A crumbling bridge VR can fix

Or, the rise of the planet of the armchair game developers

Armchair game developers aren’t new, they’ve been around for a while. If you’re a game developer, you’ve probably seen something like this happen: A game developer releases/does something that, to a developer, is completely normal and understandable. However the non-development community blows the situation well out of proportion, starts slinging insults, refund requests, threats and boycotts at the developer. Quite often, there’s news coverage on the outrage from gamers. Now, you might be thinking “Well, no shit Joe, every industry and field has this.” You’re right, there’s armchair politicians (especially in todays world), psychologists, scientists, etc. Generally, they’re annoying at best and honestly, we’re all guilty of being an armchair something at some point. But, for the game industry, armchair developers are growing rapidly, and this during this past year, we’ve hit a point where it’s become a problem that could severely hurt VR moving forward.

In the past, because of the articles I’ve written, I’ve been accused of whining or blaming consumers. For this article, I’ll be blunt, I am going to be blaming consumers today. BUT I’m going to equally blame developers too. We’re both to blame for this growing problem.

So, why is it a problem now and why hasn’t it been a problem before? Well, there’s a few things that I’ve observed. First off is a growing general misunderstanding within non-development communities of how game development and the game industry works, and a general lack of communication of how it works from developers to non-developers. Without developers explaining “hey, this small thing in game actually takes a week to implement” or “No, multiplayer doesn’t take a week to implement.” gamers don’t know. We’re even seeing this in VR development today. Consumers only see the end product or carefully tailored “in development screenshots” that marketing puts together. Rarely, do they see the buggy, gray box T-posed game that they love. I’ve written about this before in the context of VR.

Secondly, “games as service” has seemingly grown the sense of entitlement in consumers. Yes, I said the “e” word. Sorry guys, you aren’t entitled to anything. You deserve the best product that the company can produce within proper business standards, I will not argue with that… but you’re not entitled to anything, sorry. Game development doesn’t work that way. Things happen that cause pieces of the game to be cut. Deadlines get moved so you can’t get enough polish in.

Thirdly, and most specifically for VR, consumers are carrying over the expectations and standards set by PC and console games, and are applying them to VR. This doesn’t work, there some things that we now know that we can apply, but generally, this a whole new ball game. I say it a lot but for VR you need to reset your standards. We developers are going to be building up new standards over the next few years. The great thing about this though, is that everyone now gets a say in things. Developers and non-developers can work together to make a great VR future. But we can’t do that with arm chair developers vying for control.

So, what can everyone do to ensure a more understanding and smooth future for VR? Well, let me break it down.

VR Developers, explain yourselves.

And I don’t mean “Explain why you have your hand in the cookie jar,” type explanation, I mean, explain why you’re doing certain things. Communicating properly doesn’t mean announcing “We’re an exclusive” — it means explaining to the best of your ability why you’re doing what you’re doing in terms that non-developers can understand. Additionally, it means that when you make an announcement, you have a plan for how to respond to potential questions. Don’t be afraid to take the extra 30 seconds to explain things slightly better. Community Management skills are more important now than ever. Don’t wait until AFTER the community fallout to explain yourselves. Do it immediately, and handle the response as it comes up.

On top of that all, listen. Knee-jerk reactions are far too common in todays world and generally create more trouble than they create good. Wait, get facts and info straight, then talk.

Additionally, if you have a multiplayer game, take the time to play your game with your players. Actively do it. Make it an evening event, once or twice a week. The developers of Smashbox Arena have been doing this consistently. They even have their own discord for players to join and chat with developers. Developers tweet “hey, I’m heading in to play!” — I love this. I think this is fantastic. Interaction with players is just as important as any blog post you might write. You don’t even need to play your own game, find another one and play that instead. Just, interact with the community.

Consumers, calm the hell down.

I get it. You don’t like how a developer said that a feature was going to be in the game, but it ended up not making launch. You don’t like how your games are exclusive to the hardware you don’t have. We get it, we were consumers once. We don’t like it as much as you do. In VR, things are going to change super rapidly. Even more rapidly than traditional games.

Jumping immediately onto the bandwagon of insults, hate and threats isn’t going to fix things a lot of the time, pressuring the developer that way isn’t helpful. Take a few minutes, and ask questions. Why did the developer do this? Is this a marketing thing? Do they need funding? Will this funding they’re getting make the game better? Ask the developer for more information. Don’t knee-jerk react.

In the immortal (paraphrased) words of Gabe Newell “If people are going to be pissed off, make sure they’re at least pissed off for the right reasons.” So, if you’re going to be angry because a developer had to go exclusive to make their game even better for you, then make sure you know why before throwing the pitchforks up. Try and hold back foaming at the mouth and listen. I’m not saying DON’T be angry, you can be angry. Just make sure you’re angry at the right things and the right people.

VR YouTubers and VR Streamers — you too!

Yea, you’re not getting out of this either. You are more important to VR than you are to any other part of the gaming industry. Now, I can’t curate your content, nor can I tell you do things that I don’t think you should do say. However, I want you to know that are more impactful to VR gaming right now than to any other part of the gaming industry in my mind. With VR being so small right now, it’s extremely easy for you to influence and sway the public. If you’re going to side in an argument publicly, then you absolutely should get your facts and information straight. You have the ability to make or break VR games and developers. As it once was said, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”

Too often, I see players yelling “Why aren’t developers talking to us more!” and too often, I see developers going “I’m worried to talk to players because I’m afraid of the response.” The communication bridge that used to be sturdy years ago, is now crumbling and falling apart. To me, thats a problem. Thats a big problem. Each side makes it harder to communicate with the other. I don’t want to see that bridge destroyed completely, and I think VR right now is the key to saving the bridge.

The VR market and communities are small compared to the rest of the gaming and tech markets. Everyone from consumers to developers are excited for it. We’re early enough, and predicted to grow enough that we can build strong consumer-developer relations. As VR grows, these foundations can grow and spread back into the gaming industry as a whole.

How we can start rebuilding that connection.

It would pretty poor of me to just talk about all these things that are wrong, tell people what to do, then walk away to leave it to fix itself. That’s not how things get done, that’s not how things change.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you know that I’ve been thinking about this problem for a few months now, and how to build strong developer-consumer relationships. I’ve been talking about making a mixing pot for developers and consumers to interact, in an equally moderated environment. After weighing options of platforms, structure and generally how to handle this… I’m happy to announce the VR Creative Mixer, an open Discord channel for anyone and everyone who is interested in VR development.

The ultimate goal of this community is to foster and build strong relationships between developers and consumers. In an ideal world, it would prevent outrage incidents, similar to the one seen around Giant Cop’s Oculus announcement, and King Sprays silence around their first launch date. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get rid of those incidents, but my goal is to reduce them and make them a bit more respectable and less frightening to developers.

Now, why did I choose discord? At the moment, VR games are one of the biggest markets in the VR industry as a whole. So, presumably, that is where many of the consumers are going to be. Discord is a gaming-focused Voice and Text chatroom application that fits the needs of what I’d like to be able to do with this project. I’ve been using it for some time and I quite enjoy it. There is a web based, desktop and mobile app available, so you can chose your preferred method of communication. Most importantly, it’s extremely easy to join, requiring only a web link. (and it’s free!)

The discord channel will be divided into relevant sub channels of discussion, so that it’s not just one big blob of discussion. Additionally, developers will receive a special color name when they are a verified developer. I’m not sure if I fully like this idea, but I want to provide some sort of way to denote developers, out of a potential sea of non developers.

Should you join? Well, thats up to you. You don’t need a VR headset, you don’t need to necessarily make VR games, but if you have an interest in VR then I would strongly consider it.

By clicking this link, you’ll be able to join the discord easily. If you’d like, you can download the desktop app here (I recommend this, it’s very good) or the mobile app here.

As this experiment carries on over the next few months, I’ll make to sure to write about whats going on with it, and how it’s doing and why I think it’s doing what it’s doing.

Hope to see you soon!

You can follow me around on twitter @fr0z3nR for other game and VR development shenanigans.