Dean Hall, the mind behind the immensely successful Arma mod, DayZ, offered up his opinion on VR in general and the HTC Vive in particular.
In a Reddit comment chain (which we found by way of PC Gamer), Hall offered his opinion of the burgeoning technology as a developer. Of the HTC Vive, he said ”It’s the device that really convinced me that we could make fun (and not just casual-as-f***) VR games.”
He also feels that the Oculus and Vive are very different products that offer very different experiences, the Vive being focused on positional tracking with the Oculus on head-tracking. ”Games designed for one or the other work best, IMHO, and I would offer EVE Valkyre as a great example. CCP sat down and made a game for the Oculus and the result was outstanding.”
Hall offered a bit of concern to temper that enthusiasm. ”Overall my greatest concern has been: can we make good VR games that people will want to play for longer than 20min?” He suggested that VR might be compared to a significantly more expensive version of the Wii. “The Wii was successful because it offered simple, fun, approachable experiences at a low cost. We don’t know what kinds of games will sell well, how big the market will be, and so on. So our steps with VR are exploration and we’re not banking the studio on it. I fear some studios are so swept up with the possibilities of VR they’re putting everything into it when we don’t know anything about the VR game market. How many people will be buying VR games?”
It’s impossible to tell how the VR market is going to shake out at this point, but it’s good to see a developer’s perspective on the technology that’s neither all-in nor dismissive of it.
