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Comment by zmmmmm | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like they are a lot bigger than I would have expected. This isn't an email you write to 5 people. Perhaps that is a sign of the problem.

I worry that VRChat has worked its way into a local optimum that may be hard to get out of. They've appealed very strongly to niches - people with alternative lifestyles who enjoy the freedom to express themselves in unique and interesting ways. I think it's wonderful but it actively inhibits me from wanting to use VRChat because I don't identify with that. So how do they grow to 10x their current user base without alienating their existing loyal users? This is going to be a classic business dilemma for them I think.

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I wonder if that’s a lot of the VR world.

Years ago John Carmack complaining about not being able to present in front of large VR crowds, and discussions about avatar quality:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/carmack-wants-a-250-v...

I love tech and the idea of VR and I was struck by how … NONE of those things interest me.

I wonder how much existing VR just caters to the existing audience, less so others.

I recall a story that ages ago the NHL realized their core fanbase was men, and a lot of them boozing it up. They wanted to appeal to families and more fans and realized and knew it would upset their core fans if they started cleaning up the game … and fans, but they chose to do so.

As a longtime hard-core NHL fan, toxicity of the "core" fanbase is pretty irritating. E.g. the recent controversy over noise about the league mandating protective neck gear. Fans and players didn't like the aesthetics of it (re they were worried about looking less cool/tough)

Any attempt at broadening the appeal of the game is met with revulsion by the angry traditionalists.

Yeah and I think some tech or topics or businesses get stuck in that hole more than others and it's brutal to get out.

I remember the really old NHL, late 1970s / 1980s. Everyone drinking it up in parking lots before the game, in game fights and hits could be nasty. Different atmosphere. The idea that you might discard your entire existing audience for a hopefully larger one must seem like a mountain to climb. Still, it seemed to work for the NHL. It's a completely different vibe now.

I bought a Quest 3 last week. I have no interest in VR avatars but the games are mindblowing. And I'm getting a serious workout playing them. I don't think VR is the future of social interaction, but it's the future of exercise.

Absolutely 100% would buy again. I can't believe the amount of technology packed into the small box strapped to my face.

It's truly incredible isn't it? And when you add in that this device is barely more than the cost of a midrange phone, it's all the more staggering.

The novelty will wear off after a while, and the games that are purely based on that are not as exciting. But exercise is definitely one of the enduring uses of it that lasts beyond the novelty wear-off phase. I wouldn't exercise any other way now.

> it's the future of exercise

..for a certain demographic.

VR and video game based exercise isn't a scratch on real world training. Most people either drop off the bandwagon once the novelty wears off or they move onto more effective stuff (resistance training for anaerobic, cardio for aerobic).

As someone working in the social avatar space for >10 years, you sound like someone who has worked in the social avatar space for >10 years. :)

Once it comes time to flip on the monetization switch, you have find a way to bring the users along for the financial security ride (ala Roblox). The alternative is user base revolt and then rejection.

lol, no but i closely follow VR / MR for other professional and personal reasons.

Am curious what your involvement is? (if you are up for disclosing here)

I worked on, then eventually lead IMVU’s Product Design team.

Now I work as a producer for a creative agency where we make Roblox games for brand clients, including Roblox.

Oh man I only discovered Roblox through my kids.

I remember years ago thinking "Man someone needs to make some sponsored / actually branded content on here. There's so much room for fun, whimsy, and etc."

Next think I know my son is playing a game and him telling me "No dad, this is official. <X> company made this."

Shameless plug: Try Alo Sanctuary! It's a branded experience with a wholesome meditation feature. That's one of my products!

Nice! you have done some cool things.

Hopefully some people are not deluding themselves about infinite growth, because trying to appeal to an audience 10 times larger than the current user base would really mean sanitizing the platform and losing what made it successful in the first place (and the users who cared about it).

> trying to appeal to an audience 10 times larger than the current user base would really mean sanitizing the platform and losing what made it successful in the first place (and the users who cared about it).

This hasn't stopped any media company I'm aware of

As long as they successfully capture a larger audience than the original diehard users that cared about it, then the original users can go pound sand

Of course this generally winds up being "we captured a 3x larger audience for a while and have steadily dwindled since then" while the original 1x sized audience would likely have remained relatively consistent forever

AI allows people to 'express themselves in unique and interesting ways' far more than VR does. Text and image generation allow people to create worlds completely tailored to themselves, this time unlimited by the need for other people to play along.

So AI competes with VR both for users (The type willing to pay for cutting edge consumer tech experiences) and investment (AI is the big thing, VR is so 2022), and labour (How many researchers want to work in VR over AI?)

The social aspect of vrchat is what makes it popular. None of what you described has any relevance to that.

Fittingly, the equivalent projects started by the companies currently trying to stuff generative AI into everything fell completely flat.

People don't care about having AI generate exactly the world they want. People want the "wild"-ness and spontaneity that VRChat offers (finding a cool world someone made, running into real, interesting, people and hanging out with them). The issue being that as VRC grows/grew, they had to start taming that wildness (because it also allows for a lot of things not really compatible with monetization), but that slowly brings them closer to the over-sanitization problem that killed all the competitors.

> The social aspect of vrchat is what makes it popular. None of what you described has any relevance to that.

I bet chatting with Replika or Character AI is satisfying the same needs as VRChat for many of the people that either appeals to. I think that's what they were getting at.

I guess they could be saying that. I don't really see the appeal of Replika/Character AI, while I do of VRC, so I'm obviously not in the target audience for the point they're making.

Other people playing along is the feature here.

AI doesn't have the sort of cutting edge consumer tech experience of even a basic FPS it's a non-stater here.

I'd argue there are far more low hanging fruits in VR than AI right now. But you'd need more of a creative mind to see them than a technical one.

To make these “unique and interesting ways” somewhat more explicit:

AI isn’t going to let you hang out with your friend who is presenting as a nine foot tall naked dragon lady made of gummy candy, and experience getting pulled into one of her orifices and digested. It’s not going to let you pretend to be turned into her horny parts, either. With or without the experience being enhanced by various Bluetooth-connected toys. And AI’s not going to hang out with you in the flesh at a convention later on based on the good times you had in VR and make a lifelong connection, either.

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