notes on WorldsChat, one of the earliest 3D avatar chatrooms on the internet — exploring its design and historical significance
This entry comes from the Preserving Worlds project, a documentary series chronicling virtual worlds that have survived long past their commercial viability. The featured world here is WorldsChat, a pioneering 3D social space launched in 1994 — and remarkably, still online today. WorldsChat allowed users to create avatars, build spaces, and chat in a 3D environment. What began as a utopian digital hangout gradually evolved into a strange, vibrant labyrinth of outsider art. It’s one of the earliest examples of user-driven worldbuilding in persistent online environments. A notable part of this archival snapshot is the 2015 interview with GradualDIME, an independent archivist documenting user-generated content in WorldsChat. He guided the team through notable locations and recounted the brief intersection between WorldsChat and 4chan’s /x/ board. This interview predates the official Preserving Worlds pilot and was initially meant for another documentary, Sarasota Half in Dream, before becoming a standalone short.