@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff. I only hope that one day I too will be able to talk in normal sentences, just like Palmer.

Congratulations, that's even worse than the cover.

Yeah, this is a super stupid and silly cover, but I don't believe for a second that this will have any sort of impact on VR's success or failure in the mainstream. I feel like it's gained enough traction at this point that mainstream outlets will pick up on it when it's released regardless of what happens between now and then. The market of people that are already on board is fairly considerable, too.

@sanj: Kind of puts in perspective why they paid Leigh Alexander do work for them.

@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff. I only hope that one day I too will be able to talk in normal sentences, just like Palmer.

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand your bizarre sentence. Maybe you could try again once you're more like Palmer

I dunno, I think the general populace is smart enough to not be fooled by this.

Video Game Hysteria didn't work in 90's when TIME maybe still mattered, I don't see it working now when TIME matters less and Video Games are larger than Hollywood.

Much ado about nothing.

lots is being said about the cover itself

but I genuinely feel bad for the dude in the photo

he.. they really made him look like a complete tool..

Not up to him. I bet even the photographer is surprised they chose his worst pic as the cover photo.

Christ, they could have taken some stock image of white people at a bistro laughing and eating salad, photoshopped Oculus onto them and it would have been better than this.

Rorie?

Certainly not.

I see AOL is still salty that Facebook stole "their" internet.

That's Palmer Luckey

This much more convincing as for future of VR.

@tiffanytryhard said:

@dr_monocle said:

@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff.

What the fuck...

Yeah, super out of touch. That feels like it was written in 1985.

It's not a great cover, but I don't know what cover you use to make VR compelling to 60-year-olds reading your magazine in a dentist's office. Maybe have Paul McCartney wearing it?

I mean, why even try? Why can't it just be a shot of Palmer smiling and holding his product? Or art of experiences you can have springing out of a photo of a Rift? Something sensible. Let the text do the talking.

It genuinely looks like someone at TIME was TRYING to make Palmer look stupid. What's baffling is how Facebook's PR let this happen.

What is supposed to being going on with the beach? Is the beach supposed to be a VR beach that he is seeing? Or is the beach supposed to be real?

Because this photo is looking like a fat kid being awkward with his VR toy when he could be enjoying the nature and sun around him. Like... what?

@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff. I only hope that one day I too will be able to talk in normal sentences, just like Palmer.

I've always wondered why people looked at me weird and why I hated shorts.

You know, all this time I thought it was Paul Murlucky.

LOL, this cover is the best thing to come out of the VR race. I love it when the media can successfully take the piss out of flip flop wearing Silicon Valley billionaires.

Yea this is pretty bad. But if VR really will be awesome then what does this matter?

I don't share the fright that when VR is not marketed properly it will fail. No, it will fail when it isn't good enough. If it's really amazing then it will find it's way to the people, no magazine cover can change that.

@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff. I only hope that one day I too will be able to talk in normal sentences, just like Palmer.

Look, with how "nerds" have been representing themselves lately, this actually seems like a bullet dodged.

Well, at least he wasn't projectile vomiting, which will likely be my experience with VR.

Oh boy.

@nasar7: Didn't realize that's how it worked, yikes :/

@cale said:

From the article:

Good stuff. I only hope that one day I too will be able to talk in normal sentences, just like Palmer.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

You hear that Jeff... That articles might be super awesome.

Is it just me but it's hard to tell if that is Palmer Luckey or some random 10 year old. I mean I know Luckey is young but still.

The worst part of this is the no shoes thing.

I never thought Time would allow a poorly Photoshop image appear on their cover but then again I don't read their magazines so maybe they've always had bad judgement.

Jeff, if VR is revelatory as you and others have been saying, if people who use it instantly want to show it off to their friends, one goofy Time magazine cover/story ain't even gonna be a blip on the radar.

You keep your shoes on while having sex?

i almost wonder if it could have been on purpose. almost

I'm British so maybe i don't get it, but isn't the classic perception of virtual reality always been "You're in another world! You're a bird! You can fly!" etc... So this cover is just playing on those maybe outdated perceptions?
Maybe i've just spent my entire life ignoring magazines to the point that showing me the cover of one just makes me bored more than anything else.

PC Gamer wrote a similar article, so I don't think Jeff is the only one "overreacting"

Deep breaths Jeff! Just hang in there man!

Hey, they could have used the other image (found on http://time.com/3986185/virtual-reality-headset/ ):

People are saying that the mainstream opinion doesn't matter yet since the first wave of VR devices is being targeted at the enthusiast crowd, but I disagree. We might've been at a tipping point with Google glass-like AR glasses by now, but the initial mainstream reaction was VERY negative and the term "glasshole" still stings. Hopefully Hololens fairs better.

It might not be the end of the world, but every disparaging piece of content like this Times cover does real damage and shame on them for releasing it.

If your revolutionary idea doesn't withstand one silly photoshopped picture, maybe it wasn't a very strong idea to begin with. VR has been a long-running case of The Emperor's New Clothes for tech and video game people and maybe this will make more of them realize that.

Gaming did not need the mainstream press the past 20 years, VR won't need the mainstream press the next 20 years.

Even within gaming, the press has a very limited grasp on what is relevant. Moba and mindcraft became the biggest thing by far, but you would not guess it from reading gaming websites.

As Time's 2006 Person of the Year, I feel qualified in saying that Time magazine is a joke.

Looks like something from the 80s

This whole story is why I will never be fooled into thinking that mainstream publications will ever "get" the hobby of video games. At least not for a very long time.

I don't even like VR and like @milkman kind of hope it's not successful, but seriously: Never think that by writing stories with big fancy words and wearing a nice shirt and talking about "important issues" you're going to trick the kind of people who write for TIME Magazine into thinking you're anything but a manchild who won't give up toys. Big Bang Theory didn't make people like geeks, it just made people like models who dress like them.

In conclusion: Fuck TIME and fuck mainstream coverage of video games. It has almost invariably been terrible since the birth of the hobby, on a scale of irritatingly patronizing, to outright vicious. And we don't need it.

Holy crap

@jeff "A dude, Photoshopped up in the air, shoeless, kind of pretending to... fly? Flutter? On some kind of beach or something?"

"Dweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee......... dweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....."