a few years ago, maybe around 2023, i was on a long flight. I don’t remember where I was going, or why.

I had downloaded a few podcast episodes on my phone, just help the time pass. Among them was an episode of 99 Percent Invisible, about the old online game The Sims Online. More specifically, it was a story documenting the hours leading up to the shutting down of The Sims Online servers, and about the community that was affected by that.

One of the clips included a recording of someone who ran an in-game internet radio station, tearfully expressing his appreciation for all the years together while a goodbye song plays in the background, just before the world shuts off.

I’ve never played The Sims Online. But even so, sitting on that plane, I was desperately trying to hold back tears and not sob my eyes out. It was impossible to ignore the parallels between this community and the VR communities that are so important to me.

I was hit with a sudden, grief-ridden realization of the temporary nature of all of this - the inherent shakiness of the ground we stand on, the inevitable doom that one day VRC might face. It affected me deeply.

Looking at the present, in just in the past few months, we’ve watched a similar version of this story befall the VR platform Rec Room. Regardless of whether Rec Room is the kind of game you personally would have liked, it’s heartbreaking to think about the communities were torn apart due to forces that the players were helpless to do anything about. Some of those people will make the effort to keep in touch with each other, but others might never see each other again.

It feels like this pattern repeats itself with nearly every large-scale, centrally hosted game: eventually, the company that owns the game decides it’s not financially sustainable to keep hosting it anymore, and everything goes dark.

Because of Furality’s theme this year, and in particular after watching the fireworks show, a lot of these thoughts and feelings have been bubbling back up for me. I’ve been reflecting again about how VRChat, and the communities I meet inside of it, won’t last forever. We don’t know how things will end; it might be a pull-the-plug moment like The Sims Online or Rec Room, or the platform might morph itself into something unrecognizable or slowly fizzle out, like the path Horizon Worlds seems to be heading down. This hopefully won’t happen anytime soon if we’re lucky, but it’s something I think about from time to time.

I still have moments where I worry if I’m wasting my time by spending so many hours in VRChat. Sometimes I wonder if it would be a better idea to spend my time doing more real life stuff instead. But, in moments like this, I try to remind myself that the bonds I have with the people I care about are extremely important. Those connections might be THE most important thing I have. Even if nothing lasts forever, I want to remind myself to cherish the moments I have right now with the people around me.

It’s all I can do.