The Issues Behind VRChat

I know everyone loves to talk about VRChat as the new metaverse, but I don’t think it will make it. It’s not just the usual, “STARTUP BURNS VENTURE CAPITAL MONEY ON QUESTIONABLY MONETIZABLE SERVICE TO BUILD USER BASE, THEN FLOUNCES” concern, but rather the fact that it is fundamentally limited in some ways. Most people don’t have high-end VR headsets, but rather the cheaper Quest Headset. Even the developers acknowledge the limitations of the Quest Headset. Yes, you can make beautiful worlds that are PC-only, but how many people will actually enjoy it? VRChat also has limitations regarding instances. When doing narrative gaming, you will have to start the world for all script events to take place, or restart it if your friend joins. VRChat also has the usual VR Shooting Galleries that were a bane of early VR, but ContractorsVR and other games do it fundamentallly better, with more realistic weapons and better handling. They are the closest thing to Gun Gale Online that we have right now.

Anyway, none of this is to disparage VRChat. It is a fascinating platform, but it is fundamentally just about standing around and chatting, or Erotic Roleplaying with an anime girl of dubious background in a private instance. Trolling has largely been reduced to a minimum, but I do miss the random insanity of raids of tiny dragons or anime girl cops or what have you. There was one person who spammed memes directly into my VR headset as well, which was disturbing. Now the worst experience I’ve recently had in VRChat was being asked to give my real life birth date to prove I could enter a fictional bar. Such is life, I guess.