The Role of Friendship in Enhancing Virtual Experiences with Joi Podgorny
Is the science of friendship one of the keys to more positive virtual experiences?
Joi Podgorny returns to the Cohere podcast to discuss her unique perspective on the state of the Metaverse with hosts Bill Johnston and Dr. Lauren Vargas.
In season 1, in the early stages of the pandemic, Joi and Bill explored the part communities, and in particular VR-based communities, might play during the lockdown and socially-distanced period of the pandemic.
On this episode, Joi returns to revisit the conversation in Season 1, talk about her new role with Together Labs, and discuss how kids have weathered the pandemic in virtual worlds and in real life.
Of particular note is Joi's perspective on the science of Friendship, and how the three pillars of Friendship (proximity, familiarity, and positivity) are guiding principles in her work.
Key Quotes:
“We try to put in constructs within the virtual world that lend themselves to the three pillars of friendship, which are proximity (being around people), and familiarity (being able to have as many common things to talk about), and then positivity. They’ve seen that the more each of those different pillars are focused on and enhanced the better chance that there is to be a friendship connection with people.”
Positive Reenforcement
“The big buzzword in the gaming space right now is “pro-social behavior”. Let's not make trolls. Let's see how we can not have people be griefers. Let's encourage good behavior and see if that keeps happening. Parenting circles for years have been doing positive reinforcement and telling everyone that physical violence with children is not something that actually helps them learn in a good way, and positive reinforcement is the way to go.
Hey, let's use those in our community areas. It's been really fun not only to dig into that research and work with our advisors and get that woven into the DNA of the community. We're working with Spectrum, which is a machine learning, AI based filtering software, and they are really big on the pro-social thing, so basically doing contextual messaging. When you detect positive conversations happening and then encouraging them and like rewarding users for being nice to each other and helping other people. And crazy to me that after 20 years people are like, this is a cool idea. Why don't we do this? I don't know why it took this long, but it's. Thankfully it has caught up.”
The Interoperable Metaverse
“If we're talking about metaverse as different worlds that are interconnected, so you have almost like a single signon capability between different worlds. So I can take my Roblox character into Fortnite, into Minecraft, into InView, into Advocate world.
I can take it into wherever that doesn't exist yet. We don't really have that yet. We are working on that and want to do that and be respectful to not only the users, but also to the company and the potential partnerships that are happening there. So the fact that it hasn't happened yet is not a function exactly of the tech not being there, but rather a function more of those of us who are able to do it, who have developed virtual worlds that could interconnect each other. Wanting to be respectful to all of the stakeholders within that transaction. So it, it's gonna happen really, really soon because a lot of us are working on it, but we wanna do it right.”
Inclusion Strategies
“The positive stuff that is happening that I really dig is inclusion strategies that are happening within the metaverse world. People thinking about “how do we make all of our users feel like they belong here?” and that is becoming something that's not just like a fringe conversation that happens, or a checklist item that your HR department or some ERR brand person made you talk about everyone's thinking about.
I think that's why the inclusion is coming up in the corporate strategies is those people who this has been a central kind of guiding light to the way they run their personal lives. They're now in power positions within their companies and they can say, “Hey, this is not performative, this has to be in there” and they have the political capital within their teams to force it and stay vigilant on it and make sure that it's always coming up.The company that I'm at, we have really active ERGs and really active just DEI activities. I'm seeing it in all of the organizations like the nonprofits that I help out with.
It's not just a checklist item, it's something that someone's bringing up and reminding everybody, “Hey, this is important to us.” ”
Resources from this episode:
Find Joi online:
Resources on the science of friendship:
Additional resources mentioned in this episode:
Cohere Podcast: Developing Expansive Community Business Models with Joi Podgorny
Community Skills - Soft Skills Needed to Make Your Community Thrive
‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ by Becky Chambers
‘Little Weirds’ by Jenny Slate
‘The Ministry for the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson
‘The Three-Body Problem’ by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)
