Virtual reality gaming is intended to be an escape from everyday life. Often, the games take place in fantastical landscapes, where players complete tasks and perform feats they never would have been able to do in reality.
However, there are some nasty realistic things that exist even in digital worlds where you have to fight off zombies from castles and fortresses.
Jordan Belamire, a woman playing the game QuiVr, reported she was virtually sexually assaulted within minutes of testing out the gameplay.
Another user virtually rubbed her character’s chest and grabbed at her butt and genitals. He chased her when she ran away and ignored her when she told him to stop — all within the game.
The reason? While her character looked just like every other character in the game, other players in the multiplayer version could hear her voice. Her female-sounding voice.
Virtual reality, or VR, glasses and gaming systems make every experience in the game seem as real as possible, as players control their characters with their own bodies and see everything from a first-person perspective.
That made the other player — comically and almost too perfectly called BigBro442’s — groping seem just as real as it would have been if they were on the sidewalk instead of in the forest.
Upon hearing about Belamire’s experience, QuiVr developer Jonathan Schenker instituted a “personal bubble” setting to protect players. Anyone who plays the game can set their ideal distance to maintain around themselves. If another player got too close to them that player would simply “fade out of existence.”
If only it were that easy in the real world.
The biggest issue here is that there is literally no safe space from the threat of sexual assault. Even when you are alone in your house playing video games, someone can reach out and “touch” you inappropriately.
The culture that makes it OK for women to be objects of these kind of inappropriate actions simply because they are women pervades even into a world completely different from our physical world.
It’s scary to think that within VR, often a mechanism for people to play out fantasies and adventures, someone’s idea of a good time is to assault a woman. Online, there are no rules. The worst that could happen is they may be kicked out of the game.
Many have attributed VR sexual assault to the fact that gaming is often a male-dominated activity.
But women ages 18 and over make up about 31 percent of the gaming world, according to the Entertainment Software Association.
So the problem is not because there are men online. The problem is that people do not feel like their actions have repercussions online, even though they may still be able to traumatize others.
Assault is not OK anywhere. Not at school, not at work and not in virtual reality.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
