How do I get a game out of the loop? In addition to the developer's operation and promotion, fans' secondary creation of the game is often also very important. So what is secondary creation?
This concept refers to a creative mode that adapts, quotes, imitates and plays on the basis of the original text, images, films, and music. For example, the various secondary videos on B station and vibrato, not only game fans love to watch, people who have not played the game will also be interested, and even downloaded the game for this purpose. Some game officials see the influence of Erchuang and also support the development of such a fan ecology.
So, can VR also break the circle through two-creation video? What kind of VR application is suitable for erchuang?
At this time, some people may say that just watching 2D video does not fully understand the effect of VR, you have to actually experience it. In fact, considering the current price and use threshold of VR hardware, the technology to more people still has to rely on the existing medium, so the industry is also exploring how to show VR, such as relying on mixed reality technology and so on.
In contrast, VR social applications such as VRChat rely on 2D video to show how it plays, because many of its functions are unique to VR, which is difficult to achieve on PCs and mobile devices. For example: free movement in physical space, full body posture tracking, high degree of freedom of limb interaction, and so on.
Based on VRChat secondary creation of the video, the number of plays on youtube can reach up to 46.28 million times, more than 1 million views of related videos have exceeded 150, the audience of these videos include VR and non-VR users, not only for VR to play a good role in publicity, and even attract some people to start using VR.
Since VRChat Dichuang video can be a big fire overseas, is there the same treatment in the domestic market?
VRChat creates the status quo
Before answering the above question, let's take a look at why VRChat looks good. First of all, VRChat itself is a high degree of freedom, customizable VR application, you can customize avatars, virtual scenes, games, activities and other content, you can also combine tracking modules to achieve full-body posture tracking.
That is to say, VRChat is essentially a VR social game, but how it is played can be decided by the player. Therefore, in addition to making friends on it, some people also like to show off their original skin/avatar, or practice dancing in front of a virtual mirror, or show off the tracking module so that they can make lying down and squatting movements.
As a result, there are also a variety of different ways to play, such as building virtual worlds and hosting events in them, or performing movies and stories with friends.
Compared with the traditional games such as Sims, Original God, Tomorrow's Ark, and Dongsen, VRChat has a higher degree of creative freedom, not only has a large number of virtual characters to choose from (custom images, anime images, live-action images or movie characters), but also the actions, dialogues and interactions are controlled by real people, and do not require a lot of post-synthesis. Chat videos or funny shows recorded with VRChat can be fun.
In fact, this kind of video with foreigners in the game is very popular, and some of the dialogue videos based on PUBG have received tens of millions of views. And vrChat on Bilibili, the first few hottest content includes dialogue with foreigners to say Chinese, cheating foreigners to charge Q coins, Japanese girls and American tough guy dialogues, and so on. Although 2D video is difficult to visually show the immersion of VR, it is enough to show how fun VRChat is in social, interactive, performance and other scenes.
Of course, many times the audience may stop here after watching the VRChat video, even if asked what kind of game it is in the comments, it is often discouraged by the expensive price of VR. In people's stereotypes, to play VR games you need to have a budget of ten thousand yuan (PC VR). Indeed, under the stimulation of Quest 2, the price of domestic VR all-in-one machines has also dropped to less than two thousand yuan, but VRChat-compatible VR all-in-one machines only Quest, Pico, iQiyi VR still need to connect PCs to run SteamVR to play.
On the other hand, if you want to achieve full-body tracking, you also need to buy additional SteamVR locators, such as the full-body tracking kit that jd.com sells including face trackers, and the price can be as high as nearly 3500 yuan.
For two creators and ordinary players, the cost of playing VRChat is not low, which also means that no matter how popular VRChat is, its high threshold still limits VR breaking the circle.
This is also why the domestic VRChat ecosystem has always been niche, and creators and audiences are far less than overseas.
VR ecosystem at home and abroad
You also have to buy expensive equipment, why are so many people playing VRChat on YouTube? One of the fundamental problems is that the profit model of the self-media ecology at home and abroad is different. We know that YouTube bloggers can turn on advertising revenue for videos, and viewers have to watch ads every time they watch a video, thus generating advertising revenue for bloggers. It is understood that for every 1,000 YouTube video views, the creator receives $18 in advertising fees, so the most popular VRChat video can get about $830,000 (46,280x18), which is equivalent to 5.245 million yuan.
In contrast, the B station video does not have an opening advertisement, and creators mainly rely on brand advertising in addition to the basic platform rewards. In the niche VR field, the channels for advertising are limited in themselves, and only a very small number of big UP can receive advertisements from VR hardware manufacturers or offline VR experience stores. Most of the rest of the VR video creators are generating electricity for love, and it is difficult to maintain continuous high-quality content output, so the domestic VRChat ecosystem is far less than overseas, and it is difficult to promote VR to break the circle.
On the other hand, after seeing vrChat videos, overseas viewers can directly purchase Quest 2 to experience, which can basically be used out of the box. The use of Quest 2 in China requires a more complex installation process, if you buy a domestic VR all-in-one, you also need to connect to the PC, adding additional costs and steps. This has a certain threshold for domestic creators and ordinary consumers, which is why VR is difficult to get out of the circle in China.
Of course, VRChat also has a non-VR version, and this article mainly focuses on the VR part, so it will not be repeated.
Domestic VRChat?
Since Meta began to vigorously develop VR social networking last year, domestic Tencent, Baidu, and ByteDance have also begun to explore related technologies such as metaverse and VR social. So can domestic manufacturers also hatch social applications as interesting and highly free as VRChat?
At the end of last year, Baidu's internal testing's Xilang platform showed the basic appearance of the metaverse, but to be as attractive as VRChat, it is not only necessary to improve the underlying architecture, but also to grasp the pain points of players, such as only low-cost VR all-in-one machines to experience immersion, high degree of freedom virtual space, highly customized avatars, and interaction with tens of thousands of strangers.
Continuously lowering the VR threshold and enriching the application scenarios and experience sense is the long-term investment direction of VR giant Meta, and the domestic VR manufacturers are also worth learning. At present, the domestic VR all-in-one machine application mainly relies on the introduction, high-quality domestic VR games are few, compared to the strict approval of the game, VR social application seems to be more conducive to promoting the domestic VR ecology, because it can not only socialize, but also create small games, but also can hold movie parties, dramas, art exhibitions and other different activities, an application has a rich use.
The lowering of the VR social threshold is also expected to further promote the VR video innovation ecology and further promote vr circle breaking. Therefore, from a certain point of view, domestic players are expecting domestic giants to launch a real, epoch-making social product.
Nevertheless, building a domestic VR social application not only takes time, but also needs to weigh the hidden dangers of high openness in the long run. For example, the Switch game animal Forest Friends Association, which was on fire last year, was removed from the shelves for involving sensitive content after only three weeks in China.
In fact, most social platforms have moderate platform supervision and moderation, but compared to text, voice or video social, the interaction method in VR is more complex, and users can even harass others through gestures, graffiti, and close gestures, so the existing supervision system may be vulnerable. Previously, the Meta VR social application Horizon was exposed to imprecise review, slow progress, and the system could not recognize violations in the virtual space.
In short, domestic VR headsets also need high-quality, low-threshold VR social applications like VRChat, which will not only promote the domestic VR dual innovation ecology, but also further drive VR into the mainstream vision. However, highly free and open VR applications are not only difficult to develop, but also a major challenge for security audits, and will need long-term exploration in the future.