleykemp3570]

The unintended comedy of watching an awkward wine bottle nod along to anime girls talking is pure genius.

[@MYR_112]

The crouch walk to

[@geneticemo]

I remember my most amazing memory with VRchat was sitting down in an underwater house with a bunch of random people when a solid snake avatar pulled out a guitar and started playing music as a group of people We sat there for hours just singing and talking, I met my boyfriend(who I now live with) and a bunch of close friends that night Playing VRchat literally shaped my life today

[@EQOAnostalgia]

It do be like that.

[@cartersmith6628]

That’s beautiful

[@unclekanethetiberiummain1994]

That's why he's the best boss.

[@starofaetherius]

I met my gf on vrchat too! And VRC offers SO much potential for interesting date spots. Hell, if you know some basic blender or unity engine stuff you can MAKE your own perfect date spots! There is just so much on offer there.

[@theaplayz2.032]

I have a good memory of VRchat as well now the adventure time song is much better then it already was

[@blankblank4949]

i just wanna say, meta trying to redefine and monopolize the 'metaverse' angered me so much becuase we ALL already have a metaverse. YOUR metaverse is the sum of all your devices,software,and websites. The metaverse is literally already a completely open platform and meta is trying to steal it all away. meta wants to take over not only vr, but every digital component of your personal metaverse there is. I dont want to engage in a metaverse full of painfully bland expression and monetization, i am terrified that by the time i do have enough money to buy vr gear that has no attachment to facebook vrchat and the current independent vr metaverse will be already poisoned by meta's tendrils.

[@applepie9806]

This is why I'm really leery of buying the oculus. The old company should never have sold Oculus to FB, I saw an old 2015 article that said the previous Oculus devs were planning to give the headsets for free once they earn enough from the software to do so. I miss that sweet idea of creating an inclusive community, that generosity of an indie company. *sigh*

[@baitposter]

@@applepie9806 Well worth shelling out the extra dough for a Valve Index. I've tried both, didn't take me long to decide the Oculus wasn't cutting it for the experience I want in VRC.

[@PolloLocoTheFun]

I am probably going to get the Valve standalone VR headset for the wireless experience. And maybe I will be able to buy a VR capable Graphics Card by then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@nanatnat9327]

If Meta tries to take over VRC, I can promise you they will have a very rude awakening. People would just leave and recreate the game elsewhere. The community would not stand for enforced creativity and ad monetization. The beauty of what VRC did is when they used blender and unity as a basis for their own game and ALL player made content, they taught thousands of other people to make VRC again, and again. It will most likely rise again. On a side note- if you do look into VR, your best bet is the Index. They have the most compatibility, but that means nothing if you don't have the computer to support it. I have an original HTC VIVE, but they don't make those anymore. Even they are better than the Quest 2 in my eyes, as old as they are.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

I'm sorry but i refuse to use their blanket, Orwellian af terminology.

[@gschoenhoff]

"How often do you need to stop people doing ERP in K-Mart?" is the best question I've ever heard.

[@nahometesfay1112]

"We know the popular spots" XD

[@kazumablackwing4270]

Kmart may be defunct in the meat space, but its fuckery lives on in the metaverse

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Absolutely cannot get over the little gremlin t-rex pose of Quinn's wine bottle. Have sat here laughing for a solid 5 minutes.

[@adastra553]

I misread this as “t-pose” and expected to see Quinns, unsure of how to work the controls, menacingly standing motionless over all of the others in the room. i was not prepared for what awaited me

[@diegomountin585]

Hey, Potato!

[@RyanPHoferJr]

Didnt expect to see you here

[@luckydodo8025]

It is literally my favorite part of this video!

[@music_YT2023]

Had to pause during the KMart store tour because I was laughing so hard at the crouching bottle avatar

[@PikaPetey]

Fun fact about people working for Mark Zuckerberg's Meta Horizons Worlds. They are annoyed that he insists meetings be held in VR. Meanwhile VrChat employees love hosting their meetings in VR. Edit: This is a very good outside looking into vrchat. But I disagree with the "everyone is a female anime" take. THERE ARE TONS OF FURRIES! a lot of the people who wear furry avatars never go to public places though.

[@sownheard]

The big difference seem to be being forced into change and choosing for change

[@ikbenmathijs9424]

Why would anyone want to be in horizon worlds? it looks like a kid opened unity, put in a character controller with an ugly looking model and placed down some texture-less blocks while VRChat has almost infinite absolutely amazing worlds that people put a lot of time & effort in

[@pielovervi]

@@ikbenmathijs9424 this ☝️

[@zaidlacksalastname4905]

So furrys not only don't go to real public spaces, but also virtual public spaces. It's a win win for society, imagine some furry teaching your kids math lol

[@sotpunkkatt158]

@@zaidlacksalastname4905 id hate to break it to you, but there are many furries who works as teachers.

[@otocan]

This video gave me good feels. Those people role-playing as K-Mart employees just to provide people a space to chill out reminded me so much of my teenage years online, particularly on Habbo Hotel - a complete crazy mess but at the heart of it were people who wanted nothing more than to share stuff and hang out with other people, and before too long you will stumble upon some surprisingly selfless people doing cool and nice things just for its own sake. I made friends there in a way that I never could have in real life, and I even met my future wife there though I didn't know it at the time :)

[@EQOAnostalgia]

I'm Christian so avoided VRchat after hearing about the pervy stuff and nonsense but if you find a good world, mostly PC... yessir. It's good, clean fun. Just avoid PC/Quest worlds that are really popular, and if you do go, go with friends into a private world. It's a bit tricky navigating the edgelords and kids but it's worth it to find like minded, mature people. Once i found a 90's house party the nostalgia got me connecting with people my age and that's when it went from "this is either for potty mouth kids, or for teens that think they're furry's" to "this game could be anything and it's endless" Oh and most of the people who are furrys are pretty nice. They seem to like ears and tails. Only some of them are weirdo sex addicts or whatever lol.

[@theninjamaster67]

@@EQOAnostalgia As usual the loudest weirdest voices tend to crop to the top of every community so just like misjudging VR Chat you also misjudged the furry community I'm not personally a furry but the people I have met from that community are really nice they just like the animal aesthetic of ears and tails (and fangs) as you said.

[@ahomestucker]

"headpats in vr are kinda the handshake" thats just so interesting. how the interactivity of a game can change how ppl interact on even the most basic level, their greetings like, i used to play a game called sky cotl a lot, and in that game bowing was the way basicslly everyone greeted each other and it made interactions so different from stuff youd find anywhere else

[@thespacementv1506]

Go coom elsewhere, coomer.

[@twotruckslyrics]

heyyy!! sky cotl mention!! the bowing greeting is lovely still! a heart kiss or wave emote immediately after is an extra to basically say “Hi!! 😁” after “Hi!” i love to do this greeting with moths (new players) to teach them early and to have an extra hello ☺️

[@kayleewoz]

I have been in virtual worlds as an educator and socially for 15 years. I love VRChat! Because of my age (62) I don't get involved with any of the social side of things, but I do have places I go regularly to do IRL exercise, and fun activities like bowling and mini golf. It's an incredibly rich virtual universe (forget the metaverse) that can be a wild ride, but is also infinitely interesting. 💜

[@Axel230]

VR Grandma! VR Grandma!

[@alwaysyouramanda]

Subscribed ❤️❤️

[@litheralySOcool]

@@Axel230 yes

[@amarevite8388]

It's worth noting that every single person I have met in my 800 hours of playing VRChat agrees that children using the platform is a huge problem. We've been advocating for literally any changes that could solve this problem, but the dev team has a history of making changes very, very slowly.

[@applepie9806]

I have a feeling the dev team is struggling with Unity. Had that experience myself.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

I have to warn yall right now. VRchat will not go unattacked lol. There are people who stand to make A LOT of money off this metaverse trash, and they are extremely wealthy and influencial and they want this tech for evil and they will get it eventually. They'll start by either buying out this dev team, or destroying their vision slowly. People can always host private servers etc... but i would be SERIOUSLY shocked if the evil men at the top of this sick, satanic world don't dive all over this soon enough and twist it into the image they see fit. I hear the EAC already took a large bite out of the server pop.

[@guiltriple]

Given the "old internet" comparisons, I'm remembering my own blithely cavalier lying-about-my-age youth and I'm not sure if there is a perfect technological solution that doesn't also bring unwanted side effects -- but of course harm reduction is vital and valuable, and hybrid approaches to the problem would probably be optimal.

[@cmnidit4444]

No matter what kids will show up to the game. I mean hell all it takes is to stay silent and type in chat box "yep I'm a mute"

[@doukzu]

I've accepted it for the most part- kids can be fun when not screaming, and I know there's no way to keep children off such a fun platform. They also make some normally boring worlds really chaotically fun. HOWEVER, there is definitely a problem. I went into one truth or dare game- saw the mature rating RIGHT there, and who's in the game? kids. Kids are running right into mature games/instances with no repercussions whatsoever.

[@gilon-xx1es]

The thing is with Meta, Mark is gonna HEAVILY sanatize it to make it look "Investor-Friendly". Means no copy-righted brands or characters, creativity would be heavily restricted by an inhibitive TOS system, most projects would become souless cash cow traps. Not to mention should Mastercard be involved in ANY way shape or form with finance, expect massive desexualization and LGBTQ othering to follow afterwards.

[@nightcatarts]

I disagree. I see them selling licenses to use brand logos and names in user-created content. The rest is all absolutely true though.

[@hamyncheese]

​@@nightcatarts Interesting insight!

[@vincent67239]

Ads would definitely ruin it. Anything advertisers don’t want to be associated with would be quickly moderated.

[@jordan3636]

Most people who are into VR and are not interested in using Vr chat is mainly because of all the creepy sexualization and furries. I think that to keep competing with the other metaverses eventually VR chat will have to clean up it's image. Also I play Rec Room which is a actual metaverse(unlike vrchat) and it is way more fun and not souless at all. I just don't have 90% chance of being virtually raped when I want to play some games or hang out with friends.

[@vincent67239]

@@jordan3636 Better than VRChat getting 100% raped by soul-sucking corporations.

[@TheL0rd0fSpace]

I know you described it as creepy, but I fucking loved Quinn's wine bottle because it looked like anything but. An adorably disproportionate being with a small, cute face, hunched over looking at its small friends; it looked like something out of a Pixar film.

[@rhythmandblues_alibi]

I got No Face Ghibli vibes.

[@0v_x0]

No Face for sure (after it's eaten like two people). The crouching really sells it.

[@shimblywimbles158]

This is honestly the most sold I've ever been on a VR future, and it has *nothing* to do with Zuck's vision. They will destroy this, just like they did the internet. Wondering whether I should try to find my way there or give it a pass so I don't get my heart broken when that happens. EDIT: Oh god the gender part broke me. Yeah, my non-binary ass is gonna find a way there.

[@applepie9806]

Just go. I'm already surfing around looking for a vive to buy lol, this vid sold me the vision

[@iiraingirlii]

Same

[@spazev2124]

We will gladly have you.

[@cheesecake4648]

what do you think vrchat now after all these changes?

[@Empiko_VT]

Empy here! This video is definitely one of the best and well-rounded takes on VRChat yet :)) Me and the other two really appreciate you guys giving us an opportunity to tell our stories and exchange things about this lovely game that can't really be ascertained and encapsulated in a single glance. It's hard to see that beautiful, quirky and varied underbelly beneath the publics, and harder to approach, but in doing so, maybe perceptions around 'metaverses' and how fantastic it is can really be conveyed to those who disagree with it. Thank you for giving us ALL the time to show you it.

[@stevepittman3770]

I love your avatar!

[@FigmentForever]

Oh how I would love to be a part of this experience. 😞 I’m transfemme & relate so incredibly hard to this “Game/World”. If only it were possible to have internet. I have an original Quest but I don’t even know if it would work as I’ve only just been able to update it when my wife drove us to a Starbucks an hour away just to have access (only Free WiFi nearest us).

[@Maho.]

Tell your friend I like their hoodie

[@thegeekclub8810]

Do you have any advice for people looking to get into VRChat for avoiding public worlds if you don’t have friends to play with?

[@calunchained]

Really enjoyed your interview. A subject I'd never thought about before but so interesting to just hear people talk passionately and honestly about what they like

[@LuciferMStarVR]

Finally a positive and accurate representation of VR the metaverse and VRChat. Another great video! it was great talking to you guys :D

[@robsonclark9678]

Ya, this was so cool to see! Glad he found quality longtime vets like you to interview and learn from!

[@runakovacs4759]

I love the pro-trans/pro-LGBT focus of this video!

[@Vaeldarg]

Were you aware of Lucifer being known as "the light bringer" (hence luciferase being the name of a certain naturally-glowing substance) when you designed that light-speckled lounge?

[@LuciferMStarVR]

@@Vaeldarg I was aware yes! I had my name set to this as when I signed up for VRChat many years ago I was watching the Lucifer TV show. Then I built so much stuff it didn't make sense changing my name to something else since everyone knew me now as Lucifer :D

[@starwinter6845]

Your worlds are my favorites ever since I Started playing a year and a half ago!

[@trollster7133]

I love how vrchat parties are full on raves and having a good time While facebooks excuse of a platform just has like 10 people standing around doing nothing.

[@25566]

They don't even have anything yet, it was a shitty ad of a nonexistent platform

[@vicca4671]

The future of virtual/augmented reality should be open source imo, and VRchat is the closest to that goal since it uses mostly Blender and Unity for its tech. Open source projects have a better chance of striking a good balance with moderation and being more focused on the community rather than the profits.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

We have 2 paths, one good, one evil. We ain't stayin open source sista lol. This world is evil.

[@Mr_Mistah]

@@EQOAnostalgia I mean several countries have actually banned vrchat but those countries monitor and police what their citizens do on the internet to privacy invading degree

[@EQOAnostalgia]

@@Mr_Mistah I've got news for you, all countries do, because we're already in a globalist system... they just didn't update the firmware yet lol.

[@veto_5762]

100% agreed, this technology should be seen as a medium, not as a product Also open source projects don't need to be isolated of profit, godot and blender 100% open source projects that allows everyone to help making and sugesting features but with a development team that gives the last word at everything, they are open to receive donations and they even have received big donations from companies with conditions where companies can't control the project but only contribute and request features to them in which the team can decide to agree or not

[@ai-spacedestructor]

im surprised to see a journalist actually willing to put in enough efford to understand how it works instead of looking at the first 5 situations that happened to them with random strangers and then call it a tool used by people to abuse and harass others. Like i dont see any journalist say that about reality despite how many people do these crimes IRL. Hopefully people learn to give things a chance and stop judging everything only by the first impression after instantly dropping it because they saw something they dont like. i know the whole thing people say about first impressions but if your goal is to talk about something you need to actually understand it and not repeat what people see when they watch random videos on youtube. at that point i might just use youtube as a replacement for journalism instead.

[@otocan]

PMG are damn good journalists.

[@ai-spacedestructor]

@@otocan i have seen like 1 or 2 other videos so i cant say much about them but yeah what i have seen so far was almost only positive and from what i can tell so far they put in a lot more efford then others. Just wanted to point out that as a user of the platform im glad whenever someone is willing to understand it and gives it a fair chance at least.

[@Pendji]

Meanwhile the upcoming VRchat documentary from HBO shows what most of us actually see: Nonstop overly sexualized anime characters.

[@thatnoobnextdoor]

*VRChat, A Safe Haven For The Alt-Right.* How video games are used to radicalize impressionable young men.

[@fromthebackseat4865]

@@thatnoobnextdoor not on VR Chat specifically but that is definitely a problem present in a lot of gaming communities- claiming otherwise is very silly.

[@andriypredmyrskyy7791]

Hey, don't forget there's a robust deaf community in vr chat! You can learn sign language in vr! Honestly, you could do deep dives into hundreds of these communities.

[@yacabo111]

How is that possible? afaik the Index Controller is the best controller in terms of finger tracking and even it doesn't have nearly enough dexterity to do sign language

[@chai4638]

@@yacabo111 they designed a version of sign language compatible with the normal range of vr hand movement

[@SquishyHo]

i definitely wish they would've looked for how much accessibility it is for disabled people/people with disabilities

[@NewMateo]

Dude the fact you did ALL these interviews as a giant creep of a wine bottle is hilarious. The skulking around K-Mart is great.

[@MisterDillPickle]

that innocent smile makes it even more creepier lol

[@nighteule]

Just shows that you can be literally anything apparently lol

[@gormauslander]

He didn't feel creepy to me

[@aviatornic2839]

My friends and I do Friday night drink nights every week. Through VRChat, this 20 something Engineering student is best friends with a physical therapist, a Canadian Armor Vet, and a bombastic German brother from another mother, and so many more I can mention. Making and maintaining my avatar and keeping up with communities is an amazing experience. Public worlds are terrible, you definitely need to get to find some people to get into a private or friends only instance. The feeling of getting to visit friends at any time without travel time is amazing.

[@iruns1246]

Curious, do you "drink" in the VR drink nights? Does your avatar drink but you don't? If they do, do they get some effects from the drink (e.g. visual or sound fx)? Do you actually drink IRL when having a drink night? Because the effects of alcohol is partially what defines a drink night IRL right? Or is it just about hanging out in a virtual world?

[@aviatornic2839]

@@iruns1246 we drink alright, drunk as hell. Lots a mixed drinks, shots, neat liquor, beer. We drink in real life but we're having a chaotic bar like experience, simulated and hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Drinking in VR is something you should do only when you're accustomed to VR, and able to keep a level of spacial awareness with the headset on. I don't reccomend it for fresh VR player, but somebody who has gotten their VR legs a bit

[@iruns1246]

@@aviatornic2839 I see, thanks for the reply.

[@khumz11]

Sounds like you got a mf Task Force. You love to see it

[@BHBalast]

@@aviatornic2839 Is there a way to throw a tracker on your glass and track it? :D

[@springheeledjacques]

20:46 Eric's sigh sent me into a genuine fit of laughter. So much exasperation expressed with such a small gesture.

[@cxrbxn]

the struggle is real

[@DiversionG]

So, no one's going to talk about 15:45 ?

[@ItsPronouncedShawna]

I owe my career and a lot of my mental stability to VRChat. I live with depression, a chronic illness and a dissociative disorder. I was and am in therapy IRL and have had amazing care through the years. But I've always had a sore spot around anything I create, boiling down to having been abused and punished as a child if I so much as got caught scribbling in a notebook. I had to squirrel sketchbooks away, and so I grew into an adult with a permanent filter that let nothing from my imagination ever come out. But in the beginning of VRC avatar options were very limited, and I couldn't find any that looked like me. So I, who still owned a brick cellphone up until last year and had no clue how Photoshop, Unity or Blender worked opened it up and eventually made several avatars, which I still have today. I wasn't alone, and the VRC community has been nothing but supportive from jump. Today I can now say I've almost done it all. I found the courage to speak in public, doing standup and podcasting. I picked up an ink brush after it having been so long that it hurt my hands to draw. Oddly enough, a game ou'd assume is all about "escapism", helped me once agin find my real-world voice, let that filter down, and now, well, I can say that my quirky little avatars are just walking self-portraits at this point. I've also made friendships that still last to this day. I used to never be the type to go "let's all get along regardless of our beliefs", but that's exactly what wound up happening. I learned that it isn't the belief itself that -makes- the person, it all kind of boils down to who we all are, where we are, our circumstances and more that shape us all. I've had conversations with people I'd want to fight IRL, yet online the total absence of any hostility I'd assumed I'd feel felt like a phantom limb. Anyways, great video. Thank you so much for bringing more light upon such a great game. Well, until they added EAC and kneecapped just about everything I'd mentioned, including yeeting my avatar world into the void. But there are several candidates for replacement, which I'll be checking out once I've had a good look.

[@MyFedora]

This comment resonates with me. Art, photography, etc. teachers back then killed my passion for creative work. Art teacher: Why did you color the sky magenta? I discovered that I have a color vision deficiency (CVD) several years down the line. CVD isn't that uncommon mind you, so I expect art teachers to know about and prepare for students with CVD, label the colors and such. Electronics teacher: Why did you use that resistor? Resistors are color-coded. There's also nothing quite like venting frustrations about CVD to friends and family, only to get back a disheartening: Maybe you should look into other career paths. I like drawing! I only want the colors to look correct for people other than me as well... Photography teacher: Why isn't that photo sharp? Gee I dunno, maybe you forced everyone to focus and shoot manually with a camera that doesn't have any help system for manual focus, and didn't inform us that cameras have diopter adjustment for students with glasses, like me. I'm genuinely impressed at the teachers I've had the displeasure to work with. A teacher vanished overnight, didn't enter grades for the girls in class, and the girls were stranded without a school report due to legal reasons. Teacher that intentionally gave us not enough time to complete exams, so we must learn everything by heart... numbers of a system that differs from company to company practicing the system. Hear a teacher justify for 15 minutes straight why it's okay to have me re-take an exam the first day I came back to school using weird ass explanations referencing my father's background as a manager at a company, even though the school system verifiably didn't even show me the original exam?? Like, come on... Generic cases of learn this completely automated thing by heart and perform it manually, with zero utility for the real world. Teacher complaining about me missing from school despite an email from the homeroom teacher explaining the situation. Response: Oh, I don't look at my emails. Several teachers feeling personally offended when I miss their class, despite aforementioned email explaining the situation from the homeroom teacher. Once, a student in class had a breakdown due to a particular teacher. Said student struggled so much with that teacher that they had to take medication to compensate. Identical teacher also threatened to sue certain students for copying, or letting others copy their assignments, followed by multiple hour long heated discussions. Like, what? I obviously also had my fair share of breakdowns and panic attacks due to school. After discussing this with a few online friends, I concluded that I rolled a solid 1 out of 20 with my teachers.

[@vanessapigwin]

This is very nice! I am one of the "mutes" who only use VRChat for fitness. We go to community dance worlds just to work out. It has added a positive impact in my life for sure (aside from the occasional events I now go to less because of a busy IRL schedule)!

[@MoonSafariFilms]

I had to laugh every time it cut back to Quinns' avatar patiently listening.

[@Meimoons]

Especially the head nodds lol

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

Let's not forget that Metaverse announcement by Facebook was primarily a desperate attempt to avoid a massive scandal. It was a task failed successfully, but let's not forget the Facebook Files.

[@float32]

I did. What scandal?

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

@@float32 the Facebook Files. Leaks by their ethic committee showing all the ways Facebook's research of profit before everything else directly supported dictators, abusers and just made the world a worst place. And obviously, Facebook did nothing, despite knowing full well how broken their system were. (So the fear about their vision of the "metaverse" is perfectly warranted). Also, "fun" fact. After the leaks, Google got rid of their own ethics committee.

[@csabaweisz8791]

@@float32 around that time a massive data breach happened, and over 500 million facebook account's private data got leaked

[@BHBalast]

@@csabaweisz8791 Yeah, that's why they bought Oculus and have been working on it for the last couple of years...

[@csabaweisz8791]

@@BHBalast of course they would've eventually announced that sooner or later, but that leak forced to make super half-baked presentations of the tech (to outshout the bad news), and they definitely needed some extra time to polish the barebones structure to a level that doesn't look like low-quality crap. The whole debacle reminds me of Blizzard prematurely announcing Diablo 4 and Overwatch "2" (which isn't even a sequel, but the big update to the first game) during the sexual harrasment controversies and the financial reports showing the company going down the gutter. It took 2 years to even present an OW2 beta (all while they didnt put any significant content to the live game, causing player numbers to plummet), and D4 is still nowhere to be seen

[@rodrikforrester6989]

the first two thirds of this video have such a warm, comfortable atmosphere! there's such intense happiness just _radiating_ from all these people talking about carving out comfortable spaces for themselves in VR. I think this energy singlehandedly brightened my day. and what's most interesting of all, the conclusion is entirely bereft of fearmongering! it doesn't feel like doomscrolling through twitter, helplessly watching on as the world burns - it feels like I was handed a fire extinguisher.

[@applepie9806]

I think that's why VRchat is so good to the hardcore community. That warm lit space is pretty tantalising.

[@Weisz]

18:48 “boob-rich environment” is my new favorite quote

[@Cragsand]

Thank you for highlighting how Facebook and the crypto craze is completely backwards about the "metaverse"! Building an empty hype wave and marketing gimmick just looking to profit instead of seeing the potential it has for people to be creative and express themselves in new ways. I'm waiting to see how the mainstream reacts when discovering the potential of VR roleplay (RP for short) and storytelling. Similar to how Corona increased the use of teleconference and in turn raised the popularity in playing tabletop games online like Dungeons and Dragons. In VRChat culture before Facebook stole the "meta" term, it described something else entirely reaching back to 2017. "Metaverse RP" was (and still is) an overlapping term of various connected roleplay groups in different settings and themes. Public worlds tend to be off-putting to most VRChat players, especially new ones because it is unfiltered, poorly moderated and chaotic. Because of this most groups organize and meet via private Discord servers. You also have many non-metaverse RP groups that are more similar to Dungeons and Dragons campaigns where the players and game masters dictate and direct their own roleplay. Imagine a fictional medieval or scifi world where players create their own avatars, rules, characters and worlds to immerse themselves in. There can be mechanics such as vehicles, firearms, magic and game modes. To give some examples of VR RP groups you have Neon Divide, Fractured Thrones and Ascension Academy to name a few. I like to make the comparison that VR RP shares more similarity to larping than traditional gaming. Being a bit of a roleplaying nerd, to me VR is the next step in expanding the dimensions available for storytelling. Text based RP was always limited, voice chat helped a lot, revolutionizing how events could organize in games. Combining the immersion with open world games you have projects like GTA Online via FiveM but perfected with NoPixel RP, which blew up on the Twitch streaming platforms. Adding the next dimension to this is translating body language online. This you can get in VR and currently only from VRChat. Cheers to you for sticking through and reading all of this! Maybe I've expanded your view of the potential of the positive sides of VR, the "user and individual created VR" instead of the "corporate profit based VR". One just looks dystopian but the other is quite fun!

[@wrongteous]

Also, have you heard of those Crypto lands which are selling land? Have you seen how fucking awful they look? Anything other than VRChat and Rec Room is an obvious scam.

[@Cragsand]

@@wrongteous yeah they're terrible. All those NFT scams remind me of those old "buy a star" scams from back in the 90s. You pay for a registry of something that is worthless nor respected by any authority. In a way its similar to paying to be listed in a phone book that hardly anyone reads. A phone book from the 80s may have been printed in a million copies but the content in them is outdated and useless today. So will all those NFTs be, broken links in a registry with no authority.

[@techman0681]

​@@Cragsand Could you explain what is "buy a star" in more detail?

[@Cragsand]

It was a scam where a company without any legal entity nor authority sold "contracts of ownership" for stars in the night sky. It was popular as a present for a while until people realized they had just wasted their money. NFT:s are similar because they show proof of purchase, but there's no legal entity or authority which actually respects the purchase. In essence you pay for a receipt which is actually worthless.

[@charlesbwilliams]

I mainly use VrChat to practice Spanish. I’ve always wanted to learn the language but resources like school or textbooks focused too much on how it could help your career rather than actually talking to normal people in a meaningful way

[@illiteratebeef]

That's a good point, there's tons of language learning available in VRChat. There's a few sign language worlds, some with weekly classes and a world for almost any country to practice whatever language you're working on.

[@johanwettergren]

That’s very clever!

[@FlorSilvestre12]

Oh that's a really brilliant idea. I took seven years of Spanish in school and then lost it all because I had no one to speak it with in my very Anglo community. Way to be resourceful!

[@wrongteous]

Also, just something I feel is important: All of these metaverse projects are completely new or aren't even fucking playable yet. They have absolutely no backbone community built and if they eventually do, it will be full of NFT bros who will dip from the project if the price of their land or whatever dips enough. Meanwhile, Rec Room and VRChat, VR Projects that have been around for more than half a decade, have built up a huge dedicated fanbase. This fanbase for Rec Room could either be it's Creative Builders or it's competitive scene. For VRChat, it could be the numerous furry communities. Also, KZbin. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT FUCKING MIND WILL MAKE CONTENT ON HORIZON WORLDS??? Worlds has nothing interesting or fun to do in it. No competitive scene, no amazing maps, nothing that gets views. The only way I would go about making content on Horizon Worlds is by recording myself ruining the experience for everyone. Meanwhile, VRChat and Rec Room already has KZbinrs dedicated to making content specifically for the game. That content gets hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of views. VRChat was able to popularize the Ugandan Knuckles cultural phenomenon. Something like Horizon Worlds could only dream of doing that.

[@nbshftr]

i would just like to say that rec room is dogshit

[@cassowarygaming2163]

I laughed so hard when when Malenia, Blade of Miquella, walked toward you after you said "Think about the parts of the video that excited you, and maybe the parts which scared you". Malenia on a 2D screen, let alone in VR, has already given me nightmares enough, thank you very much.

[@CryptidTea]

I remember the exact moment I fell in love with VRChat. I was randomly hopping from world to world looking for a new avatar use and came across a world memorializing a teenage avatar creator who had sadly passed away. A friend of theirs got access to all of the avatars the creator had made and put them up publicly for anyone to use alongside a biography of who the creator was. Exploring that world and reading everything about the creator gave life to everything I had ever seen in VRChat. That was the moment VRChat no longer just felt like some random fun virtual thing to explore, I began to see it as a living and breathing community that people truly cared about

[@thecomentingcat6280]

whats the world name?

[@cheesecake4648]

i want to know too!@@thecomentingcat6280

[@norwhalerae3323]

Glad I could provide headpats! Thank you for giving a proper view of VRChat to the masses! Really high quality video as well

[@fafo_o]

Tell "The Booper" their lain avatar is the best thing I saw today

[@applepie9806]

So it was you? XD Nice. Head pats are good uwu

[@thegreenguy8837]

Thanks for representing the VRChat community so well!

[@WraxTV]

The discussion of "adult happy fun time" reminded me of an adult manga I read way back in the day, during the Web 1.0 days of the internet, where there was a VR Game that was basically Everquest but everyone was using it for "adult happy fun time" - and in that comic you had to provide proof you were of age, and if you weren't, characters would look like undressed Barbie and Ken dolls and the force feedback/"sensation" features would be turned off. Of course, the high school protagonists found ways around this by using their parent's accounts to trick the game into thinking they were of age, but still, it's somewhat amusing to me that an H-comic put thought into underage players in a VR game while the actual game that mirrored this concept 10-20 years later didn't.

[@Khandrake]

When you give people creative freedom and don't monetize literally everything... sometimes people can have fun

[@AlyCatVR]

As a VRChat content creator, it's refreshing to see people genuinely take a dive into our universe than just dismissing it based on outside opinion

[@flipina]

How does this not have millions of views? It is such a well-made documentary, very empathetic and immersive. I don't have VR but might reconsider now

[@pancakemotors23]

This game got me to buy a VR headset. Previously, I thought things like Google cardboard were that, but when I first got my quest2 on, I was blown away. Phone-VR is pathetic in comparison!

[@ArkayeCh]

VR Chat knew everyone wanted to play and hang out in VR so they did just that. Metaverse is a neoliberal nightmarish realm trying to recreate Second Life with no idea what people like.

[@NorroTaku]

yup

[@InventorZahran]

What does neoliberalism have to do with this? Wasn't that an American economic strategy from the 70's and 80's?

[@johnclark926]

@@InventorZahran I guess it would be neoliberal in the sense that there would be no regulation on the data Meta collects from its users, the amount of ads thrown every five minutes, or the prices you’d have to pay for virtual assets and/or subscriptions.

[@DuringDark]

@@InventorZahran neoliberalism as used online encompasses the political climate from the 80s to now; superficial progressivism, with a modicum of social change mixed with mountains of sanitised messaging to hide resistance to real changes in socioeconomic mobility or hierarchy

[@InventorZahran]

@@DuringDark Thanks! That explanation makes much more sense than what I found on Wikipedia.

[@milesorvetti2115]

“The entire VR Chat hashtag on twitter is less of a thirst trap but more of a thirst dungeon on a scale not seen since Elden Ring” is my new favorite PMG quote.

[@MRBONES-fg6cs]

Frankly, VRChat's utter lack of moderation is exactly what appeals to me. The only moderation that needs to be in place, IMO, is keeping kids the fuck off the platform instead of sanitizing it for their sake.

[@jaayro]

@@pXnTilde It already has means of moderation. It's still reportable and indeed bannable to be racist, hateful, & nsfw in public worlds for example. It's a matter of moderation taking money and resources. Obviously we're still going to see those things as it's impossible to catch everything, especially if it's a brand new account who's very first interaction is screaming slurs.

[@trejkaz]

@@jaayro I'm not even sure throwing more money at it would make it good either. It would be like throwing more money at a police force. Do you _really_ want it to be that every public world you go to has a cop in it?

[@jojbenedoot7459]

@@friendofp.24 public worlds are already relatively centralized

[@25566]

Yep, youtube fucked this up badly. They have youtube for kids and rhen proceeded to flag a ton of videos for kids, now you can't leave comments or use the mini player or save to watch later videos for kids, how stupid is that?

[@ElmoLahti]

You don’t remember being a kid? They’re not just going to accept that, they’ll get in either way because VRChat is cool.

[@UberMun]

VRChat needs private servers. REAL private servers not just instances that are hosted on their official server. Real privately hosted dedicated servers are the backbone of any multiplayer game if it to last a long time.

[@mycelia_ow]

If the official serves go under, I'm sure there will be those that will figure out how to do it. This happens with older games all the time, and this community seems dedicated so it wouldn't be long until unsanctioned servers pop up.

[@applepie9806]

Oh I'm pretty sure the community will figure it out connecting the servers. The problem is maintaining said servers, cloud services isn't that cheap. Unless you sacrifice a home computer to be your server mule and keep up with the Unity updates.

[@EQOAnostalgia]

@@mycelia_ow Yep, pretty much everything can be saved. I come from an MMORPG that was shut down in 2012, named my channel after it lol. We're still trying to get the data Sony had serverside to work with the client they setup which was just a save state on PCSX2, nobody has ever tried to bring back a console MMORPG like this. Now if our small community is making that happen (albeit very slowly) very popular VRchat will be fine.

[@play3rthr339]

I hope, if official private server support doesn't come to VR chat, that it isn't locked down too much to prevent the community from making it work. I play Titanfall 2, and while those servers are still technically running, due to very active malicious haking on them to prevent the game from working, the community made a mod for the game that allows the hosting of private servers and it isn't very resource intensive to have a small multiplayer lobby hosted on your own pc that also runs the game. Hoping this can also be the case for vrchat, as the last thing an independent vrchat needs is to rely on companies to monetize their server rentals and force their corporate ideals onto the community.

[@reallyWyrd]

Hopefully, if VRChat is ever about to be bought or go bankrupt, hopefully someone on the inside can publish the source code before it goes away. Then others can copy that around. Keep the spark alive. Information wants to be free and so forth.

[@GinjiVitis]

as a denizen of VR-Chat, I would like to thank you and yours for a respectful depiction of the platform and the minds who work every day to make it a wonderful place.

[@zubinzuro]

impim in the wild

[@luistigerfox]

Was just scrolling comments while watching this vid and found you here. Small world :p

[@olivianeugeboren602]

This is the first video about vr chat that has made me "get" it. Even with all the grody stuff u talked about, you managed to communicate an atmosphere and vibe that I haven't seen, and seems really really cool

[@applepie9806]

Right? I used to think vr chat is kinda boring with a lot of weird people, but this made it pretty cool

[@yashizuko]

Knowing the IT field, those 10000 new employees to make something make me laugh, determination and gut feeling is so important in developing something like VRchat, 10000 people are not going to take risks on new features because they are being hired by someone that just wants to make more money, not something cool, i could only express this feeling in a sentence "9 mothers don't give birth to a baby in a month"

[@_vofy]

Most of it will be just assets. Can't imagine 10000 programmers in a room trying to agree on something...

[@yashizuko]

@@_vofy so true hahahaha, maybe its a "hunger game" scenario where only like 1000 "survive"

[@OrbitalCookie]

3 developers, 1 qa, 1 analyst, 4 designers, 1 pm and 9990 VR moderators

[@Elc22]

Well, most big companies are risk averse, and thier management tends to be either behind on the times or is just there to push short term profits as a sociopath and don't care about anything else. The normal way of "innovating" at this point is either to throw a bunch of money at the problem by buying up a company in the thing you want to compete in, or throw a bunch of money into hiring a team of Yes-men to make a clone of something that is better. In both cases, the end result eventually leads to heavily sanitized and monetized products that tend to be inferior.

[@pasta-and-heroin]

thats really apt, and a quote id never heard before

[@aname4931]

Can we please take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of a humanoid wine bottle interviewing an anime girl about gender identity at 20:05

[@Spo8]

It absolutely destroyed me every time someone was having a genuine and vulnerable conversation and it cut to a 10 foot tall wine bottle pensively listening.

[@burtonizedchips788]

@@Spo8 a at

[@szegers]

That's what the internet was like

[@Elc22]

The absurdity is a slice of the web 1.5 of sorts. The time where the big tech giants were just getting started, and before they had absolute control over the internet.

[@hcxpl1]

@@Spo8 If I ever go to VRChat that is the reaction I want to elict

[@P0LYB1UZ]

Unironically VRC is such a magical place. I've been to real furry conventions held ENTIRELY on the platform and they're BEAUTIFULLY BUILT and last for your usual fan convention length of 3 to 4 days. I have ranted and raved with great excitement about VRC to my therapist who is delighted and awed by this flatform that allows me to be face to face with people long distance as anyone in any setting doing anything we want. It's beautiful and it's freeing. What Meta is pushing on us is this extremely sanitized version that thrives on... money. and not actual lasting experiences and fun with your friends. And that terrifies me. Something feels very very bleak about everything I love suddenly being taken over by cryptocurrency. That sucks! This sucks!

[@hackladdy9886]

Now all we need is for VRChat to go open source, decentralized/federated, and be interoperable between different instances running different software, and you literally have *the* metaverse

[@nbshftr]

how would the devs make any money tho, also how woulf reporting people with crasher avatars work

[@hackladdy9886]

@@nbshftr Well, that's the point. Non-profit things are great, but there's still a very low likelihood they'd actually become a non-profit, because of the profit motive. We can hope, though. Reporting people could be done in a number of automated ways, one of the best spam proof ones being a model similar to Kleros Court. (Can't link here due to KZbin usually taking comments w/links down. Try googling it)

[@nbshftr]

@@hackladdy9886 i meant how would the devs get the money to be able to develop the game if they arent making money

[@applepie9806]

While I appreciate that though, that would be incredibly difficult, cross platform is a headache in itself already, you want people to specify their own servers? We'll just end up with 1000s of broken servers when people abandon maintenance, especially since VR chat is built on Unity and Unity's a well known update nightmare - it updates so often and breaks the games built on it each time it does. Imagine your avatar made for a later version of unity trying access a private server made with earlier versions. Glitch cityyy

[@Steph.98114]

@@nbshftr donations, I would be happy to donate.

[@MaxFerney]

Thank you for making this! Its easily the best documentary for the general public about our current metaverse.

[@PeopleMakeGames]

Oh hey, I think you might be our very first Super Thanks! Much appreciated :) -Chris

[@jcassidy13]

Once again blown away by the quality and integrity of your work. The number of voices you've incorporated, the aesthetic decisions you've made in representing those voices, the open yet critical posture you folks take - it's all so good. Cannot thank ya'll enough for this stuff.

[@Riverbreak]

VRChat kept me sane during lockdown, I met the closest group of friends I've ever had in my life on the platform, and wanting to edit my own avatars gave me the drive and confidence I needed to get into 3D modelling, something I've always wanted to do but never knew where to start. It has unequivocally changed my life in so many positive ways.

[@StepBackHistory]

This is the most Shut Up and Sit Down energy People Make Games to Date

[@hish.b]

I agree. I think it's because he's trying to get you excited about something you don't understand.

[@reubenm.d.5218]

The juxtaposition between Quinns describing a grassroots utopian future and then cutting to his slouching 2D rendition of a wine bottle is endlessly hilarious to me

[@klof361]

PMG, thank you for the thoughtful research, marvelous visuals, and journalistic integrity! What an incredible journey this channel has been on, and seeing your subscriber count go up with every video is absolutely wonderful! At the moment, I am not in a position to support on patron monthly [pay me more, job😅] I noticed your donate button for the first time, so I want to show my appreciation for the work you put into your content. May the algorithm shine brightly on your content for more to enjoy…but not too many😅 (if I can slightly borrow the same sentiment from VrChat community)

[@gazingatsaturn]

@@FractalPrism. LMAO its a way to support and say thanks to the creator. how is that gross?

[@petey5009]

@@FractalPrism. it is a superchat

[@samranda]

@@FractalPrism. what a weird reaction to this,, it’s so bizarre and alien to me to see a comment that monetarily supports the creator and respond with “gross” like who are u

[@otocan]

@@samranda I guess they find the idea of commercialism creeping into things, like which comments get to the top, gross. I can understand where they're coming from - most people would prefer things to become popular in their community because of merit rather than people being able to purchase advantages. Relevant to the discussions in the video maybe.

[@sock2828]

@@samranda maybe it has to do with it creating a class of people who can afford to pay for their comments to be more visible and a class of people who can't afford it.

[@digitallyawesome1120]

I picked up a vr headset right when covid hit, and I think it’s something that really kept me sane. I’m a bartender, and it really scratched that itch of talking to people. It really helped me scratch that itch of going out to the pub with the black cat world. I met a lot of amazing people, who I hope to have life long friendship with them. One is from Australia, and he might be coming up to visit me in Canada soon, fucking love the guy and I’m so excited to go out to a pub with him in person. Vrchat is really amazing and the meta verse that we deserve, there truly is something for everyone. I just wish that there was less kids in it for sure, like there was some sort of age restriction.

[@Rotem_S]

I love the fact you included a section on entering the game for the first time through public lobbies! Every time I see something about VRchat they overlook that and just go straight into "assuming you found like 40+ different friends in this sea of toxic 13 year olds, here's what your experience will look like" which makes the game seem way more enticing than it is, at least assuming I don't want to build a whole new social life from nothing just to play it.

[@en0n126]

I mean, ultimately, it is a social community platform. That's what it is, more than "a game". If you're not enthusiastic about belonging to a niche social community of like-minded niche people, then you're probably not going to find much lasting value in VRC. It's kinda strange to me that people refer to VRC as a game, or "playing" VRChat.

[@Jsfun]

There are public lobbies which are specifically adult-focused, and many (if not most) communities don't allow kids. You can find lots of Discords and events on Google, it might be a bit awkward at first not knowing anyone but people are generally friendly. PC-only worlds also lean much more adult as the entry price is higher. It's also worth pointing out that the time you play makes a big difference. Later on a Friday evening US-time there will be hundreds of players in worlds with no kids in them, for example. On the rare occasion a kid does show up they're usually shunned and promptly kicked.

[@WunderWulfe]

I think that it is amazing that you can even speak with sign languages to players from across the world, and while being a dog! Such a bizarrely comforting and exciting experience. There are incredibly complex and bountiful friendly communities of classes/teachers, fandoms, hangouts, languages... it really is surprising the level of interactivity and experience that is so impossibly unobtainable in reality... somehow feeling so real and authentic.

[@Kuni02120]

I spend over a thousand hours on vrchat back to 2020 when the pandemic happened and learned how to speak English. It literally changed my life. I was a factory worker after my graduation of high school and had no brain to get into a university (you have to take an entrance exam and pass it in Japan). But after spending such a long time on vrchat, I realized I spoke descent English and I took an entrance exam. None of my family was expecting this consequence but now I’m a university student and going to be an international exchange student to Australia this year. The craziest thing here is that I spend only few hundreds dollars for my headset to learn English thanks to vrchat. It’s simply amazing how small number of people maintain this community without putting huge money like what Meta is doing. Thank you for all friends in this community for changing my life and also you for making such a great video.

[@Krystalchan2009]

Hey I think giving some of my perspective would be warranted on VRChat. I'm a dancer in VRChat, and I range from adult venues doing lap dances, to the raves of SHELTER and Tube, to the Hip Hop cyphers of FlowVR that started recently. VRChat has effectively turned into a daily routine and workout for me doing these events and venues, as I constantly dance, sweat and party in my room. I originally started dancing half body for almost a year before getting a job and having the funds for FBT. And at the time of writing this, its bittersweet with my home club I started at closing its doors this thursday. But in that time I got to dancing two or more events a day, finally being under a 30BMI and getting endless hours of instruction and stage performances that I wouldn't be able to do IRL due to the history of where I live, where most if not all venues near by are crime adjacent at best and straight up run by gangs or mobs at worst. On a more personal level I feel satisficed with the degree I got in game development just working on VRChat avatars and worlds as I get that direct interaction and complements of the time I put in. But that being said I would like to add more onto the topic of touch brought up in this video. See I think you guys might have missed a little of the forest for the trees with Avatar Dynamics and touch, as it just accent the touch by showing us how it manipulates hair/ears/ect. Touch goes a lot deeper than that in VRC under the term "Phantom Sense". For a sizable portion of the user base to some degree, the immersion of VRChat can open pandora's box of sensations. The reason why mirrors are so important is that our only vectors into VR are sight and sound and seeing someone touch you can trick your brain into a response of physical sensations. Granted my phantom sense is rather vivid (and more than most), in that I can feel touch, temperature, pressure and pain. Just the other day someone hit me with a frying pan in the head which instantly gave me a headache and try to block any future hits. But more commonly I might go to hot springs and saunas if my irl room is chilly, and something thats a cool evening world such as Yayoi Summer Nights if I need to cool off. I cuddle up to people and it feels like they are there as my skin tingles and warms up to where there body "is". But to loop this back around to lap dancing and the Adult topics you touched on in this video. I am trans so I find my virtual body to be much more comforting than my real life one and that includes all aspects. I don't need any external bluetooth devices because my brain quickly fills in those gaps. And as a lap dancer I'm almost could be an expert in finding where people are sensitive. Lastly for getting a VRC avatar; There is actually a lot of free options out there. About a good third of my avatar collection is free avatars that were given out by various creators. One of my VRC avatars was obtained by nitro boosting a creator's discord. Just be aware most if not all avatars will require some base level Unity knowledge and even a bit of blender knowledge. And if PMG want some guidance on avatars for any future VRChat related content the community is always helpful.

[@3u-n3ma_r1-c0]

the paragraphs about phantom sense are so interesting! i never even considered that. thats amazing. thanks 4 sharing

[@FeddyGrunt]

Wasn't Second Life like the original "metaverse" back in the day? Minus the VR aspect.. a virtual space where one could hang out with other people with an avatar to represent your "real" self that you could buy virtual clothing for and buying virtual property/spaces that you could host to have your friends hang out in?

[@float32]

There were a few before that too

[@Sparks29252]

It was certainly a precursor, but hardly the first. If we apply the definition broadly enough then the earliest MUDs and MUSHes were metaverses. The avatars were just text descriptions instead of models.

[@stephanieamare]

Yeah, and they've covered it on this channel once or twice.

[@UnknownSquid]

I'd say it was the first high profile one, and most technically accomplished one for it's time, yeah. These days it's slowly managed to make a minor comeback, back a bit closer to it's historical peak, and is surprisingly sitting at a relatively stable active user count, but it's being utterly dwarfed by the explosive growth VR-Chat has seen. VR-Chat is now not only sitting at near three times Second Life's active player count, but has been growing exponentially in the literal sense of the word, over doubling it's user count year on year. The key factor is simply VR. Second Life had the concept, but not the medium. Linden Labs (SLs creators) did experiment with VR, with a side platform named Sansar, but it struggled to find any popularity and was shut down.

[@stephanieamare]

@@UnknownSquid - Not just Sansar but LL has tried in the past to experiment with VR in SL. There was a viewer called CtrlAltStudio Viewer. But the issue is that with all of the unoptimized content among other things, it's hard for even the most beastly of PCs to pull the frames required for a decent VR experience. That said, original co-founder Philip Rosedale re-joined Linden Lab as a "Strategic Advisor", and he has a company called High Fidelity Inc. which had a virtual world of the same name, and it was VR-centered--before the they decided to pivot and focus on spatial audio. So who knows what, if anything, he can bring to the table--what LL will take on-board. But he sees a lot of the same issues with VR in SL, and in general. He also has a lot of opinions on Metaverse.

[@catriona_drummond]

The reason there was an overwhelming majority of female avatars over male avatars back in Second life was - sadly - that "female" would at least grant a chance for acceptable social behaviour. The world was populated with armies of badly made male avatars who only knew the words "wanna fuck", some female avatars with the same behaviour, a good amount of female avatars who were actually behaving like human beings and rather few male avatars also showing the latter. So peope incresingly went wit statistic expectations. I've been to places that explicitely stated "no male avatars" and I met quite a few guys who used female avatars without having any underlying gender issues simply because it allowed them to sovialize with people in a civilized manner. In a way, it was brutal... Also it depends very much on how much you identify with your chracter, is it you? a 100% representation of you? or it just an avatar, like in a game. people perceive that very differently.

[@gormauslander]

5:48 The only way to make VR chat worse is to have a friend there to witness what you witness. The only solace is knowing that those embarrassing encounters die with me.

[@Rosslefrancais]

You're not wrong, in that everytime it would cut to a 3rd person shot of you interviewing someone the crouching wine bottle looked both demonic and hillarious!

[@terrydooher4540]

Fascinating. It absolutely reminds me of the early MUDs/MOOs. There was a game there, but they just became a fairly safe space to hang out with people in dozens of different countries, in a friendly, judgement-free space. Had no idea this existed, though. I thought Second Life was still the go-to :D (Also +1 for the unintentional hilarity of watching a creepy, grinning wine bottle try to nod seriously at someone making reasonably serious points.)

[@SkySweeperSyn]

you should hop in and give it a try! It has a fully functional desktop mode - the only difference is obviously movement is a bit more stiff.

[@guyunderwood2297]

"It absolutely reminds me of the early MUDs/MOOs. There was a game there, but they just became a fairly safe space to hang out [...]" For the last 18 years I have regularly posted on a forum dedicated to a game I haven't played in 15 years.

[@macroverbumsciolist]

quinns' wine bottle leaning in to his interviewees like a ten foot tall michael parkinson is wonderful also as a trans person, the gender chat was really interesting! i can definitely identify with, in real life, having avoided thinking about how you look, and then having the opportunity to actively Choose a gender presentation and realising that 'straight boy' is not the one for you.

[@FigmentForever]

Fellow trans person here. Been on Estrogen for 4 years & wish I could do this. Sadly no access to any internet

[@Tesseract_King]

Yeah... I can only imagine that VRChat has cracked more eggs than a short-order diner cook.

[@runakovacs4759]

@@Tesseract_King I'm no egg, but I yearn for VR chat :c. Hungary/Russia suck donkeyballs to live in.

[@FigmentForever]

@@Tesseract_King I got to try out VRChat for 10 min earlier thanks to a friend bringing me to their house. It was so euphoric 😢

[@gramursowanfaborden5820]

that part stood out to me too, as a straight and cis man. recently i've been getting back into playing Runescape again (oldschool) and for my new character chose a female one for the hell of it, but after a while of playing i realised i was behaving in a far more whimsical and feminine "girly" way than i normally do, and i realised it's because of the lack of expectation or obligation for me to behave in a masculine way. i naturally fell into being a very different personality that could barely even be called me, at a point it made me question whether i actually was cis or whether it was just an assumption i had made about myself, but i am just subconsciously fulfilling that character role, and it has been a very insightful experience to see how i behave when given different shoes.

[@star_str3m63]

VRChat asks to be a way to communicate long distance, rather than Facebook which seems to want to consume every aspect of your life and work.

[@Gaia_Gaistar]

The fact that the protagonist in Ready Player One didn't use a cute anime girl avatar felt unrealistic to me.

[@ikebirchum6591]

also the complete lack of furries in the book/movie

[@elizabethtangora4353]

I have to say, I was really impressed with how deep you were able to explore the worlds and people’s use of them. The idea that the person who made Treehouse In The Shade has passed on, but that people are still visiting and enjoying it was incredibly moving. Major thanks to the person who was there to tell that story, like a virtual historical tour guide.

[@chaoticneuron3661]

was super confused when a load of big companys started saying they were making the "first" metaverse online vr stuff when us vrchat furrys where right there - the most unrealistic part of their vision being the complete lack of anthros

[@applepie9806]

LMAO

[@hyperbolic3833]

I'm glad Quinns is reprising his role of PMG virtual sex correspondent

[@shadowtheory7500]

Look up "eurogamer interview naughty america" My headcanon is that Chris is getting back at Quinns for a half-decade of jokes. (I kid. Seriously, this was another fantastic video from PMG!)

[@cxrbxn]

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us! You were perfectly charming as the wine bottle- don’t be hard on yourself!

[@askplays]

lmao, great job

[@ecogreen123]

i love hearing peoples reactions to their first experience with vrchat and it's funny how most times they sum up the entire community from a couple public rooms they visited, it's very entertaining how many people do this and as a person that's been playing it on and off for years i'll say you summed it up extremely well in the "we start to understand VRChat" section. amazing work.

[@THESP-rz3hg]

Watching Chris and Quinns try to hug did more for my faith in VR than anything I've seen from any big tech company. And I think that's my biggest concern about the future.

[@Crushanator1]

This is bringing back some elder millennial memories of growing up on that early internet. I was in a vampire the masquerade game for years in a random MSN Groups chat that used like, basically comic book panels for when you talked? I think there's something really cool about the idea of doing games and hangouts in this space, VS zoom calls, or using something like Roll20 or Tabletop simulator

[@nikkothegoblin]

It helps that it's a collaborative community with player made content with a huge focus on anonymity, versus a "metaverse" where the entire concept is founded entirely on the concept of your identity. Whether that be your real personal identity or what you own, you're on the metaverse to be judged and derive enjoyment from that. That's more like real life but shittier. Fuck that, people want to escape and frankly, that's the reason why I can't imagine VR chat not being able to survive web3. What it offers will still be unique, at least for a long time. The amount of work and content already in VRchat would be impossible to recreate (copyright aside).

[@Lilithe]

I owe VRChat so much I think. I've found my creative calling (at least for now). I've been the happiest and most fulfilled out of any other time in my life. I feel capable of creating things I can really be proud of, and that other people like. It's... really humbling and I'm gonna cry now 😅😭

[@corgis6801]

You should be proud! Your work on FE was excellent. Thank you for your contributions!

[@Lilithe]

@@corgis6801 aww shucks

[@kenkoontz4541]

Thanks for making this video and the many other insightful content on your channel. I always enjoy tuning in. So excited for the future of VR and global communication but absolutely not at the expense of corporate controlled moderation and dissemination.

[@DJ_BoomBear]

I've been making avatar edits since 2017 and djing in vrchat for 2 years, this game has been the reason I mentally survived the pandemic and has connected me with people from across the country and other parts of the world. I'm honestly thankful for this app.

[@bobbinthepirate]

The thing with meeting people in VRChat is that it takes a little bit to find a niche that you can have fun in. For me, that's the karaoke goers and furries. Even before I became a furry, they were generally the most friendly and chill people there, and once you find a good karaoke world you usually see the same people there over and over who just really enjoy music. If the public worlds overwhelm you, try one that's not so crowded or find a world that relates to your own interests. You'll find other people you actually want to talk with there.

[@pleasegoawaydude]

When I used to play, I loved singing with people. It was always fun, and I learned a lot from it, even if I never have enjoyed being a low baritone. I miss it now. I can't ever have that type of fun again, for a number of reasons. But, the biggest thing VRChat taught me was that literally everyone was going to call me Markiplier or, if I was sleepy, Corpse Husband, and that the first song anyone wanted me to sing was Your Man by Josh Turner. Needless to say, I learned to stop singing in public worlds.

[@vivvy_0]

doesn't it annoys your rl neighbors, how do you deal with making noise while playing? i'd be too scared to be to loud, i wouldn't be able to relax i think

[@bobbinthepirate]

@@vivvy_0 Oh, I'm really lucky in the fact that my building has concrete walls and ceilings, so none of my neighbors can hear what I'm doing xD

[@EQOAnostalgia]

Yep, i was bummed out because nobody was visiting the 77077 arcade and bar that i hang around in. So i went to Club Orion, the DJ pointed me out and demanded people add me to increase my level since people avoid new accounts like the plague. Good thing too because i was starting to feel like i was in some clique that was ignoring everything i did lol. People are just really sketchy about who they talk to, understandably but he had the entire club turn and look at me, then about 5 friend requests came in lol. I danced there for like 3 hours, went home to my arcade and a group of 4 people were there so i changed into Aeris and handed out flowers, they opened a portal to a 90's house party and after that i had 4 more friends, that lead me to Adrift where i added 2 more. This was after a week of feeling pretty out of my element and ignored. So my advice, stick with it til you find people, and don't be too shy to speak. Not talking is also a creeper indicator. People avoid the shy.

[@shrineoffarewell]

I never really got into the hype behind VR headsets as the new and more immersive (?) way to Experience Gaming and I held a very stubborn "this isn't for me, I don't get it" stance, but getting to hear the denizens of VRChat speak so passionately about it, in a way that told me "Wow, these people have really had such depths of experiences in these worlds and these communities, beyond even what could be shown in this documentary", I think I really do understand a bit of the best VR can be. I might not be converting to the side of VR instantly, but in some small way I feel like I get it, much more than before. Thanks for putting this together so that I and hopefully many others can learn about these communities too.

[@Yipper64]

34:14 this is something we should keep in mind in general. If we keep saying "facebook will probably fail like they have failed before" well, I think that public lack of confidence will have an effect on it.

[@WBB-op4jv]

I want to send this to every journalist trying to sell, critique, or make sense of VR/AR and especially the Metaverse. This video perfectly captures both the perils and potential of VR in a manner that many others miss.

[@guard13007]

I was already interested, but the moment the centaur showed up, I became so much more excited! How amazing is that? Just being able to take an AFK friend with you while wandering around is so useful. :D

[@duckyfoxy2939]

Thank you for taking this open minded step into what I call my social safe place! As corona hit, meeting up and socializing was of incredible value. At some point it was not about the game anymore - it was about the people and the interactions. I lived alone during start of Corona, and it was incredibly giving and if not important to me, to have my good friends asking me how I was, giving me headpats and hugs, and we could do activities together and make further connections with people along the way. 2 years later I am still in VRChat every day, meeting my friends. While I do myself wear avatars that are sometimes female, sometimes male, I do agree with the feeling of being cute or just feel adored. (Rusk f.ex). But yes, thank you for giving VRChat your time and for spreading the positive parts about it as well. VRChat has huge potential as a platform, no doubt about that.

[@dariodeagostini]

i started watching this video with 0 expectations... usually this topic is explored by ppl with no expertise and wrong approach... it turned out I was glued from beginning to end. I am an old user of the early Fidonet and Internet... and I can totally see how vr chat shares similar characteristics... and probably the same end. But this was a VERY thought provoking video, very well made and exceptionally interesting. Thank you very much.

[@Octo-Genius]

Really fantastic video. The part mentioning that VRchat is a lot like the old internet hit me pretty solidly in the brain- there had been a feeling I was getting the few little times I tried out VRchat I couldn't quite define, and it was THAT, it was the same feeling as exploring the early internet, just wandering from site to site, finding new people and things.

[@jedgrahek1426]

I've always used attractive (to me) female characters in games if given the choice, I completely get why that choice is made from a purely aesthetic standpoint. And some of the general cultural "softness" that it seems to engender in VRchat is really interesting and nothing but a positive thing. It's almost the opposite of the culture engendered by 4chan for example, where it's super easy for bad-faith shitposts to dominate the "discourse" so utterly that people stop even seeing them as such... whereas if everyone is communicating in a visually based (as opposed to written text based, ie more right brain engagement, as reading alphabetic text is a very left brain thing) environment that is conducive to kindness and sincere personal expression, where "shitposting" would make one the lunatic on the corner it does in reality... a vastly more positive internet based culture than we have ever seen on all the text-based social media platforms could develop. We also see this sort of phenomenon on TikTok, which is again inherently more positive because it is visually based and shows people genuinely expressing themselves, and is not really conducive to shitposting and straight-faced bad-faith like text-based platforms are. So that's something hopeful. This is why twitter and facebook are such utter poison, because they behave like 4chan and give bad faith, hate, and demagoguery every possible advantage over real humanity. They are the worst "public squares" possible.

[@markusParkus233]

This. I think this is a better explanation than the video.

[@beanieteamie7435]

This video is bloody fantastic! Thank you so much for taking the time to make it!

[@jerbid_]

VRChat is a precious and fragile platform that demonstrates one of the best parts of the internet - its unending and determined cooperation, fostering a community full of expressive, impressive, proud creations. It's what helped me to create my persona which I'd had in my head for years, in a 3D space where it can really be actually me. I've also had plans to 3D model my first car, which I was super proud of and sort of made it part of me both as an inside joke between me and my friends, but also as my key into my adult life which had to be scrapped from a blown head gasket, and make it a prop I can drive around in-game so that I can re-live that experience. It's definitely something I'm gonna fight for. It's one of the very few sanitized, ad-free spaces I have left, so I'm paying for the premium service despite the limited functionality it provides both to support the project and as leverage if the threat of buyout ever looms.

[@supinearcanum]

Wow, that does make it look really cool, and I get that feeling of early internet both in the promise and how it is still a walled garden for a lot of people. I really wish this had talked more about how avatars work and what one has to do to get one, because that feels like something of a unique step that the service doesn't provide and one that you yourself must do. But how does that work, how do you get them, how much technical knowledge must you have, what's the support network like to find and create one? Like, that whole process feels like it can be a massive hurdle just when thinking about what those answers COULD be, how does this system help people identify and overcome them?

[@danku-chan]

not sure if this is what you were asking, but... because of vrchat's massive avatar making community, there are thousands upon thousands of 'avatar worlds', places made by a person to hold avatars that they created/uploaded. this is the main way for people to find avatars, and there are so many of them that at least one of them will fit you, and the chance of you running into someone with the same avatar is incredibly low. you need almost 0 technical skill to find an avatar, it's just creating a personalized one that requires technical skill or moneymaking skill

[@WinseAndWepeat]

I agree with @Danku-Chan. For just starting out, your VRChat "home" world has a small selection of clickable avatars thumbnails right next to the big central mirror. Also in you home world are at least one portal to an avatar world. In your Quick Menu is an entire row of dedicated to avatar worlds that you can visit. Many of these worlds have contact info for the creators so you can contact them if you want a custom avatar $$. BTW, you just click on an avatar thumbnail image to "wear" it. You can then save it to your favorites slot if it is one that you want to keep for reuse. Finally, if you want to do some easy avatar "creation" on your own, your VRChat home world also has wall ads for ReadyPlayerMe and Tafi, which are Windows apps that let you do point and click style avatar creation, and easy automated upload to VRChat. If you really want to get into fancy avatar creation, you'll need to develop Blender and Unity skills. For that, youtube has plenty of content, and you need detailed help, join the VRChat Discord and check out the Avatars channels, as well as the Oculus Quest channels.

[@JamiePryke]

Yeh avatar world's are the way to go. With how immense the community is, there's very likely an avatar out there that fits your want/need that basically 0.01% of the population is using. So you can basically feel unique even using something someone else made. I tried rigging some models, to varying degrees of success, but creating something from new is definitely out of my artistic league. If you're like me, avatar world's are great XD it's also just fun to shop around and see what crazy avatars are out there for you to use.

[@necry9583]

I feel like the Metaverse is a mirror to VRC with all the things we don’t want. I am happy to see this video and am thankful for the representation!

[@BlitzkriegOmega]

you could almost call it a Black Mirror.

[@mamacoffeecat5542]

Finding this video a week after VR chat devs committed brand suicide is like stumbling across a murder scene.

[@sugoish9461]

Wait what?? What happened?

[@mamacoffeecat5542]

@@sugoish9461 Vr chat is doing weird fuckery by banning a bunch of user made content as well as all third party mods. Then they started banning people upset about it from the vr chat forums. They say its for security which is true to an extent but it also bricks basically all accessibility mods and a ton of user made worlds essentially killing the community. Its on the same level as if second life were to ban 3rd party sellers and avatars. Theyre so ingrained in the system that to remove them now would damage it beyond repair. Vr chat is new so its less disruptive but not by much. I mean it's essentially completely disabled a lot of full body tracking software which made it impossible for people who have made it big on the platform to exist anymore

[@sugoish9461]

@@mamacoffeecat5542 Oh gosh.... I heard some people say they fixed/made it a little better recently somehow, with some new update/changes.. Do you know what they meant? I'm saving up for a Quest2 for some casual VR use and was planning on trying out vrchat, but I'm scared if this new change would make the performance even worse on the device? Tysm for the answer btw!

[@BlitzkriegOmega]

@@sugoish9461 on July 26, VRChat devs implemented "Easy Anti-Cheat", a controversial DRM program that prevents players of online games from using modified game files of any kind. in VRChat's case, it broke a ton of accessibility, UI, Anti-Lag, and anti-hacker mods. EAC is also constantly running, which puts a major strain on lower-end computers that could once have run VRChat at a stable 60+fps, but now have choppy and inconsistent framerates due to an addition nobody asked for and nobody wanted.

[@vizthex]

@@BlitzkriegOmega *o o f*

[@pwilll]

I am SO HAPPY you interviewed strasz for this video!! Their videos on VRChat are incredible and really dive deep into how this new technology can have an incredible influence on identity, socialization, gender expression, and so, so much more.