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.
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.
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.
That's totally understandable, but one would expect that it's something that's eventually grown out of as one ascends the ranks, and yet there's no shortage of very financially successful people who are in little danger of becoming impoverished who continue to act that way.
Agreed, I make a lot of stuff in my free time (cosplay related) and a lot of my older friends from Holland really frown on that saying it's "immature" and "I should do something more important with my time like doing a work course instead of playing dress up" :( The same with my projects at the makerspace, several people have asked me "why do you bother if you're not selling anything". People are so focused on money it's ridiculous. I just love the experience of dreaming something up and seeing it materialize. It gives me agency.
At least most of my more recent friends love it. But it's a bit off-putting.
A lot of my older friends don't think watching mediocre streaming shows or football is a waste of time though, no, that's "enjoying the fruits of hard work". Whatever.
I think part of it is that, in the US (and probably in many other countries too), the roles of maker and consumer tend to be more clearly separated. In contrast, among Japanese users, that line feels much more blurred.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of “avatar worlds” where people just go in and pick premade avatars, but these are almost nonexistent—or at least not widely used—by Japanese audiences. The main exception seems to be worlds specifically designed for trying on sample avatars, rather than adopting them as-is.
>...the roles of maker and consumer tend to be more clearly separated. In contrast, among Japanese users, that line feels much more blurred.
Seeing a Japanese singer I really enjoy listening to post clips of her Valorant gameplay with her own music playing in the background was quite jarring. I couldn't imagine something remotely similar happening with a pop-singer in the West. The closest analogue that comes to mind would be D&Diesel with Vin Diesel, where he played D&D (the nerd that he is) for a youtube video with the Critical Role cast.
I think there is a genuine difference in the respect/appreciation for the arts between the two countries. Americans seem far more proud of their ignorance of the arts and in their lack of respect for artists.
I wonder if it might also be related to Japan's stronger laws against slander/libel and lack of fair use. I've seen many cases of harassed Japanese creators being able to drag their abusers into court in ways that seem very alien here
I think this is in part projection of insecurity by low/middle classes, because rec sports are definitely a social status signal for upper classes. It's also "socially acceptable" to waste hours of time watching TV instead of hustling. Another data point as a counter is the popularity of video games. The only people saying they should just be for kids are aging boomers (in general)
I do agree though that there is a stronger social pressure to be enterprising. For young Americans I think the obsession is social media or youtube
well japan has comiket. unlike the Western equivalents like Comicon, etc. which has been mostly captured by corporates as a channel of advertisement, comiket remained a grassroots market, where ordinary, individual artists can get a booth to sale whatever creative work they have produced. this is almost unimaginable in the West.
surely that has an enormous impact on the vitality of the creator community.
Most other countries have full health coverage, it's really just the USA that has such a broken health system.
That doesn't mean we do more art. I am considered unusual because I sketch, badly. I think it's this "why would you do something you're bad at?" attitude in our western culture that kills it for us.
I think you just don't see peoples' artistic side in the USA. People were always shocked if they happened to see my home music studio setup (which I tried hard to make sure they don't because then they want to hear my music, then we have to both do a social politeness dance when they hate it).
It's not ok/safe to share in the USA unless you are amazingly talented and conform to generic norms.
Maybe artists in Japan are more conformist so it's more safe to share, maybe they don't have to mirror popular standards so it's more safe to share.
It's also impossible to make it as an artist in the USA because of health costs. I could hardly justify jumping to working for myself and I had six figures of work a year lined up because insurance went up so much and coverage at the higher rate was way way worse. It really requires parents/spouse boot strap your career.
"Share music but remain anonymous" is much more typical in Japan, I think. The whole Vocaloid music scene revolves around people using a handle and uploading videos. I can't think of many communities in the west that work that way, aside from maybe small EDM artists.
It's more common to know someone's name if they break out into more mainstream music, such as Kenshi Yonezu (he's done music for Ghibli, My Hero Academia and Square Enix...but some of his most famous work is under the name Hachi). There have been many others who have had that trajectory. Ayase (half of YOASOBI), Reol, Giga and Ryo (Supercell) come to mind.
I think there's also just more of a societal emphasis on craftsmanship and honing skill as its own end. The US has been smoking the capitalist crack pipe for so long everything is either about consuming or producing something of value for others to consume.
I think the gap comes from the collective/individual divide found elsewhere in Japan/US comparisons. It's just a bit less obvious w/r to art.
In Japan there is a presumed collective endeavor to creativity. That starts in school and continues into the professional world: mangaka will plagiarize from each other in the pursuit of a collective storytelling lamguage (a concept introduced to me by Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga, a great humorous short read on simple realities of the industry with practical advice). Someone who makes a bad drawing is given a lot of leeway to be "pulled back in line", for better or or worse. The professionals complain that everyone copies from everyone else overly much, and the pressure at the top level to continuously put out high level work is deadly intense, but it creates the high standard of uniformity.
But the US culture guarantees a lot of awkward standoffish scenarios because, if you make art, it's positioned relative to the worst framing of your ambition, and this typically means you are viewed as a speculator, someone who is plotting a way to cash in without doing something for others. It's far more acceptable to say that you are an art teacher than an artist because then it locates you within the structure of the firm and the state, which is the "hidden" collective tendency in US culture: be as individual as you want if it builds the nation in balance sheet terms, otherwise you are a failure. Thus the observation from earlier in the thread that a sports fan is more deserving of respect than an amateur athlete - the fan is a consumer, they are participating in the market.
If you walk into a computer/electronics store in Japan you're likely to see a bunch of Wacom (Japanese brand) gear out on display, and if you see that there'll be Photoshop open with the image of some anime girl that a previous shopper had drawn on the tablet.
I think you might be right. The Japanese seem to have a different attitude toward competence. It's just more expected that you get good at doing something. Cruise the bars of Japan and you're going to find a lot of girls who are pretty but not particularly intelligent, just like anywhere else in the world. But some of these approached me and tried to get me to give them English lessons. They wanted to learn English. I've been giggled at by the same kind of woman in the USA for even knowing more than one language.
Maybe in the countryside and smaller towns, but in Tokyo at least people express themselves through fashion and style quite unabashedly, especially in the parts with the largest populations of younger people.
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)
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.
I provide full livecast coverage by visiting every booth at Vket, which takes place in VRChat twice a year, and over time I’ve noticed some clear patterns.
In Japan, the market for 3D models and other VR/metaverse assets has steadily flourished. Within VRChat, it’s fairly common for users to purchase avatars from platforms like booth.pm and then customize them to their liking—sometimes as simply as changing colors, and other times by adding clothing, accessories, or other elements. The market itself is quite approachable: some avatars are used by thousands, or even tens of thousands, of people, while others cater to much more niche tastes. Either way, there’s something for almost everyone.
Originally, the focus was largely on avatars themselves. Over the years, however, we’ve seen a noticeable shift toward clothing and accessories. Looking at booths in recent Vket events, roughly 40%—if not close to half—of the offerings now fall into those categories. Tools such as ModularAvatar and Mochifitter have made applying and adjusting these items easier than ever, lowering the barrier even further. More broadly, many Japanese users don’t seem to find working with Unity particularly daunting, and that comfort level has helped form the foundation of the ecosystem we see today.
While comedy and roleplay certainly appear from time to time, many people treat their avatars as genuine representations of their identity. This doesn’t mean that identity is fixed—some users switch between multiple avatars—but there is often a strong sense of attachment. The avatar functions not merely as a surrogate in a virtual space, but as something that defines how they present themselves within that world.
This emphasis on originality, combined with a general avoidance of ripped game assets or avatars based on existing IPs (at least compared to trends outside Japan), appears to have played a significant role in shaping this distinctive Japanese VR culture.
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.
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.
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.)
It’s not something I’ve looked into so I’m not sure. VTuber software output can be set up to appear as a webcam which can be used in Zoom and such, so that’d be the closest that I know of.
It's a bit perplexing, but 1st gen VTubers were all 3D. They evolved through natural selection into current 2D forms, only slowly growing back supplemental 3D forms.
My guess as to why is that full 3D must have been extraneous cognitive load to viewers - xkcd wouldn't have been as popular as it is now if it had been drawn somehow by Rembrandt himself. It owes its success to Randall Munroe's minimalist art style. That kinds of things.
It's probably because high quality 3d is just much more expensive to do. You can easily do all sorts of effects in the constrained environment of a 2d model that take a lot more skill to pull off in 3d.
Plus, ultimately, the anime aesthetic is a 2d thing. It's a lot harder to make a 3d model look good in a 2d art style, as a ton of anime over the years have shown.
If someone is socializing in VRChat it would follow they are able to be social. So a bit of a non sequitur.
Would it be more accurate to say you have a categorical disdain for the way they are socializing? Why do you think that is (other than the obvious stuff, which seems to be more an anonymous internet thing than anything particular to VRChat)?
I'm genuinely curious because I see this attitude a lot and I don't understand it.
I have no issue with it if that’s your thing. The dozen or so times I tried it, I had the above experience. I deleted it and never looked back.
Others have had similar experiences. While others say it’s the best thing since the internet. Some people like ToFu. I find it bland and without flavor.
When asked “What are the general experiences”, I pulled from a few sources that corroborated mine and others experiences.
If the attitude of “This is bad” offends you, it is not my fault. Your personal tastes are not my fault. However, more and more reading can be done on the hellhole that is VRChat from others, from researchers, and from victims.
I stand by my sentiment. I will never see it in any light other than what it showed me. I choose not to.
As to the point about socializing. You are correct, they are indeed socializing. Again, research has shown that there’s levels to this, with engagement. Not having the social skills in the real world doesn’t mean they aren’t social online. You’re right. Have you been online lately in these lobbies? The verbal abuse and mental health issues are all over the spectrum. Socializing by reinforcement of mental illness isn’t what I would call healthy socialization.
Not saying they are all like that. I’m not a totalitarian. When the majority of experiences border on my own, I draw my conclusion. Until then, I assume it’s just me.
No offense, but you really can't possibly understand how bad this place is if you have never been in VRChat.
Picture a 30 something guy in a hotdog avatar telling children how he can't help be a pervert.
Picture playing a game of chess in a chess room that should be really cool for all ages. Then a drunk woman is telling the room about the blowjobs she has given. Of course you can hear by the voices that some are little kids talking.
If you put on a headset and go in VRChat right now, you too can have the same experience. Anyone who says this is not true is completely full of shit because everyone inside VRchat knows this almost like it is an inside joke.
I would never bag on someone for being socially awkward. I was so awkward as a teenager. Social awkwardness is not the problem at all.
Oh yea how about kids running around yelling the n word for no reason other than they can? That is standard.
If you never used modern VR, the immersion is incredible. That is what makes the VRChat experience so disturbing.
Most people with any sense avoid public instances. Most of the healthy interactions in VRC are almost certainly in highly curated Friends instances at the broadest and Invite or Invite+.
The VR raves though at least kind of work. You can do a lot visually with the medium and sound.
The problem is that generally VRChat is like a masked ball with a combination of alcoholics, repressed perverted losers, obnoxious personalities and children.
Anyone who downvotes this to me is suspect as being part of that ingroup.
It is one thing to be socially awkward. I was quite awkward when I was young too. VRChat is something else. Like the worst aspects of a 90s chat room but with immersion and real voices.
Some Japanese people use avatars to be v-tubers, and post talking head content on youtube or similar while mailing privacy. In some cases talent agencies require them to use avatars, which remain the property of the agency.
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
> “‘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!!”
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, consider how awful it is to be poor in the United States, and it makes sense why people work so hard to avoid it.
That's totally understandable, but one would expect that it's something that's eventually grown out of as one ascends the ranks, and yet there's no shortage of very financially successful people who are in little danger of becoming impoverished who continue to act that way.
Agreed, I make a lot of stuff in my free time (cosplay related) and a lot of my older friends from Holland really frown on that saying it's "immature" and "I should do something more important with my time like doing a work course instead of playing dress up" :( The same with my projects at the makerspace, several people have asked me "why do you bother if you're not selling anything". People are so focused on money it's ridiculous. I just love the experience of dreaming something up and seeing it materialize. It gives me agency.
At least most of my more recent friends love it. But it's a bit off-putting.
A lot of my older friends don't think watching mediocre streaming shows or football is a waste of time though, no, that's "enjoying the fruits of hard work". Whatever.
I think part of it is that, in the US (and probably in many other countries too), the roles of maker and consumer tend to be more clearly separated. In contrast, among Japanese users, that line feels much more blurred.
One thing I’ve noticed is that there are a lot of “avatar worlds” where people just go in and pick premade avatars, but these are almost nonexistent—or at least not widely used—by Japanese audiences. The main exception seems to be worlds specifically designed for trying on sample avatars, rather than adopting them as-is.
>...the roles of maker and consumer tend to be more clearly separated. In contrast, among Japanese users, that line feels much more blurred.
Seeing a Japanese singer I really enjoy listening to post clips of her Valorant gameplay with her own music playing in the background was quite jarring. I couldn't imagine something remotely similar happening with a pop-singer in the West. The closest analogue that comes to mind would be D&Diesel with Vin Diesel, where he played D&D (the nerd that he is) for a youtube video with the Critical Role cast.
I think there is a genuine difference in the respect/appreciation for the arts between the two countries. Americans seem far more proud of their ignorance of the arts and in their lack of respect for artists.
I wonder if it might also be related to Japan's stronger laws against slander/libel and lack of fair use. I've seen many cases of harassed Japanese creators being able to drag their abusers into court in ways that seem very alien here
I think this is in part projection of insecurity by low/middle classes, because rec sports are definitely a social status signal for upper classes. It's also "socially acceptable" to waste hours of time watching TV instead of hustling. Another data point as a counter is the popularity of video games. The only people saying they should just be for kids are aging boomers (in general)
I do agree though that there is a stronger social pressure to be enterprising. For young Americans I think the obsession is social media or youtube
well japan has comiket. unlike the Western equivalents like Comicon, etc. which has been mostly captured by corporates as a channel of advertisement, comiket remained a grassroots market, where ordinary, individual artists can get a booth to sale whatever creative work they have produced. this is almost unimaginable in the West.
surely that has an enormous impact on the vitality of the creator community.
London's MCM had a lot of original artists this year. Surprisingly not too corporate captures.
With full health coverage, people in Japan can pursue simpler jobs and get by, with more free time for artistic endeavors.
Most other countries have full health coverage, it's really just the USA that has such a broken health system.
That doesn't mean we do more art. I am considered unusual because I sketch, badly. I think it's this "why would you do something you're bad at?" attitude in our western culture that kills it for us.
And, yet, a Japanese mangaka living in squalid poverty with shitty health is practically a stereotypical meme.
I think you just don't see peoples' artistic side in the USA. People were always shocked if they happened to see my home music studio setup (which I tried hard to make sure they don't because then they want to hear my music, then we have to both do a social politeness dance when they hate it).
It's not ok/safe to share in the USA unless you are amazingly talented and conform to generic norms.
Maybe artists in Japan are more conformist so it's more safe to share, maybe they don't have to mirror popular standards so it's more safe to share.
It's also impossible to make it as an artist in the USA because of health costs. I could hardly justify jumping to working for myself and I had six figures of work a year lined up because insurance went up so much and coverage at the higher rate was way way worse. It really requires parents/spouse boot strap your career.
"Share music but remain anonymous" is much more typical in Japan, I think. The whole Vocaloid music scene revolves around people using a handle and uploading videos. I can't think of many communities in the west that work that way, aside from maybe small EDM artists.
It's more common to know someone's name if they break out into more mainstream music, such as Kenshi Yonezu (he's done music for Ghibli, My Hero Academia and Square Enix...but some of his most famous work is under the name Hachi). There have been many others who have had that trajectory. Ayase (half of YOASOBI), Reol, Giga and Ryo (Supercell) come to mind.
I think there's also just more of a societal emphasis on craftsmanship and honing skill as its own end. The US has been smoking the capitalist crack pipe for so long everything is either about consuming or producing something of value for others to consume.
I think the gap comes from the collective/individual divide found elsewhere in Japan/US comparisons. It's just a bit less obvious w/r to art.
In Japan there is a presumed collective endeavor to creativity. That starts in school and continues into the professional world: mangaka will plagiarize from each other in the pursuit of a collective storytelling lamguage (a concept introduced to me by Even A Monkey Can Draw Manga, a great humorous short read on simple realities of the industry with practical advice). Someone who makes a bad drawing is given a lot of leeway to be "pulled back in line", for better or or worse. The professionals complain that everyone copies from everyone else overly much, and the pressure at the top level to continuously put out high level work is deadly intense, but it creates the high standard of uniformity.
But the US culture guarantees a lot of awkward standoffish scenarios because, if you make art, it's positioned relative to the worst framing of your ambition, and this typically means you are viewed as a speculator, someone who is plotting a way to cash in without doing something for others. It's far more acceptable to say that you are an art teacher than an artist because then it locates you within the structure of the firm and the state, which is the "hidden" collective tendency in US culture: be as individual as you want if it builds the nation in balance sheet terms, otherwise you are a failure. Thus the observation from earlier in the thread that a sports fan is more deserving of respect than an amateur athlete - the fan is a consumer, they are participating in the market.
Ado is another big name that came out of the anonymous online music scene out there.
If you walk into a computer/electronics store in Japan you're likely to see a bunch of Wacom (Japanese brand) gear out on display, and if you see that there'll be Photoshop open with the image of some anime girl that a previous shopper had drawn on the tablet.
I think you might be right. The Japanese seem to have a different attitude toward competence. It's just more expected that you get good at doing something. Cruise the bars of Japan and you're going to find a lot of girls who are pretty but not particularly intelligent, just like anywhere else in the world. But some of these approached me and tried to get me to give them English lessons. They wanted to learn English. I've been giggled at by the same kind of woman in the USA for even knowing more than one language.
Government initiatives and subsidies. Big push to export culture post WW2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Japan#:~:text=Cool%20Japa...
Personal individuality in Japan is so repressed, people have no choice but to express themselves through art or online creative spaces.
In the US, there are more ways to express yourself, so art becomes less of an obvious outlet.
Maybe in the countryside and smaller towns, but in Tokyo at least people express themselves through fashion and style quite unabashedly, especially in the parts with the largest populations of younger people.
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)
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.
I provide full livecast coverage by visiting every booth at Vket, which takes place in VRChat twice a year, and over time I’ve noticed some clear patterns.
In Japan, the market for 3D models and other VR/metaverse assets has steadily flourished. Within VRChat, it’s fairly common for users to purchase avatars from platforms like booth.pm and then customize them to their liking—sometimes as simply as changing colors, and other times by adding clothing, accessories, or other elements. The market itself is quite approachable: some avatars are used by thousands, or even tens of thousands, of people, while others cater to much more niche tastes. Either way, there’s something for almost everyone.
Originally, the focus was largely on avatars themselves. Over the years, however, we’ve seen a noticeable shift toward clothing and accessories. Looking at booths in recent Vket events, roughly 40%—if not close to half—of the offerings now fall into those categories. Tools such as ModularAvatar and Mochifitter have made applying and adjusting these items easier than ever, lowering the barrier even further. More broadly, many Japanese users don’t seem to find working with Unity particularly daunting, and that comfort level has helped form the foundation of the ecosystem we see today.
While comedy and roleplay certainly appear from time to time, many people treat their avatars as genuine representations of their identity. This doesn’t mean that identity is fixed—some users switch between multiple avatars—but there is often a strong sense of attachment. The avatar functions not merely as a surrogate in a virtual space, but as something that defines how they present themselves within that world.
This emphasis on originality, combined with a general avoidance of ripped game assets or avatars based on existing IPs (at least compared to trends outside Japan), appears to have played a significant role in shaping this distinctive Japanese VR culture.
It's the next level of social gaming, being in VR makes the experience a lot more immersive and visceral.
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.
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.
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.)
It’s not something I’ve looked into so I’m not sure. VTuber software output can be set up to appear as a webcam which can be used in Zoom and such, so that’d be the closest that I know of.
No worries, thanks anyway
It's a bit perplexing, but 1st gen VTubers were all 3D. They evolved through natural selection into current 2D forms, only slowly growing back supplemental 3D forms.
My guess as to why is that full 3D must have been extraneous cognitive load to viewers - xkcd wouldn't have been as popular as it is now if it had been drawn somehow by Rembrandt himself. It owes its success to Randall Munroe's minimalist art style. That kinds of things.
It's probably because high quality 3d is just much more expensive to do. You can easily do all sorts of effects in the constrained environment of a 2d model that take a lot more skill to pull off in 3d.
Plus, ultimately, the anime aesthetic is a 2d thing. It's a lot harder to make a 3d model look good in a 2d art style, as a ton of anime over the years have shown.
A lot of them had 3D models and quit using it. So I doubt it had to do with the cost of making one. IMO the second one is much more likely.
People Make Games did a mini documentary on almost exactly what you're asking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PHT-zBxKQQ
Its three years old so things have slightly matured.
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If someone is socializing in VRChat it would follow they are able to be social. So a bit of a non sequitur.
Would it be more accurate to say you have a categorical disdain for the way they are socializing? Why do you think that is (other than the obvious stuff, which seems to be more an anonymous internet thing than anything particular to VRChat)?
I'm genuinely curious because I see this attitude a lot and I don't understand it.
I have no issue with it if that’s your thing. The dozen or so times I tried it, I had the above experience. I deleted it and never looked back.
Others have had similar experiences. While others say it’s the best thing since the internet. Some people like ToFu. I find it bland and without flavor.
When asked “What are the general experiences”, I pulled from a few sources that corroborated mine and others experiences.
If the attitude of “This is bad” offends you, it is not my fault. Your personal tastes are not my fault. However, more and more reading can be done on the hellhole that is VRChat from others, from researchers, and from victims.
I stand by my sentiment. I will never see it in any light other than what it showed me. I choose not to.
As to the point about socializing. You are correct, they are indeed socializing. Again, research has shown that there’s levels to this, with engagement. Not having the social skills in the real world doesn’t mean they aren’t social online. You’re right. Have you been online lately in these lobbies? The verbal abuse and mental health issues are all over the spectrum. Socializing by reinforcement of mental illness isn’t what I would call healthy socialization.
Not saying they are all like that. I’m not a totalitarian. When the majority of experiences border on my own, I draw my conclusion. Until then, I assume it’s just me.
That seems... rather reductive.
You give references, but their conclusions and yours seem to operate on different scopes and restrictions.
I don't use VR, so I don't have a horse in this race. What do you gain from this?
No offense, but you really can't possibly understand how bad this place is if you have never been in VRChat.
Picture a 30 something guy in a hotdog avatar telling children how he can't help be a pervert.
Picture playing a game of chess in a chess room that should be really cool for all ages. Then a drunk woman is telling the room about the blowjobs she has given. Of course you can hear by the voices that some are little kids talking.
If you put on a headset and go in VRChat right now, you too can have the same experience. Anyone who says this is not true is completely full of shit because everyone inside VRchat knows this almost like it is an inside joke.
I would never bag on someone for being socially awkward. I was so awkward as a teenager. Social awkwardness is not the problem at all.
Oh yea how about kids running around yelling the n word for no reason other than they can? That is standard.
If you never used modern VR, the immersion is incredible. That is what makes the VRChat experience so disturbing.
Most people with any sense avoid public instances. Most of the healthy interactions in VRC are almost certainly in highly curated Friends instances at the broadest and Invite or Invite+.
>What do I gain from this?
Nothing. Just sharing the experience of most on VRChat with links to studies and comments.
Hate it or not, it’s not a very friendly place.
The VR raves though at least kind of work. You can do a lot visually with the medium and sound.
The problem is that generally VRChat is like a masked ball with a combination of alcoholics, repressed perverted losers, obnoxious personalities and children.
Anyone who downvotes this to me is suspect as being part of that ingroup.
It is one thing to be socially awkward. I was quite awkward when I was young too. VRChat is something else. Like the worst aspects of a 90s chat room but with immersion and real voices.
So it's not just me...
Some Japanese people use avatars to be v-tubers, and post talking head content on youtube or similar while mailing privacy. In some cases talent agencies require them to use avatars, which remain the property of the agency.
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
>「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!!”
"married to the state" - now that's the spirit! :)
Never heard of it. Sounds cool. Is it useful for virtual office setups? With virtual screen sharing, etc.
No, it's like a nightclub, except full of anime characters and furries and other wacky avatars. Look it up on youtube.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
what the hell is a 'VRChat creator'? They make VR chats?
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.
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.
What is a bad omen and why? That most of the creators are Japanese? Why?
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.
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.
They can also include animations, emotes, outfits, etc.
There are some artistically impressive avatars out there.