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> But to be honest, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning.

Would you? Really? It is my understanding the Oculus folks were working on that partly for fun, partly because they have a purpose (the purpose being "VR gaming would be soo cool!"). Their idea of a "comfortable retirement" may very well be to continue working on the Rift. I would also be surprised if they didn't care at all about the community.

Seriously, what would you do if you won $2b tomorrow? I know I wouldn't retire in Malta or such, because it would quickly bore me to death. I would need to do something, and I suspect, so do you.

Absolutely. I wouldn't even look back. I have plenty of other things to occupy my time that isn't work. Painting, writing, photography, music, and the list goes on forever. Freed of the daily grind I would nothing but things I expect no return on simply for the pleasure of it. I'd probably even give away the output of those activities for nothing.

What if you wanted to do something bigger? Like, say, design a next-generation VR platform?

Why is that bigger? I can already instantaneously communicate with whomever I wish anywhere on or near the planet...cheaply or for essentially free.

To play games? I love gaming as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day it's just a toy.

It's bigger because it requires more than your own efforts. One person can draw, paint, make music all they want and never have to interact with others at all, and these were the sorts of things you were saying you'd do in retirement.

But you couldn't move to Malta and make a next-generation VR platform. You'd need funding, facilities, people to take care of managing these things. That's what I meant by bigger.

Ahh, bigger as in "involves more people" rather than bigger as in "moral crusade to change humanity".

Yeah, no thanks. Once I get the construction crew out of my retirement home, I'd like to deal with as few people as humanly possible. I don't even like the social interaction of dealing with cashiers, I love the self service lines.

If I hit on a retirement hobby that requires more people, I'm sure I'll always just be able to just form a company and hire people to do the work with my swimming pool full of money.

> at the end of the day it's just a toy.

I'd say VR headsets are as much of a toy as Otto Lilienthal's hang gliders. As such, sure, they won't do much more than cool games. But the future is obvious: they're a first step into the Matrix, and from there to fully fledged Mind Uploading. (It may not help us develop the necessary technology —though it may help us figure out crucial neurological facts. But it will give us a glimpse of what is to come.)

Not to mention, VR will probably help us get to AR, which will surely have an even bigger impact.

At this point, we're not looking at a toy any more, but at a Prophecy.

Ah, so you would do something. Okay.

I didn't see him say anywhere he wouldn't do something, only that he would retire to Malta.

Well yeah, I wouldn't just stare off into space till my heart stops functioning.

Wow I am sorry that you enjoy your life's work so little. Maybe you should do something about that? I couldn't imagine a life where I was not stoked to do what I do every day.

Wow, I am sorry that your interests are so narrow. Maybe you should do something about that? I couldn't imagine a life where there was only one thing available that would fulfill me.

Who said my interests were narrow? I enjoy a multitude of hobbies including hiking, biking, homebrewing, reading, cooking/grilling, etc... I just said that it is a shame you do not enjoy your daily work (i.e. the grind as you call it).

So if you had a billion dollars sloshing around in your bank account...and you could do the things that interested you the most, it would be having a job to go to?

I'm not knocking that, I know lots of people who hit retirement and literally don't know what to do with themselves. So work gives their day structure and meaning. I'm not one of those people. For me, work gets in the way of what I want to do.

I personally cannot conceive of a job, working for any company (my own included) or any other person or group of people, that I'd rather do than those things.

First of all, I don't have a job. I run my own consulting business that does very well. I don't think I could ever have a job working for someone else ever again.

That is my entire point, that I keep getting downvoted on like it even matters. That what I do today is the same thing that I would do if I had a billion dollars. That is I'd be working in technology (specifically software). I might use that money to build ideas faster but it really is what I am the most passionate about.

I feel it is the same for the Occulus Rift guys at the moment.

Because if you aren't passionate about what you spend your daily life doing (and consider it a grind) what is the point?

I'm not going to make any value judgment on how much fulfillment you get out of working for your customers.

But you're getting downvoted probably because you don't understand that, as a consultant, you have a job, and you work for your customers.

Everybody who does work has a boss of some sort.

If being a consultant is what you'd be happy to do in perpetuity, even in lieu of retirement, more power to you.

The OR guys also now have a master. Facebook. Ultimately, their reporting chain is to Zuck and then to the board and then to the FB shareholders. They might feel really passionate about what they're doing, but it's not like they don't have jobs.

"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."

I think that this quote is very much true. Take it how you wish to.

I'd rather be stoked to do what I do every day and have $2 billion in the bank than be stoked but not have a massive pile of cash.

It's not as if there's only one thing in life that I could possibly enjoy.

A strawman. I never stated this. Merely was stating that if you consider your daily profession a "grind" it might not be the one for you.

"The daily grind" doesn't mean it's unpleasant, it simply means that you have to do it in order to e.g. continue eating.

Weird. When I ask myself this question (as I do often), I don't usually get such a strong answer from myself. But my self just said, "I would work on VR." Fascinating.

Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great campaign, but I digress...)

The great experiment & test of your theory would be to see something like Titanfall only last a year or so, since it's ALL a social/multiplier experience.

In theory I think social gaming has strong networking effects that have to potential to cement a game, especially in crowds that aren't maybe hardcore gamers. For example, I thought one of the best things to come out of the Zynga era was the fact that middle aged mothers were the core gaming segment. Why is this awesome? Because as a life-long gamer I thought it was awesome that more than teenage boys were welcome into the community, regardless if the niche/genre was not my style.

Yes, there are a few problems that no one has quite figured out yet in regards to hyper-social, and solutions have been kind of lazy at best, but there's a big market opp here for somone who DOES figure it out.

Well remember, for every successful social game, there's a Star Wars Galaxies or Age of Conan. Or if successful, try to play Mario Kart Wii or Mario Kart DS. Suddenly tens of millions of gamers get $0 of value out of their purchase because a company has decided it's time for gamers to move on and make their next purchase.

The problem of course is that most companies don't go the way of Quake3 and let people run their own servers. Because that's hard to monetize after the initial purchase. Valve has found a way to make it work, but outside of some very rare exceptions (WoW, 2nd Life), the age of the short-lived social game is here.

It's hard to imagine, but FarmVille isn't even 5 years old.

"social gaming" (as in what Facebook fostered) really means something different from good old "multiplayer gaming". It means the application of "social" as a buzzword and business model (meaning to intentionally exploit network effects) to games, like spamming people's facebook walls against their will, giving in-game benefits for spamming the game to other people, etc.

> Getting dozens of spams a day from your "friends" to play this or that shallow psychological-reward hack social game on Facebook

So, much like the responses to '2048' here on HN, and among members of its community? And, seeing how highly voted those posts and comments were, I assumed that wasn't seen as a bad thing?

> social gaming is not well loved. [...] Even among new games, Skyrim and GTA V are hugely popular even though the experience is mostly single player.

Do you mean un-popular here? Or among new gamers not games? Not sure...

I'm glad that the 2048 craze has petered off a bit. But social gaming is the same thing essentially. It hits, involves lots of people, then the next hit comes around and everybody is off to the new thing.

"new games" vs. "older games"