Making a Metaverse That Matters

CHAPTER 7VRChat and Finding Furry Anime Utopia

Chris “Strasz” Hornyak was only a casual VRChat player at first, randomly exploring the platform with his spouse, both wearing VR headsets while at home in the same room, adventuring in the virtual world while trying not to whack into each other in real life.

Then COVID-19 came calling. During the lockdown, Chris tells me, “Exploring VRChat effectively became our way of going on dates.”

VRChat became something more transformative to Strasz, a longtime virtual world enthusiast and MMO gamer, when he descended by elevator into a massive virtual rave in a basement space with glass and metal floors:

“And I remember going into this environment and everybody was dancing, and I was shoulder to shoulder with people, and there's like lights and music playing and everything was going on and I got so overwhelmed,” as he describes the experience now. “Everyone was dancing and swaying, and I kept expecting to feel their elbows bump mine, I kept expecting to feel their body heat. I completely felt like I was there and I've never gotten that elsewhere.”

It also connected him to the Metaverse in a direct and profound way. “I read Snow Crash growing up and I wanted to visit the Black Sun so bad and it was the closest I ever felt to having that experience.”

While it may come as a surprise to anyone who assumed Meta would shape the future of the Metaverse, its purest contemporary incarnation so far resides in VRChat, a small startup first bootstrapped ...