Project Title: What is the Culture of Virtual Reality?
BASIS Advisor: Ashley Bulldis & Aaron Glanzer
Internship Location: Raft
Onsite Mentor: Bharaat Sharma
Virtual Reality is a place like any other with its own culture and customs. However, modern virtual experience designers all too often act as if the culture of virtual reality was just the same as any other, which leads them to make blind design decisions. My aim with this project is to, through virtual interviews with real virtual users and a rich understanding of user interactions, discover the composition of virtual culture. I will then compile what I have discovered into a narrative document that explains the culture of virtual reality through the stories and opinions of ten different virtual users from a variety of experiences and backgrounds.
My Posts
Compuculture: Conclude
Jun 01, 2020
Looking back on my experiences in VR, I can scarcely imagine how such a fantastic place can exist. It’s magical how parts of so many different worlds are pieced together by all the different people present. I believe that VR is a necessary experience for everyone, and I sincerely hope that its user base continues […]
Compuculture: Website
May 04, 2020
This week, I focused almost entirely on building my Ruby on Rails practice website. I’m almost done with the Rails tutorial now, meaning I’ll be able to start work on some larger applications with Raft. Modern websites are composed of dozens of moving parts, most of which you never even see. That said, even the […]
Compuculture: Why We Play
Apr 28, 2020
Why do players choose to play VR games? It appears to me there are exactly 3 reasons that can describe almost every player’s actions. This week, I took a dive into the farther corners of Rec Room’s VR. One game I played was named “Union City.” Union City is a ‘crime game,’ where players form […]
Compuculture: Helpful Participants
Apr 22, 2020
This week, I really got into the swing of virtual interviews. I’ve found out that it’s actually really easy to make friends in virtual reality — not necessarily because everyone is nice, but because everyone plays VR to have fun. Combined with the anonymity and security VR offers, and the result is that strangers are […]
Compuculture: Rails
Apr 13, 2020
This week, I took a break from VR to work on learning Ruby on Rails. I’ve discussed it before briefly, but to refresh your memory, Rails (as its name is shortened to) is a web development framework. Using Rails, you can create every part of a website in one place, including the databases, code, the website […]
Compuculture: Visitors
Apr 05, 2020
Welcome back to Compuculture! I’m happy to say that, this week, the first interviews have begun. Right off the bat, I’ve been floored by how excited people in VR are to do interviews. One of my major fears was that most if not all players would be disinterested in conducting an interview, but much to […]
Compuculture: Cabin
Mar 27, 2020
Welcome back to the Compuculture blog! That character you see there is me — in Virtual Reality! The first experience I’m using for my virtual interviews is called Rec Room, a free-to-play game in VR. The VR headset I’m using is called the HTC Vive. It’s a modern headset featuring 3D tracking. That means that, […]
Compuculture: Wireframe
Mar 21, 2020
Hello again! This week was spent nearly exclusively building a so-called ‘wireframe’ of an application for Raft. The virtual interview center’s design was also planned. A ‘wireframe,’ as it’s called in the tech industry, is a plan for the user interface of an application. Just in case you’re wondering, ‘user interface’ is how the user […]
Compuculture: Workweek
Mar 13, 2020
Nearly all of this week was spent working with Raft, learning new systems and starting projects. This week, I finished learning Ruby. Ruby is a popular new(ish) coding language used in web applications. Some of the biggest websites in the world have used Ruby at some point, including Twitter. Ruby is interesting because it allows […]
Compuculture: Simple Freedom
Mar 06, 2020
This week, I did research on the nature of digital communities and set up many accounts and systems for my upcoming internship at Raft. Research On the research side, I started at the basics. My question was “Why do people participate in virtual communities?” The answer was provided mainly by Cultures of Anyone, a book […]
Compuculture: Introduction
Mar 03, 2020
What makes a culture? Any place with people has a culture — a school, an office, a club, a street. It stands to reason that virtual spaces, just like real ones, have cultures as well. My name is Miller Hollinger, and the aim of my project is to understand and distill the culture of Virtual […]