New World Notes

Rec Room Always Intended as Cross-Platform & Not VR-Only, Says Company's Community Head

As Rec Room for iOS went to open beta, I mentioned how some community members have grumbled that the social VR world seems to be moving away from being VR-focused. But Shawn Whiting, head of community at Rec Room, tells me that that's never actually been the case:

"We think of ourselves as a virtual social club," as he puts it. "We're always expanding to new platforms since playing with your friends is what makes Rec Room so fun. We're always looking to increase the opportunities players have to hop in no mater where they are or what device they have."

I think it's fair to say Rec Room (as with Sansar), marketed itself some years ago with more emphasis on VR, until it became clear that few people wanted to buy a virtual reality rig. But since Rec Room was among the few social VR games on Steam back then, my sense is the small community of early adopter HMD owners fervently embraced Rec Room as "our platform". But Sean insists it's always been architected for cross-platform:

VRChat Hiring "Virtual Economy Manager" to Roll Out In-Game Currency & User-Generated Content Marketplace... But Not Deal With IP Infringement?

Since you're reading New World Notes, this is likely a great job opportunity for many of you; for everyone else, it's news that VRChat is planning to launch an in-game economy and currency with a user-generated marketplace:

We’re looking for someone to lead the development of VRChat’s virtual economy, currency and marketplace... At VRChat, we’ve got ideas about how we’d like to move forward with our economy [emph. mine], but we’re looking for someone with experience to help guide and lead the effort. As our Virtual Economy Manager, you’ll be responsible for the oversight, development, release and management of VRChat’s virtual economy, currency and marketplace.  

"We've got ideas" is a pretty open admission that VRChat management would like to have a virtual economy, but hasn't thought through all the implications that deploying a virtual economy would require. Another sign of that:

Syrmor Rising: VRChat's Virtual Reporter Attracts Massive Community, Real World Meet-Up With Worldwide Attendance

#syrcon2019 meet-up - photo by Gabrielle

How beloved are the VRChat interviews of Syrmor, the social VR world's best embedded reporter? Here's how much: Right now in Toronto, nearly two dozen people have gathered from around the world for what they've dubbed #Syrcon2019, a meet-up that the young Canadian filmmaker had nothing to do with at the start.

"I didn't organize it," he tells me, laughing. "It was a bunch of people on the Syrmor community Discord became friends and decided to do a meet up and it just got larger and larger until it became know as Syrcon."

They arrived from the United States and his native Canada, and from far farther parts: "Twenty people have come from a bunch of different places like Finland, Germany, and UK", he tells me. Yes, Finland. ("I didn't even know that country was real!", Syrmor says with ironic wonder.) 

"I'm meeting up with the people in Toronto but I didn't organize it or anything... We've rented out a bar and have plans for a bunch of things around the city," Syrmor goes on, "And they all get to meet friends that have made appearances in my vids."

As anyone who's seen Syrmor's interviews knows, they're uniformly funny, sweet, and positive (if also often sad and poignant). So notwithstanding VRChat's reputation as a hovel of trollish a-holes, the Syrmor community has followed that lead, becoming a chatty, social community -- one that's even inspired some real relationships:

I'm Finally in VRChat as Hamlet_Au -- What Should I Do Next?

I swear any time I create a new account on a new-ish platform, some total tool has always already taken "Hamlet" as an avatar name before I can grab it for my own. But no worries: Connect with me on VRChat as Hamlet_Au.

I'm logging in via Oculus Quest, so I my options are somewhat limited compared to the full Oculus/Vive client, but so far, the new account creation process is not horrible. I like how you start in a lobby all your own, and have an option to teleport to a small, private home location all your own. (Second Life, by contrast, has always been plagued by an on-boarding process where your avatar is dropped into an orientation area used by multiple players, then plopped into a Welcome Area usually teaming with many more multiple players, who tend to make the Welcome Area unwelcome AF. Most people quit SL, disoriented and intimidated, somewhere in this process.)

On the down side, VRChat's account creation process is still very beta and user-unfriendly for anyone who is not already a hardcore gamer, so there's a lot to be improved. Anyway, that's my early experience. Who else reading these words is in VRChat? Please connect with me in-world and share your experiences and tips in Comments!

Rec Room/Against Gravity Site User Demographics: 174,000 Uniques, Mostly Male, Notably Older Than VRChat Site Users

SimilarWeb, my go-to resource for online/mobile data, just shared with me some exclusive user data for the site of Rec Room/Against Gravity (the studio behind the social VR platform). While this doesn't give us direct user data on Rec Room the download client itself, it gives us a pretty good estimate on unique users over time, and demographics. So:

Total unique visitors over the last 12 months globally are 174,130.  That would track with my estimate that Rec Room probably has about 20,000-30,000 active monthly users.

As above, over 3 in 4 users are female, with the largest age cohort (34%) being 25-34 years old.

Compare and contrast that with SimilarWeb's VRChat site user demographics: 82% are male, with the largest age cohort (43%) being 18-24 years gold. This suggests Rec Room's user base is on average older than VRChat's user base, with 1 in 3 users aged 35 or older. Not surprising, since Rec Room is much more VR-centric than VRChat, and VR rigs aren't cheap -- typically, people outside college age can best afford them.

Rec Room/Against Gravity site demographics by location are also worth a look:

SL Should Adopt VRChat's Avatar Rankings -- And SLers Should Be Less Like Barbie, More Like Elizabeth Warren (Comment of the Week #2)

Great conversation in this post praising VRChat's new avatar optimization rankings (from Excellent down to Very Poor, for avatars over 70,000 triangles) -- including this great comment from reader "Finni Graves", who agrees with reader "Cake" that Second Life should adopt these rankings:

I've invested a lot of my SL esteem in the whole crazy avatar adornment scene. Then one day, after trying to navigate a horrible shopping event, I've got to stop being so selfish and hogging so much resource. What's the point of looking good, if I don't feel good? These ridiculous mesh bodies, heads, hair. clothes, and accessories are literally sucking the life out of our SL. We must simplify ourselves because this whole hamster wheel isn't working.

Cake is right. All of us need to be graded harshly and it is our duty to ask ourselves, " do I really need this?". It's also the duty of content creators to make consumers aware of the optimization of their products and to guarantee it. They should have to be graded too, at least on Marketplace. 

Finni says SL's many fashion bloggers should advocate optimized avatars and stop promoting resource heavy avatars which degrade the performance for everyone around them. And then, notably, likens these reforms to the plans put forth by the US Presidential candidate who's leading the charge to reform the American economy by penalizing people whose greed hurts society and the environment:

Why VRChat Players Love Looking at Themselves in VRChat-Based Mirrors

In case you were wondering what inspired Nylon Pinkney's latest comic about VRChat, reader "Cake" has some more context for you in Comments:

The mirror is a big social area in your typical VRChat room. People stand in front of it and talk like they would if they were primping with friends in a bathroom. Shaders also look slightly different in different maps depending on what you're using--so even if you have one set for your avatar, you still go to the mirror to check out what you look like on that particular map.

That's actually a fascinating analogy, and does a lot to help explain VRChat's popularity:

Nylon Pinkney Is Online - Why Virtual Mirrors Are Popular in VRChat

Watch: Daily Show Features VR-Based Baptism, Hilariously Misses the Point

The Daily Show's Ronny Chieng featured virtual reality-based baptisms in a recent segment, hilariously noting the strangeness of AltspaceVR avatars ("God created man in his own image, not in the image of a purple dildo!"), while just as hilariously missing the actual point* by asking, "Does a virtual baptism even count?" As it happens, I just asked that very question to Bishop DJ Soto of VR Church, who's featured in the Daily Show segment, and who had a very substantial answer:

"First and foremost, we believe the sacraments of baptism and communion to be symbolic. They are an external expression of an internal experience," as DJ puts it. "We don’t ascribe to the literal transformation of the bread into the body of Christ. We don’t believe that baptism literally washes away guilt and sin. We believe these sacraments are symbolic. Therefore, in the spirit of this symbolism, VR Church celebrates VR sacraments."

Still, Bishop Soto tells me he took the Daily Show segment in, well, good faith:

VRChat Site User Demographics: 430,000 Uniques, Mostly Male and Over 25

SimilarWeb, my go-to resource for online/mobile data, just kindly shared with me some pretty interesting behind-the-paywall demographic on VRChat's site. (The company has not publicly released much concrete, industry standard user data numbers, beyond saying 30% of daily users are logged in via a head-mounted VR display.)

Here's SimilarWeb's age and gender demographics for the site:

• Gender Distribution
• Male: 81.5%
• Female: 18.5%
• Age Distribution
• 18 - 24: 42.8%
• 25 - 34: 32.1%
• 35 - 44: 12.1%
• 45 - 54: 6.6%
• 55 - 64: 3.8%
• 66+: 2.6%

The gender breakdown, alas, is not a surprise -- as embedded reporter Syrmor says, "VRChat is really disproportionately male".

The VRChat site age breakdown, however, is fairly notable: A strong majority (about 58%) are over 25, while 1 in 4 are 35 or older. That runs counter to the general assumption that VRChat users are mostly teens and early 20s.

In terms of unique users, VRChat site visits over time give us a pretty good guess at active unique users of VRChat: