Just in time for the weekend, VRChat for Android is now freely available here on Google Play.
I'm an iPhone nativist myself, but if you do have an Android, dear reader, I hope you give this app a try and report your experiences back here.
Prior to this, it was in closed Alpha and only available for VRChat+ paying subscribers. Despite that, it's already been downloaded over 50,000 times, mostly by subscribers. (Which is another way of saying that there are upwards of 50,000 paying VRChat+ subscribers -- and probably at least double that number, factoring in all the VRChat+ subscribers who own an iPhone.)
And yes, the Android app supports VOIP and text chat, the VRChat team just confirmed with me. I suspect that will be the main use case for mobile, since it's PC and VR are better for immersion, exploring, and content creation.
The VRChat peeps tell me the Android app has been mainly for social interaction:
VRChat finally launched official monetization last week right before the Thanksgiving holiday, so it's likely most metaverse folks in the US missed this long-awaited, much-considered feature. (It was announced last May.) Here's the basic gist:
Paid Subscriptions allow everyone in VRChat to directly support the creators they love with dramatically less friction. At the same time, Paid Subscriptions also empower creators to build far more interesting creations with their supporters in mind. Creators can now easily create VIP rooms in their instances that only their subscribers can access. Or maybe they could have a special car or jet that is only available if you’re a supporter. Or maybe supporters get a special icon above their head in their instances. Or, for event runners, priority or exclusive access to your events!
How Do Paid Subscriptions Work?
All VRChat players can now purchase VRChat Credits with real-life money. You can spend these on certain perks that creators set via Groups. Generally, you’ll go to a creator’s Group page, click the “Store” button, and then be presented with a list of things you can purchase. These individual perks are known as Paid Subscriptions! You can purchase one for a certain amount of time: say a month, three months, a year. These are currently not recurring – but will be in the future!
Notable for NWN readers, the payment processing is provided by Linden Lab spinoff company Tilia. So Second Life and VRChat now share the same payment back-end.
Even more notable, the VRChat creators only take 50% of revenue from these paid subscriptions, with 30% going to the platform (Steam, etc.) and VRChat the actual company taking just 20%.
As I've written before, there's well over 1000 VRChat creators already monetizing on other third party platforms (YouTube, Patreon, etc.) , so the question is whether they'll also add this official payment channel.
So I asked some of them! Here's takes from three top VRChat creators, which roughly fall into the Good or Mixed category:
Challenge #1: VRChat's user base of some 5-10 million people are from all over the world, some of whom (probably 10,000-20,000 of that number) are deaf in real life, and so can't communicate through VOIP.
Challenge #2: Sign language "dialects" vary from country to country, with no one standard.
Challenge #3: VR-based hand tracking for most VRChat users is technically limited, especially as most VR users are on the Quest 2.
Solution: Create a new, international, VRChat-based sign language dialect that accommodates the most popular hand tracking options (i.e. for the Quest 2) -- and a global community of deaf people and their supporters, to teach it to each other.
This is how both the affordances and limitations of technology create new forms of online culture, often for bad -- but as here, sometimes for absolutely good.
Watch the full report by in-world reporter PHIA, and be sure to watch to minute 6:15 or so for the real hit in the feels. This community was also reported on by Syrmor in 2019, but it looks to have evolved quite a bit since.
For years, a programmer kept having a recurring dream -- more a nightmare, maybe -- where they were lost in an endless library containing all the knowledge of the universe ever written, but where the seeker never finds the answers they are searching for. The dream was inspired, of course, by Jorge Luis Borges’ legendary short story “The Library of Babel”, which has been haunting readers, mathematicians, and artists since 1941:
The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors…
Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book, perhaps the catalog of catalogs; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the hexagon in which I was born. Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite.
And for the programmer, who goes by the name “Mahu”, these words were the source of that dream they kept having for some 7 to 8 years.
“I'd say that a big part of the way I experience the world is through my spatial perception of my surroundings,” they explain. “It tends to be one of the only things I remember about a dream if I remember anything at all.”
But rather than just keep letting the concept remain a nightmare, Mahu did an unexpected thing:
Roblox — a company that builds a hugely popular virtual experiences platform, recently introduced its own spin on video chat, and even created an in-Roblox career center — is “transitioning away” from remote work and will be asking “a number of our remote employees to begin working from our headquarters in San Mateo by next summer,” CEO David Baszucki wrote in an email to staff shared publicly on Tuesday...
Baszucki also says that virtual working environments just aren’t as good as in-person ones: “While I’m confident we will get to a point where virtual workspaces are as engaging, collaborative, and productive as physical spaces, we aren’t there yet.” Seems like the company has some work to do to meet its own goal of having Roblox employees “spend more time using Roblox for remote meetings than with video” within the next five years.
Bad news for Roblox employees who hate the work commute to San Mateo. (Even though it's near a bomb ass ramen joint.)
At the same time, I wouldn't interpret this as suggesting metaverse platform companies in general aren't ready to work within the virtual world platforms they create, at least on a part-time basis:
I keep saying VRChat resembles Second Life in its golden age, because in both cases, amazingly ambitious community-made inventions keep popping up like magic mushrooms when you weren't looking.
Which brings us to this project by VRC creator Myro P: A theme park builder similar to the classic game Roller Coaster Tycoon, but in full person VR. And not only do you get to create and simulate the rides, it comes with 500 NPC customers with their own AI routines.
"Coding the NPCs was probably the trickiest part," Myro allows, "and it's still a work in progress. I programmed an AI for the NPCs; for instance, when they're hungry, they'll order food, and when they're tired, they'll rest on benches until they feel better. I had to implement my own pathfinding algorithm because I couldn't use Unity's built-in system."
As with many (most?) other VRChat projects, Myro is making this game free-to-play, something for the community to enjoy.
"When I was in high school, 'Roller Coaster Tycoon' was my favorite game, and I felt like a game similar to 'Roller Coaster Tycoon' would work pretty well in VR," he explains. "I also liked the idea of being a visitor of my own theme park, which is why I added the scaling feature."
In case you missed it, VRChat launched the Alpha version of its Android mobile app last week. (User-made tutorial above.) It's already been downloaded 10,000 times, though to be honest -- given VRChat's user base of 5-10 million active users -- on first glance, I'd have expected a larger download rate. Then again, the Android app is basically the Quest 2 version of VRChat, which means lower graphics quality and less interactivity options.
Then again (again), VRChat will need to get the mobile version right to grow the user base beyond its hardcore user base primarily composed of VR owners. Like I mention in Making a Metaverse That Matters, VRChat's user base was originally 30% VR-based, but that fairly quickly changed:
Occasionally VRCers ask how he created it, but, "I also like to just watch people play around and see what they come up with in Thad Room. They sometimes even surprise me with things I haven't thought of myself. Like when someone found out that they can pick themself up when they use the grappling hook and grapple onto some object in their other hand." (That's actually a glitch in his scripting, he admits, but now won't fix, "because it's way too cool.")
Thad also patiently explained how he created it, and... I'm only slightly less confused. The explanation is almost as brain-melting as the actual experience.
The trouble with writing a book about the Metaverse is you end up too busy to write about what's currently happening across the best metaverse platforms.
The other challenge: VRChat is primarily played on Steam and through the Quest, both of which take a 30% cut. As compared, for example, to Patreon, which only takes a 5-12% commission; top YouTubers usually get into direct sponsorship deals, and pay YouTube zero percent in commissions. So creators already established on those platforms have more incentive to encourage fans to support them that way, and not through in-app payments.
All that said, I reached out to some top VRChat creators for their take on monetization:
