Today I had the idea of looking at an aspect of gaming that I have been very quiet on with this blog, or just in general. This is because I usually prefer to write about topics with which I posses something of a first hand account. However, recently I appear to have been branching out into Blogs detailing my thoughts on the future of gaming, so I might as well get to the one thing that everyone keeps telling me is the future; Virtual Reality. Namely, how impractical it currently is and how much I feel needs to change/improve before it starts to 'take over gaming'.
It seems that widespread virtual reality is still failing to reach the levels of cultural proliferation that we were promised back when Vive and Occulus were in their infancy. You know, the time when all of these budding tech companies were stroking their VR patents and scoffing at anyone who considered their ventures with a raised eyebrow. "Laugh it up kid, in a couple of years you'll be the stupid one." And, to their credit, both companies are still in business so something must be going right. (Despite that messy lawsuit with Zenimax.) But we've yet to reach the 'headset in every home' campaign promise that made us sign up all those years ago. Sure we've seen that the Playstation 5 intends to redesign and buff up it's Playstation VR into the eloquently named: Playstation VR 2; and rumors persist that Microsoft's Project Scarlett will support some form of VR, but these announcements seem like footnotes compared to the real system sellers. "Oh yeah, we're doing VR. But check out our resolutions and our RAM! That's the real deal baby!"
This situation has had me wondering; Why? Why isn't VR the powerhouse that it rightly should be. And don't get me wrong, it rightly should be the next big step in gaming. Afterall, where else is there to go? We've created games that look so authentic that stills of 'The Last of Us Part 2' genuinely look true-to-life with the right lighting. Realism has reached the point that it seems there is little more possible improvement in the visual department. (Except maybe training better animation algorithms to lighten heavy workloads.) So shouldn't we all be retreating into Ready Player One's Oasis and teaming up with Tracer and the Iron Giant to bring down big cooperate. (I never watched Ready Player One, if that isn't readily apparent.) It seems not. Or at least, not yet.
I feel like there are a few factors at play here but to start with I want to address the systems and games that one has at their disposal with VR, and why they may not be enough to support a mass exodus to this new hardware. Take a look at the spectrum of VR games out and you may notice something, most of them are shallow. Just like with any new console, the VR space was flooded with tech demo 'experinces' that amounted to little more than touring players through a space and showing off all the cool things that the system could accomplish. Of course, with VR these experiences are far more interesting than anything we're likely to see Christmas 2020 when the new console generation launches, purely for the gimmick of total visual immersion; but it's still a gimmick and those are usually characterized by their short life spans, and such should be the case with VR.
However, things don't seem to have gone that route. Even now we are seeing 'experince' games that exist to do little more than wow their audience with a quick, but expensive, tour. (More on that little caveat later.) Back in the launch period, these titles were more blatant. There was the game in which you went shark diving in the deep ocean and got attacked by a shark, or the one in which you went mountain climbing in the Andes. There was even one which shot players up an elevator and played off of your vertigo/fear of heightsin order to get a rise out of you. These were 'amusement park' tier attractions that one is expected to pay top dollar for. Later on in the life of VR, things hardly got any better. There was Ghostbusters VR, which offered people nothing more than a tour through the iconic firestation and literally nothing else. Rollercoaster dreams, which is a rollercoaster. And countless 'things you could do in real life but lack the freedom and time to do' games that you'll soon start to forget that these systems were originally marketing as 'gaming platforms.'
That isn't to say that every VR game is a 'sit back and do nothing' snorefest. Over the years there have been some VR games that have tried to buck the trend set by their contemporaries and deliver something worthwhile. The VR game 'John Wick Chronicles' allowed people to fight their way through heavy gunfire sceanrio's with none of the deftness of the iconic man-on-fire hero but all of the bullets. Until Dawn Rush of Blood was... another rollercoaster game! Really? Okay, but this one did focus on scaring the player with weak jump scares and keeping them somewhat entertained with on-the-rails shooter segments. And Lone Echo was a fully realized game about solving puzzles and traversing space as a robot which no control over his legs. All these games were active attempts to do something fun with the VR space, but most of them delivered something that was palatable for a moment, but hardly worth the heavy asking price on the box. (With the exception of Lone Echo, that game was pretty cool.)
Some other developers tried to make games that really took advantage of what VR had to offer, and these were the kind of experiences that most users would be familiar with. Owlchemy labs seem to be the masters of this right now with their expanding 'Job Simulator' brand of games and their 'Rick and Morty' experience to boot. Those games took advantage of the way that VR sets you into a fully interactible space and mixed it with fun, sometimes dry, humor; which I can appreciate being a Brit. Then there is the VR exclusive version of SUPERHOT, which removed the movement/time manipulation aspect of the console game in favour of a system wherein careless hand gestures could spell your doom. And then there is the streaming darling: BeatSaber, which completely supplants DanceDance Revolution as the music rhythm game of the modern generation. (And they didn't even need to turn tricks for Sony in order to get an ad in The Emoji Movie. For shame, Ubisoft!)
The problem that all these games suffer from right now is one that is in serious need of innovation; (I.e. a problem that won't be solved from just throwing money at it) most VR games are incapable of facilitating movement. This is not just because of bad control set-up (although that is a factor) but more due to the inherent motion sickness that many users suffer from when their world view shifts without their body moving. It's a disconnect that the human body wasn't built to handle and thus can really mess with people's heads. Unfortunately, the cost of this issue is that many VR developers find themselves stuck with the ideas that can be realized when your player is stuck to one spot. Some games have come up with the 'teleport method' but that is murder to immersion, so that cuts off a huge amount of the appeal of VR for a great deal of potential developers and consumers. What is left are games that are either really basic on-the-rails affairs (A genre which should be killed in a fire) or imaginative games which manage to make things interesting without changing the players location too often. (Although that takes real thought and effort to achieve so most people just give up and decide to make a console game instead.)
Additionally, the effort required to develop a VR game often far exceeds the returns that one could expect, and I'm not just talking about software difficulties. (Although I'm told that those do exist.) Rather I referencing the way that a VR environment requires a lot more care and attention be devoted to every aspect of design due to the fact that players are far closer to the world and they would be through a TV screen. Suddenly, all textures have to look good up close for fear of the player sticking their face all up in it. (Don't want anyone to start hurling the second they start making out pixels.) Then there is the fact that developers have to work overtime to hide the seams of the world, because players can look up and over everything within range of their grubby little mitts. You bet that means studios are forcing their modellers to texture the bottom of coffee cups to minute details. (Bethesda may be use to it but everyone else is still adjusting.) All that work is made despite the fact that the number of consumers who actually consume VR content is far inferior to other forms of digital entertainment; so why bother with all that effort in the first place?
But we've just gone all the way around back to the original point; nobody is playing VR. Why? Well, for my part I suspect that this could come down to two factors and both of them have to do with money. (Although bear in mind this is coming from the mind of a real life Scrooge McDuck here, so take this hypothesis with several grains of salt.) Here in the UK, a HTC Vive headset will set people back a cool £499, with the Pro variant reaching up to £800. Even the cheaper option, The Occulus Quest, is retailing for £399 on Amazon. This tech is going for console-grade price points despite the fact that their gaming versatility is laughable compared to even the most pitiful consoles. Few big companies even bother to support the VR ecosystem with games and those that do rarely put any effort behind their offerings. This has led to the VR marketplace being flooded with low effort or over priced products that leave a sour taste in the mouth of consumers. There might even be actual consumer dissent if the gimmick of virtual reality wasn't powerful enough to keep people hooked. Yet despite that, word of mouth tends to be more along the lines of "Not yet, but keep an eye on things" Instead of "Go out and buy a headset right now!"
"Surely there must be good, worthwhile, fairly-priced games on the VR marketplace!" You may be asking. And you would be right, of course there is. The problem is that the vast majority of them are video games already exist on paltry non-VR consoles. The best VR shooter right now is probably Payday 2, (which is on Steam) the best open world game, and I'm using 'best' to denote the fact that there is literally no other competition in this department, is Skyrim VR (Which is based on the Special Edition available on consoles and Steam) and the best horror game is undoubtedly Resident Evil 7 VR. (Which is similarly available everywhere.) None of these experiences are exclusive to VR and yet hold a prohibitively expensive barrier-to-entry in order for the general public to get hold of them. (Except for Resident Evil VR. That's available on PSVR which is by-far the most reasonably priced VR option at £150 on Amazon.)
At the end of the day, the tech may be there for great VR games to exist, but none of the other infrastructure has caught up yet. Studios aren't willing to code for it, consumers aren't willing to fork out for it, and the native games aren't good enough to make people willing. Recent times have seen some legitimate efforts to make something special; 'Blood and Truth', though horribly cliched, seems to be a decent B-List action game. (Actually I just read the title aloud to myself, make that D-List.) and Lone Echo is getting a sequel that looks to be a bit more hands on. But we have a ways to go before VR gaming becomes a genuine contender for gamer's screentime. Maybe once the studios start getting behind the concept, and the retailers start pricing the equipment reasonably, we'll start to see something real special bloom in the world of gaming. Who knows, maybe 10 years in the future this will be a VR blog. I'm joking. I'll definitely have killed myself long before then. (If VR vertigo doesn't kill me first.)
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