Last week, I got to chat with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, one of the virtual reality gaming industry’s most prominent figures. Like many others, Sweeney believes that VR has the potential to transform how we interact online, especially as more sophisticated tracking systems translate body language, facial expressions, and other details into digital worlds. More specifically, he thinks virtual reality could make us treat each other better there. Unfortunately, this is almost certainly wrong — and if we wait for it to happen, I fear we’ll ruin social VR in the process.
During the interview, I asked Sweeney about how social VR would deal with the toxicity that multiplayer games and social networks already have had to address. “Both multiplayer games and online forums have this property of virtual anonymity. Other people can’t really see you, they don’t really know who you are. And so the sort of social moderating mechanisms in real life, and your desire not to offend people around you, don’t really adjust,” Sweeney told me. “Once your VR avatar really looks like you, and people can see you, and you can see them and their faces and emotions, I think all of the normal restraining mechanisms will kick in. If you insult somebody and you see that they have a sad look on their face, then you’re going to feel really, really bad about that. And you’re probably not going to do it again.”
Anyone who’s been bullied or catcalled knows that face-to-face decency has limits
At first glance, this sounds theoretically possible: if people are more civil in face-to-face conversation, maybe that means we need more virtual faces on the internet. Anecdotally, virtual reality developers have shifted away from photorealism because some players have found killing real-seeming people in VR disturbing. But there’s a gulf between a willingness to kill and a willingness to say nasty things, and even if a minority of people treat each other badly, that can ruin things for everyone else.
As anyone who’s been bullied, catcalled, or otherwise harassed in real life can attest, social restraining mechanisms don’t create a blanket aversion to “offending people.” They make everyone worry about offending people they see as part of their in-group — or people they could face punishment for bothering.