In SuperhotVR there are multiple acts of self harm; Shooting oneself in the head, jumping to your death. They make up a very very small amount of the game's content. After an update which made those scenes optional, the devs did another update and removed them all together. The VR community has surprisingly responded in a very mature and supportive manner.

LOL, just kidding. They're totally shitting themselves. https://old.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/op018r/all_scenes_alluding_to_self_harm_will_be_removed/ https://steamcommunity.com/games/617830/announcements/detail/2992063678829322337

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
    hexagon
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    And yet remove it, and it's still the same game. There's a downvoted comment in there talking about VR as a technology and its influence on the brain as opposed to the fact that we use it for games that I think covers it the best. I'm reminded of when Jeremy Bailenson, psychologist and the head of stanford's virtual human communication lab, asked vr developers to consider that what they were creating was no longer just a video game but software running on simulator hardware and reddit blew the fuck up comparing him to Jack Thompson.

    • Azarova [they/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This is the angle I think a lot of people are overlooking. It's one thing to do looking at a screen using a mouse and keyboard or controller which adds layers of abstraction on what you're doing. It's a whole other thing when there's very realistic physicality to it in VR that is, in my opinion, crossing a line into very dangerous territory. Content in VR should be treated differently than normal games.

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        Exactly. It's crazy that like every VR enthusiast is out there thirsting for Full Dive VR, because it's goign to be real, while not grasping the implications of what that means about what's happening in your head. Like how many videos do we need of people knowing full well they're in VR and yet doing stupid shit like jumping into walls in that Plank experience game because the part of their brain that's telling them it's just a game you're totally safe is overshadowing the part of the brain that's keeping track of the outside world?

          • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
            hexagon
            ·
            4 years ago

            Yes, people got used to it, but those same underlying functions happening in the brain are still there and they're only going to get more powerful as the technology advances. The entire goal of VR tech is to hijack so many of the senses that the brain no longer has a reference point to determine the difference between the real and the virtual. And that's not even really factoring in the danger of what's going to happen as we incorporate eye tracking, eeg, and other biometrics.

            And btw, despite using modern VR for more than 6 years now, and playing half-life alyx for more than 50 hours with 3 play throughs I still find myself occasionally having uncontrollably visceral feelings of disgust to things like one of those nasty dark gray headcrabs crawling out of a dumpster next to me. And that's with video details on low. Each play through I've added something additional like a better headset or haptics and each time it results in a more immersive, fresher experience. We're barely scratching the surface.

              • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
                hexagon
                ·
                4 years ago

                You’re gonna blow your mind when you hear the concept of horror. I do the same when I replay Amnesia the Dark Descent every Halloween. People have been having emotional reactions to media for as long as it’s existed. This isn’t unique to VR in the slightest, it applies to literally every piece of media.

                lol , you're agreeing with me and don't yet realize it. Do you think these are different cognitive mechanisms we're talking about? If people now are "used to movies" and not freaking out over trains, what changed that allowed them to make fools of themselves in VR? What we're talking about is an increasing exploitation of those same mechanisms. We went from surround sound and bigger and bigger screens in the cinema to smaller ones strapped to your face for stereoscopy that blows away typical cinema 3d and gives us almost total control over the visual cortex. By adding responsive movement tracking to the screens we're taking over our equilibrium and balance and overpowering our ability to track the world beyond the headset. By adding in hands and body tracking we're tying in our proprioception mapping to "dissolve" our brain's ability to track the body. Matter of fact much of Bailenson's research ties into how that affects our self-image, they're doing shit like giving peoples third arms and putting in them cow bodies. Again, we're barely scratching the surface and you're telling me that people got used to it while also telling me you get physiological reactions to configurations of light on a screen. We got used to it by accepting these things happening as part of the new normal, but the technology is still doing a number our brain.

                  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
                    hexagon
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    Furthermore, you didn’t even respond to my Airsoft comment because it disproves your entire idea. AirSoft is the closest you can be to actually shooting people and you don’t lose touch with reality because of it. It doesn’t cause people to pick up a real 9mm and shoot people in the street. If we can abstract an almost perfect simulation of shooting another human, we can handle VR. You’re worried about simulations of reality when we do absolute fine with doing these things IN reality.

                    I don't talk about your airsoft idea because I find it laughable how you ignore the environment around airsoft as if most of the people involved in airsoft aren't playing war games fulfilling jingoist fantasies of the imperial nation that they've been raised in. But if you'd like me to address it; feel free to put an airsoft gun to your head, pull the trigger, and then get back to me if the feeling of the pellet bouncing off your skull encourages you to do it again the way people are whining about not being able to do it in VR anymore since that's what this conversation spawned from in the first place.

                    Then why haven’t we seen psychosis in people who read books or listen to stories? If this was something to worry about, we all would have turned into Don Quixote in our literature class. You’re acting as if humans haven’t been doing this for literally 6000+ years now.

                    What makes you think we haven't? As if there aren't fucking massive fandoms of people cosplaying and getting way too into their favorite characters. Entire industries built on fulfilling those fantasies. A book, television, or movie is such a small portion of our lives, of our sensory inputs, and yet it fully takes over some peoples' lives.

    • D61 [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      There's been some use of VR in helping people get over PTSD, so I'm kinda inclined to side with the "VR makes things different enough that extra care should be taken" crowd.

    • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I'm not sure I follow you here. Is the concern that the extra physicality of raising a gun to your head inside a VR game represents an extra psychological risk over doing so in a traditional keyboard-and-mouse-and-screen game? I haven't done any research into the subject, but I don't think that experience in VR is going to have any more of an impact on a person than it would otherwise (though obviously if someone has suffered trauma and has legitimate triggers from such an experience their experience is going to be drastically different, but that's why the toggle exists).

      • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        Have you ever heard of toilet paper bondage? TLDR: It's kind of a niche concept within kink where one understands that behavior modification through domination happens over time in small doses. One wrapping of toilet paper around your wrists isn't enough to confine you, but over time if one keeps wrapping it over and over you'll find yourself subdued. VR in its current form is like that. It's still at a phase where the links between our VR in game behavior and our real world behavior is tenuous, but they are linked. That's literally what many psych researchers (and facebook for much darker reasons) have been waiting on advancements in VR for, because of the rich possibilities that VR has for therapeutic behavior modification in the form of non-threatening gamified experiences.

        These games that have people kill themselves because it's funny and/or edgy are creating mental links between self-harming behaviors/mindsets and ingame rewards. And again, while the links are tenuous and miniscule, they are there. And for some people, they may be strengthening harmful thoughts and behaviors that are already lurking beneath the surface.

        • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          These games that have people kill themselves because it’s funny and/or edgy are creating mental links between self-harming behaviors/mindsets and ingame rewards.

          Yeah, people aren't killing themselves IRL for points. This is a pretty absurd leap in logic.

            • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              You can't reduce all human behaviors to reinforcement. People do not kill themselves because they're anticipating reward.

                • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  So instead of substantiating your point that suicide-esque elements of Superhot VR will actually lead people to kill themselves you're just going to namedrop a highly speculative psychological theory.

                  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
                    hexagon
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    I'm saying that as the technology advances the line between in VR game behaviors and real world behaviors will blur and behavior learned in one will easily cross over to behavior in the other. That's not really debatable, it's the point of VR.

        • DefinitelyNotAPhone [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That's an interesting concept I haven't seen before, thanks for the link.

          I can see the logic here, but I think there's a disconnect between learned behaviors regarding random things like being bound by a single layer of toilet paper and things your body has an immense physiological aversion to like self-harm. I could very definitely see this kind of VR experience being problematic for people who already struggle with suicidal ideation or have PTSD or something similar, but not so much for neuronormatives.

    • Abraxiel
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      deleted by creator