5 ms·

VRChat: “There are more Japanese creators than all other countries combined”

77 points by numpad0 11mo ago

crooked-v 11mo ago
The Japanese market on Booth also seems to be much more original than the English-speaking market, or at least that's the impression I get from the ten billion English-description avatars out there that are the same "bone white goth girl with a huge chest" templates with different yet basically interchangeable overloads of tattoos and piercings.
- jeffwask 11mo ago
  Feels like there is some correlation here to the Anime / Manga industry, creating VR avatars and drawing manga characters aren't that far apart. Japan has always had a large pool of aspiring Anime and Manga artists, and this would be a pretty solid side hustle.
legacynl 11mo ago
what the hell is a 'VRChat creator'? They make VR chats?
- Analemma_ 11mo ago
  You can commission people to make custom avatars for you if you don't know how to make one yourself. This is a fairly complex process, at least if you want a nice one that has full rigging and mocap support using external cameras and body tracking. I met someone at a party who does this as a side gig and brings in about $15K/year from it.
  - nomel 11mo ago
    They can also include animations, emotes, outfits, etc. There are some artistically impressive avatars out there.
- numpad0 11mo ago
  People that make 3D models and sell them on Etsy style websites for ~$50 each. Others then gather and buy them. It require basic skills in Unity to use them. tbhimo, this is beyond bad omen to VRC and VR at large from profitability angle. To me it looks the exact path that Twitter went down.
  - t-writescode 11mo ago
    What is a bad omen and why? That most of the creators are Japanese? Why?
    - numpad0 11mo ago
      I'm a random person on the Internet with tinfoil hat on, but: Twitter and Mastodon "went down" this same path. Once bunch of Japanese users figure it out, it's over for a webservice. The system will be pinned at capacity while hemorrhaging non-Japanese users, and any attempted improvements super-proportionately hurt metrics such that the operation only grow in expenditures. Facebook never had this problem(they still have/had plenty of pornography, anime and not, even literal records of child abuse, just not key presence in/from Japan), and is in fact has been a tumbling snowball of cash. Those content creators aren't malicious, and there still would be tons of non-monetizable values in the system, but the system that are shaped in this form is set up to be a money pit. My gut theories as to why are that maybe Japanese populace has sixth sense about incurring losses, subconsciously doing for the sake of it, and/or that Japanese people have significantly higher dopamine tolerance that systems that are just right in Japan are way too overwhelming to anyone else - a prime example of the latter being Elon Musk, who appear to be in an incomparably better cognitive state on literal abused substances than he is just browsing Twitter normally. But whatever the mechanisms might be, the way I feel about "content from Japan > all others combined" situation is it's a "get the plane ticket now if you had cathedrals and national parks to see before you go" indication for the system.
- t-writescode 11mo ago
  Custom avatars and worlds. Avatar creation requires a strong understanding of 3d modeling tools and some level of shader coding in many cases. World creation is also 3d modeling, plus scripting to generate games, doors, etc, if the world has interactivity. It’s quite lucrative if you’re good at it.
Jhsto 11mo ago
On a related note, does anyone have references which would explain VRChat (and the culture around it)? I'm not quite certain if the models are primarily used for comedic effect, role-play, or more of as a 'Ready Player One'-esque alternative identity. I think I know cases for the latter, but I feel like as someone who has never understood VR as a form of self-expression or played VRChat, I feel like I can't have the conversation with them.
- cagenut 11mo ago
  People Make Games did a mini documentary on almost exactly what you're asking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ Its three years old so things have slightly matured.
- jauntywundrkind 11mo ago
  I find the vtuber effect pretty offputting myself. It's so flat. It's going to wander into entirely different problems (one with a much more uncanny valley), but i'm curious to see how the field develops when facial animation systems start being able to parallel people's faces more.
  - cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
    VTuber avatar expressiveness varies wildly depending on the software and avatar artists in question. With the right software and top tier avatars, it can be quite good, but high quality avatars are extremely time consuming to create and thus expensive so only the biggest streamers tend to have those. Some agencies also force usage of less advanced agency-proprietary software to prevent talent from using the avatars without authorization.
    - swores 11mo ago
      Not quite the same as Vtuber avatars, but what you said about their software makes me think (hope) you might be able to answer a question I was wondering about the other day: is any software/models good enough yet to be able to replace the face of someone talking into a webcam with a different, photorealistic face - either that of a different existing person, or an entirely fictitious face - in real time, such that it could be used to pretend to be a different person on a live video call? Or, if not real time, how about for non-live videos, is there a tool that can do it well enough to be convincing without needing any manual editing? And if the answer is no, how far away might it be? (I'd be curious to play with it myself if such a thing exists and is publicly available, but the main reason I'd like to know is to keep an eye on how soon we might see faked video calls joining faked voice phone calls in the toolbox of financial scammers.)
cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
My impression is that across the board, Japan (and to a similar extent, other East Asian and some Southeast Asian countries) have outsized presence in online creative spaces. Part of that comes down to sheer numbers, but I feel there’s cultural differences that go into it too. Having lived in Japan I found that relative to the US, the average person is more likely to be decent at drawing/doodling or have interest in other forms of art. I don’t have any special insight to why that’s true (if my experience is representative of reality — n=1 and all), but my hunch is that it might come down to an overall less self-defeating and more supportive attitude towards self-expression through art… in the US it’s common for people to completely dismiss the possibility that they could ever create anything of value, citing things like lack of talent. There’s also a consistent undercurrent of a disparaging attitude towards artists which also doesn’t help. With those cultural differences, it’s easy to see why one group could end up with a higher percentage of creators than the other.
- bongodongobob 11mo ago
  Government initiatives and subsidies. Big push to export culture post WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#:~:text=Cool%20Japan%20(%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%91%E3%83%B3%2C%20K%C5%ABru,high%2Dtech%20industrial%20products%22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#:~:text=Cool%20Japa...
- fidotron 11mo ago
  My experience is in the US they are no less talented, there is just a much wider abandonment of doing anything which isn't going to generate money, along with being disparaging towards anyone that does pursue things as an amateur. i.e. being a "sports fan" is more socially acceptable than being someone that actually plays a sport enthusiastically but not at a high level.
  - cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
    Yeah, I didn't word it well but part of that is exactly what I was getting at in my post. In the US there's a weird crab-bucket mentality thing going on where we shoot ourselves and each other down when making an attempt to skill up. Maybe worse, if you ignore that and skill up anyway those same people will take it as a personal insult and act like you're trying to be "better" than them. "You're one of us, stay where you belong." It's a truly bizarre dynamic. The money part is real too, though. It gets baked in early. I've had to try to shut out that nagging voice in the back of my head myself.
underlipton 11mo ago
Not surprised. 90% of Western VRChat users are furries *and weebs, and 90% of them just want to party. IIRC, a lot of the builders went to NeosVR and Resonite, particularly after the anti-cheat debacle. V-ket is one of the largest virtual conventions on the platform, hosted out of - wait for it - Japan. (The winter edition is currently on-going, if anyone wants to check it out.)
andybak 11mo ago
I'm one of the maintainers of Open Brush (open-source continuation of Google's Tilt Brush) and a huge chunk of our community is in Japan as well as other East Asian countries. The language barrier is really frustrating as I'd love to engage with them more - respond to bug reports, feature requests etc). (Open Brush can be used to create content for platforms such as VR Chat as well as being a way to create explorable spaces and artworks in it's own right)
arjie 11mo ago
Unsurprising. They have adopted these personas into the mainstream more than anyone else. Many of these personas also have visual characteristics typical of anime/manga. Anyway, I found it interesting that it's so mainstream that they have a minister in their government who claims to be attracted only to these fictional characters: https://x.com/onoda_kimi/status/1600805415909933056 https://x.com/onoda_kimi/status/1600805415909933056 >「早く結婚を」「子供を産め」 20代の頃から有権者に言われ続けてきたけど40になってもまだこの言葉をぶつけられる事にため息出ますわ。何歳になったら言われずに済むようになるのか。 > 3次元では国と結婚してるし、そもそもプライベートは２次専だって言ってるでしょ！！何度でも言うぞ２次専なの！！ Translated by ChatGPT to be > “‘Hurry up and get married,’ ‘Have children’— I’ve been told these things by voters ever since my twenties, and even now that I’m 40, I still get these words thrown at me. It just makes me sigh. At what age will people finally stop saying this to me? > In the 3D world, I’m married to the state, and besides, I’ve said that my private life is strictly 2D-only, right!! I’ll say it as many times as it takes—I’m 2D-only!!”
- m4rtink 11mo ago
  "married to the state" - now that's the spirit! :)
haolez 11mo ago
Never heard of it. Sounds cool. Is it useful for virtual office setups? With virtual screen sharing, etc.
- throw3e98 11mo ago
  No, it's like a nightclub, except full of anime characters and furries and other wacky avatars. Look it up on youtube.
  - t-writescode 11mo ago
    Or minigolf, board games, etc with your friends across the world in about the closest approximation we have of physical in-same-room interaction over the internet.

77 points by numpad0 11mo ago

The Japanese market on Booth also seems to be much more original than the English-speaking market, or at least that's the impression I get from the ten billion English-description avatars out there that are the same "bone white goth girl with a huge chest" templates with different yet basically interchangeable overloads of tattoos and piercings.

jeffwask 11mo ago
Feels like there is some correlation here to the Anime / Manga industry, creating VR avatars and drawing manga characters aren't that far apart. Japan has always had a large pool of aspiring Anime and Manga artists, and this would be a pretty solid side hustle.

legacynl 11mo ago

what the hell is a 'VRChat creator'? They make VR chats?

Analemma_ 11mo ago
You can commission people to make custom avatars for you if you don't know how to make one yourself. This is a fairly complex process, at least if you want a nice one that has full rigging and mocap support using external cameras and body tracking. I met someone at a party who does this as a side gig and brings in about $15K/year from it.
- nomel 11mo ago
  They can also include animations, emotes, outfits, etc. There are some artistically impressive avatars out there.
numpad0 11mo ago
People that make 3D models and sell them on Etsy style websites for ~$50 each. Others then gather and buy them. It require basic skills in Unity to use them. tbhimo, this is beyond bad omen to VRC and VR at large from profitability angle. To me it looks the exact path that Twitter went down.
- t-writescode 11mo ago
  What is a bad omen and why? That most of the creators are Japanese? Why?
  - numpad0 11mo ago
    I'm a random person on the Internet with tinfoil hat on, but: Twitter and Mastodon "went down" this same path. Once bunch of Japanese users figure it out, it's over for a webservice. The system will be pinned at capacity while hemorrhaging non-Japanese users, and any attempted improvements super-proportionately hurt metrics such that the operation only grow in expenditures. Facebook never had this problem(they still have/had plenty of pornography, anime and not, even literal records of child abuse, just not key presence in/from Japan), and is in fact has been a tumbling snowball of cash. Those content creators aren't malicious, and there still would be tons of non-monetizable values in the system, but the system that are shaped in this form is set up to be a money pit. My gut theories as to why are that maybe Japanese populace has sixth sense about incurring losses, subconsciously doing for the sake of it, and/or that Japanese people have significantly higher dopamine tolerance that systems that are just right in Japan are way too overwhelming to anyone else - a prime example of the latter being Elon Musk, who appear to be in an incomparably better cognitive state on literal abused substances than he is just browsing Twitter normally. But whatever the mechanisms might be, the way I feel about "content from Japan > all others combined" situation is it's a "get the plane ticket now if you had cathedrals and national parks to see before you go" indication for the system.
t-writescode 11mo ago
Custom avatars and worlds. Avatar creation requires a strong understanding of 3d modeling tools and some level of shader coding in many cases. World creation is also 3d modeling, plus scripting to generate games, doors, etc, if the world has interactivity. It’s quite lucrative if you’re good at it.

Jhsto 11mo ago

On a related note, does anyone have references which would explain VRChat (and the culture around it)? I'm not quite certain if the models are primarily used for comedic effect, role-play, or more of as a 'Ready Player One'-esque alternative identity. I think I know cases for the latter, but I feel like as someone who has never understood VR as a form of self-expression or played VRChat, I feel like I can't have the conversation with them.

cagenut 11mo ago
People Make Games did a mini documentary on almost exactly what you're asking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ Its three years old so things have slightly matured.
jauntywundrkind 11mo ago
I find the vtuber effect pretty offputting myself. It's so flat. It's going to wander into entirely different problems (one with a much more uncanny valley), but i'm curious to see how the field develops when facial animation systems start being able to parallel people's faces more.
- cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
  VTuber avatar expressiveness varies wildly depending on the software and avatar artists in question. With the right software and top tier avatars, it can be quite good, but high quality avatars are extremely time consuming to create and thus expensive so only the biggest streamers tend to have those. Some agencies also force usage of less advanced agency-proprietary software to prevent talent from using the avatars without authorization.
  - swores 11mo ago
    Not quite the same as Vtuber avatars, but what you said about their software makes me think (hope) you might be able to answer a question I was wondering about the other day: is any software/models good enough yet to be able to replace the face of someone talking into a webcam with a different, photorealistic face - either that of a different existing person, or an entirely fictitious face - in real time, such that it could be used to pretend to be a different person on a live video call? Or, if not real time, how about for non-live videos, is there a tool that can do it well enough to be convincing without needing any manual editing? And if the answer is no, how far away might it be? (I'd be curious to play with it myself if such a thing exists and is publicly available, but the main reason I'd like to know is to keep an eye on how soon we might see faked video calls joining faked voice phone calls in the toolbox of financial scammers.)

cosmic_cheese 11mo ago

My impression is that across the board, Japan (and to a similar extent, other East Asian and some Southeast Asian countries) have outsized presence in online creative spaces. Part of that comes down to sheer numbers, but I feel there’s cultural differences that go into it too. Having lived in Japan I found that relative to the US, the average person is more likely to be decent at drawing/doodling or have interest in other forms of art. I don’t have any special insight to why that’s true (if my experience is representative of reality — n=1 and all), but my hunch is that it might come down to an overall less self-defeating and more supportive attitude towards self-expression through art… in the US it’s common for people to completely dismiss the possibility that they could ever create anything of value, citing things like lack of talent. There’s also a consistent undercurrent of a disparaging attitude towards artists which also doesn’t help. With those cultural differences, it’s easy to see why one group could end up with a higher percentage of creators than the other.

bongodongobob 11mo ago
Government initiatives and subsidies. Big push to export culture post WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#:~:text=Cool%20Japan%20(%E3%82%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%91%E3%83%B3%2C%20K%C5%ABru,high%2Dtech%20industrial%20products%22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#:~:text=Cool%20Japa...
fidotron 11mo ago
My experience is in the US they are no less talented, there is just a much wider abandonment of doing anything which isn't going to generate money, along with being disparaging towards anyone that does pursue things as an amateur. i.e. being a "sports fan" is more socially acceptable than being someone that actually plays a sport enthusiastically but not at a high level.
- cosmic_cheese 11mo ago
  Yeah, I didn't word it well but part of that is exactly what I was getting at in my post. In the US there's a weird crab-bucket mentality thing going on where we shoot ourselves and each other down when making an attempt to skill up. Maybe worse, if you ignore that and skill up anyway those same people will take it as a personal insult and act like you're trying to be "better" than them. "You're one of us, stay where you belong." It's a truly bizarre dynamic. The money part is real too, though. It gets baked in early. I've had to try to shut out that nagging voice in the back of my head myself.

underlipton 11mo ago

Not surprised. 90% of Western VRChat users are furries *and weebs, and 90% of them just want to party. IIRC, a lot of the builders went to NeosVR and Resonite, particularly after the anti-cheat debacle. V-ket is one of the largest virtual conventions on the platform, hosted out of - wait for it - Japan. (The winter edition is currently on-going, if anyone wants to check it out.)

andybak 11mo ago

I'm one of the maintainers of Open Brush (open-source continuation of Google's Tilt Brush) and a huge chunk of our community is in Japan as well as other East Asian countries. The language barrier is really frustrating as I'd love to engage with them more - respond to bug reports, feature requests etc). (Open Brush can be used to create content for platforms such as VR Chat as well as being a way to create explorable spaces and artworks in it's own right)

arjie 11mo ago

Unsurprising. They have adopted these personas into the mainstream more than anyone else. Many of these personas also have visual characteristics typical of anime/manga. Anyway, I found it interesting that it's so mainstream that they have a minister in their government who claims to be attracted only to these fictional characters: https://x.com/onoda_kimi/status/1600805415909933056 https://x.com/onoda_kimi/status/1600805415909933056 >「早く結婚を」「子供を産め」 20代の頃から有権者に言われ続けてきたけど40になってもまだこの言葉をぶつけられる事にため息出ますわ。何歳になったら言われずに済むようになるのか。 > 3次元では国と結婚してるし、そもそもプライベートは２次専だって言ってるでしょ！！何度でも言うぞ２次専なの！！ Translated by ChatGPT to be > “‘Hurry up and get married,’ ‘Have children’— I’ve been told these things by voters ever since my twenties, and even now that I’m 40, I still get these words thrown at me. It just makes me sigh. At what age will people finally stop saying this to me? > In the 3D world, I’m married to the state, and besides, I’ve said that my private life is strictly 2D-only, right!! I’ll say it as many times as it takes—I’m 2D-only!!”

m4rtink 11mo ago
"married to the state" - now that's the spirit! :)

haolez 11mo ago

Never heard of it. Sounds cool. Is it useful for virtual office setups? With virtual screen sharing, etc.

throw3e98 11mo ago
No, it's like a nightclub, except full of anime characters and furries and other wacky avatars. Look it up on youtube.
- t-writescode 11mo ago
  Or minigolf, board games, etc with your friends across the world in about the closest approximation we have of physical in-same-room interaction over the internet.