Lessons from 15 years of experience with 3D avatars to be applied to Social VR

1. The Secrets of
Avatar Design for
Social VR
Brett G. Durrett
CEO, IMVU

2. • 16 years experience with avatars in social
experiences
• 5 years in virtual worlds
• 11 years on the leading Social 3D product
(lots of professional experience with avatars)
Why is Brett talking about Avatars?

3. IMVU is the LEADER in SOCIAL 3D
Over 3 million Monthly Active Users
World’s largest catalog of UGC 3D objects –
more than 20 million 3D assets
iOS Top 15 grossing in Social
Android Top 10 grossing in Social
(IMVU is all about avatars)

5. [ NEED IMAGE FOR SLIDE ]
SOCIAL

6. “We’re making a long-term bet that immersive, virtual
and augmented reality will become a part of people’s
daily life.”
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook
2014 announcement of Oculus VR acquisition
"We're working on VR because I think it's the next major
computing and communication platform after phones...I
think we'll also have glasses on our faces that can help us
out throughout the day and give us the ability to share our
experiences with those we love in completely immersive
and new ways that aren't possible today."
July, 2015 predictions about the future, Business Insider

7. "For virtual reality to really cross into the mainstream, it's
gotta be more than just really awesome, killer games.
What is the Twitter or Instagram of VR? By that, I don't
mean having tweets in VR or having filtered photos in
VR — I mean that it's native to that platform, it's born of
that platform and would not have existed without that
platform."
Nick DiCarlo , Samsung’s VR Vice President

8. “Seeing other people is incredibly engaging and
that's one of the drivers that made us partner with
Facebook -- social communication. Not social
newsfeeds but actual face-to-face seeing multiple
avatars in a play experience, that's going to be a
very big part of the future in VR.”
Brendan Iribe, CEO Oculus VR

9. social |ˈsōSHəl|
adjective
1 [ attrib. ] relating to or involving activities in which people spend time talking to each other
or doing enjoyable things with each other
• liking to be with and talk to people : happy to be with people
• of or relating to people or society in general

10. SOCIAL REQUIRES PEOPLE - IN VR, PEOPLE ARE AVATARS

11. DELIVER EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS

12. DELIVER EMOTIONAL CONNECTIONS

13. READ THIS BOOK!

14. READ THIS BOOK!

15. BEWARE THE UNCANNY VALLEY

16. DEPTHS OF THE UNCANNY VALLEY

17. UNIQUELY EXPRESS YOURSELF

18. UNIQUELY EXPRESS YOURSELF

19. UNIQUELY EXPRESS YOURSELF

20. THE AVATAR MUST BE ESSENTIAL

21. THANK YOUBrett G. Durrett, CEO, IMVU @bdurrett