A Mission to Make Virtual Parties Actually Fun

November 30, 2020 11:24 AM

Gretchen McCulloch explores the rapidly-growing world of proximity-based chat platforms (Wired) like Gather, CozyRoom, Spatial.Chat and Rambly. "What makes a party feel like a party, I've concluded, is that there are multiple conversational options that you can move between." Previously.
posted by adrianhon (24 comments total)

Yes, multiple groups to mingle with is key. For my Election Night Zoom party, I opened up breakout rooms for "Living Room," "Kitchen," "Dining Room" etc. and even the "Back Deck" for the smokers. (LOL) People wandered among the virtual rooms and said it was fun and worked well.
posted by PhineasGage at 11:28 AM on November 30, 2020 [7 favorites]

I looked at a bunch of these for an annual holiday house party we're hosting next week, and also ended up on Gather. There seem to have been a lot of these launched this year, for obvious reasons, leading to dozens of half-finished services. Gather itself is far from done (the character motion, spatial audio, and game integrations could all use work for example), but it looks good-enough, and closer to done than the other ones I looked at.

I'm actually excited about hosting the virtual version of the event now, which I wasn't before we went down this road. We now have a virtual version of our house to explore, with secret passages to find, games for guests to play together, cameo.com videos from minor celebrities, etc. I'm hoping to provide enough hooks for both the extroverts and introverts to find ways to have fun, a lot like the real party. It sits on a nice line between hosting a party and designing a video game.

One other site I'd call out besides the article's highlights is High Fidelity. I don't think it does video, but if you try out the demo with headphones the spatial audio effect is really promising.

Oh another intriguing one is dj3d.io, which has more of a 3D character model approach. Kind of like holding your party at a climbing gym? More of a tech demo than a service for now, but looks fun. I'm looking forward to the best ideas from this genre getting polished up into usable services.
posted by john hadron collider at 11:57 AM on November 30, 2020

(Oh, another way Gather isn't done is that it doesn't work well yet on mobile devices. I suspect there are multiple ways the half-bakedness of this genre makes it less accessible at this point.)
posted by john hadron collider at 12:00 PM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

"What makes a party feel like a party, I've concluded, is that there are multiple conversational options that you can move between."

More power to everyone who's trying to make lemonade (and $$$) out of this pile of shit, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's not a party if I'm staring at a glowing screen, and it's not ever gonna be.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:25 PM on November 30, 2020 [21 favorites]

I think it's interesting how this sort of thing is getting dusted off again. I remember when trying to have virtual parties and networking events in Second Life was a thing people kept trying.

Somewhat related have been the virtual music festivals hosted in Minecraft. Sam Sutherland interviewed some of the folks behind them a couple of weeks ago.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 1:14 PM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

This reminds me of the multiuser worlds we were trying to create with Java applets in 1998. Then Quake III came out and we forgot about it.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:16 PM on November 30, 2020 [6 favorites]

I think the writer hit on why it works better than Second Life; these are people you know. I liked the idea of SL but hated talking to strangers when I was just trying to wander around checking stuff out. Also, griefers and so on.
posted by emjaybee at 1:26 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Say you're having a Zoom birthday party. You’ve invited a couple dozen people

I'm gonna go ahead and stop you there, how do you know that many people that you would invite to a party!? I have like, eight friends, tops. Is this some sort of extrovert thing?
posted by mrgoat at 1:41 PM on November 30, 2020 [24 favorites]

I host all my virtual parties in the Phasmophobia asylum map on professional mode.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 1:41 PM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

For my Election Night Zoom party

Election night parties aren't like regular parties. There's really only one thing that can go wrong with them, and it's not the booze running out, someone puking down your garage door, or the cat getting accidentally microwaved.

The worst party I ever went to in my life was the Labour Party victory celebration on UK general election night, 1992.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 2:28 PM on November 30, 2020

The Red Dead Redemption option.
posted by doctornemo at 2:28 PM on November 30, 2020

mrgoat, I think it's an introvert thing too. Can you really talk to all eight of your friends in one zoom room at once? That drives the introvert in me absolutely batty. I want to slink off and talk to 1-3 people max at once.

I'm at a conference this week that is trying out wonder.me, which is another similar idea. And Mr. nat and I are getting married this weekend; the wedding is obviously tiny in-person, but we wanted to have a virtual component for at least the wedding party and other close friends and family who couldn't come. We may just do zoom with breakout rooms, or we might try one of the fancier ideas.

We did actually try gather, but we're worried that prox chat isn't something our older relatives will understand, cf this recent ask.me question. Whereas it seems absolutely everyone we know has had to use zoom for something by this point.
posted by nat at 2:32 PM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm gonna go ahead and stop you there, how do you know that many people that you would invite to a party!? I have like, eight friends, tops. Is this some sort of extrovert thing?

I'm an introvert but I found the underground electronic music scene and made a great many friends and acquaintainces that way, hence I have a few dozen folks or so that I invite to parties I throw, also involving underground music.

I've since become a DJ myself too, this also helps you meet people! :)
posted by neon909 at 2:40 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Does anyone know of one of these that has any kind of robust security? Ideally end-to-end encryption. I'd like to start pushing to use these among some groups I'm in, but a) I prefer to support companies that care about privacy, and b) there are some people who I know will be very resistant to anything that involves effectively surrendering their personal data to The Cloud in a way that isn't controllable.
posted by Acheman at 2:49 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm gonna go ahead and stop you there, how do you know that many people that you would invite to a party!?

Yeah, the best part of turning 40 this year is that only my daughter, my wife, and the guy at the fancy fried chicken place handing me my beer, had any interaction with me about it.
posted by sideshow at 2:52 PM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Champlain College (Vermont, USA) built their own, called In-Space.
posted by doctornemo at 4:36 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

The thing I find hard in these spaces is that all the natural excuses to end one conversation and move to another that I've built up over a lifetime don't work. I didn't realize how much of my group social interactions depended on returning to the catering table or finding a bathroom or a garbage can. Somehow, literally saying, "I've enjoyed talking to you. Now I'm going to talk to someone else," feels very strange. It's more honest, perhaps, but also very awkward except among people who know each other well.
posted by eotvos at 7:33 PM on November 30, 2020 [8 favorites]

Seems like it needs a TouchTunes that you load up with music right before you leave.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:00 PM on November 30, 2020

eotvos-- that's actually a thing I like about gather, or any of the options that actually has something to do embedded in it (like games to play or designated places for a certain conversation). You don't need to go get another coffee, but maybe you have a sudden need to play Tetris.
posted by nat at 8:10 PM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

Does VR Chat not allow you to make your own spaces and such? It’s been out since 2017 I believe. I want a VR headset just for that, and it’s not even necessary.
posted by gucci mane at 2:30 AM on December 1, 2020

We used Cozy.room at work because people used to go for a drink after the big monthly all company meeting and wanted a replacement.
It apparently worked out pretty well?
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:36 AM on December 1, 2020

I'm gonna go ahead and stop you there, how do you know that many people that you would invite to a party!? I have like, eight friends, tops. Is this some sort of extrovert thing?

Pandemic has shown me that I'm more extroverted than I previously thought, but I still lean mostly introverted. But how it works is, I know eight people. Those eight people at various times might have partners, so it's anywhere from 10-16 people. Then sometimes I myself have a partner, who knows eight people, and now I kinda know those eight people. And those eight people may or may not have partners. And before you know it, you have 30ish people on an invite list, and maybe 15 show up, and there you go.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:40 PM on December 1, 2020

Just heard about one the other day called topia.io that looks nice. With video. (Like Gather I guess.) Features a simple background terrain and objects with a hand-drawn look (default style). I'll create a new "world" or whatever if anyone wants to try it with me.
https://youtu.be/uhgBiRvsxPI
posted by thefool at 4:17 PM on December 1, 2020

For those who want a self-hosted open source solution that doesn’t take your data and lets you build and expand to suit your needs:

For a gather-like 2D experience there’s Work Adventure.

For a VR-chat-like experience that supports all VR platforms and 2D visitors on web and mobile there’s Mozilla Hubs.

I’m building stuff in both for a conference right now and having a great time with it. I would include links but it’s past my bedtime so I really need to put the phone down.. they’re easy to find online.
posted by antinomia at 4:41 PM on December 1, 2020 [2 favorites]