VR Doesn’t Need a Killer App
Or, dear god please stop saying that a single app will “save VR”
“VR needs a killer app” is something that I’ve heard a lot over the past year. Usually it’s tied to news coming out of a major tech/software expo or major big-name VR game launch. It feels like there is this belief in the industry that a single app is going change and completely flip the VR industry over “saving” it from the potential failed fate that other tech bubbles met.
I think this mentality is silly, stupid and potentially harmful. It highlights a larger problem, I feel, that has lingered the past year. The problem being that a single app can bring forth the masses to VR. It is my opinion, that we’re past the point of a single-app causing momentous changes in the game industry, and we’ve never been at that point in the VR industry.
To talk about this though, and its impact on VR, we need to look back only a few years to the the “rise of indies” and get a brief understanding of what happened then.
MARTY, GET IN THE DeLOREAN!
Minecraft alone didn’t bring the “rise of indies”
Minecraft is heralded as bringing about the “Indie revolution” back between 2010–2012. The success of an at-the-time, small time dev team in Sweden inspired and drew people from all over the world to begin making games. One game, being marked as the “bringer of indies” is really kind of silly when you think about it, and a disservice to the other games and tools that really helped bring the indie rise about. Not the undermine the impact of Minecraft, but there was a lot more to it than just one game.
It should be defined that when I say “Indie revolution” or “rise of indies” I’m not just talking about the increase in the number of “indie games” that existed, but also the increase in interest in game development, by “independent” developers. Basement-coders and weekend designers alike.
Around that time, Unity was gaining traction. It was one of the first, if not the first, free-to-use game engine that was easily accessible and powerful. People see the success of Minecraft, go “Hey, I want to do that too!” They find that Unity is right there, and makes it easy for them to get started. Voila, they’re now game developers. Unity is considered the “game engine for indies” for a reason.
Beyond tools, there was other games too that fed this revolution. Super Meat Boy, by Team Meat launched in 2010. Braid while it was a bit early, still felt like it contributed with its launch in 2008. Additionally, there was all the indie games involved in the Potato ARG for Portal 2’s 2011 launch. All of these games contributed to the ‘rise of indies’ over this few year time period. It was not just a single game.
Without Minecraft, SMB or Braid all coming together and showing that indie developers can make successful, quality titles AND having Unity being a strong force in the industry at just the right time, we wouldn’t have seen the rise we saw.
It was more than just one app that brought about the “Rise of Indies”. It was the combination of multiple games and tools. I also didn’t really mention the increase in popularity of mobile games, and the app store when factoring into this. ALL of these things are what have contributed to the Rise of Indies, and where we are with the game industry today.
But, how does that factor into VR right now?
Unicorns are rarer than ever
Based on what I read, heard and seen around the internet, this is what people are expecting to happen again with the VR industry. People are waiting for another Minecraft. One game, so good, so popular, that causes everyone to want get a Vive, Rift, PSVR or whatever platform the game is on. One game being so good, it “saves” the VR industry.
And thats a problem. We’re past that point in the industry as a whole. Killers apps, or Unicorns as they’re sometimes known, like Minecraft, or Super Meat boy or Fez are now even harder than ever to make, partially because of their own success. Creating Unicorns was unreliable before, and they’re unreliable now. You never bet on a game to become a unicorn, and you never design a game to become one. It just happens. There is no VR “killer apps” that could be made that would cause everyone to rush out and grab a VR headset. Hell, I’d argue even three “Killer apps” wouldn’t.
Content, Costs and the will to buy
On the other side, theres content vs cost. I’ll explain my situation. I’m a huge RPG fan. I’ve spent close to 55% of my time playing games in the past 13 years, playing RPG’s. So, with all the great RPG’s that have been coming out in the past 6 months, Horizon Zero Dawn, FFXV, Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, NieR Automata, you’d think that I’d be all over getting a PS4 and a Switch.
But, I’m not.
While significantly cheaper than VR, the price to buy into these games are a little too high for me. I can’t justify buying a Switch for just Legend of Zelda, and I can’t justify buying a PS4 for just Horizon or FFXV. Even though, I’d definitely enjoy all these games and I consider getting these platforms “cheap” compared to buying into VR. Compared to my selection of PC games, there isn’t enough content there for me to justify spending a few hundred dollars.
We need quality content
And thats where almost everyone I hear talk about getting VR is at. They want VR, they’d love some of the games that are on VR right now, but they can’t justify buying in. It’s not worth it to them. Just like I don’t think it’s worth it to buy a PS4 to play two games with potentially hundreds of hours of content, many don’t think it’s worth it to spend much more money on potentially less content. There’s far more quality content for the average player to get and enjoy on their non VR platform of choice.
Valve recently announced that there was 1300 VR apps on Steam. Only 30 of them made over $250,000. 1,300 VR apps, out of the 17000 some odd on steam, and we don’t yet see the light at the end of the “it’s just for enthusiasts/early adopter” tunnel. We’re new, so it’s completely understandable that we’re in a content drought, but I think this is really telling about where consumers and the VR market are right now. In addition to giving a metric on how the content is. It’s not bad, but I don’t want to oversell VR right now.
One game or app isn’t going to change our drought. Fallout 4 VR, won’t change it, and that is arguably the VR game that will have the highest amount of replayability and content in it. Even as Gabe Newell said in a recent interview,
“If you took the existing [PC-driven] VR systems and made them 80 percent cheaper, there’s still not a huge market. There’s still not a really incredibly compelling reason for people to spend 20 hours a day in VR”
Even if we made the hardware cheaper, so that it’s a bit more justifiable to buy, there isn’t enough compelling content right now to turn the average gamer over to VR. On top of that, there isn’t enough compelling, accessible content for that gamer to play for even half the amount of time they spend playing normal games.
The next steps
We need to move past looking for a singular, killer app to save VR. We need to look for just flat out damn good content. We need the tools that allow people to make that content, to be easier to access and to provide the support needed to make that quality content. It doesn’t really matter where this content comes from, indie developers to AAA devs alike. It’s just a matter of that it gets enabled to be made.
So stop looking for that Killer VR app. Stop holding hyped up games to that title, as you’ll always find disappointment. Look at the whole picture. Look at what we have now, and what we have coming. Look at what is needed, work towards filling that. One app isn’t going to save VR, we all will.
You can follow me around on twitter @fr0z3nR for other game and VR development shenanigans.
