A few months ago, before 2016 was destined to become a future VH1 special, I wrote about my childhood dreams of virtual reality and my ceaseless desire to not exist in this world. That was basically the thesis: I've always hated life, and pop culture tricked me into thinking virtual reality would solve everything.

Well, good news, you guys--I got virtual reality and it solved everything!

There should be a good sarcastic turn here. And if I had more emotional energy after this year, I'd nail it right home. I'd throw a good “NOT!” up in there and get high-fived by cool kids and it would be 1992 all over again.

So virtual reality didn't solve everything. It didn't even solve anything. Okay, it created even more problems. But it's actually here and it's actually much better than my childhood self expected it to be. Or, at least, what pop culture promised it would be to lonely kids like me.

Even at the surface level, virtual reality in the current, first generation, “We got your money, suckers!” version looks a million times better than it did in old movies. Yeah, yeah, I know we all love the 1980s neon polygonal landscape, but come on. It wasn't that great.

Except for HoloBall on PSVR, which is a lot of fun for $10!

Actually, look at HoloBall for a second. It's a dumb game. It's Pong. You use the motion controller to knock a ball back at a computer opponent who taunts you about your life. So you don't even miss out on having multiplayer.

The crazy thing about HoloBall isn't the game itself. Like I said, it's Pong. But what's amazing about HoloBall is how much people want to actually try it. My roommate and podcast co-host, whose video game enthusiasm might be best described as “mockery” saw me playing and immediately wanted a turn.

And a lot of people want a turn. Virtual reality is a novelty right now, but it's a novelty that gets people who don't game excited. And that excitement is nice. It's nice to have people who want to come over and hang out with you. It's almost a childhood-like feeling. My sister, another person who hates games, made me restart the Apollo 11 VR demo three times.

You know when you'd get a real good SNES or Genesis game? Like NBA Jam? Or Mortal Kombat II? And kids from around the block would want to come over and give it a try, even just to look at it? That's what virtual reality feels like right now. It's exciting.

Of course, I know that not everyone has fair weather friends who only come over when there's a carrot at the end of a stick. Even if that carrot is a $500 virtual reality helmet they're going to cover in their disgusting human sweat.

I get that it's a real Pollyanna view to like virtual reality because friends wanna hang. But it's literally the opposite reason I always wanted virtual reality. I always wanted virtual reality because I was fat and sad and felt pathetic and thought maybe, just maybe, the escapism of VR could make me feel like the person I actually wanted to be.

But that's not going to happen, at least not for the foreseeable future. We're still working on showing hands in VR without melting down a system, let alone a body suit that simulates whatever sex feels like. Is it like a hug and a kiss at the same time? I don't know; keep it locked here and shout out in the comments below. Video games.

Speaking of sex, yes, I tried virtual reality porn. It's really bad. Like, exceedingly not good. They still haven't really figured out scale, so it looks like a 60-foot-tall woman is yelling at you about your junk. It's like sex from the perspective of the baby in “Look Who's Talking.” Is this a bad metaphor? Sure. Is virtual reality porn better or worse than the sex in Lawnmower Man? Trick question--both terrible.

My honest hope--besides virtual reality porn not being a fucking nightmare--is that the games follow the excitement. Because right now, the games are fine. Some, such as Rez Infinite and Thumper, are amazing in VR and still great outside of VR. Others, such as Audioshield or Tilt Brush or HoloBall, are neat demos for what's to come. And a few, such as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, are exactly what I'm talking about. It's a game where one person wears a headset while everyone else shouts instructions. It's local multiplayer in a way that didn't work before.

Childhood me would've probably been bummed by it. Childhood me would've probably bemoaned needing other people around for a virtual reality game. All my friends can be robots! I even built a robot girlfriend and called her Mega Girl. This is true; I was seven. Who hasn't done this? Oh, none of you? None of you have done this?

In some sort of narcissistic child rage, I had hoped virtual reality would take me away from reality. It's right there in the title. And sometimes it does. It's easy to lose yourself in a game of Eagle Flight the same way you can lose yourself in a game of Battlefield 1 without virtual reality goggles. Because, that's how escapism works – you escape.

In fact, one of my favorite casual uses for virtual reality is weirdly enough the Hulu app--where you simulate a movie theater. You know, movie theaters--where things are improved by a social experience.

Here's the point, and I'm not sure if it's a good one, but I'll make it anyway: Virtual reality isn't going to be what any of us expected or wanted it to be. And it'll take a while before we don't want to throw up because the camera thought we teleported a foot forward. But instead of being an escape from an anti-social nightmare reality, it might make our actual garbage reality a little more fun and social.

So what's sex like?

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Mike Drucker is a Giant Bomb contributor and co-head writer for Bill Nye Saves the World, coming to Netflix in 2017. He's also written for The Tonight Show, Nintendo, The Onion, and SNL. His podcasts, “How To Be a Person” and “The Room Where It's Happening” can be found on iTunes. You can follow him on Twitter @mikedrucker and watch him on Twitch under the surprising name "MikeDrucker."

Great article!

Cool stuff! My 60-year-old dad actually just picked up a Google Daydream headset with his new phone because of some sort of... sports thing that caught his eye? So this article is relevant in a way I never thought it would be. On the topic of isolation in virtual reality, I also think it's weird that one of the things I'd love to try in VR is essentially a concert simulator which is satisfying for the same reason the Hulu thing is, I'd imagine.

Great article, thanks for writing it up!

@mikedrucker: I think when you look at the best stuff for vr right, you see that social experiences are the key to success. It's the fist bump to join a party and play paintball in rec room. Gameplay hasn't radically changed so far - it's been a glut of shooting galleries. My best guess is that vr tourism and shared spaces will be the key to vr being successful.

Drucker is the best

Re: VR porn and scale, there are some companies that have not figured it out yet and you are correct about that. But there are definitely some that have and you don't get the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman issue. When it looks and feels right its... quite something.

If Waifu Simulator VR was better, the world would end.

Everything I know about sex I learned from Phantasmagoria.

I also really enjoy apps that let me watch tv or movies. The Hulu app is kinda weird looking (I feel like a tiny baby in a giant room), but it's nice to use nonetheless. Sometimes I just wanna chill in a place other than my shitty room. (And not have to leave the house...)

And If the porn is anything like other 360 videos I've tried, 3d really helps to bring down scale. It all depends on the company making the videos and type of camera they use. It's funny cause you'd think the porn industry would be on top of their game with this stuff considering how influential they are in new tech.

Edit: Oh shit! It's Mike Drucker!

I'll be blunt, I see way more money in option A rather than option B and that's likely where companies will ultimately push it.

It's the VR the world will ultimately get, and have to deal with, in the tens (rather than hundreds) of years.

Lol, I read the title and I knew Mike Drucker wrote this

Great article but wasn't Keep talking... a game well before vr and working just fine?

Please don't let him wrote more articles, that was the most cringe-worthy review I've ever read.

We're still working on showing hands in VR without melting down a system, let alone a body suit that simulates whatever sex feels like. Is it like a hug and a kiss at the same time? I don't know; keep it locked here and shout out in the comments below. Video games.

This part killed me!

I have also been waiting for VR and really enjoy my PSVR. It is just another form of escapism like TV, Cell Phones, video games ect. People piss on it for being anti social, like its any worse than people with their faces stuck in their iphone. Today my niece and nephew tried out X-Wing VR and we had a blast. How is that anti-social. Yes I know there are people who just like to bitch about stuff, but VR is fun and you should give it a try.

Loved this.

And can't wait for Bill Nye's new show!

I remain as one of the increasingly fewer people to have never tried VR, mainly because it's way too expensive and the kiosks at the mall are always too swamped for me to wait it out. Still, I can't help but be excited for the fact that virtual reality is a thing that is actually happening. Though I suspect that the technology requires a few more revisions before I buy into it, even I can see that it's here to stay.

Escaping through VR has never been about not being social. It's about being able to choose exactly how social and with whom. At a bar you're necessarily mingling with all sorts of people. I don't want to mingle with all sorts of people, I want to mingle with my own people. That's why conventions are popular.

It's obvoiusly just retreating even further into our separate bubbles, but that's just how it is now. We've realized that we don't actually want to socialize with 95% of the population out there. Leaving the house to interact with random humans is almost always awaste of time. Many times it's actually negative. Sometimes hugely negative. Lots of people are pure trash.

Put it this way: If I could block humans in the real world, just make them disappear from my view forever, I might be more likely to go out. Sooner or later all the shitlords will be gone and the world seems infinitely better. VR escapism isn't solitary, it's exclusionary and clicky as fuuuuuuuuck.

Ace blog post.

@hassun said:

Just another proof that Video Games truely are educational.

Always great having Mike on the site.

This was an entertaining read. I can't wait for the new Bill Nye show! :D

What a great read.

Awesome, fantastic work as always Mike. Hope Dweck doesn't kill you just for writing about her on a video game website. [Name drop to prove I listen to your podcast]

As an owner of Oculus Rift and Touch I disagree with almost everything in this article. If you play games you enjoyed before VR, like Elite Dangerous and Project Cars, it's a no-brainer. Sure, the most 'approachable' games, like a Pong clone will catch the the attention of non-enthusiasts and work first and foremost as a showcase. But Tilt Brush in particular and even HoloBall deliver experiences that I could not have imagined before VR and are not translatable into other mediums. Meanwhile Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes is exactly the same, with or without VR. Also VR porn isn't that bad if done right. On the other hand, simulating a movie theater or tv screen is the most boring and nonsensical thing you can do in VR. But I'm also the kind of person who thinks that teleporting in VR is super lame, just let me walk around! (Bioshock Infinite via VorpX is one of my fav VR experiences). Overall, virtual reality is very much what I wanted it to be.

I mostly come to Giant Bomb to get opinions on VR porn.

I was stoked to see another Mike Drucker article/blog on the site.

Thanks Mike, it was a great read. I can't afford VR, so its great reading a witty blog about your thoughts and perceptions on it.

Good luck with the new show.

Good read and good points Mike, only one real issue regarding the VR porn comments... that's my thing

Social VR is something I too never really wanted or expected from this tech. Keen to see where this is all heading!

I look forward to the day that VR gets commoditized as another communications/media platform in some ways, in others I have no idea what form sponsored ads will eventually take in that reality - "Wellp, time for watching 3D YouTube alongside my buddy from North Carolina. What's with this abrupt fade to black mid-sentence? OH GOD I just got stabbed in the face with a Necronomicon, time for that horror movie ad again."

VR makes me ask a lot of psychologically existentialist questions, like "if we spend enough time in full immersion breaking the laws of physics will we become so accustomed to the freedom that we occasionally forget how reality works?" That's why I'm excited about it.

VR as a social space just seems like a new way to sexually harass women online. So the garbage of reality persists.

@sirdesmond: It IS like a hug and kiss at the same time. lol