Philip Rosedale recently said something very interesting to Christian Nutt of Gamasutra about his upcoming VR platform, High Fidelity, which is already compatible with users in multiple VR setups, so Oculus Rift and Vive owners (for example) can already interact together in the same metaverse:
Interestingly, Rosedale sees VR as a natural antidote to the current abuse-soaked state of the internet: "The more synchronous, the more real-time you force the interaction to be, the better everyone behaves. In VR, it’s much harder to be a bully or be abusive if you’re doing it face-to-face."
This caught my attention, because it doesn't quite square with my 10-plus years writing about Second Life, Philip's first VR platform, where real time interaction often leads to months-long battles, user-to-user racism, and griefing of all variety. And so I asked Philip about that:
"What makes you confident this will happen?" I asked Philip. "As you know, Second Life has constant griefing and harassment, even though avatars make eye contact, and there's real time voice/interaction. There's several memes about SL griefing ("Ralph pls go") and YouTube video channels devoted to griefing (like this guy). Why do you think the opposite will happen in virtual reality's next generation?"
Philip Rosedale answered this way:
"I have two thoughts here: First, you need to consider the percentage of griefers-to-users, which I believe is much lower in face-to-face environments like SL as compared to places like forums or chat rooms. Said another way, even though there is griefing in SL, people are much nicer overall than they are on something like Reddit or in blog comments."
He then pointed to updates as another path to VR civility:
"Second, there are many improvements that will likely happen in upcoming systems like High Fidelity that will create the right kind of balance/controls/accountability to make griefing much less likely/fun."
What kind of improvements, he didn't say. I also asked if his "percentage of griefers-to-users" in Second Life referred to specific abuse report data, but Philip also didn't reply by publication time. (I'll post an update if he does.)
Philip could be right, but I disagree on a number of points:
First, because VR is still disproportionately popular with young white males, anyone trying to use VR who doesn't fit in that demographic (women and under-represented minorities in particular) is likely to experience over-average amounts of grief and harassment, just as they do in every other online context now. Unless Philip's figured out how to architect away underlying social prejudices which still exist, that's a reality virtual reality can't address.
Secondly, while I do agree that most regular Second Life users are friendly, civil, and helpful, and SL griefers are a minority, the griefing still has a disproportionate negative impact on the entire userbase.
Griefers like Esteban Winsmore (above) may be numerically rare in Second Life, but they're extremely popular on YouTube, for instance -- far more popular than videos of civil SL content, in fact. There's low comedy value in griefing, and that's likely not to go away anytime soon. Meanwhile, the platform gets tarnished as a haven for griefing in the general public perception, while new users to the platform (who have less skills to fend off griefers) are discouraged from staying around.
Again, maybe these are problems Philip and his team have the solution for, but seeing how intractable racism, sexism, and just general gratuitous dick-ishness is in the real world, even or especially face-to-face, I'm not seeing how VR is supposed to be the panacea here.
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Charlie Winsmore rocks (Esteban is his alter ego channel). Watch h1z1 videos for a good laugh.
Posted by: John Q | Wednesday, August 12, 2015 at 05:45 PM
I agree with you. While bullying might be less frequent in VR, the negative interaction taking place hits people on a much more personal level. It might even be the case that in very realistic VR, there will be psychological consequences as if it was real life bullying.
Posted by: Estelle Pienaar | Wednesday, August 12, 2015 at 11:02 PM
I think people will be people and they will drag their issues into whatever platform you create for them.
If people will bully others less because the environment is more realistic, then it only figures that those who are bullied will also feel the negative effects more realistically too.
In the case of people using Occulus, you can't assume that the type of person who is willing to wear that mask and stand alone while flapping their arms in mid air isn't going to be a bit anti-social and self-absorbed to begin with.
People fantasize about empowerment. Could Philip be fantasizing about people's good behavior for the sake of his own empowerment?
Posted by: A.J. | Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 05:36 AM
The more flexible the virtual world platform, the more a griefer can impact my experience. On a blog, he can post a piece of text that I can delete or scroll past. In VR he can make noises, gestures, speech, block entry to my house, assault me, etc.
On a blog it's (relatively) easy to write spam and abuse filtering software. In VR I have no idea how to write the "detect an avatar behaving badly and block him" software.
I think the flexibility in VR systems that gives them their amazing promise goes hand-in-hand with making griefing a bigger problem.
Posted by: James Cook | Thursday, August 13, 2015 at 05:36 PM
What A.J. said. Just more snake oil from a master salesman of utopias. I'll settle for the face-to-face civility of the open mic at my locally owned coffee shop.
Nice thing about a RL social venue: you can evict "griefers" fast. In a rather posh London pub once, I found myself sharing a table with several office-workers just off work. While we were chatting about my "holiday," the kitchen emptied and the barman flew over the bar. The employees all grabbed a guy by his four limbs and tossed him out into the street. Life in the pub quickly resumed its moderately low-key, after-work vibe. I asked what had happened.
"One of your countrymen got a bit uncivil." was the answer.
Best "eject button" I've ever seen. I bought a round for my tablemates.
Posted by: Iggy | Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 08:27 AM
I did visit High Fidelity today for the first time. I had expected to find something interesting after browsing 30 places but there was absolutely nothing except a phone booth that puts you on another domain once you touch it, similar to a hyperlink. Two years in the making and that is all? I see the three.js library stuffed in a client which makes it more laggy compared to using it directly in Google Chrome.
I did not even find a decent demo area, and most places did not bother with collisions either, you just drift everywhere through walls and floors.
It is Garry's mod, there is no chat except an irc room like in the 80's. After 2 years I had expected a minimal demo, the orginal three.js demos impress me much more than what I just saw now.
They do not even have an ocean shader. I also wonder what the point is of a place, a new world where everybody just uploads models they find online and bam there you have your virtual world. Second Life did have a unique system where everything was produced by the residents of the world. That was an interesting concept, one could admire the skill of their fellow residents. Now it is all mesh crap sourced from the net found on the cheap. Why would people bother to create and how could one compete with all possible models already out there.
I will visit again in 3 years, by then there might be chat and a demo area or some sort. It shows what you get when everyone can upload on the cheap, when land has no value, when space is free. It is like the geocities crap webpages from 1993. Free cheap webhosting pages but look what the result was.
Look what you find in opensim because it is cheap and free, all stolen models from Second Life and people do not even bother to put another texture on their sim. When virtual space has no value or cost associated what is the point?
Posted by: High Fidelity Visitor | Monday, August 17, 2015 at 01:49 PM
Gee, by stoner-Phil's logic, the more "real" VR becomes the less griefing should occur.
It must be based on "real" real life which is now totally absent of such things like racism, sexism and dickishness.
Yeah, make it more real Phil, that will solve everything.
Too funny.
Posted by: Joe | Monday, August 17, 2015 at 06:31 PM
what is missing in this thinking, is that in a RL encounter there is the ever-present threat of physical violence being retributed on the griefer
Posted by: irihapeti | Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 06:01 PM