It’s probably quite obvious to say that dancing is fun – after all, it is a universal
human activity.
Often, dancing is most enjoyable when done with other people.
However, despite many dance games and interactive performances over the years, there has not
been too much happening in terms of computer facilitated or enhanced social dance experiences.
At least before the arrival of social virtual reality
In the past years social vr has gained traction and become more mainstream.
This means more and more people can enjoy remote embodied social interactions – a
way of interacting better suited to dancing than many earlier consumer systems.
The increased popularity of social VR has already spawned a vibrant social dance community
on VRChat.
This community comprises of a variety of clubs and venues with different music, live DJs
and dancer performances.
This scene provides a window to an interesting intersection of social VR and dance.
Dance as an activity pushes the boundaries of VR technology, and dancing in a social
setting presents opportunities to study complex interactions that involve a lot of non-verbal
communication.
Since all of this happens in VR, there are a lot of challenges to overcome as well as
possibilities to craft experiences that are only possible in a virtual environment.
Inspired by these possibilities, we set out to explore what the scene looks like at the
moment
In doing this, our main interests were threefold; first, what are the things people find most
enjoyable and motivating about dancing in VR; second, how do the social facets contribute
to their experiences; and third, what are their current needs and challenges.
To find answers to these questions, we interviewed 17 active members of the VRChat dance community
and conducted thematic analysis to identify central themes of their experiences.
As a result of our analysis, we identified six different themes.
These are freedom, dance like no one is watching, vibing together, dancing to perform, community
and connections, and self-expression and exploration.
For details on the themes and related challenges we identified,
we encourage taking a look at our paper.
For the rest of this presentation, I will focus on
the three themes related to dancing itself
"Just listening to a song, really getting in to it, just letting it move you.
That’s one of the things I find so fun about it."
" When I’m really into it, the world almost falls away.
I found I didn’t have to constantly worry about how I appeared to other people.
That, plus the whole quasi-anonymous aspect of it, greatly reduced distracting anxieties
and allowed me to dance like no one is watching."
These statements from our participants illustrate the theme of dancing like no one is watching
Experiences related to this theme were characterised by a focus on self and the experience of dancing.
Participants described moments of getting immersed to the music and letting it move
them, shutting out any outside distractions.
In contrast to self-focused dance experiences,
”vibing together” in variety of ways was enjoyed as well
“The feeling of community.
Jamming out together.
Seeing everyone’s personal styles and how they react to the music.
Playing off each others’ energy.
Feeling like I belong.“
“Seeing someone else just go on with you
and dance, like you don’t even know them.
Or just hype you up and all that.
It’s an insanely fun feeling."
“You can’t really describe it.
You can describe it, but you can’t quite define it.
with monitors strapped to their heads,
all dancing alone in their room.
But they all feel like they are together.
That’s the kind of thing that I love about it."
These experiences represent moments shared with other people either one-on-one
or as a part of a larger group.
They were all about sharing the joy of dancing, the group energy, and encouraging everyone
to enjoy and let loose.
The feeling of connection despite physically being far apart was also sometimes described
as something almost mystical, something you have to experience yourself to truly understand it.
As a third aspect of dancing, people also enjoyed putting up a performance.
"I really like just dancing and having a good time, but I also feel more encouraged if someone
is watching or saying that I’m doing good."
"My friend took me to my very first lap dancing event, and that’s what really got the ball
rolling for me to want to be on stage and express myself
and just spread smiles around and have fun."
"I love to add cool costumes that I think will look cool in motion while dancing.
I’ve even come up with some stuff that is entirely my own, such as a set of folding
fans that I can open and close, throw like boomerangs and have orbit or rubber band around me,
which have been really fun to try to incorporate into my dancing."
These experiences related to for example optimising how you look by practicing in and out of VR,
implementing accessories or dancing for clubs.
Many participants were encouraged and motivated by getting positive feedback, or simply enjoyed
sharing their good vibes and expressing themselves.
While these different dance experiences were
enjoyed for the most part, being in VR didn’t come without some challenges.
Quite a few of them were related to immersion
Immersion was mentioned a lot by our participants.
Its importance was especially highlighted for the individual dance experiences of getting
lost into the music, but it was a critical facilitator for enjoyable dancing across the board.
It was not a surprise then that many participants had come up with ways to mitigate recurring
disruptions to immersion.
In addition to lag, these disruptions were mostly caused by the equipment getting
in the way or getting thrown off while dancing.
To solve these problems some participants had for example added extra straps to their
headsets, or gotten creative with the placement of their trackers
Interestingly, some participants also had their own habits to boost immersion.
For example, a few mentioned wearing matching clothes in real life and in VR.
This was important, because during a long night of dancing and partying, it was necessary
to take breaks every once in a while, for example to get something to drink.
This required getting out of VR, breaking the immersive experience.
Thus similarity between the two environments was found desirable.
This indicates that for social VR at least, transitions in and out of VR with the intention
of taking a break may be equally important to the enjoyability of the experience as transitions
at the start and end of the use.
This example is far from the only outstanding challenge we uncovered.
In addition to technical challenges and opportunities, there were multiple motivations for dancing
that could help focus future research.
Overall, our participants found their experiences of dancing in social VR overwhelmingly enjoyable
and meaningful, with benefits sometimes extending even to their lives outside VR.
These positive aspects were related to the social, physical, and self-expressive facets
of the experiences.
Conversely, there also seems to be some tensions underlying all the positive vibes.
They were related especially to addictive behaviours, harassment, and worries about
body-image issues.
To an extent they mirror similar concerns with other social media and digital environments
and are deeply intertwined with aspects that
make the experiences enjoyable in the first place.
These last two points could fill a presentation of their own,
so I won’t be going into more detail here.
To wrap up, it suffices to say that while
social dancing in VR clearly is already enjoyable, current consumer VR technology does not always
optimally support these interactions.
Furthermore, there are many interesting opportunities to enhance dance experiences beyond fixing
issues that currently take away from them.
By exploring these issues and opportunities we hopefully can help create dance experiences
that get people moving and even better facilitate enjoyment and meaningful experiences while doing so