I was wondering what people thought of VR and its coverage from GiantBomb and other places? Listening to the Bombcast in the past couple of months since the release of the Vive and Rift VR headsets there seems to be a slight disappointment from the GB guys. When comparing the recent VR launches to a traditional platform launch, I totally get it. Hardware isn’t being delivered to buyers in a timely fashion and the games/experiences don’t seem to captivate.

But I find this assessment of VR is a little unfair. Instead of looking at VR as a new gaming platform(s) I think we should look at it as a new media. In doing so it seems VR is still very young and different from games, but is still just being analysed through the lens of traditional video games.

Film started as experiments from inventors, before evolving into public exhibition of short films, and then some years later the standard of feature films and much later home distribution developed. Similarly, video games started as projects in university labs of the 60s and 70s before moving to arcades, and then finally into the home. Both those media have gone through a 3 step evolution.

VR (in its current iteration) seems to have gone through that first step of people tinkering in universities and making headsets in the garage but now I feel there is an expectation from people (including the GB crew) for VR to be here and good from the get go. Instead, it will take many years for the language of VR (and the hardware) to develop.

All this rambling leads me to have a few questions on the current state of VR and VR coverage:

1: Is it possible for VR to have its arcade/nickelodeon phase? I think you could argue that carting the headsets out to game conventions is that but maybe the desire for VR to be immersive means that all people really want is to skip to step 3 and have hours long VR trips in the comfort of their own home as opposed to shorter experimental experiences in public exhibition.

2: Is looking at the current VR experiences as games fair, or are they a different thing that requires a different vocabulary and tools to criticise?

3: Looking at the origins of film and games above, those media started from humble beginnings. However VR in its infancy is coming from the biggest companies in tech and media. Is that contributing to a feeling that the experiences are lackluster or that the language of VR should be further developed than it currently is?

4: How do other people see VR? A gaming peripheral, a game subset/genre, or a different media (with clear links to video games)?