When you picture a virtual reality headset user, you’re probably not picturing someone like Sherry Dickson. At 69, the snowy-haired, retired elementary school teacher hops into her Meta Quest headset five days a week, for roughly 60 to 90 minutes at a time. She’s not attending live concerts or watching immersive films. Dickson, a fitness buff since Jane Fonda workout videos in the ’80s, largely uses her headset for one reason — to play Supernatural, a VR fitness game with a huge, loyal fan base and a tight-knit community.
Supernatural isn’t dead, but it might as well be. A few weeks ago, Meta shut down three VR studios as part of broader layoffs in its Reality Labs division. As a result, Supernatural will no longer get new content. That’s why Dickson is spearheading an online social media campaign to save Supernatural from slowly fading into oblivion.
Supernatural is a mix between a Peloton class and rhythm games like Just Dance or Beat Saber. You swat at targets as they fly toward you, timed to music, inside a picturesque virtual world. You can choose from a library of dance-like Flow workouts, boxing, or even meditative breathing classes. Like any connected fitness game, Supernatural’s stickiness relies on an ever-evolving content library. New music, levels, and choreography keep people hooked because they not only keep things fresh, but strengthen the bond between users and the game’s charismatic coaches.
“Mark Zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist. Perhaps it is not surprising that he killed Supernatural.”
For a game like Supernatural, shutting down content production was a death knell that left Dickson and countless other Supernatural fans blindsided with shock, then grief. The Supernatural Facebook page has over 110,000 members, many of whom have written sprawling odes to the game. Over 7,000 and counting have also signed a Change.org petition, begging Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to rethink the decision.
Dickson is what your typical Supernatural user looks like. In an emerging tech category with expensive hardware dominated by 18-to-34-year-old men, the majority of Supernatural’s warriors are women, people over 50, and folks with limited mobility. And in the weeks since the news, they’re not staying quiet in their grief.
Sherry Dickson, 69, is leading an online campaign to save Supernatural. She’s also part of a group of women who play the game together called Team Sunshine. Photo by Laurence Philomene / The Verge
They’re pissed, and they want Meta to know two things. Not only has the company royally screwed up, but they’re also not letting Supernatural go without a fight.
“My opinion of Meta can be summed up as @*#&&1 $&#^!@ &^#%,” Regina Lynn, a Supernatural athlete in her 50s, tells me in an email. (Athlete is the term the Supernatural community prefers.) Lynn has been playing for five years, roughly three to four times a week. “Mark Zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist. Perhaps it is not surprising that he killed Supernatural.”
Lynn is one of several Supernatural fans who reached out to The Verge to say they see a correlation between what’s going on in the world and how Meta has conducted business since acquiring Within, the studio behind the game. Unlike Meta, Within was an independent studio with roots in music videos, feature films, and creative projects. In a Decoder interview, Within cofounder Chris Milk described building Supernatural as “making something that is meaningful to another human being” — something more akin to immersive art than a means to solidify dominance in the VR market. That, in no small part, explains why some fans have reacted so viscerally.
... continue reading