Boss Key Productions co-founder Cliff Bleszinski is busy these days with his next game LawBreakers but he did speak to GameSpot about the current state of virtual reality gaming. He noted that there are still obstacles to VR really taking off including high costs and the present hardware available.
“VR is very near and dear to me. I have a few ideas I’d love to play with, but again the friction point is getting VR installed. Sony’s got a great headset but still it’s kind of clunky, the price point, there’s a lot of shovelware on VR right now. A lot of crappy Unity games where it’s like, ‘Oh look I’m throwing a can.’ Yeah, big deal right? No actual real games, and part of that is this catch 22 of a lot of the proper platform-holders of VR finding funding. You can’t make a really deep, great game arguably in VR for like a million bucks. So you’ve gotta really pony it up.”
Bleszinski noted that a “real VR game” would be something like Robo Recall from Epic Games, which was announced at this year’s GDC. “Yeah, it’s a wave shooter but, damn it looks good. The controls are perfect and they really knocked it out of the park. That’s the kind of stuff that needs to happen, as opposed to more friggin’ roller coasters and things like that. There’s also jump scare games that YouTubers want to do. So there’s a lot more to it, but there’s like six things right now that are really preventing VR from really exploding in a good way.”
VR could eventually hit the mainstream but it’s going to take a while. “I think there’s enough people in Silicon Valley and beyond that have deep enough pockets to ride this out the long haul. I think [Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg] saw the potential in Oculus in realizing like the first time I did touch demo and [Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey] was standing across from me as a VR ghost, even though he’s in the other room. That’s when it gets magical. If I could play catch with my niece in California, that’s pretty magical … but we’ve gotta start pushing through and working through it all.”
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