Facebook’s new VR chat app will throw paid staffers at “on-boarding” trolls

Enlarge / Mark Zuckerberg reveals Facebook Horizon at Oculus Connect 6 in San Jose, California. (credit: Facebook)

SAN JOSE, Calif.-The fusion of Oculus and Facebook continues apace at this year's sixth annual Oculus Connect conference, with this year's biggest example coming in the form of Facebook Horizon: a new VR chat app exclusive to Oculus whose mix of cartoony avatars, social spaces, and playable games resembles current VR mega-hit Rec Room. The app won't premiere until "early next year" as a closed beta, but in the meantime, we got a chance to test it out-and learned about the crazy plan Facebook has for its first foray into social VR.

After testing the solid-if-early app, I asked two Facebook representatives about existing social-VR apps like Rec Room and VRChat, which have their own creative, organic approaches to making strangers meet each other in VR. Facebook says it's going to try something we haven't yet seen in any chat app, VR or otherwise: a fully staffed concierge service.

After going through Horizon's tutorial, "you'll encounter humans that are part of our team in the product, known as 'Guides,'" Facebook's AR/VR experiences director, Eric Romo, told Ars Technica. "Those are the people who will be trying to set the tone of what the environment is." When asked to clarify whether these would be paid Facebook staffers, sitting in microphone-equipped headsets and waiting for new users to appear, Romo answered, "Yeah!" He added that these staffers would be "saying, 'How can I help you? What can I show you to do?'"

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