it’s probably my grumpiness putting me off of VR felix is right
I did see some of the students in a previous cohort at the UCSC Games and Playable Media master’s do a VR game that was just, literally, a platformer in VR but you’re in the center and can look around and see the level around you
and when you hear that description it doesn’t sound super impressive until you play it and it’s like, shit they built a really, really tall level above you and that’s REALLY cool to be able to see more than just what you’re presented with at the outset. and all they did was make it so that you could look up at the level!
that’s the kind of thing I’d like to see more of and astro bot goes in that direction kinda
disembodiment will save VR is basically what I’m saying
just joining this discussion out of context to say that one studio that does good things with VR is Tender Claws in LA. they made this game called Virtual Virtual Reality that is a quite subversive little commentary on the kind of techno-optimism infused into these products… and they also just recently released another game called The Under Presents which is intended to be a sort of immersive theater experience. a lot of their stuff is narrative focused but more clever/less heavy-handed than a lot of the walking simulator-y indie stuff with similar production values. i haven’t been able to play The Under Presents cuz no VR headset, but worth checking out if you do have that setup and are into VR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnxFU0aRUTM
re: general VR discussion at the time of VR being a Hot New Thing in like 2015 maybe, i was exhausted from hearing about it because it was obvious that VC money was propping up a lot of that discussion and excitement. suddenly VR was the future! until it wasn’t! once devs saw there wasn’t a fountain of money in VR they suddenly stopped being excited about it went to focus on getting their games on the Switch and games that were successful on the switch or whatever. not that i blame them, but it goes to show how fickle that kind of discussion/excitement is about this stuff.
but anyway - i don’t hate VR. i think there’s a lot of possibilities to explore there. but i do think it’s a separate space from other videogames - what works there often doesn’t work with regular games, and vice versa. it certainly will never replace them. so as a more established alternative space i think VR could be cool, provided VR headsets were more accessible anyway. i guess PSVR is that for a lot of people, but it’s not something i imagine being widely embraced as a whole because it’s just extra time and money for studios to make (and i’m more interested in stuff that’s made particularly for VR hardware, rather than adapted to it).
This by itself was enough to put me off of many Nintendo DS games that made heavy use of the stylus and therefore caused me great discomfort, and I can only imagine how much worse this could be with physically-demanding VR games.
well, I can find lots of articles about playing rift games on quest, and I know how to make my headset play rift or steam games, but this is the first quest-only game I’ve seen and I don’t think that works for me…
I guess it just came out and they have to patch in support for other platforms
im really glad that in this round of VR i don’t really see anyone convinced that they’re gonna replace videogames as we know them. everyone’s been down that road and can’t be sold the lie anymore
a few years from now everyone will be throwing out old VR for new models. in this time i hope all the people who couldn’t afford it first gen will be able to get and create some games ill be SUPER excited about
honestly one of my favourite things about VR is that there are all these weird new platforms and small projects coming out I’ve never heard of on them
like I know there’s expense/availability/access concerns that people have up front about $$$ and if you’re used to being excluded from things on that basis obviously you’re gonna be more upset about it out of the gate
but given how codified the idea of A Game Platform is, I really don’t mind that I learn every other week about the Icculus Journey which somehow has a dozen studios roped into working with it. I have no idea who’s buying it, the answer is almost certainly “no one, and it’s burning VC money,” but it’s still wild
like if not for all the other inequality and stratification and atomization concerns shared by videogames’ audience I don’t think the idea that not everyone is going to individually own every platform would be that contentious