“If your game is boring, making it fully surround me is not going to change much about it.”

Exactly! If your game is shit, being CLOSER to it isn’t going to help. It’s a hilariously obvious downside to VR.

This is just a case of throwing dollars as bad design to make it look fresher, like the 3D movie craze that crops up every now and again.

I think a lot of the overassessment of this technology comes from tunnel vision on behalf of its prophets. VR can be a nice (short-time) gimmick for the kind of first-person “experience” games, like the horror games you mention. Carmack did well with that kind of thing, which is probably why he massively overestimates its importance in the market. I know this trap well, being involved in some R&D myself. You look for cool uses for this new technology you’re developing, and kind of lose track of how little your demos and examples might relate to what people are actually interested in doing.

Immersion, this big word that’s been waved around by media since the 90s as the highest goal for video games. I don’t think immersion is really that big of a deal for most games. Other aspects are massively more important in deciding how gripping a game is. Sensory immersion is just superficial. If your game is boring, making it fully surround me is not going to change much about it. Likewise, I’ll quickly forget that I’m just looking at a screen when your story and atmosphere hold up. The same goes for movies and the whole stereo 3D fad, really, which is why the only films still doing it are C movies with nothing else to offer, and some niche titles (documentaries).

Nor is it all that desirable. I think like me, a lot of people would usually prefer to not be “fully immersed” in a game. I like to take quick moments to look out the window, exchange some words with family and friends, or take a sip of tea. To quote Marge Simpson: “I didn’t say you couldn’t, I said you shouldn’t.”

@Wolfe: I would kill for a Holodeck, but I’d probably just have it simulate Iceland and play D&D in it. Wait, that actually sounds incredible.

That said, the Rift looks like nothing more than the modern incarnation of the Virtual Boy. At the very least your eyes won’t be scorched with a red tint after a test play.

Anyways, who really wants to wear all this Ghost in the Shell looking gear to play what are going to amount to first person waling simulators? Let’s just jump ahead a few centuries and get started on a Holodeck.

As for VR, I will wait patiently. I will try it with an open mind if I get the opportunity, and I will wait a few years before I consider paying for it. I’ll watch the kinks work themselves out or see it fade away as a gimmick from the outside. Sometimes I like being an early adopter although I know that it’s a complete indulgence. (See: PS4, Nintendo Wii), but other times, I just do not think it is worth it, even if I had the money to spare which, these days, I do not.

Virtual Boy at least had a few amazing titles: Mario Clash was brilliant, and has not yet been redone (although it should be); and Red Alarm, which was like a cross between StarFox and Descent. Both were an absolute blast to play, and are the only reason I miss my three Virtual Boys.

Mario Tennis was ALSO excellent. Best version of that game they ever made: simple, straightforward, and solid.

I don’t ever see virtual reality being much more than a novelty, even if it was perfect. Even the cyberpunk movement favors a more augmented reality-driven future as opposed strict virtual reality. Even so, it will never achieve any popularity until they fix that absurdly cumbersome hardware design, which requires a better understanding of physics. Fun for fifteen minutes, then back to ‘normal’ reality, and that’s about it. There’s no pragmatic reason to play a video game this way.