Zoom Not Cutting It for You? Try Exploring a Virtual World

If you’re craving more from your video chats, think outside the box. From Second Life to Online Town, there are plenty of places to gather while staying at home.
One red wooden figure surround by a group of plain wooden figures on blue background
Traditional video conferencing apps like Zoom essentially force everyone into a "virtual sharing circle," where only one person can talk at a time and awkward eye contact abounds.Photograph: Getty Images

In a matter of weeks, Zoom has gone from obscure business app to household name. It’s where college kids throw parties and how elementary school students attend class (at least until their teachers get Zoombombed). “Zoom happy hour” has officially entered the nomenclature, and some people are even suffering from “Zoom fatigue.” Millions of Americans have now been confined to their homes for weeks or months, so it’s no surprise they’re relying more on video chat. What’is less expected is that a piece of corporate software, often terrible at mimicking real social interaction, has emerged as the hottest app of the pandemic.

On Zoom, the conversational format is essentially "virtual sharing circle," where one person can talk at a time and you're never completely sure whose turn is next. Social gatherings are transformed into formal meetings—exactly what Zoom was designed to facilitate but not what you always want. Fun backgrounds aren’t enough to feel like you’re at a real party or hangout, or at least not a good one, especially if you’re spending most of the time staring at your own face on screen.

It’s time to think out of the Zoom box. Why not add a virtual world to your next video call? Having a place to socialize, even a digital one, can make connecting through a computer far more enjoyable—even if you think you don’t like videogames. Virtual worlds like Second Life, as well as massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, have been around for decades, but the Covid-19 lockdown presents an opportunity to revisit them and to explore what we want in an online destination. “I think the new demands of the shelter-in-place orders may prompt interesting new designs for virtual spaces and also help us rethink assumptions,” says Nick Yee, the cofounder of Quantic Foundry, a gaming market research firm, and the author of The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us—and How They Don’t. “Why do we need virtual chairs if our virtual bodies never get tired?”

A more recent experiment in digital space making is Online Town, which launched in early April. The free program was created by Cyrus Tabrizi, Phillip Wang, and Kumail Jaffer, three friends who together formed a tech collective called Siempre to develop projects that, they say, “help us support fulfilling long-term relationships.” Previous inventions include a wristband with pictures of friends and family; tap one and you automatically call that person. They had been mulling over the idea for Online Town for months when the pandemic arrived and provided the impetus to finally get it up and running.

Online Town can be thought of as a mashup between Zoom and an 8-bit videogame. It allows you to have multiple separate video chats at the same time. You can enter and exit them, just as you might at a real party or event, except here you navigate a pixelated avatar around one of its virtual worlds. The founders say around 100,000 people have visited Online Town’s website since its inception, and roughly 3,000 people enter one of its private “rooms” each day. “The thing that surprised me was just how universally delightful it was to people,” says Tabrizi.

“It's like Zoom, except slightly more gamified,” says Katherine Lin, a startup cofounder who recently used Online Town to organize a nearly eight-hour high school reunion. “Maybe it's less tiring than Zoom.”

The founders of Online Town hanging out on the site.Courtesy of Siempre

The best part about Online Town is that it’s more than a novelty; it works well. During a 40-minute interview I did with Tabrizi and Jaffer within the site, there was barely any lag and zero noticeable glitches. The program sends audio and video data peer-to-peer using the open source software WebRTC. That means your video chat is sent directly to the person you’re chatting with, rather than being stored on Online Town’s servers. Relying on peer-to-peer technology made the project easy to scale and means Siempre has no way of spying on your video calls.

Anyone can create a room in Online Town. When you join one, you’re transported to a virtual two-dimensional map that can be navigated via a keyboard. Players can choose from a handful of tiny avatars reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. If you walk up to another person, a seamless video chat will begin. Start walking away and the call will gradually fade out. You’re free to mingle and form smaller groups, just like at a real party. Also like real life, being in a shared virtual space gives you something else to do besides make awkward eye contact or stare at someone’s forehead for the whole conversation. “Your focus is on your little avatar running around instead of on other people's faces and social cues,” says Lin. Researchers have found that being forced to stare at other people over video chat for long periods can be exhausting, in part because the brain has limited access to information like nonverbal cues.

For now, Online Town lets users choose between six pre-drawn maps, including generic destinations like Office and Apartment, as well as landmarks like Times Square and Dolores Park in San Francisco. The founders say they’re open to adding more maps in the future, and they’ve already created a number of custom designs for their own use, including one resembling the outside of Tabrizi’s high school. Most of the maps are crude creations whipped up in Photoshop. The point isn’t to mimic real life but to give you and your friends a place to explore while you talk and hang out with one another. Each map is filled with charming Easter eggs for players to uncover.

Jaffer says that as he and his cofounders began experimenting with Online Town, they noticed that many people weren’t actually using it to host gatherings with side conversations. Lin also said that those who attended her high school reunion never splintered off into groups, choosing instead to remain in one big discussion. “Somehow, it’s still nice that it’s this physical-ish space that you can just come in and out of really easily,” says Jaffer.

During the pandemic, videogames are becoming destinations every bit as legitimate as their analog counterparts, as WIRED’s Cecilia D’Anastasio wrote earlier this week. Just look at how many people are obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons or even get married in it, despite the game having a notoriously clunky chat interface. I recently took a trip to Anteater Island in Second Life, where UC Irvine professor Tom Boellstorff is teaching his Digital Cultures class this semester. Boellstorff, an anthropologist, has studied Second Life nearly since its inception in 2003, but this is the first time he’s teaching class using the program.

Boellstorff custom-built Anteater to include an office, spaces for lectures and group projects, areas to hang out, and even a roller coaster (which obviously I rode). He uses the island in tandem with Zoom for classes, partially because Second Life doesn’t run well on older computers and can’t be accessed from a smartphone. So far, the setup is working well. Being in the same virtual space “does seem to have supported interactions that would not have happened if only using Zoom or a similar conference call program,” he says.

I visited Anteater on Wednesday, during a class discussion about the week’s assigned reading. “Sitting” among the students, in a lecture hall overlooking the ocean, I felt much more engaged than I have attending more traditional online classes. After the students broke out into groups, I watched the sun set over the island’s peaceful lake. Boellstorff is one of many people teaching in Second Life—there’s even an annual Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference, which of course takes place virtually.

Moving all your classes and work meetings to a virtual world like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, or even Animal Crossing wouldn’t necessarily be easy. The classroom or office can have hierarchies and dynamics that can’t always be replicated easily on a cute island overseen by a tanuki who loves putting everyone in debt. “Virtual worlds are great for socializing but not so great for work meetings; this is because people in virtual worlds get to be themselves, which isn’t always appropriate in a work context,” says Richard A. Bartle, a computer science professor at the University of Essex who cowrote the first virtual world, MUD, in 1978. “As a professor, sure, I could deliver a lecture in a massively multiplayer online game, and indeed I’ve done so, but my authority comes from my identity as a professor, not from my identity as a level-80 white mage.”

If going full white mage feels like too much, Online Town might strike the right balance between a vanilla video chat and a full-on virtual world where your voice and body are transformed. Even just starting a Zoom call while playing Animal Crossing with a friend might do the trick. If you’re craving more from your video chats, try finding a virtual place, any that you choose, where you and your loved ones can gather.


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