Exploring Avatar Experiences in Social VR: A Comprehensive Analysis of User Reviews

With the emergence of the metaverse era, users utilize avatars to engage in immersive experiences within virtual worlds. Avatars typically represent the player's second self in the metaverse, reflecting their self-affirmation. The selection of avatars and their effects on other players is a topic worth exploring. Prior research has primarily focused on interviewing participants to investigate avatar-related user experiences. However, the potential value of user reviews of virtual reality (VR) applications remains largely unexplored. In our study, we collect 6,206 avatar-related user reviews of a social VR application from the Steam platform. Through a comprehensive analysis of these user reviews, we examine avatar customization mechanics, the influence of avatar diversity on players, and avatar theft. Our findings suggest that developers should fully support avatar customization while implementing mechanisms for avatar review and preventing avatar theft.