Against Gravity CCO Cameron Brown shares experiments, surprises, mistakes and insights from the first year of Rec Room, the virtual reality social club where you play with friends from all around the world. Social presence in VR is very real, and it creates opportunities for powerful new interactions - both positive and negative. Whether its creating positive social affordances or creating systems to manage trolling and harassment, Rec Room is a real world laboratory for exploring and defining this new reality. Presented as part of the VR-AR Track at Power of Play 2017 hosted by the Washington Interactive Network

1. Social VR: The Story Of Rec Room!

2. Who am I?
Co-founder and CCO of Against Gravity
Rec Room (Vive, Rift)
@treedemon
/u/gribbly

3. Background
20+ years in video games
Creative Director @ HoloLens

4. What is Rec Room?
A virtual reality social club where you play active games with friends from all
around the world!

10. What we’ll cover
Our social mission
The code of conduct
Discouraging negative interactions
Encouraging positive interactions
Getting it wrong in the right way!

11. Social Mission
Rec Room is a fun and welcoming environment for people from all walks of life.
Fun = you want to do it
Welcoming = minimize negative encounters, foster an actively helpful community.
All walks of life = skill levels, gender, nationality, philosophy, physical disposition,
intelligence/intoxication, etc.

12. Code of Conduct
All players must follow the Rec Room Code of Conduct:
1. Rule #1: Be excellent to each other!
2. No sexually explicit behavior or language in the locker room or public activities.
3. Children under thirteen are not allowed.
4. Whatever you choose to do in a private activity, still make sure everyone is cool
with it.
5. Sexist, racist, discriminatory or harassing language is not welcome in Rec Room.
6. Don’t mess with other people’s games! We don’t want to implement a million rules
to control your behavior in every game. Don’t make us.

13. Types of Misbehavior
Kids (that’s another talk)
Cheating/Exploits (that’s another talk)
Verbal harassment
Physical harassment

15. Verbal harassment
Who’s talking?

16. Verbal harassment

17. Verbal harassment

18. Verbal harassment

19. Physical harassment
Reclaim autonomy - below the “monkey threshold”

21. Ghost mode = fail
Overcooked (ghost metaphor confusing)
Reactive
People got flustered and forgot
Most people didn’t even know it was there

22. Ignore bubble

23. More...
● Mute
● Ignore
● Kick
● Report
● Reputation...

24. Positive Interactions
Fist bump
High five
Handshake...

25. Fist bump

27. Our learnings so far...
Set the tone day one (e.g., code of conduct)
Realize that many anti-harassment features can be abused
Listen to a variety of users
Expect to spend 10% of your dev effort on moderation features