Tamrielo

As more and more excited, breathless news comes out of this iteration of the virtual reality push, it’s hard for me not to feel like this all isn’t really familiar. It seems like I’ve heard the same promises, the same giddy excitement, and the same “this is going to change everything” sentiments that existed the last (few) time(s) this circle has come around. Back then, Virtual Reality was a great big helmet you wore with screens for your eyes, and you looked around and waved your arms to interact with an immersive 3D… wait.

Frankly, I have yet to hear what’s different this time. What’s the magic sauce that’s going to get millions of customers to buy a giant headset for a lot of money when they weren’t willing to do it the last time? I keep hearing the promises— movies rendered in glorious 360-degree panorama, games so immersive you’ll swear you aren’t in your living room with a big helmet on, life-changing experiences that you could never have in reality, but in VR it’s like you’re there. I don’t doubt that any of these things could happen, but they’re the amazing things you get on a mature platform. The best games of a console generation are rarely the release titles– it takes a while for developers to get comfortable with the hardware and really spend time investing in it.

To get those really awesome, mature-interface applications, you need a product with a userbase worth investing in. You need a spark that drives people to absolutely need that VR helmet. I feel like game consoles are a good analogue– consoles watch for exclusives because they all want that one killer app that makes everyone absolutely need to buy it. Even late in a console’s lifecycle, those apps are sought out, because they’ll sell consoles and grow that ever-critical userbase. Almost every major console release has a significant uptick corresponding to a massive, blockbuster release, that game everyone just has to have that drives not just game sales, but console sales as well.

There’s likely a business/marketing term for this kind of product that I don’t know; I know the term as “killer app”, because that’s what I’ve seen on the consumer side. These killer apps have a lot of things in common– they’re big, with very wide appeal, and very sticky. For consoles, they’re games that people play for hundreds of hours, sometimes they’re the only game people own on their console and STILL play it every night. They’re that experience you just can’t get anywhere else.

Why did smartphones take off when 3D TVs didn’t? 3D TVs are/were the new hotness in living room entertainment– buy this fancy TV and wear goggles while you watch to have an unparalleled moviegoing experience. Problem is, you can have an experience about as good without the need for (multiple pairs of) goggles that you have to wear in your own home every time you want to watch a movie. The addition of 3D is not compelling enough to sell millions of TVs, despite the marketing push. Smartphones, however, gave us something we didn’t realize we wanted but quickly couldn’t live without: easy Internet at our fingertips at all times. The killer app for smartphones wasn’t programmable alarms, or fancy touchscreens, or the camera, or the built-in camera or notepad apps. Those things are nice, but being able to easily check e-mail and browse the web and get GPS directions got us hooked. The more elaborate apps came later, once smartphones became ubiquitous. Arguably, these things weren’t even new, they were just presented in a user-friendly way when before they were obtuse, expensive, and unfun to use.

So. What is it that VR is bringing to the table, at launch, that’s going to move millions of units and build up a userbase big enough to make investing in cool 3D movies, immersive VR games, and promising virtual classrooms all worth it? I still don’t know. The latest thing I’ve seen touted as “the reason to get VR” is an astronaut sim– float around in space and be an astronaut. It’s got the same problems as all of the other launch VR apps; it’s a cool experience for about ten or twenty minutes and then you’re done, telling your friend who showed you the app that it was really immersive and thanks for showing that to me, that was awesome and then you go home, and, importantly, DON’T instantly go out to your local electronics store to buy one for yourself.

As an aside, I think Augmented Reality (AR) is much more likely to catch on, because the instant applications are much more obvious. Get a decent HUD on a pair of glasses, get a set of haptic-feedback gloves (or even just fingertip sensors), and plug both into your laptop. Now you have a computing space that doesn’t require a massive desk and multiple monitors, yet gives you more (virtualized) screen real estate than even the most elaborate monitor setup. You can get as much work done on the bus as you can in your office, and you don’t need a huge, bulky PC or even a table to set down your laptop. It doesn’t require terribly much in the way of technological breakthroughs, and you don’t need a screaming fast laptop to get the full benefit. That’s the hook, and once you get enough users sold by that (relatively-easy-to-deliver) promise, then you can start looking at the really exciting AR apps.

In the meantime, however, I still don’t know what problem VR is solving, or what app is going to suddenly make masses of people decide that this time, they do in fact want to wear a big headset. It’s a massive hurdle for VR to get over– we’ve proven time and again that people just don’t want to wear a massive thing on their heads for casual entertainment. Even 3D glasses for the TV was too much. I’d love to see VR become a thing, it’s been the promise of the future since I was a kid, but I still can’t tell you what would get me to plunk down a few hundred for an Oculus Rift or similar, and I like that hardware.

I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m still waiting to see how it might happen.

I’ve been playing more of the Shadowrun: Hong Kong Extended Edition content– the post-game storyline that ties up some loose ends that the main story resolves but doesn’t quite clean up. It’s really satisfying, because (avoiding spoilers) some characters at the end of the main storyline don’t get the comeuppance I’d like to have had the chance to deliver, and while that’s a very Shadowrun-feeling thing, it’s nice to be able to go after them in the epilogue.

The Shadowrun games are, mechanically, a lot like many other games out there. XCOM is a superior tactical shooter in many ways, Satellite Reign does some more creative stuff with real-time stealth and cover, and most turn-based isometric tactical games offer a lot more functional customization than Shadowrun does. I still keep coming back to it over those other games, and it’s based on one key feature that beats out its competition: writing.

A manager of mine used to half-jokingly tease our team’s (excellent) writer when asked about some narrative plan or plot twist. Do what you like, he’d say, “as long as it’s well-written”. Different game, different set of people, but that sentiment really resonates. I keep coming back to Shadowrun because I adore the writing. It’s nothing fancy, no voiceovers, lots of text in boxes, very old-school in that regard, but it consistently sets the mood, fills in details without getting bogged down in them, and makes me laugh, seethe, and sigh at various times. It introduced me to a slew of characters that, on paper, I liked none of, and by the end of the game I was completely attached to.

More than anything, it inspires me to write my own stuff, and gives me ideas. It provides little hooks, various options, and lots of choices throughout the game. It sets up no-win situations that are still satisfying in the end, and I’ve rarely if ever felt like I’ve been forced down a choice that I didn’t want. There’s lot of side content, lots of little extra details filling out the world and suggesting that it *is* a world, just one that I’m seeing only a small part of, and other bits in glimpses. In and among all of this, it manages to surprise me in ways I don’t expect. It’s not just that there are plot twists, because I see those coming, it’s that the twists still happen in ways that I didn’t expect, that still make sense.

I place a lot of value on writing that can surprise me; I’ve read a lot and have seen the same tropes unfold in lots of different ways, so seeing something I’m familiar with flipped a slightly different way, or seeing something I didn’t expect at all tends to stick with me. Good narrative sells me really quickly on an experience, and I’m willing to trade fidelity in a lot of other things to get it. I’m reminded of Warframe here, and how a good game became enthralling when the storytelling suddenly improved dramatically. I like almost nothing about the gameplay presentation of Persona 3 Portable, especially after having played the more refined Persona 4, but the story was compelling enough to hook me.

In the meantime, there are plenty of truly excellent games where the narrative (or lack thereof) leaves me wanting. I love Elite: Dangerous’ gameplay, but the lack of any compelling storytelling keeps me from bothering to log in. Star Wars: Battlefront’s lack of a campaign left me ultimately unsatisfied with the game, despite it being incredibly fun in other ways– I even loved CoD: Modern Warfare because of its excellent single-player campaign. I started playing Dex, and while the game’s setup and art was really interesting, the writing turned me off.

I’ve been listening to Bel — Mr. “I don’t care about story just give me something to fight” himself — talk about the Division, and what I hear from him is how enthused he is about the setting and the story they’ve set up. The very first thing he linked me was a youtuber deep-diving into the game’s story, piecing together scraps to see how much he could uncover. Story matters, and having context makes a huge difference.

As it turns out, I’ll play pretty much any game… as long as it’s well-written.

We talked a bit on this weekend’s podcast about The Division. It’s a game I feel like I’d really enjoy if I were playing it with friends, though I’m pretty sure I heard at least one person audibly check out at the point where it became clear there was neither sorcery nor swords of any kind, including indistinguishable-from-magic technology.

credit: Dennis Chan

I’m in a similar boat– the game is much more interesting than I expected (I was a bit cynical about it) and honestly looks like it could be a lot of fun. I just wish there was a bit more fantasy in it. I feel like I’m roaming the streets of modern-day New York, and while it’s gorgeously rendered and surprisingly detailed, I can also hop a flight and literally walk around those locations myself. It’s just barely enough escapism for me to enjoy, and I can completely understand how it wouldn’t be enough for someone else. I tend to like my “modern” to be followed by “supernatural” as far as settings go.

That having been said, I loved Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, and like I’ve said elsewhere, The Division feels like a deeper, more varied, more refined, and more complete version of that, just in a different setting. I’m still pretty likely to pick it up and give it a go at some point. In the meantime, I’ve continued to play a TON of Warframe, which has continually managed to surprise me and get more interesting.

I do keep thinking about that key amount of fantasy it takes to make something compelling. It’s a delicate threshold, and different for everyone. Too much fantasy, and you can’t relate to it enough to get into it, and too little and it feels boring. I know some people who instantly check out of entertainment that has magic or advanced technology of pretty much any kind, and I know others for whom there’s a minimum threshold of one or the other (or both) that has to exist before they’re interested. Personally, I like at least a little bit of fantasy, but I’ve run into things that are just too much for me to get invested in.

Weirdly, what I’m looking for lately is a game where I can really appreciate the worldbuilding. I want to walk around fantastic cities and see people living everyday lives, and live part of a fantasy, virtual life myself. I’d boot up Deus Ex again if I couldn’t still remember it so well; there’s something really awesome about walking around its cyberpunk cities among ordinary people, doing largely ordinary things. It’s part of why I picked up Cradle, the first-person sci-fi puzzle game that held such promise but ultimately disappointed me.

I’m waiting on a few games that might scratch that itch– I really want to play through Dreamfall Chronicles once the season is complete, since there’s a lot of cool wandering through a real-feeling cyberpunk city there. I’m tentatively hopeful for CD Projekt Red’s cyberpunk game, though I’m leery thanks to The Witcher– not a game that meshes well with my tastes. I continue to wait for Persona 4, and I’m actually excited about Final Fantasy XV thanks to the demo; it’s not without some obvious flaws, but I think it’ll be fun anyway.

Kind of a rambling post today, I’m having the gaming equivalent of having a craving for something specific but not quite being able to place what that specific thing is. This post is trying to put words to that. If anyone’s got good recommendations for an open-world cyberpunk or otherwise sci-fi game, I’m open to suggestions!