Gaming has always been like peering through
a window to get a glimpse of another world.
Sure, you’re pressing buttons that make
things happen on screen, great.
If you do it for long enough, your brain might
just zone out and become immersed, and you’ll
forget you have peripheral vision.
But you can’t go there.
You can’t really interact.
It’s a dissonant experience, frankly, but
we don’t think about it so much because
it’s what we’re used to.
It’s all we’ve had, but not anymore.
If you’re like me you probably suffer the
lingering effects of a traumatic childhood.
Not that kind of traumatic childhood.
A childhood of goofy motion control wands
and hal-9000 crossover dancing games that
tore the still-beating heart straight from
the chest of so many beloved franchises before
our young, innocent eyes.
[indi]
Yes, you could say I’ve developed trust
issues when it comes to promises of “revolutionary
hardware.”
So when I first saw the oculus rift making
its way between the many clammy hands of the
industry, I was once again skeptical.
Not about the whole taking the window and
strapping it to your face part, that makes
complete sense.
Problem solved.
In fact, the problem was solved about 60 years
ago, even that whole two-lenses per eye thing
that’s in the valve index’s logo, but
that’s a topic for another day.
The devil’s in the details.
The issue is in the interface between the
virtual world strapped to your face, and your
meaty sausage fingers.
VR has always represented the far-off next
generation of games, if not entertainment
as a whole if Elon has his way (more on that
later), but I struggled to see how a technology
that fills the entirety of your field of vision
with game wouldn’t be severely hindered
by the fact that you aren’t using your hands
to interact with the world, but some wacky
wand nonsense that doesn’t reflect what
you’re actually doing with your hands.
Then, I tried the game Stormland on the Oculus
at Pax East and I thought hey, that’s pretty
good.
I was surprised at how easily my brain just
bought it, even with the wands and less than
ideal native resolution.
By far the standout moment of the demo was
when I had to rip my own robot arm off in
order to upgrade it, and then I looked down
at myself, saw the missing arm and my brain
just went “Yup, no, your arm... it’s gone
dude.”
A very convincing sensory illusion, considering
my arm was still very much attached to my
body, nor am I a robot - I think.
File that one away for later, I thought.
I said “Yeah that was cool and all, but
not exactly worth the price tag.”
But after a few months, the urge to immerse
returned, and I ended up renting an hour at
a VR arcade for my girlfriend, myself and
a friend, this time with the HTC Vive.
This was where I played a game called Stand
Out: Battle Royale.
It looked like ass.
It felt like ass.
But then something happened that sold me on
the entire concept immediately.
I dropped in to a melty, unreal store asset-flip
looking island landscape, snagged a P90 from
an utterly featureless building, and was promptly
beset by a shifty 12 year old of approximately
7 ft in height.
“We’re cool, man.
We’re cool.”
The snake beckoned.
Years of betrayal in games like DayZ prepared
me for what was coming next.
With viper-like sleight of hand, the zealous
zoomer snatched the magazine from my weapon
with a smug chuckle, and raised his hands
in some sort of mock Bruce Lee Kung fu pose,
ready to unleash a flurry of open-handed slaps
that would send me to the shadow realm.
But I was ready.
In an instant, I pressed the barrel of my
5.7mm armor piercing submachine gun against
his chuckling face and smote the snake with
my sole chambered round.
Point blank.
He flew into the air spasmodically, as I heard
his anguished cry of “NOOOOOOO” fade into
the distance.
I then proceeded to cackle maniacally in a
room full of families and children playing
beat saber.
Contrary to what reddit would have you believe,
nobody clapped.
That didn’t matter, though, cause I was
hooked.
In the following weeks, I binged VR videos
like a FIEND.
And then I stumbled upon Stress Level Zero’s
Boneworks, the Valve Index headset, and Knuckles
controllers.
To my surprise and elation, my prayers had
been answered.
A controller that tracks your fingers AND
allows you to relax your grip?
Holy shit.
They even feature haptic feedback to give
the impression of recoil.
Now THAT’s Immersive.
If my brain could be so easily tricked into
accepting the wee-wands [wee/wii], I couldn’t
wait to see what the next gen could accomplish.
I reserved an index, and when the time ultimately
came to place my order I looked at the thousand
dollar price tag, then at my bank account,
then at Gabe Newell’s smiling eyes.
Enraptured in his benevolent gaze, Gaben’s
reassuring countenance appeared almost to
wink at me.
The decision had been made for me.
Looking back at my bank account, I defiantly
proclaimed “business expense” and flushed
a grand down the virtual toilet.
Then I moved to California, which kind of
contributed to me not uploading yeah sorry
about that.
Anyway, a few months later, my index came,
and then I spent 3 days in VR like an absolute
layabout.
But I was having the time.
of my.
Life.
Even at this relatively early stage, there’s
something for everybody.
This may sound strange when I’m talking
about something that looks so ridiculous on
quite literally anybody, but I think this
new form of gaming has the potential to attract
the interest of a lot of people who may not
have been interested up to this point, because
it is no longer an abstraction.
And for those people looking to ease into
Virtual Reality, there is a wide variety of
casual social experiences that make full use
of the technology in a unique way that isn’t
exactly possible with anything that’s existed
before, but do not demand the hand-eye coordination
of others.
One of VR’s strongest selling points is
body language.
So much of communication is non-verbal, and
canned emotes simply don’t cut it.
But in VR, you can gesture however you like,
which makes the social dynamic and subtle
communication of many games impossible to
replicate outside of VR.
Games like recroom and VRChat are a perfect
place for even the most casual player to experience
this for the first time, but as with most
games that allow players to do whatever they
want, prepare yourself.
If you want to feel like a badass there’s
SuperHot, which you may remember from the
desktop version that I will now never want
to play again, because the tension you experience
when bullets are physically RIGHT IN YOUR
FACE makes the desktop version just feel…
boring.
Sidestepping an attack by pressing the D key
is nothing compared to physically diving face
first onto the floor to get out of the line
of fire.
If you want a more authentic shooter experience
there are games like Contractors and Onward
that apply the more tactical design philosophy
of games like insurgency or even ArmA to either
PvE or PvP game modes.
It’s in these games that a critical, but
often overlooked, component of virtual reality
really shines: sound.
The Index’s headphones don’t actually
touch your ears, but instead are offset a
little bit so they function like two tiny
speakers, which gives the impression of being
surrounded by a much larger space than you
actually are.
Sounds like footsteps, reloads, and all can
appear very lifelike in their positioning
and volume, which really helps to set the
mood.
Creeping around a building with night vision
on, clearing each room and intently listening
for anything that could tip you off to the
enemy’s location, only to have it all pay
off when you get the drop on somebody is,
once again, so much more adrenaline pumping
than sitting in front of a screen and holding
shift w to slow walk while waiting to hear
somebody else press R.
If you’d like to go even further in the
‘realistic’ direction, there’s Hot Dogs,
Horseshoes, and Hand Grenades for those of
you who are interested in a game where loading
your weapon can sometimes be the biggest hurdle.
Jokes aside, Hot Dogs, Horseshoes, and Hand
Grenades has the best feeling weapons of any
game I’ve tried so far, and plenty of minigames
to try them out.
The coup de grace of first person shooters
in VR, though, is Pavlov.
It’s like what I imagined Counter-Strike
to be when I was a child.
The game gives players plenty of leeway with
things like reloading, letting magazines just
snap into weapon so that you can focus on
the gameplay.
This isn’t a sim.
This is meant to PLAY well.
This is what a next generation FPS feels like.
There’s all the stuff you’d normally expect
from Counter-Strike gamemode wise, but the
absolute standout to me so far has been TTT.
If you don’t know what that is, well, basically
it’s a murder mystery game where a couple
players are traitors and the rest are innocents
that have to survive and find out who dunnit.
It was great fun in Gmod, but this is something…
else.
There is, however, one VR experience that
I would recommend to anybody, and that is
Minecraft.
It’s obvious when you think about it.
Exploration game.
Scale.
Caves.
Getting blown up in first person is scary.
Building is so much more rewarding.
Really, every aspect of this game is made
better by VR, and it’s a classic, I mean
really.
It’s really amazing that it all works so
well, despite the fact that it’s not an
official port, and like one or two dudes seem
to have made just for funsies.
I played on the SMP Live server in VR and
it was chaotic to say the least.
Now don’t get me wrong, VR is definitely
still in the “early adoption” phase.
And by that I mean, about half of the games
I’ve tried either made me want to scoop
out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon, or suffered
catastrophic failure.
Case in point: Skyrim VR.
I have mixed opinions on Skyrim.
The environments are super nice and I love
the game’s dungeon delving, but its combat
and occasionally its npcs have a tangible
shallowness that turned me off of really loving
the game the way others have.
Blah blah blah you’ve heard that from a
million people before.
Having said that, I thought that VR had the
potential to remedy some of those issues.
Or at least overshadow the game’s shortcomings
with awe-inspiring scale and the intensity
that a sword slashing right near your eye
has over one on a screen.
Unfortunately, Todd had other plans.
I suppose you could say, I was taken for a
ride.
Yes, technical difficulties are the norm.
But, I’ve saved the best for last.
A game I’ve had no trouble with whatsoever.
A complete product.
That’s the game In Death.
It’s a roguelike, which means when you die
you lose your progress and equipment, if you
didn’t know.
It’s got some clear dark souls influence
and it really shines when you’re fighting
for your life on a long run and physically
hiding behind cover.
You can choose between the crossbow or longbow,
and find a variety of special ammo like explosives
or lightning arrows, and this has become kind
of a mainstay for me.
I can play this game over and over again,
and I have.
The satisfaction of pulling off a long range
headshot is something that you don’t get
outside of VR where you actually lead the
target and aim the shot.
Definitely check this one out.
You won’t be disappointed.
So that’s all fine and good, right?
That’s where we are.
You get it.
VR’s great, it’s suffering some growing
pains, but probably going to be a major force
in the industry.
But let’s talk about the exciting part.
Let’s talk about where this is going.
Let’s talk about neuralink.
So what is Neuralink?
Neuralink is a brain computer interface.
Which basically means take your phone and
plug your brain into it, but then plug your
phone into a crazy fast internet connection,
except it doesn’t have to be plugged in
because it’s 5g which means the internet
is EVERYWHERE.
That’s neuralink.
Confused?
Don’t worry.
Let Elon help.
So what does that mean?
It means that everything you experience is
the culmination of electrical signals passing
between neurons in the brain, therefore it
is possible to provide electrical signals
to these neurons via a man-made source, your
brain phone-aka neuralink, in order to create
the impression of stimuli.
Basically think about unplugging your eyes,
and plugging the computer in.
Okay?
Okay.
Obviously this has all kinds of applications
including but not limited to
Telepathic communication
Giving yourself a HUD
Aiding in the treatment of paralysis
Developing a better understanding of mental
illness
Installing a soulless technological demon-creature
into your brain
Brain Porn
Digital Dopamine Drip
Immortality
But I’m going to talk about the one you
came to this video for, and the most important
one, which is gaming.
Piping the game directly into your brain so
that you may sensorially experience as though
it were reality is undoubtedly the final step
on the road that is gaming’s future until
it becomes something else entirely different.
And the fact that Google figured out a way
to take the computer out of your computer
and put it in a warehouse someplace else means
that this all might be possible sooner than
you or I would think.
It may sound as though I’m being tongue
in cheek, mainly because I have been for the
past couple of minutes.
But it’s serious time.
This actually may be the culmination of Human
expression.
No joke.
Expression, culture, art, whatever you want
to call it, is at its core about sharing feelings,
experiences, knowledge, lessons learned, the
highs and lows.
Sharing the human experience.
A brief encapsulation of what it is like to
live.
Does neuralink and a brain-computer interface
not sound like the pinnacle of that?
Wanna talk about walking a mile in another
person’s shoes?
Well, hypothetically you could.
Think about the value this could have in education.
Wanna learn about history?
Well here’s a sensory reconstruction of
what it would feel like to walk around Rome
in 350 B.C. to the best of our knowledge.
That’s the kind of thing possible with this
technology.
Hypothetically.
So next time somebody tells you that videogames
are a waste of time, scoff at them and tell
them that it’s merely the infantile state
of Humanity’s greatest cultural legacy and
that you pity them.
Oh also, follow me on Twitch.
I’ll be streaming VR there.
