Alright Mr. “VR’s already dead” … we need to talk
Or, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU EXPECTING? A UNICORN?
You know who you are. Lil’ Miss “I was right, VR will never take off” and Mr. “I knew VR was dead before it even started” or the ever popular “VR’s just a fad, it’ll be dead in a year” dude. I see you in the comment threads of PC gamer articles, Reddit and all across the internet. I know you think that VR is stupid, and will never take off or grow. Well then…
I have one question for you.
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU EXPECTING?
Naturally, around the end of the year, and anniversary’s we got a lot of “How the past year of VR’s gone” or “Where is it now!?” articles, blogs, videos, interpretive dances, etc. And, as such, VR once again gets thrown up in the air and judged. This time around, it’s with skepticism, bit of pessimism and a whole lot of “I knew it would never take off.”
This embodies my frustration over the past month, well year really, but mostly in the past month. Obviously and naturally, there’s a mismatch between what we developers see, and what everyone else see. This desync usually stems from the fact that developers are the first people to know of something, and thus, adjust accordingly. And then it takes time for that change to get out to the public, then the public have their own time process and probably change en-masse.
So, what is happening with the VR industry right now?
A good friend of mine worked in VR for quite some time before I did, and a while before I got into VR (this was while I was still skeptical about it, more info on that here), I asked him what the prospect of VR was— and he said (roughly) the following:
“VR is a bubble. But! After it has launched, it won’t burst. It’ll shrink and solidify down to a solid foundation and slowly grow from there.”
VR had a HUGE launch — articles touting VR becoming the next revolution of gaming. Investors threw over a billion dollars into VR (Lots of it to the elusive magic leap). It was really hyped, it had people interested, people wanted to see it, learn more. They wanted to be a part of it.
VR’s life has shared a lot of parallels to that of the life of a star. A space star, not George Clooney. (I have a degree in space, you didn’t think I’d sneak a blog out without making a reference, did you?) A star spends a long time slowly growing, and growing, until it rapidly expands and becomes HUGE and hot. It stays there for a little while, until it explodes and becomes a much smaller, denser star. A foundation for things to orbit around, to grow(ish) around. The star didn’t die, nor was it ever “dying.”
And thats what happened to VR. It slowly grew over the past few decades, then it rapidly grew. This past year it exploded, and whats left is a solid, foundation. You’ve actually probably heard of this before — it’s called the Gartner Hype Cycle. I’m not a huge fan of the graph exactly, but the general terms and progress work.
So, what we have now in VR is a quickly solidifying foundation. VR isn’t failing, it’s doing precisely what it means to. A lot of people focus on the negative, and you admittedly hear about the “negatives” of VR more often than the positives (guilty!). But, that doesn’t mean it’s dead or dying. For those statisticians and scientists keeping track at home, this is called observation bias.
We have many individuals and groups and of highly motivated, highly energetic artists, writers, programmers, designers, composers, engineers, business people, investors — all a part of that foundation. We’re moving forward with VR, building a foundation. A code, a doctrine, a bible or whatever the heck you want to call it, is being built for VR, for the future. Yea, it might sound stupid to you that we need to create something like, design do’s and don’t, or a standard for managing social interactions. But these are 110% necessary for creating a solid foundation for VR.
Simply put: VR isn’t dead and it’s certainly not dying. It’s died down… but thats OK.
So chill out.
You can follow me around on twitter @fr0z3nR for other game and VR development shenanigans.
