Online harassment in virtual reality is 'way, way, way worse' — but can devs change that?

Patrick Harris of Minority Media (Papo and Yo) opened his cautionary presentation during Game Developers Conference 2016's virtual reality series with a warning: His talk, on the potential for — and overwhelming effects of — harassment in socially minded VR spaces, could get uncomfortable.

Although "viewer discretion" was advised, Harris warned the audience that he wasn't going to shy away from the harsh realities of harassment over the next half hour. The cyberbullying he detailed was both familiar and foreign to much of his listeners, however, making it all the more fascinating — and, in a way, frightening.

Harris is a lead game designer at the studio, which is now working on multiplayer VR experiences. Similar to typical online games (he often referenced Dota 2 and Call of Duty), players in massively multiplayer online VR releases will likely be the target of harassment at some point during play, he explained. But what isn't quite apparent yet is the form that harassment will take with this technology, which encourages total immersion and players having presence within the virtual environment.

It turns out that, according to Harris, harassment is "way, way, way worse" in VR. "It is intense, it is visceral [and] it triggers your fight or flight response," he warned, his tone becoming more grave.

"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin"

In VR, a player can do much more than send a death threat over text. Minority Media developed a multiplayer prototype to understand what harassment looks like with VR technology, and found players can abuse the presence afforded by virtual reality to get right up in the faces of others.

"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin and it's really scary," Harris said. As part of his experiment to figure out the depths of VR harassment, the designer played his MMO prototype with an unsuspecting woman. Their gameplay session was shown to the audience with a short video that left the room in stunned, dismayed silence.

He described the shame he felt as he pushed the game's immersive capabilities to their limits, making obscene gestures with a "phallic" object, invading his fellow player's personal space and ultimately trying to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible — with great success. All of this was shown to the audience, too, as the video cut between the woman's palpable discomfort and Harris' increasingly disturbing victimizing tactics.

Afterward, Harris apologized profusely for the way he acted during the game session — he was so stricken by how real the experience felt, he said, that he immediately felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Even worse, according to the woman he played against — and harassed in the name of research — it was "a damaging experience."

"if we're not going to change it, who the fuck is?"

Yet Harris sought to do more than instill fear into the audience, thanks to his detailed descriptions of the discomfort he caused and felt as a faux VR abuser. Although he admitted that there was likely no one great method for protecting players from every possible instance of virtual harassment, he suggested several gameplay mechanics for creating precautions and punitive measures for damaging behaviors within VR. These include creating opt-out "personal boundary lines" which turn opponents invisible once crossed, improved report systems and saving replays of offending incidents.

But in a field that's still untested, none of these ideas are safe bets just yet. Just how severe and affecting harassment can be with technology that requires true presence within the game world remains to be seen.

It will be up to Harris and his fellow pioneering VR developers to figure out how to curtail the problem before it reaches its worst potential, he said.

"We're the ones with the power to change it," he told the crowd with increasing volume. To end his talk, he shouted:

"If we're not going to change it, who the fuck is?"