Tag: Interview

“The Beyoncé of Virtual Reality”: VICE Interviews VRChat Video Maker Syrmor

VICE interviewed Syrmor (a.k.a. Canadian VRChat video maker and livestreamer Sherazee Syrmor) in a recent episode of VICE News Tonight:

If you’ve never heard of Syrmor before or viewed his work, this video is an excellent introduction to who he is and how he got into the habit of interviewing various people he encounters on the social VR platform VRChat.

Syrmor actually earns a living from advertising on his popular YouTube videos (he currently has 647,000 subscribers to his channel) and from his Patreon supporters (here’s a link to his Patreon page). He is also an active livestreamer on Twitch. He was even the focal point of a real-life meetup of his fans in Toronto, dubbed Syrcon 2019, which people attended from around the world!

The interviewer and he share a joke in this VICE News video that he has become “the Beyoncé of Virtual Reality”, because he is now so well known for his video interviews that he can’t venture out in public without getting accosted by his fans! Syrmor tells the interviewer that he receives thousands of emails from people who want to be interviewed for the videos in his series.

If you are interested in reading more about Syrmor and his work, there is an excellent March 27th, 2019 article on the Kotaku website, which I would encourage you to go over and read in full. Here’s an excerpt:

Syrmor notes the most memorable experiences he’s ever had in VRChat and the subject of one of his most recent videos. The subject explained that he was a kid suffering from epidermolysis bullosa, or “the butterfly condition,” a lifelong genetic disorder that makes your skin as “fragile as a butterfly’s wings.” (In some cases, it can even lead to amputations.) Everything, from crawling on your hands and knees to taking a bath, can be very, very painful. He told Syrmor a story about daily battles with the disorder through the guise of a sprightly Piglet avatar.

“What really got me is that he talked about his dad very highly, because his dad is his caretaker. I said something like, ‘Your dad sounds like a cool guy,’ and he actually got his dad on the microphone,” says Syrmor. “Having this very burly, 40-year-old male voice coming through Piglet in virtual reality, talking about his son’s disease, and what life was like for him, was just not something I ever expected to encounter in video games.”

Thanks to Wagner James Au of the blog New World Notes for the heads up!

Philip Rosedale Talks About the New Direction for High Fidelity

Philip Rosedale is always a great interview: insightful, engaged, and articulate. Here’s a perfect example, a recent 11-minute interview with GameReactor (a European videogame magazine) at the Gamelab 2019 conference in Barcelona, where he talked about his favourite topic, the metaverse, and the new direction for High Fidelity as a platform for remote workteams:

He argues that the change in the medium and the technology with virtual reality is so profound that it’s unlikely that the same big companies will dominate it, thus creating business opportunities for new companies (like HiFi!). He compares the shift from flatscreen computer use to virtual reality as being similar to the change from radio to television in the last century.

Image from IEEE Spectrum

Philip Rosedale is a true pioneer and visionary, without whom we literally would not have the metaverse landscape that I love to blog about! Even though I am still somewhat annoyed at how High Fidelity chose to handle the sudden pivot away from their original consumer audience, I can certainly understand and appreciate the company’s need to establish a beachhead in one area (remote business teams) and then use that as a base to expand into other areas. VR needs more time to mature. As he says in this interview, HiFi was early to the game. The pivot was the best possible corporate strategy to keep the company moving ahead and generating revenue while waiting for millions of consumers to adopt VR (and eventually, they will).

I do admire Philip and I wish him and his team at High Fidelity the very best (even if I do deliver the occasional critical editorial on this blog).

New Podcast Interview with Philip Rosedale

Philip Rosedale

The Stayin’ Alive in Technology podcast’s most recent episode is a detailed, wide-ranging, hour-long interview with the virtual world visionary and Second Life and High Fidelity founder Philip Rosedale. The topics which Philip and his interviewer, former Linden Lab staffer Melinda Byerley, cover range from the very earliest days of Linden Lab to his thoughts about the so-called “3D web”. Have a listen:

Episode 6 of the Metaverse Newscast: An Interview with Sansar Creators Bagnaria and Medhue in Scurry Waters and Scurry Canyon

I’m pleased to announce that Episode 6 of the Metaverse Newscast is now available for public view on YouTube (my Patreon supporters got a sneak peek yesterday).

My producer Andrew and I paid a visit to Scurry Waters, the tropical paradise created by Medhue and Bagnaria. Scurries are animated creatures made by Medhue, who is already well known for his Zooby cat and other animated creations in Second Life. Scurry Waters is full of things to do and see: ride an airboat, shoot pistols and try to trap each other in large floating bubbles, even blow up a pirate ship!

Bagnaria and Medhue discuss their creative partnership and we even get to discussing why some virtual worlds attract an older crowd than others. We wrap up the tour at Scurry Canyon, a fun and challenging shooting game. Can you make it to the very end?

If you are looking for previous episodes of the Metaverse Newscast, you can find them on the Metaverse Newscast channel on YouTube. We are still aiming to release one episode a month.

And if you want to support the show, may I steer you over to my Patreon page, where as little as US$1 a month unlocks exclusive perks and benefits? Whether or not you are a Patreon patron, thank you for your support!