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[Grimmrobe]

News flash: VR is just another display device, and the reason it's stalling is because it's being treated as an entirely separate platform. Article below taken from https://www.patreon.com/icycalm

I have censored a couple of bad words for the sake of minors browsing the forum.

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VR Is Stalling For No Reason

This isn't a proper VGCULTURE essay. This is some basic common sense stuff that I really shouldn't have to write, yet which I am compelled to write because, astoundingly, no one else is.

So let's get this straight right off the bat: VR is NOT stalling because there aren't any good VR-exclusive games coming out, like everyone else is saying. That's like saying that LaserDisc stalled because there weren't any new LaserDisc-exclusive movies coming out ffs. VR is stalling because people are stupid and don't demand that ALL their new games work with VR out of the box.

We don't NEED new VR-exclusive games. The vast majority of the few such games that exist do not REQUIRE VR to be played, and therefore they SHOULDN'T require it. Their devs are shooting themselves in the foot by cutting out the greatest percentage of players in this way. Conversely, there is no reason at all why EVERY new game coming out — and especially all the first-person ones — shouldn't be playable in VR. There are goddamn UTILITIES made by single random people and distributed online for free that allow you to play ANY old first-person game in VR — like all the old Far Cries, for example — so why on earth a company like Ubisoft isn't adding a VR option in stuff like Wildlands and Far Cry 5 is beyond me.

Understand that there's nothing particularly special about a VR headset compared to a monitor or TV or projector, IT'S JUST A F#*!$ING DISPLAY YOU STUPID F#*!$ING MONKEYS. "Presence" is a term for idiots who need half a dozen words for the same concept, that concept here being "immersion". And if they made a brainjacking device tomorrow, you should STILL be able to play Far Cry 5 with it with barely any modifications. They ALREADY modify the game to work with various different resolutions and display setups, so making the necessary changes to ensure a smooth VR experience is merely an extension of that. Requiring that the devs make an ENTIRE NEW F#*!$ING GAME just because you want to use your VR headset is an ENTIRE NEW GALAXY of asinine that I simply don't have enough all-caps for! It's like when Sony announced the PSP, and Capcom said they'd make a DMC game specifically for it. Only, eventually, they didn't, because it wouldn't have made any financial sense. THAT'S why no one is making "VR-exclusive" games today — at least not serious ones — and all you get is dreck, or cheap gimmicks like Beat Saber.

So, to ask it one more time, why on earth can't I play Wildlands or FC5 in VR, with official support? Or Siege for that matter. Or even PA, since there is a VR version of AirMech up on Steam that looks fantastic [ > ]. Which brings me to the other giant stupidity: entire new versions of games that companies are charging people again for simply to add VR support as if they are brand-new f#*$ing games! It is insane that no one is screaming about this shit, and it's insane that with all this nonsense raging people are actually expecting VR to take off!

And then on top of all that, the vast majority of gimmicky VR-only games that come out seem to suffer from the brand-new "disembodied hands" syndrome for no apparent reason. You know what I am talking about, I am not going to bother elaborating. If your game has disembodied hands I refuse to even watch the trailer, let alone play the stupid thing.

So why is VR stalling? I said there is no reason, but I lied, since it's obviously sheer stupidity, plain and simple. Sheer stupidity of everyone involved: the companies that can't figure out that they should be adding VR support to their existing projects, the journalists and players who can't figure out that they should be asking for it, the shovelware-makers who are taking advantage of the paucity of titles to flood the market with their cheap dreck for a few quick bucks, the players who buy the dreck, the journalists who are reviewing it without trashing it as dreck...

Thankfully there's that Oculus James Bond game coming out, Defector [ > ], that looks cool. Of course, they are not letting you play it without a headset, which means they won't make much money, which means they won't invest much money, which means it looks like a 360 game, but it's still better than the shovelware dreck, so whatever. It's basically the same stupidity with what Ubisoft does (or doesn't do), but from the opposite direction, treating essentially a display device as if it's a new system ffs. People are paying an exorbitant amount of money on headsets and graphics cards to power them, and can't even play their fucking games on them. Of course VR isn't taking off!

F*!$ing morons. F*!k knows how many years it will take the industry to overcome this new stupidity. Until then, VR is doomed to stalling for no reason. In the meantime, I will research enthusiast utilities that let you play all games in VR and report back with my results. Might as well be the only writer here again who's doing something productive with his time.

 

[Kamina]

VR is stalling becuase most people dont want to buy and wear heavy glasses.

 

[MisterBrimstone]

wat?

 

[Grimmrobe]

VR is stalling becuase most people dont want to buy and wear heavy glasses.

Most people don't want to buy 144Hz monitors either, but no one is saying that they are stalling because no one is trying to make games exclusively for them.

VR is a new kind of display. Buy it if you want, don't if you don't want to, just like with any other display device. But don't cripple the device's market by segregating it for no apparent reason.

If anything, VR must be selling better than 144Hz monitors. And yet people say VR is stalling, instead of 144Hz monitors!

 

[DarthBuzzer]

This guy is absolutely clueless. Saying VR is just a display and that there is nothing special about it and presence doesn't matter completely flies in the face of some of VR's best games like Lone Echo / Echo VR, Astro Bot, Beat Saber.

It has to be treated as something completely different because that's how it becomes a long-term mainstream success. You're not going to have VR become mainstream if it's just an optional VR mode, as great as they can be.

 

[Grimmrobe]

This guy is absolutely clueless. Saying VR is just a display and that there is nothing special about it and presence doesn't matter completely flies in the face of some of VR's best games like Lone Echo / Echo VR, Astro Bot, Beat Saber.

It has to be treated as something completely different because that's how it becomes a long-term mainstream success. You're not going to have VR become mainstream if it's just an optional VR mode, as great as they can be.

He is not saying to not make Astro Bot. He is saying patch Blops4 so that it works with it, and watch sales explode.

 

[Pejo]

Just for the required performance and graphical concessions angle alone, this is a bad rant.

 

[Blam]

VR is stalling becuase most people dont want to buy and wear heavy glasses.

VR isn't stalling it's just a slow market. You can't expect any platform with a minumum of having a $800+ phone or a 200+ headset for maybe 100+ games most of which are techdemos to be fast selling or breaking anything like that.

Games need to be longer and better but VR isn't like consoles where everyone is looking through one view point it's much harder to develop for and that's not being taken into account by many AAA devs. Maybe Ubisoft but even then.

But on that point the headsets are clunky (i own 3 headsets atm, rift, vive, wmr) and setup is not always easy. That's for PC alone.

Quest might push a lot more people to get VR and that's good. Oculus has facebook marketing behind them and they will be the ones to push it mainstream I do very much think they're the only ones who will do so.


Not having large scale games on a easy to access platform is what's slowing sales of VR. Sony is trying their best and it's sorta working but not as well as it could. VR users are also all basically semi-whales in terms of spending on games and stuff like that.

 

[Grimmrobe]

If 144Hz monitors only worked with exclusive games, no one would be buying them either. And no games would be made for them. But the monitor industry is not that stupid to try to launch a new platform based on a mere display device.

 

[DarthBuzzer]

He is not saying to not make Astro Bot. He is saying patch Blops4 so that it works with it, and watch sales explode.

He is incapable of thinking of VR as anything other than a display which is the problem. If he wants every game to support VR, then that's great - I'd love that too, but he is practically dismissing the idea of VR exclusives as anything more than gimmicks.

Fortnite VR support would probably sell a bunch of units. A few hundred thousand maybe? Half Life 3 VR exclusive to VR would sell a lot more because people will find they actually need to buy VR to get it, because they can't play it any other way.

 

[Hexa]

Lol no. Playing games not designed or modified for VR in VR is awful nausue inducing nonsense for first person games, and I've never tried with third but I'd assume it's worse. It'd be a complete waste of time to implement half assed support.
If you want to ignore everything that makes VR special and treat it as just another display, just play games on it like a normal display, which is already possible for essentially all PC and PS4 games, and stop writing garbage rants whining about things you don't understand.

 

[Ryno1221]

Virtual Reality is stalling because Actual Reality is much, much better.

 

[CloudStrife_ca]

Expectations, the non-VR users expectations, the general public's expectations are all basically the limits of their own imagination at this point but thats not reality. This is first gen VR, for anyone who actually adopted VR this first gen, to grow your brand of choice, be it the PSVR, the Oculus or the Vive, we stand to support this medium as not to replace flat gaming but encourage future generations of VR to get to where we want it to be, the way you do that is with your wallets and some time, enjoying the journey as we get to that place one day where VR becomes like Ready Player One or what the general public, the uninformed consumer expects it to be.

I love my PSVR and I think for the first gen of mainstream VR its been done pretty damn well not perfect but I dont regret it and only wish I had bought in sooner. Hopefully theres a nice push on headsets over Black Friday, the more affordable these things are presented to the public, the more people get in and can't ignore the fact that VR gaming is an experience of its own.

 

[Woo-Fu]

Too expensive, too impractical.

If I were interested in driving tech like this I think I'd focus on AR instead of VR. Practical implementations of AR will yield lightweight, wireless HMDs and they'll have many more business cases to drive adoption of the technology.

 

[wondermega]

A misplaced rant. I'm a huge supporter of VR but this person has no idea what they are talking about. Things need to be specifically designed to make proper use of VR as a format beyond simply "sticking the FPS mode on your face" otherwise the experience will likely range between substandard to god awful.
I understand that there are people who are frustrated with the slow adoption of the format, but this is how it was always going to be. I can appreciate from the modern gamer's view where they may be pissed that they are not being pandered to in the usual way (a non-stop deluge of software)- the only way that is going to happen is with time, research, and sensible business conditions.

So just sit tight and enjoy VR and non-VR gaming in the meantime. Neither of them are going away anytime soon.

 

[RoboFu]

No it’s not just another display.


It completely takes you out of your surroundings. With a tv , mobile device , and handheld you can still interact with what’s going on around you.

Some people do not like that

 

[onQ123]

VR is too overwhelming to become a everyday thing but MR will most likely find it's way into everyday life & become a success.

 

[Hiro_Kunimi_80]

It's stalling for a simple reason...

the technology it's not here yet for a good quality VR experience .

 

[DarthBuzzer]

VR is too overwhelming to become a everyday thing but MR will most likely find it's way into everyday life & become a success.

MR and VR will all be in the same device anyway. As long as the device sells, that's what matters since software can be made to work for AR/VR/MR simultaneously in many cases.

 

[hivsteak]

That article is a long clueless rant. Do you have any hands on experience with VR? A display is not comparable to a VR headset.

Edit: The author of the article has serious grandiose delusions of the non-ironic kind and no solid facts supporting his argument.

Here’s a quote from the patreon you linked: “I am the world's greatest videogame theorist and critic. There is no second best: there's only me. Read some of my essays and you'll see”

 

[shark sandwich]

VR is stalling because the vast majority of gamers don’t want to strap a damn headset on their face and pantomime once the novelty factor has worn off.

Also I think it’s hilarious how the VR faithful can’t even agree on what VR is supposed to do for gaming:

- “VR is just a display tech and there’s no reason why every game doesn’t support it”
- “VR is so great, it’s the future of video games”
- “VR isn’t meant to replace traditional games, it’s going coexist, and require new kinds of games to be made for it”

LOL okay guys.

 

[LostDonkey]

I thought it was stalling because you have to dowload the file first onto a USB and then play it off that.

You cant just stream it VR from the website.....

Wait..... What?


Er...

 

[Musky_Cheese]

It's stalling for a simple reason...

the technology it's not here yet for a good quality VR experience .

People don’t want to invest. But the experience playing FireWall is so immersive compared to other non VR shooters.

But companies aren’t going to invest Call Of Duty development money into a a very small player base.

 

[onQ123]

MR and VR will all be in the same device anyway. As long as the device sells, that's what matters since software can be made to work for AR/VR/MR simultaneously in many cases.

VR is part of MR but what I'm saying is that most people don't want to be completely immersed for long periods of time so they might not jump into VR but at some point MR glasses will be cheap & make it's way into everyday life.

 

[mckmas8808]

He is not saying to not make Astro Bot. He is saying patch Blops4 so that it works with it, and watch sales explode.

That's not how VR works though.

 

[DarthBuzzer]

VR is part of MR but what I'm saying is that most people don't want to be completely immersed for long periods of time so they might not jump into VR but at some point MR glasses will be cheap & make it's way into everyday life.

True, but the point of glasses that switch between the two is that it's so easy and quick that you can get in and out of full immersion to partial immersion in a split second. That, as well as VR's unique capabilities will ensure it has use, as well as the other half of the coin.

 

[mckmas8808]

VR is part of MR but what I'm saying is that most people don't want to be completely immersed for long periods of time so they might not jump into VR but at some point MR glasses will be cheap & make it's way into everyday life.

But will the best games be in VR or MR if you had to compare the two? I think VR. Having full immersion seems like it's better, than playing a game with partial immersion and seeing enemies jumping around on your couch.

 

[Ovek]

PC VR is expensive.
Mobile VR devices are seen as disposable toys.
PC VR is viewed correctly in regards to the Vive as being a ball ache to setup.
The constant ridiculous push for "room scale" makes the average joe think they have to dedicate a entire room to use one.
The content isn't compelling enough.

So not really staling for no reason.

 

[iconmaster]

I see he's the world's greatest video game theorist and critic, but I don't think he understands technology very well. There is some non-zero amount of effort involved in adapting an existing game for VR -- if nothing else, it's important to make sure it doesn't make most players sick by default. (No, publishers will not be able to get away without making this effort. There's PR to consider.)

So that leaves us back where we were: expensive, uncomfortable devices that require extra work from developers to support. Oh, and the nausea still happens anyway.

 

[Mozza]

The mass market still thinks it's a gimmick,if they didn't it would be selling much better.

 

[Virex]

Screw your patreon link. Get a fucking real job

 

[shark sandwich]

The mass market still thinks it's a gimmick,if they didn't it would be selling much better.

Yup. I think people would actually put up with a surprising amount of inconvenience IF they thought it was an actual improvement over the standard “sit on your ass and press buttons” gaming experience.

I agree with Palmer Luckey that even if you gave these things away for free, most people would stop using them after a couple weeks. But I think the truth is that people just don’t want it. It’s not merely a matter of the technology needing to improve.

 

[DarthBuzzer]

Yup. I think people would actually put up with a surprising amount of inconvenience IF they thought it was an actual improvement over the standard “sit on your ass and press buttons” gaming experience.

I agree with Palmer Luckey that even if you gave these things away for free, most people would stop using them after a couple weeks. But I think the truth is that people just don’t want it. It’s not merely a matter of the technology needing to improve.

It's a perception and marketing issue. You said it yourself: "IF they thought". The reality is most people have yet to try VR, so they can't comprehend what it can do for them. You give every gamer on the planet a VR headset and have them play, and you'd see a massive change in opinion. A lot of those people may not use their headsets much, but that would be because of the nature of today's tech and it's limitations. Most people would be on board with the idea of VR and see what it can offer them, awaiting future improvements to streamline the process so that it's all easy to use as much as they want.

 

[PocoJoe]

Most people don't want to buy 144Hz monitors either, but no one is saying that they are stalling because no one is trying to make games exclusively for them.

VR is a new kind of display. Buy it if you want, don't if you don't want to, just like with any other display device. But don't cripple the device's market by segregating it for no apparent reason.

If anything, VR must be selling better than 144Hz monitors. And yet people say VR is stalling, instead of 144Hz monitors!

Monitors rarely make people sick,

VR is also stalling because it makes people SICK!

I loaned psvr from a friend and tested it for a Week, it made me epicly seasick and I felt bit off for 2 weeks.

From what i have heard, maybe 20-50% of users feel sick while using vr, so this is biggest problem.

Hard to sell expensive device if user cant use it.

 

[Clear]

Its a pretty idiotic essay to be honest. Look the reason all games don't just have VR modes bolted-on is because it requires work and money to do well. Without good implementation, its actually going to hurt public perception of VR, and without improving that you aren't going to increase market size to a state where funding the implementation offers sufficient return on investment to justify itself.

 

[The_Mike]

No it’s not just another display.


It completely takes you out of your surroundings. With a tv , mobile device , and handheld you can still interact with what’s going on around you.

Some people do not like that

This is why I don’t care about VR. I’d still want to be active in my environment.

The mass market still thinks it's a gimmick,if they didn't it would be selling much better.

It IS a gimmick.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Vr could learn from Wii Motion, nunchucks.

 

[Zewp]

This guy is absolutely clueless.

You don't even know the half of it. Dunno what Grimmrobe's affiliation with the dude is, but some of the Icycalm posts he's shared have been laugh out loud ridiculous. Like claiming that game complexity is inherently tied to resolution, because if you double the resolution of a chess board the game gets more complex (apparently Chessmaster 10th Edition runs at a resolution of 8x8). Or freaking out about the word gameplay, because you don't say "musiclisten" or "moviewatch".

At first I thought it was just bad satire, but seems he's been doing this for years. Dude's apparently wanted in the US for wire fraud too. I don't know why the mods tolerate Grimmrobe spamming Icycalm's Patreon links. If he's not Icycalm himself, then he's sure shilling pretty damn hard for the dude, for whatever reason.

tl;dr, don't concern yourself too much with Icycalm. He's that crazy hobo ranting nonsensically on the street corner, except in this case the internet has given him a platform so he can think he's a videogame theorist/critic. Dude's a few fries short of a Happy Meal.

 

[DarthBuzzer]

This is why I don’t care about VR. I’d still want to be active in my environment.



It IS a gimmick.

Gimmick: "a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or trade. "

Nothing that describes VR. It's a fully additive medium, meaning that it adds to the experience in a valuable way.

And if you want to be active in your environment, then you'd be doing mixed reality in VR, which isn't here yet because you know, it's early days and everything?

Vr could learn from Wii Motion, nunchucks.

It has learnt. VR's motion controls are where they are now because of the groundwork left behind by Wii, PS Move and such.
Developers have also learnt (not all of them of course) how to avoid waggle-based gameplay that was unavoidable in Wii games.

 

[Hendrick's]

I'm waiting for VR TVs.

 

[The_Mike]

Gimmick: "a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or trade. "

Nothing that describes VR. It's a fully additive medium, meaning that it adds to the experience in a valuable way.

And if you want to be active in your environment, then you'd be doing mixed reality in VR, which isn't here yet because you know, it's early days and everything?


It has learnt. VR's motion controls are where they are now because of the groundwork left behind by Wii, PS Move and such.
Developers have also learnt (not all of them of course) how to avoid waggle-based gameplay that was unavoidable in Wii games.

You can enjoy VR all you want, but it still is and will always just be a gimmick.

I love 3D on my 3D display, and I am perfect fine with it being a gimmick, cus I don’t always want to play with glasses on.

 

[Grimmrobe]

Dunno what Grimmrobe's affiliation with the dude is

I've been reading his stuff for 10 years and he is my clan leader.

 

[Zewp]

Monitors rarely make people sick,

VR is also stalling because it makes people SICK!

I loaned psvr from a friend and tested it for a Week, it made me epicly seasick and I felt bit off for 2 weeks.

From what i have heard, maybe 20-50% of users feel sick while using vr, so this is biggest problem.

Hard to sell expensive device if user cant use it.

Pretty much this. It takes a long time to get used to it and not everyone will in the end. It's why so many games push the teleport movement scheme as the optimal way to play. And let's face it, the point of VR is more immersion. Teleporting around isn't immersive at all.

 

[DarthBuzzer]

You can enjoy VR all you want, but it still is and will always just be a gimmick.

I love 3D on my 3D display, and I am perfect fine with it being a gimmick, cus I don’t always want to play with glasses on.

You're simply saying it's a gimmick over and over again, for literally no outlined reason. Just "It's a gimmick because I say so"

If you want people to actually take you seriously, you're going to need to state why it's a gimmick. Which isn't going to be possible considering I already laid out a definition that VR doesn't fall under.

 

[Grimmrobe]

The differences between VR and monitors are about the same in magnitude as between monitors and handhelds.

Fact.

There is no reason a game like BotW cannot be played on all three types of display devices. If you exclude all good games from one type, don't be surprised when adoption of that type stalls. It's not exactly rocket science (though for most people in this thread, it apparently is).

 

[Zewp]

The differences between VR and monitors are about the same in magnitude as between monitors and handhelds.

Fact.

There is no reason a game like BotW cannot be played on all three types of display devices. If you exclude all good games from one type, don't be surprised when adoption of that type stalls. It's not exactly rocket science (though for most people in this thread, it apparently is).

Yeah, no. VR is the same as a monitor in that they both have screens that display the game you're playing. That's where the similarities end. VR is purposely designed to give you a different experience from a traditional monitor. That's the entire point and why people buy VR.

VR is as far removed from handhelds as it is from traditional monitors. Though I've no doubt that because we're not parroting Icycalm's dementia-induced ramblings, anything anyone of us here says doesn't matter at this point.

 

[Hexa]

The differences between VR and monitors are about the same in magnitude as between monitors and handhelds.

Fact.

There is no reason a game like BotW cannot be played on all three types of display devices. If you exclude all good games from one type, don't be surprised when adoption of that type stalls. It's not exactly rocket science (though for most people in this thread, it apparently is).

From that point of view all PC and PS4 games are already playable on VR.

Fact.

So what are you complaining about?

 

[Darak]

You can't take a random game and suddenly turn it into a VR experience. First person games would induce nausea, so you need a completely revamped controlling mechanism with no continuous turning and reduced (or removed) walking. Third person games need a completely revamped camera which should stay quite a distance from the main character (to prevent the same issues), move very slowly and have no rotation (or a very limited one). Those changes impose severe restrictions in game design and would be hard or impossible to make to an existing game.

To be honest, you could display any game in VR, it would simple be a very bad experience which would make a lot of people sick. One of the few nausea-inducing moments I've had with VR (I consider myself fairly resistant) was playing the original Quake in VR at the original running speed, controling the rotation with mouse + head. It's just not a good idea.

 

[johntown]

It seem like they forgot that development and support cost money. He says devs should be making all FPS games in VR. This not only takes extra development time but then they also have to provide support for that version of the game and all of that cost money. I agree that if they did make a VR version of most games VR might start doing a little better.

As in other threads VR is just not quite where it needs to be yet to go mainstream. It must be mobile (wire free), it must be powerful and they need a way to address nausea. Once they have that it will take off.

 

[The_Mike]

You're simply saying it's a gimmick over and over again, for literally no outlined reason. Just "It's a gimmick because I say so"

If you want people to actually take you seriously, you're going to need to state why it's a gimmick. Which isn't going to be possible considering I already laid out a definition that VR doesn't fall under.

It’s a gimmick and always will be cus it will minority who plays it, and not the main way to play the games.