Why VR Is Bad News

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A former Valve VR contractor explains why VR is bad news.

Giesen worked for Valve as a programmer for nine months during 2012, and then for another three months ending in April this year. According to Giesen’s post to GitHub, Valve was developing both AR (augmented reality) and VR technology, and he decided to end his 2012 contract when the company decided to pursue the latter. “[VR] seems to be fundamentally anti-social, completing the sad trajectory of entertainment moving further and further away from shared social experiences,” Giesen said in a letter to a colleague at the time.
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Social this, social that, blah. blah, community, blah, blah, look at me, yadda, yadda.

Fucking hipsters.
 
Gonna go with, if you are lookin to VR to become a Primary means for your gaming consumption. Social interaction probably isn't really on your radar anyhow. So basically status quo, nothing changes.
 
I do game on my couch with my friends, but they are on their own couch or at their own computer desk. Of course my IRL friends are all over North America and Europe. Been years since I have seen many of them face to face outside of a Skype video call.

VR does not hinder this at all. Though I do not expect VR to take off just yet anyhow. It's kind of like 3d. Gotta ditch the headgear b4 it will become globally supported and truly mainstream.
 
If I wanted to be social with my gaming, I'd still have 4 player split screen, but game developers said we didn't want that. So, now, it's remote multiplayer, where VR still has a very good use.
 
There are a lot of nerds that had very little "traditional" social interaction, but have at least much more social interaction in "Virtual" worlds. So it's not necessarily a bad thing.

However, like with all new technologies, VR, facebook, etc, will change the definition of "friend" and "social interaction". Better, or worse, it depends on your point of view. You can always find examples of things getting worse, as well as things getting better.

All I know is that things will NEVER stay the same. One doesn't have to follow every new trend, but one also doesn't have to be an old-stick-in-the-mud, and complain about how it was SO MUCH BETTER in the good old days and how the new VR stuff is going to bring down society. ;-)
 
Valve makes games. Why would anyone expect them to go AR over VR? As interesting as AR is, I think you have to get VR right first.
 
Article is pure click bait and has poor supporting information for his argument.

More like this article is bad news.
 
Yeah, out of all the problems we should be worried about, being able to escape from reality into a holodeck-ish experience as a way to unwind is clearly our biggest concern.

I've been coveting something like the Rift for over 10 years, I want it to happen at pretty much any cost.
 
Megalith said:
Extroverts are stupid as hell.
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LOL!!

I noticed that.
Always running their mouth; never bother to learn how anything actually works.

I think VR headsets is just the next chapter in immersive gaming.

Just as going from 2D side scrollers to real time 3D FPS gaming was.
Remember how "amazing" 3D graphics were? For the first time you had a sense you were the character in the game. Immersive? Not really, the rest was up to your imagination.
This next chapter will trick the senses that what you are seeing is real, or real enough.

Hold on folks, this is just the beginning. I think when OLED tech really takes off we are going to see and (simulated) experience some amazing things.
The real danger I see is some will use drugs to enhance the VR experience; and that will compound the an addiction.
 
I'm about as excited for virtual reality as I am for digital scent technology. I mean, really, I can turn my head to pan around a low resolution screen while I'm sitting down at my computer, woohoo!

Guess what? I have magical technology that already does that for a fraction of the cost: it's called a 'mouse.' You don't have to wear goggles or move your head at all!

Dr. Righteous said:
The real danger I see is some will use drugs to enhance the VR experience; and that will compound the an addiction.
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I bet smoking a joint beforehand would help with the nausea issues...

Speaking of which, my incredibly advanced mouse technology doesn't cause nausea.
 
Remember when computer games involved one person in front of a computer and the most social interaction they might get was having a buddy over to watch?

Holy fucking shit are people going to be emotionally crippled in the coming years.
 
CharlesLam said:
augmented reality is stoopid. i believe google glassholes tried to make it mainstream and at the end of it, you just looked like a moron.
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Pretty much this, but it's mostly designed to appeal to unrealistic, device-addicted people. In Google's case, the interest in selling the stuff is to turn people into more effective data collection machines. Valve is just trying to create buzz and the trade-off for the cost of riding the VR fad that Facebook and Google are leading is a payout in more game sales and greater profit, plus the added benefit of having the company name in the media's spotlight for a little while. It's all about getting people to buy things. The social or antisocial elements are just supporting elements of that may drive product sales. Weirdly, most consumers focus on them as if they're supposed to be more important than profits.
 
@CreepyUncleGoogle

To an extent I agree, but Valve poured research money into this, not even cursory amounts mind you. That they have let the researchers leave and work on the same projects with outside companies (such as OR) is rather altruistic (versus the apple/MS/google and whoever else patent wars). I think Valve wants to push gaming (especially PC gaming) forward and this is their type of R&D. The don't sit on patents.

Valve does have a vested interest in PC gaming becoming more "main stream", however of any companies in recent memory, I find them the most altruistic (in a business tech sense).

VR is going to happen, there are tons of people waiting on it for decades (since the early 90's for me, I can remember trying on 320x240 vr glasses at the SGI booth at the computer fairs in the early 90's. People would physically dodge obstacles THEN. Throw in 1080P and better and the CPU/GPU power now days and it is immensely better. There might be a subset of players that use it but the subset will be large, when the implementation is done right. The when is soon. VR now is waiting on interface (haptics or whatever) and the killer application to make it mainstream: whether it be an OASIS type project.

The argument that graphics and resolution is legit but history might have already demonstrated this as a null argument. Lets take consoles in the change from 2D to 3D games the initial wave of 3d games was horrible graphics wise (early ps1, or the quasi 3D skyfox) they looked worse then the 2D of the same time... yet 3D still survived. VR is just the next step, whats after that... holdecks? brain implants? who knows?

As far as "social" play, as a previous commenter stated the term social is in a massive flux. Is Facebook social? Is talking to someone on the phone social, it talking to another avatar in WOW social? Is talking in a fully enveloped visual environment were you can see physical cues (body and hand motions, and eventually facial cues) any different from interacting directly? Reality itself is relatively nebulous concept in itself, if you can touch it, feel it, see it, is it real? You can do this in high end VR setups... some you can even smell: 4 senses engaged (do we really want to taste VR... actually lets not go there). Is that reality?

Disclaimer: I am an introvert, functional in "normal" life but I prefer heavily to be alone.

The estimated population of the US is composed of an estimated 52% introverts, 150 million or so. Lets say 10% are gamers of a reasonable age and interested in VR, so 15 million users of VR tech (this is US alone) is enough to drive the industry. Not even counting the business users of the technology. If you think extroverts are going to miss out on communicating in VR you are sorely mistaken. Not to press on WOW, never played it myself, but I have friends that are definitely extroverts that play... single computer/computer gaming is not the sole realm of the introvert. The purchase/use of the Wii might be another study in the nuances of "social" gaming... but I digress.

Eventually VR technology will trickle into the third worlds as well, guess what... cheap VR is an escape from a rough life, not much different then a drug in some ways. If a user can possibly make a living in virtual world from anywhere imagine the ramifications to the economy. Before you joke about making money in virtual world it has already happened and is happening: whether it be bitcoins, Valves TF2 hats... or second life's property sales. This is merely an extension of this same technology.

Even better VR in education, job training and recreation will become routine. The more senses you engage in learning the better you learn... This is already happening to a limited extent.

AR/VR is coming in some form, it will not be in the realm of the rich or the techies (like google glass) but mainstream.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I'm about as excited for virtual reality as I am for digital scent technology. I mean, really, I can turn my head to pan around a low resolution screen while I'm sitting down at my computer, woohoo!
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It may not be for you, but GOOD stereoscopic 3D (I'm NOT talking about what's in the theaters now and the majority of gaming attempts at it in the past) is absolutely mind blowing. It feels like you're in a different world and you notice all sort of details you never did before. The best analogy I can make is like trying to explain color v. black and white. I'm hoping this is what the Rift brings to the table. I used S-3D back around 2000 with the Elsa Revelator glasses and when they worked well, again, it was absolutely amazing. Problem is, the vast majority of good S-3D, including Nvidia's attempts are crap. Unless you go all the way, it feels like a half-assed popup book and is worse than not having it at all.

augmented reality is stoopid. i believe google glassholes tried to make it mainstream and at the end of it, you just looked like a moron.
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Yeah, ironically even though I'm super interested in good virtual reality as I means to getting more immersed in games, augmented reality has basically 0 interest to me. Oh yay, I get a HUD when walking down the street, why the hell would I want that.
 
I have a few minor misgivings about VR doing even more damage to our face to face time with people BUT

As other have stated, calling hardcore gamers introverts isn't strictly true. Yeah, you could peg me as one but the reality is that a large group of gamers I know pay each year to hold down a Mumble server. I've known these people for DECADES. We game together. When I get home from work, I turn on Mumble in my office. I've got pretty much all night voice comms with this group whenever I'm at my desk and not with my family.

How is that introverted?

I spend more time actually talking to friends than most any texting teen.

Except for the fact that I don't see their actual FACES, it's real communication. With VR, we could add a fairly realistic avatar/conference type setting to it. Which would actually be MORE interactive than just the voice.

So maybe, if we see the glass as half full, having VR would reintroduce face to face social skills because you'd need them in the VR environment? Just thinking out loud with that one.
 
Armenius said:
Second Life is still a thing?
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I think it might be, but i intended it more of a potential analogy with regards to social interaction.

A tricked out virtual living place that people could remotely join in and enjoy. Virtual living rooms, virtual board games, virtual book reading on a beach, virtual movie theatres.
 
Stiletto said:
Remember when computer games involved one person in front of a computer and the most social interaction they might get was having a buddy over to watch?

Holy fucking shit are people going to be emotionally crippled in the coming years.
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There was online gaming before the WWW: BBS, telnet, and even CompuServe. Null modem cables were around before ethernet.
 
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