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[Column] General: GDC 2015: Is VR the Future of Role-Playing Games?
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
At GDC this week, Valve rocked the gaming world with the unveiling of the virtual reality headset, the Vive. Not to be outdone, Sony revealed their updated Project Morpheus VR headset which leads the industry in hardware, but remains exclusive to PlayStation devices. With release dates of less than a year, virtual reality is coming, but will it succeed?
Read more of Christopher Coke's RPG Files: GDC 2015: Is VR the Future of Role-Playing Games?
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Valve and HTC Partner on the Vive
Comments
As a roleplayer in MMORPG's I would love Virtual Reality to take hold. Simple things like spending the evening in an inn roleplaying with other RP'ers. Or organising an event in a beautiful lush virtual forest.
Of course the quality has to be very good and there has to be a solid game behind or people won't come, but I certainly hope this next step in immersion is succesful and I can see VR giving the MMO genre a drasticly needed second life.
No.
I would not wear something like that for long periods of time. I literally LOL'd, hard, when reading MSFTs announcement of Holothingamajig...they actually believe that people are going to walk around their entire HOUSE all day long with it on to be able to interact with a gimmicky layout? Even if it wasn't gimmicky and you could control everything in your home why would ANYONE want to walk around with something on and make the motions with your hand when you can actually USE YOUR HAND to do it anyway and not have 5+ lbs on your head and a screen right in front of your eyes?
For gaming, will be great for short periods and has other wonderful uses...but not long periods of time like would be needed for MMOs. Then there is the 1080p limitation at a time when 4k is becoming more important, cheaper and only a year or so from becoming standard.
4k games over VR neck ache and eye strain any day.
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Do you think it will inspire devs to make more interactive/immersive games? Or do you think it will be an excuse not to?
Nope. It's purely a gimmick. I can say with absolute certainty that I will NEVER use it. I don't care if it teleports me into real space, hand feeds me caviar, and gives me a back rub...
But go ahead, bring a 100% VR game to the market and watch it crash and burn... it's what the public wants.
Nope.
Does nothing for anything outside of 1st person perspective.
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Not your whole face, but more like ski goggles, which isn't that bad...
LOL..I bet your stock portfolio is impressive.
This article is an obvious candidate for Betteridge's Law of Headlines: any headline that ends with a question mark can be answered "no".
Even if VR is the future, it's not going to be the near future. Stereoscopic 3D is so much easier to do right with a prerecorded video than a game that has to figure out what is going on around you on the fly. It's not going to catch on in games until after it's ubiquitous in movie theaters.
Virtual reality and roleplaying isn't confined to first-person view only. 3rd-person view is basically a spectator view, but people don't discount roleplaying entirely based on that camera view.
There is major potential for RPG's with VR, whether it's singleplayer or multiplayer. VR tech would need to vastly improve though, because framerates are very choppy when there is fast movement involved, and almost all RPG's and combat-based video games have fast movement and reactions.
Do you guys remember back in the 90's Nintendo came out with Nintendo 3D but they recalled it because it gave people seizures
Hope these are 100% safe to use.
I assume everyone in this thread that is condemning the VR tech and gadgets as uncomfortable, dangerous and "a gimmick" have all worn one of these headsets for half an hour and tried to play some games that had elements suited to VR ?
Or is it a case of "I don't have to actually try it, I just know it's bad" ?
No, VR is not about to take over gaming. Relax, there will still be plenty of games made that don't require you to wear a VR headset. The way some people are reacting is almost like they are afraid of this "new tech"...
i have nvidia stereo set at home and when i was playing wow years ago, wow looked GORGEOUS!!! not only wow, warhammer online too! so beautiful! none of you has ever used such a thing..none. you haters are just talking trash.
put iton your head, set convergence, intraocular distance and then talk about it!..when i was flying in wow i could actually "feel" hundreds of meters of depth under me!
cant wait for this thing!!! i buy it immediately once they release it!
No ,no ,NO !
The experience of using VR goggles is NOTHING like 3D movies or TV !
VR is not "3D TV that you strap to your face" !
When you're watching a 3D movie, your viewpoint is fixed. You are a passive consumer of what the movie director wants you to see. You have no control over the action or viewing angle whatsoever. If you turn your head away from the screen in any direction, you cannot see the movie any more.
Say you're watching a 3D movie in a theatre. There's a view down a long corridor on the screen. In the movie theatre, if you turn your head around, you see the person sitting behind you. In a VR game where you're looking down a corridor, if you turn your head around, you see the corridor behind your character. You are IN the game world, not looking at it through a window. It changes the experience of playing a game in fundamental ways.
3D TV and movies failed to set the world on fire. Aside from some cheap thrill tactics, stereoscopic vision in movies does not change the experience of watching very much. It adds "depth" to a scene, but it's still exactly the same scene. Your brain already does a very good job of making 2D movies seem quite realistic.
I do think it might be time to add in 1st person view as an option for any game that supports VR.
Yeah, I am not too found about 1st person view in MMOs either but I have the feeling that with VR it would be very different and worth adding.
As for people worrying about drinking a cola or smoking while playing: there are plenty of blind people doing that every day. If they can so can we, you would get used to that in minutes.
I doubt you'll see any kind of demanding RPG's with VR, mainly because you need double the framerate for a proper VR experience. That is, unless something like G-Sync can help solve that problem, then maybe it'll be something.
The problem with such a game is also that it has to be designed with it, so then it becomes an issue if games are lesser because of it.
Absolutely, there are so many things I know in life I won't like that I have never tried, such as base jumping (fear of heights) , sushi (all seafood is vile to me, raw does nothing to improve that viewpoint), Smart Cars (I am far too large), and Madden NFL, I hate sports games, and come to think of it, have no real interest in professional sports.
Same thing here, I have always hated large, heavy headphones and headsets,I wear the lightest smallest ones possible and make sure I can still hear and interact with the real world around me. (Such as talking to my wife or watching TV)
So yes, without even trying it, I am positive I won't be wearing VR headsets in their current incarnation, no matter how amazing the game is associated with it.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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I'm pretty sure all of these gadgets are lighter than 5 pounds.
I am optimistic about virtual reality's current resurgence. At the very least, it will be a neat gaming peripheral. At most, I expect it could spark another revolution like affordable cell phones did around the turn of the millennium; there are so many applications for this outside gaming.
Also, I tend to play games these days in 15-25 minute increments (including my MMO of choice). I find them more enjoyable that way. Very rarely will I have more than an hour to devote to gaming, and if I do, it's usually because I'm designing something.
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