busybee fluffy rambles

Such creativity

Furality is a great place to show off creativity. Of the panels I attended, my favorites were the Community Showcase (a 90-minute collection of short films made primarily in VRChat) and the Whose Line-style game show.

The event’s own spaces were also really great; I especially loved the main lobby area, which was pretty much a serial-numbers-filed-off version of Rito Village from The Legend of Zelda (which was the vibe of the entire visual design of the show, from the base shader used to the clothing design and even the theme music). I do wish they’d been a little more varied in where they took their influences from (they tread an extremely fine line between inspiration and imitation) but it was implemented well and was a lovely, relaxing environment.

I can see myself spending a lot more time in the space when they turn it into a public world, as they tend to do a few months after a show finishes.

Dealer’s Den

After seeing the wide variety of things on display in the dealer’s den I’m definitely going to be applying for a booth at the next show. I need to up my self-promo game and I feel like this would be an amazing opportunity for me. People were selling all sorts of stuff, including avatars (hi), art (hi), and music (hi), so I think I’d fit right in. Also, unlike a physical dealer’s den, it doesn’t require manning a table.

Panels

I went to a bunch of the panels that I was interested in, and I found them a little unfocused. I feel like they’d have gone a lot better if they had a more specific target audience; for example, the panel that was ostensibly on turning an (established) music-creation hobby into a business started out with “First, you should learn how to make music! Here’s some software you can try!” and it never really went any further from there. I also found it a little off-putting that when someone asked a question about mastering, everyone on the panel seemed to think they were asking about mastering in the “being really good at a thing” sense and not in the “mixing and equalization” sense that the question seemed pretty obvious to be about. But maybe I misinterpreted something.

The “advanced avatar shenanigans” panel was really good though, or at least the part of it I saw was. I’ll definitely have to go back and watch the recording of it, because there was some really cool stuff shown off, and some incredibly inspiring things that gave me some really good ideas for things. (As usual, one of them is a means of improving the material switcher on my avatar).

Speaking of avatars…

So, during the lull of the closing ceremony being delayed for a while (because of the usual technical difficulties inherent to running a complicated setting like this), someone in the room with me discovered that their avatar had been ripped. And then saw that other peoples' avatars had been ripped, too. And then I checked, and found that several of mine have been, as well.

At first I wasn’t too annoyed by this; I figured that it was all done automatically and that it’s highly unlikely that anyone would go looking for mine specifically on the ripped asset store. Worst case it continues to be ignored, best case it gives me a bit of promotion.

But everyone else in the room was very upset about their avatars being ripped and instead of me being able to calm them down, they got me a bit worked up about it. Maybe not about my avatar specifically but about the whole nature of these things. I’m not sure I ever really felt upset that mine was ripped, but clearly everyone else around me was upset about theirs, and I didn’t want to downplay their hurt.

Anyway, my friend Micca kinda shrugged and said something to the effect of, “Yeah, that happens, it’s just because for someone to download an avatar they want they have to upload 30 avatars from others, and it sucks, but what’re you gonna do?”

After mulling it over for a bit, I tried asking a question on the Furality discord to see if they had any thoughts about banning people who were caught ripping from future events. The community moderator made it clear that this wasn’t a topic that was allowed on the Discord, and, okay, fair enough. (The rule they cited for it being a forbidden topic was… vague, but I know how it is so I totally understand.)

The CM provided an email address I could contact, and I made the suggestion that it’d be helpful if Furality would at least adopt a policy into their CoC that anyone found to be ripping or using ripped assets would be disallowed from future participation. Right now the CoC is pretty lopsided in that it simply says that users are not to hold Furality liable for ripping which occurs at a Furality event (and I mean, fair! the nature of how VRChat works and how avatars are downloaded and displayed means that if anyone can see you, they can copy you) but right now they’re just throwing up their hands and saying “nothing can be done, if you don’t want your assets stolen, don’t come to Furality.” And that’s pretty dismissive of peoples' concerns.

The specific phrasing I used was:

I realize that avatar ripping is a constant thing on VRChat and a risk that you run whenever you go into any reasonably-sized public space, and it’s not something that Furality is equipped to deal with themselves; I have also of course read (and agree with) the relevant extant parts of the Furality CoC, and I do not hold Furality liable for the ripping itself. However, I feel that larger VRChat-based events can set a precedent: if you are caught ripping an avatar, you will be banned from participating in future events (with appropriate evidence, of course).

Would this be a policy that Furality would be willing to add to the Code of Conduct and provide appropriate enforcement channels for?

To be clear I am not asking that Furality remove this language from the CoC:

Assets and content uploaded to VRChat are not secure and may be downloaded or utilized by other players. We recommend you do not use avatars that are for private and/or licensed use only. Furality Online Xperience cannot be held liable for any misuse or compromising of assets uploaded to the VRChat platform or utilized during the convention.

but that there be an additional clause stating that anyone who is found to be misusing or compromising such assets during Furality events risks banishment from future participation.

Thank you for your consideration.

If they don’t want to, that’s also totally fair. Running a con like this is very difficult as it is and bans are extremely difficult to enforce. But at least taking a nominal stand could make a big difference.

(It could of course also backfire, and end up emboldening people who do a thing, don’t get caught, and decide the policy is toothless.)

Anyway, if you want to get my avatar legitimately, the first 20 people to buy it with discount code critters4cheap can get it for $15.

Overall impressions

Furality was a great time. There were a lot of technical difficulties, and a lot of people gave them a hard time for those difficulties, but what they are trying to do is extremely difficult and expensive, and they are running a whole bunch of stuff at scale with extremely demanding time and effort constraints.

Of course it’d be great if it went off without a hitch or if they had better devops procedures and scaling strategies in place to avoid website outages. But this is a passion project done on a volunteer basis and which also raises a lot of money for charity and does a lot of good for the community as a whole. The fact this convention works at all is amazing, and I cut them a lot of slack with things like “the invite queue falls over when 15,000 people simultaneously try to use it,” especially since they are doing a thing VRChat was extremely not designed to do.

I get much more frustrated at hearing the entitlement and complaints from people around me than about the things they’re complaining about.

But anyway. I love that this furry con exists and allows me to see my friends and meet new people and experience amazing art and music without even having to leave the house. It’s still an extremely draining experience that pushes me to my limit (and I can’t imagine what it’s like for the con staff!) and given that, I’m sure I’d be unable to actually enjoy myself at real-life cons anymore, what with my various disability issues.

So I am extremely grateful that this convention exists and am glad that it’s as good as it is, and I plan to keep on attending in the future.