VRChat Ludology

I quickly found by researching more about the history of VRChat and getting familiar and assimilated in the game that not so many people consider VRChat to be what it is, a "community with its own culture". I think first we have to understand that not so many people think about "cultures" as something that can be generated, but rather something that just is, that is there no matter what naturally rather than a human element. The users in VRChat exhibit specific social behaviour and customs that are influenced by the environment of the platform, that makes VRChat as a culture valid and worthy of such definition, because that's what a culture is at its core. There are specific subsets of players that are only known to people who interact with the culture, e.g the so called Mirror Dwellers. VRChat also has a certain reputation for many things that go on inside the community, which i'm not going to name but if you've spent time in a prevalently online community you're definitely going to figure it out. But, this is not a reason to be discouraged to experience the platform, those things are just naturally present with the mixing and assimilation of large-scale communities, in other words, you can't have a society without people just like you can't expect a million people to be all good and kind, that IS statistically impossible. But of course, in our society we like to throw everything in a single bundle, we like to look at the water in the well as a single source, your average person doesn't have the time to think about social or cultural implications, much less form an accurate train of thought for said implications. it's much easier to sensationalize many complex subjects into slop that is easy to grasp for uncultured minds culled by skinner boxes, it is one of the reasons as to why widespread hate is able to spread against marginalized groups, especially nowadays in my opinion.

VRChat is a game where you can be whoever you want through avatars, the large majority of avatars are also equipped with body tracking, provided that they are rigged correctly in the 3D Modelling software that they are made in to begin with. This works wonders for people (such as myself) who suffer from identity issues or who are dealing with complex matters related to their body image. To see the avatar i wanted, controlled by myself..I didn't quite grasp it at first, because i didn't see it as an extension of myself yet. It took me a while before i could truly see it as an extension of myself, many people do. I'd say that 90% of the people who take part in this platform daily do, it's a very important aspect of VRChat, if not of VR as a whole if we're speaking in terms of perception. VRChat takes it up to the max in certain aspects, you're able to let people see the version of yourself that YOU want, without being troubled by things that are outside of your control. You're able to express yourself the way you want without being troubled by the complexities of real life, and i'd argue that is a huge plus in my opinion, it almost carries my will to play the game alone, even if i don't interact with the people inside it much.

There are so many crazy and wild people in VRChat, many of them don't mean any ill will, but there are some that do of course as it is natural in social communities. Much of one's experience in VRC can be tied to "finding their own people", this platform's main aspect is the social one, and you should find your own circle of friends or your own niche subcommunity inside of it to properly enjoy the game. I cannot underestimate the effect that this game is having on my anxiety, while it does not fix it entirely, it certainly helps and that's what matters. It was mind-bending and eye opening to be able to control your own avatar with your own fingers (VRC supports full-body tracking), it felt like for a moment i was really just that version of myself that i wanted.

VRC is also a creative platform that offers the possibility to create your own worlds and avatars in pretty advanced ways. It's not like a drag n' drop situation with 5 premade assets that you're limited to, you're instead able to use a whole SDK to create your content, alongside with Unity which can serve as a standalone solution or simply the final stage in your development pipeline. I myself use 3DSMax to create my models, i'd like to create a complete world very soon, that will require some planning ugh..When discussing VRC Content people will always be scared to address the elephant in the room though, Optimization. When VRC opened up to Quest-only users it brought with itself a whole new set of issues, mainly the much younger demographic, composed by kids whose moms are probably away doing whatever while they're surrounded by an unspecified amount of plump and big chested avatars. But another big issue was optimization of the content on the hardware itself, the quest-exclusive version of VRChat is basically a watered down experience with much less detail (Who would've thought an Android would've been capable to manage this much..) and there are requirements a creator should take if they want to make their content cross-platform. For avatars on PC there's a 70k polygon limit and for the Quest there's a 20k polygon limit, can you see where i am going? Doing serious optimization for this type of content is really hard, not so many people have the time to decimate their avatar's geometry to make it optimized, much less do it in a good way that still preserves a good amount of detail without it looking weird. Even shaders on the Quest are HEAVILY limited compared to PC, the Standard Lite shader that's meant to be used on Quest versions of VRC content doesn't support Unity's Alpha maps and realtime lighting, it's yucky. When i see the backlash against quest-content i see where these people of coming from, some come from a development perspective, having to basically castrate your PC content for Quest users, a large majority of which are kids when you've done your best to convey your vision through complex software packages is almost insulting. On the other hand some come from a "age-gating" perspective, they don't want underaged kids to experience a platform that is also filled with a subset of people who are into erotic content, and having your content be PC only basically negates the access of that majority of people (kids) to your content. Although VRChat has a age-verification system in place it really isn't perfect and it doesn't really stop kids from going into public worlds and seeing all kinds of things (cough cough mcdonalds world). I think the age problem in this game should be improved upon, i'm not one to shun people but when kids are in a public world and i'm making "adult" jokes or talking about "mature" things that's when i start to have a problem with those kids. It's not even a kids issue, it's a parental issue, but most parents do not care about what kind of equipment they give their children do they?