How Does VR Ever Finally Catch On?

The few, the proud, the VR community. I’ve been a VR fan since 2017, when I first stepped into a VR arcade and realized just how amazing this medium of gaming could be. Shortly after, I got a PSVR headset with Skyrim VR, and I was in for life. Since that moment, though, while the VR gaming community has taken off, there is a serious issue with the platform itself.

It’s just not proliferating. Despite Meta investing an incomprehensible amount of money into it, VR is not the must-have platform that it should be. There are so many reasons for this, and despite everyone knowing what they are, change doesn’t seem to be upon us any time soon.

We’re going to look into what is wrong with VR today and what it has to do to get to the level it should be in the gaming world.

What Holds the Platform Back

We’re Tired, Boss

As someone who has tried to get friends into VR for many years, there is a common thread. People are tired at the end of the day, and VR is an exercise, any way you slice it. You’re going to be active in some way, whether you’re sitting or standing playing VR, and no matter who you are or what shape you’re in, there is only so long you can comfortably do it for.

For me, a 2-hour VR session is a ton, but conversely, a 2-hour flat-screen session is just a normal night. VR just requires more out of you, and the games I love in it demand a lot of physicality from me. That makes sessions limited by default. And that physical aspect goes beyond just your body limits and extends to the equipment itself. No matter what VR headset you have, it’s just not yet something that is comfortable to wear for extended periods. Whether it’s the weight of the headset, the eye strain, or your arms getting tired, it’s not something you can do for a long time.

There is also just the effect VR has on you. Your hands can literally start ghosting in the real world if you play VR for too long. You can have extended nausea spells, full-on depersonalization episodes (as I have experienced from being in VR for extended periods of time), and other related dizziness issues. It’s just not nearly as appealing on a day-to-day basis compared to flat-screen gaming.

Take a look at a title like Asgard’s Wrath 2, for instance. That game is absolutely exhausting to play; whether it’s the frantic combat or the puzzle solving, you don’t take much of a break at any time. It’s great for a workout, but not everyone wants to exert themselves every day, and that aspect alone limits the appeal of the platform.

More than a Gimmick

Another Reality

VR, despite being 10 years into its lifespan in the way we have it right now, is still viewed as a gimmick. Not “real” games. Fake games and tech demos, side shows, whatever you can think of, VR has been called it. As a player of nearly a decade, I can’t exactly disagree. While there are, of course, some amazing VR games, there are oceans of games that fit this bill.

Games that are just sandboxes, or look pretty but have no actual gameplay substance, and, frankly, just amateur-feeling experiences. It’s not to say those games can’t be fun, but in terms of longevity, there are only a handful of VR games that can say they’ll take you more than a week to finish. The greatest hit compilation of VR games is generally pretty short, and that’s a problem for a genre that’s a decade into the scene.

The problem is that, because this is still such a new platform in many ways, a lot of developers are flying blind most of the time. The ideas might be good, but executing them in VR is a whole other ballgame entirely. You have pitfalls in many games, like terrible-feeling combat, visuals that feel several decades behind what you’d expect, and struggles to make their visions come true in the VR space vs. the flat-screen one.

All these elements come together to form games that just sometimes feel like a waste of money or are just not that fun to play for more than a few sessions. We’re lacking talent and the money to make these visions happen in the VR industry, and there is a big reason why.

AAA Doesn’t Want Any Part of It

The Big Boys Sit Out

There have been teases of AAA normalcy in VR for years now, from Astro Bot Rescue Mission (still absent from PSVR2, mind you) to Horizon: Call of The Mountain and Half-Life: Alyx. But there has never been a consistent presence, and we’re lucky if we see anything resembling AAA games for years at a time.

Look at the big companies who have barely paid any attention to it, like Square Enix with their weak as can be VR experience for Final Fantasy 15, or Bethesda, who are plenty happy to create lazy-as-hell VR ports for Fallout 4 and Skyrim, but gave little care to actually making them competent experiences in their vanilla state.

Half-Life: Alyx seemed like it could be the turning point for the VR world in 2020, but unfortunately, it was a tease. A good AAA game was not enough to cause the rest of the big hitters to latch on. There were some more attempts, like Assassin’s Creed Nexus, but the effort that went in felt minimal at best, giving us a hodgepodge story that just forced in series favorites for nothing more than nostalgia hits.

Where are the big-budget RPGs? Where is something like a Matrix title at this point, which couldn’t be more obvious of a VR title if it tried? Where are the first-party shooters to rival things like Call of Duty? Why are Pavlov and Contractors VR, the standout multiplayer shooters, when Raven Software is sitting on a mountain of money?

They just don’t see the possible profit. They don’t care enough to put their money at risk just to make a platform seem viable. They could make Call of Duty VR, and it could be the best-selling VR game of all time, but those sales wouldn’t equal a modicum of what they make selling the title on a platform. It’s an unfortunate reality, but one that doesn’t seem to be changing in the near future. In terms of getting AAA quality experiences right now, your only bet is try out fan mods of flat-screen games, which are occasionally pretty darn good.

How Does VR Get to the Promised Land?

It’s All About the Games

If we’re ever going to see VR become a titan of the video game industry, the games are going to have to do the talking. You know how people bought the Nintendo Switch just to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild? We need that kind of game. We need that experience that you just can’t miss. As good as Half-Life Alyx was, it wasn’t that game, as it honestly was missing a lot of features that VR games really should have these days, like a VR body, manual climbing, and other basic features.

Now, if you ask me, a fully modded Skyrim VR is that game. But to get my Skyrim VR how I wanted it, it took hours and hours of work. We need something that functions right out of the box. We need that big-time, big-budget experience that is something you can only experience in VR. Something that lasts for a good amount of time, and has gameplay and a story that you need to see to believe.

Honestly, we might need a Sandfall-style studio to emerge in VR to give us a game we can’t miss. We might need the talent to grow from within; we need that game that feels like The Matrix, or Ready Player One, in terms of how real it feels. Maybe that game is far away. Maybe it sits in a future where VR contact lenses are the thing that puts us into these amazing worlds.

Maybe I’m just dreaming of the day when that perfect comfort VR technology meets with a can’t-miss VR experience to truly elevate the genre in a way it’s never been. Is that experience on the horizon? Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be any time soon. Lately, every big VR release has let me down in some way, shape, or form. I have yet to see anything more engaging than Skyrim VR in my ten years with the genre. Batman: Arkham Shadow is a close second, but there isn’t much in between.

As the VR fanbase dwindles, we’re waiting for that game. I think it’s years away. There is no game like that on the horizon. For now, I’m just hoping for the John Wick simulator Gunman: Contracts to come out and at least be something that lives up to expectations for the first time in a long time. The VR world is hurting, and at this point, we’ll accept a Band-Aid, even if the cure is deep into the future.