VRChat

What if the PUBG lobby was forever?

- Tyler Wilde

On the last day of AltspaceVR, a virtual reality chat app that was shut down due to lack of funding before Microsoft acquired and reopened it, friends sang songs and took group photos and exchanged contact information in a big party. It was bittersweet, so much so that it felt anomalous – where were the callous internet people I’m used to playing games with? The ones who yell at me? After an evening in newly popular upstart VRChat, I can confirm that I have found them.

VRChat is a free-to-play, user-created multiverse where bored teenagers appear as miniaturised abominations of Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog; ten-foottall anime women who chastise you for looking at them, talking with the most unsettling text-to-speech voice available; or a melancholy Brian fromFamily Guy, gazing at the floor, repeating, “I’m Brian Griffin,” while continuing to stare – just standing, waiting for nothing.