Furry Ex Machina – The social gaming platform VRChat and digital identity generation in the furry fandom [DiGRA 2024]
Although this idea is still cooking, I wanted to briefly share my thoughts and ideas around how VRChat interacts with the process of generating furry identity and the fursona. As I’m condensing these thoughts from a DiGRA 2024 paper into a blog post, I’ve removed the discussions around immersion as these are not relevant to how these ideas have developed since. Plus, I have simplified a lot of the context around the furry fandom for brevity. In short, this is an initial discussion of the arguments for VRChat as a site of identity generation for the furry fandom, with how this relates to or is exemplified through the activities of the community, such as the creation and embodiment of the fursona.
This idea started with thinking about VRChat (VRChat, 2014), not only as a social game, but as a site of identity generation for the furry fandom. For context, the furry fandom is a community founded around the enjoyment of anthropomorphic animals whether closer to human in design or more feral in nature. Although there are a myriad of activities that make up – for the lack of a better term – “being furry”, the most universal is creating the fursona (Plante et al, 2016). A portmanteau of furry and persona, this anthropomorphic animal character provides a visual or aesthetic identifier of an individual. This is used almost exclusively in all furry spaces and is an important part of everyone’s identity within the fandom.
VRChat is a virtual world mainly accessed using virtual reality technology such as VR-headsets, but more than this, it is a ‘social platform with a focus on hanging out and talking with people from around the world in virtual spaces created by the platform’s many users’ (Asshoff, 2022). Although initially created in 2014, it rose to popularity after its release in 2017 on Valve’s Steam platform (Krell and Wettmann, 2023). It should be clarified that, although the optimum experience with VRChat is through VR technology, it can be used in “desktop mode”, which controls and operates similarly to a first-person RPG.
The point relevant to the furry fandom on this game can be found during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw an acceleration in the use of VRChat as the primary digital meeting place for furries, with the hybrid set-up for the Japan Meeting of Furries in 2020, which had a specifically created iteration of the physical furry convention space in VRChat. Following this, the fully online furry convention Furality Online Xperience (often simply referred to as Furality) launched in May 2020, with a partnership with VRChat for the event occurring by the second event later that year. This has since exploded in popularity with the most recent iteration Furality Umbra, in June 2024 having a final attendance figure of 21,004 (WikiFur, 2024), noted as the largest virtual furry convention to date.
Returning to our early definition around the creation of the fursona, we have already established that this fandom activity is a facet of identity. To complicate matters, fursonas are spoken of not as static beings but as dynamic ones, furthering their sense of personhood: as furs grow, change, or challenge existing (re)presentations of their own self, their fursona(s) may shift in response (Dunn, 2019), but in terms of the development of this furry identity, when and how does it begin? The simple answer is that this development occurs very early on, usually at the point of discovery of the fandom, and during this development some furries take time to decide upon their fursona, with some opting for the use of a placeholder that might not necessarily reflect the final species of their fursona (Maase, 2015).
It is here that VRChat opens up as a site of identity generation for the furry fandom. VRChat, as a furry space, has already become like other social platforms previously adopted by the furry fandom, such as Second Life. For example, furry artists can be commissioned to create specific and fully customised 3D models of fursonas for use within the game. So, a furry entering VRChat instances can have a full (re)presentation of their fursona that they can step into and – for the lack of a better term – “inhabit” while in the game space. This then fits into the “standard” process of creating the fursona as being ‘produced in a collaboration at a distance, communicated through text conversations and artmaking by a number of artists, each building on the last’ (Silverman, 2020).
However, the key thing for identity generation on VRChat is the ability to essentially “try out” fursonas, with the game containing world instances that are simply rooms of free, generic anthropomorphic animal models that a player can wear. Much like the placeholders discussed by Maase, these allow the player to experiment with different species if they are still deciding on how to represent their furry identity and work out what fits them best. This leads onto the next stage of furry identity – the performance of this identity. My research specifically has shown a distinction between the online and offline spaces of the furry fandom, as broadly the online being a space for fursona experimentation and the offline for performance of this identity. Across both spaces, the creation and experimentation of the fursona remains largely the same and is often fully created through interactions with other furries and personal or commissioned artwork before becoming a reflection of the whole self; reaching the culmination of a journey that begins with a discovery or an introduction (Maase, 2015).
However, the changes occur when considering the point of performance, as usually the performance of the fursona, in its becoming, causes the construction of self to shift as specific (re)presentations are performed through the fursona (Dunn, 2019). In other words, the performance of the fursona usually occurs after the codification of what that fursona is. But – and returning to the previous point around “trying on” generic furry avatars – this pipeline is potentially made far shorter when using VRChat by the allowance of stepping into a character of any given species and feeling out a performance of it in the same space. This then gives the player in this instance an opportunity to express ‘parts of their personality in physical space that they may not feel comfortable expressing otherwise’ (Silverman, 2020) in a similar way to how fursuiting is discussed and once again reinforcing my earlier idea around VRChat as digital fursuiting.
What I’ve discussed here is an early interrogation but has already landed on several key insights. Firstly, the blurring of the pipeline between the creation and the performance of the fursona that is allowed by the nature of VRChat. Secondly, the virtual reality platform as a form of digital performance of furry identity being closer to that of the physical act of “becoming” the fursona through fursuiting. Bringing this forward, I am looking to further investigate this social gaming platform, especially where it directly contradicts my previous assumptions about the development of the fursona, especially the shifts between the creation and the performance of furry identity.
References:
Asshoff, R. (2022) Welcome to VRChat: An ethnographic study on embodiment and immersion in virtual reality [Masters thesis]. Stockholm University: Stockholm.
Dunn, J. (2019) Self as Gem, Fursona as Facet(s): Constructions and Performances of Self in Furry Fandom, Award Winning Anthropology Papers, vol.5. Available at: < https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/anth_awards/5>.
Krell, F., and Wettmann, N. (2023) Corporeal Interactions in VRChat: Situational Intensity and Body Synchronisation, Symbolic Interaction, vol.46(2), pp. 159–181.
Maase, J.W. (2015) Keeping the Magic: Fursona Identity and Performance in the Furry Fandom, Masters Theses & Specialist Projects, Paper 1512. Available at: <http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1512>.
Plante, C., Reysen, S., Roberts, S.E., and Gerbasi K.C. (2016) Furscience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. Furscience: Ontario.
Silverman, B. (2020) Fursonas: Furries, Community and Identity Online [Masters thesis]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Massachusetts.
WikiFur (2025) Furality Online Xperience. Available at: <https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Furality_Online_Xperience>.