Talking in Twitch and YouTube chat just isn’t the same as standing in a crowd watching your favorite vtuber perform.
Live shows and concerts aren’t new for Hololive, one of the biggest vtuber agencies in the world, but a virtual space that attempts to emulate what it’s like to meet your favorite streamers is “the next step in the evolution of immersive social experiences,” according to the company. And it’s called Holoearth.
I’ve played Roblox and VRChat: The concept of hosting a virtual event where people can walk around and interact with each other isn’t revolutionary. But outside of concerts and cons, Hololive vtubers, who are some of the most popular vtubers in the world, don’t usually get to interact with fans in the way they can in Holoearth.
Speaking to PC Gamer (through a translator) in a recent interview, the CTO of Hololive’s parent company Cover, Ryota Aomi, said that Holoearth is “the next extension of the Hololive experience.” In other words, it’ll be a space where fans can be more than anonymous chatters during streams and hang out with their favorite vtubers using 3D avatars.
It’s hard to put a number on how successful it’s been so far. The vtubers who have streamed Holoearth have over one million YouTube subscribers and regularly bring in thousands of viewers to their streams. Holoearth splits people up into instanced “rooms” so you can only see crowds of 50 or more at once, but it’s common to see those fill up pretty quickly. Cover hasn’t posted any official numbers, but if I had to guess, I’d say there are probably several hundreds of fans logging in throughout a stream.
Even though Aomi told me he doesn’t consider Holoearth a game or even a metaverse, watching streams where vtubers socialize with fans and then jump into what looks like Genshin Impact mixed with Minecraft, it seems like it’s kind of a mix of both.
Instead of a place to spend your entire life in, Holoearth seems designed as a Hololive paradise for Hololive fans—something other vtuber agencies simply couldn’t pull off. Users can design their own clothing and sell it in-game or collaborate with vtubers to make merch that, at least in Japan, you can buy and wear for real. Both fans and the vtubers even earn royalties off of the sales.
Aomi calls it a “new ecosystem” for fans to support their favorite vtubers that isn’t tied to donations on streaming platforms. With the sheer popularity of Hololive, I’m not surprised Cover has been building a platform to try to centralize the most avid fans, especially if Google or Amazon ever decide to take a bigger cut of its streaming revenue.
That said, Aomi says YouTube and Twitch streams aren’t going away: “We intend to keep them as things existing together.” He said streaming Holoearth events can be entertaining on its own and that it will encourage people to “step inside that world” when they want to participate.
You can download and hop into Holoearth right now, but it might be a little lonely until the vtubers show up. I got the sense from speaking to Aomi that Holoearth streams will make their way into its vtubers’ schedules more often now that it’s no longer in beta, and that there are plans to keep updating it with new stuff for the foreseeable future.
That begs the question though: If Hideo Kojima can put a Hololive vtuber into Death Stranding 2, how long until Sam Porter Bridges makes his way into Holoearth? Norman Reedus is one collab deal away from waving light sticks around during a virtual concert as his own Holo-sona.