The “VR sexual harassment incident†reported by Wei Wei yesterday caught the attention of people. The developer of QuiVr, a VR game, is now studying a “safe space†function.
A pseudonym named Jordan Belamire in a woman posting in Medium said that when she was playing “QuiVr†on her brother’s HTC Vive, another player virtually rubbed her chest and ankle. She wrote: "Of course he is not really pinching me, but it still scares people."
Her posting on October 20 quickly captured the news headlines this week.
Extended reading: "VR sexual harassment" debate
Aaron Stanton, developer of QuiVr, said in an interview with CNMMoney: “Our first reaction was that we needed to make sure that such things could not happen again.â€
Stanton wrote: "As a person involved in the growth of VR, this is very disturbing. This happened in our game and it happened under our eyes."
He wrote in the article that this prompted them to expand the game's private space function, not just the face. When the user turns on the feature, if the other players are too close to themselves, regardless of their hand to reach that part, their role will gradually retreat.
Stanton wrote: "You can still turn this feature on in settings, but you can also activate it in what we call "energy gestures": put your hands together, hold the two triggers, and then open Hands are just like you are creating a force field.No matter which activation method you use, the effect can appear immediately, and the demand is very obvious.The fluctuation of power will slowly expand and dissolve other players in the line of sight (at least from From your perspective, this is the case) and gives you a safe space."
He also said that developers will put “safe space†code in the open source framework VR Toolkit and hope that other VR games will also use similar methods to protect players.
Stanton continues to write: "Maybe 'energy gestures' can be used as part of the VR development language to prevent sexual harassment, bullying or any other form of conflict. In this way, when things do not go well, or when something happens, and we cannot predict and screen as a developer, the player can always find a safe area. Hopefully, this place will be found not only in QuiVr, but in all VRs.
The protagonist Belamire responded and thanked them.
She wrote: "Aaron and Jonathan, after seeing your response to the article, I don't know how to describe my gratitude. Thank you for paying so much attention to sexual harassment in VR and respecting my experience. The idea is great."