The Oculus Buyout Rage Machine
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EDIT - nice long, recent piece on Derek Smart http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/14/3553620/the-redemption-of-...
Derek Smart's Desktop Commander!
Good times. It's funny he was even sued by Take 2 Interactive over how his horrible games damaged their IPO.
Although it was interesting, I still disagree with the final conclusion. FB taking over OVR doesn't mean they will "own" the entirety of whatever common VR-accessible space emerges. They're just another player in what will most likely be a hotly contested market.
[1] http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...
This whole paragraph can be dismissed by the optimists with the phrase: "...Until now".
Why should the past be the same as the future?
But the past does inform the future and provide it with likely vectors.
However, this is a case where the game devs are lacking in vision.
(1) My very first impression of the news last week was: Wow, I did not know that Zuckerberg had the guts and vision. I did not respect Zuckerberg at all. After the news, I see it as not only a big move for Facebook, I also explicitly acknowledge Zuckerberg as a visionary. Where this can go will disrupt what we think of as social networking, and being able to throw away the work which you have a vested interest in in order to bring in something greater, that takes courage.
(2) Discussing this with friends and then looking at what is emerging, it is pretty clear to me that this is not a vanity buy, and that the scope of Oculus has now been expanded to something much much greater than gaming. We're no longer talking about the next evolutionary stage of gaming; we're talking about the next fundamental shift in how the mainstream will interact on the internet. Gamers have this unconscious, perhaps implicit, understanding of what it means to interact with the virtual world; many folks in the mainstream do not. When this pans out in the mainstream (months? years?), it will create a shift in the psychology of individuals, something we have only seen discussed in sci-fi and cyberpunk stories. Or at least, that is the potential. Execution remains to be seen :-)
(3) Game devs in general have great imagination. Like artists, filmmakers, game devs bring their vision out into the world for others to experience. They tend to have a better feel for the future, for what the world can be, than your average person. However, I find it ironic that the game devs are so fixated on Oculus Rift = Gaming Device, that this is one of the rare times game devs failed to see the greater vision.
(4) Based on what Caramack, Palmer, and Abrash were talking about in the articles that have emerged ... until Zuckerberg showed up, they too also framed the Oculus tech as a gaming technology. That was what they sold it as in the Kickstarter, and many people were on board with it. So I understand how many gamers and game devs are up in arms about this. It's also kind of sad to me: these same folks who are so imaginative are failing to see the much grander vision.
The metaverse or matrix or net or whatever is cool and all, and I'm also of the age where that idea is firmly in my head as one of the better use-cases for this kind of tech. But there are a million other use-cases for it too. The messaging that's come out from both Facebook and the Oculus team is that the metaverse now is "the" use-case for the tech.
I actually can't stop thinking about the Kinect. People who've taken the time to reverse engineer drivers for it have come up with all kinds of interesting applications for it, but MS bought it up and for many years none of those applications could become mainstream because of Microsoft's exclusivity on the technology. Now with the XBone it's a glorified remote control and the technology is still locked up.
The facebook purchase isn't just about games dying, it's about everything but facebook's vision for the peripheral dying and the exploitive and privacy violating way that facebook uses user data.
Games are also a pioneering medium for technology (just like Porn). Technology has been pushed forward in no small part because of gaming requirements. Games are not just "a" use-case of the rift, they would have been the primary use case, with everything else falling in behind on to a long tail.
In other words, if the raison d'être for the Rift is dead (games), then pretty much all other visionary use-cases for it are dead too.
This was my chief takeaway from the article
Let's be honest here, VR is going to be used for cyber-sex at some point. Do you think it's okay for FB to have records of who you've virtually seen, how long you virtually performed coitus, what virtual positions you liked and so on and so forth? What about the unknown party that FB sells that information to? You think you can hide behind an avatar or on-line persona? Since when did Facebook let people use handles? [1]
Some hypothetical terms of service where this isn't allowed protects you? What stops FB from just changing the terms without your knowledge because your life isn't as easy to monetize as Facebook would like?
Carmack and Abrash want to make the Metaverse because it's a very old and very cool dream. Zuckerberg wants to make the Metaverse because of the tremendous money making opportunities it creates. Imagine an entire universe you control and can endless plumb for dollars.
Games are at its core, a subset of experiences. The vast majority of games also reflect the attitudes modern society has: competition instead of cooperation, a fixation on leveling up, an obsession with generating enough realism to impart PTSD, a whole host of dysfunctional dynamics. I say this as one who have enjoyed shooters and strategy games. It is only in indie games you might find something different, something beyond: the upcoming Spirit game, DepressionQuest, Wild Divine, etc. And look at the kind of nerdrage DepressionQuest generated when the creators tried to get it on Steam.
I will tell you, all the games out there don't have anything on the kinds of lucid dreams I sometimes have, for both the clarity and vividness as well as the insights gained from having experienced them. The impetus to create a game comes from the a deep, likely unconscious desire, to create non-ordinary experiences, and they are still pale imitation of the real thing. I don't mind that. However, the form in which those experience typically manifests are ... let's see, "tremendous money making opportunities".
But thank you for writing what you did. It gave me an insight into why gamers and game dev feel so much rage over this. This dynamic is not about FB or Oculus; it is not about privacy; it looks like it is really about power and control. Games -- or at least, the typical games we have -- create an non-ordinary experience in which the gamer feels more control or power, and this buyout looks like it hit a big nerve with that, like it is taking that away.
One of the things that I think people who are passionate about games understand is creating and sharing an experience, and there's a kind of generosity involved. Of course as a game maker you may want to get paid for your time, and maybe make a little profit, but people make games because they love it (the working conditions are generally pretty poor compared to other places they could be using their skillsets).
There's recently been a kind of pervasive over-monetization of games that's been happening more and more. The kind of small-experience, indie games and the like really aren't much more different and complex than the freeare and shareware games of the past, but all these free-to-play (with large in-app purchases) or digital only monthly subscription games and similar really set the hairs on the back of my neck on edge.
I think the idea of games-as-art wasn't really understood until recently, and now that it is, it's being forgotten as quickly as possible in the big development houses. At the very least there's a few decades of unspoiled retrogames, emulation and the indie scene to keep it alive.
I was very excited about a renaissance of this games-as-art vibe with the rift, with some as-yet-unknown dev in their basement building some quirky world or experience to explore (maybe not even in immersive 3d!) but I guess I have to wait now. So I'd add it's about power in both directions. Power for the gamers, but power for the game makers to craft the world of their vision as well. It's all been taken away.
I'm not so sure that what FB is doing will mean that power is being taken away. My friend and I had discussed this. His original theory was that it was a "vanity buy", something Zuckerberg wanted because it looks like a good trophy on his shelf. We talked about it more and came up with some key indicators on whether that is what is happening or not. The most important one is whether John Caramack sticks around for more than six months after the merger. Based on what we both know, and what I have read in the John & John history of id, if FB sells out, it's likely that Caramack won't stick around for long.
A day later, we saw the article with Abrash joining Oculus. That kind of confirmed it for us. Instead of people leaving, there were more people joining up.
It's early days yet, and it remains to be seen whether FB will let Oculus have free reign or not. Early indicators, despite the fear among gamers and game devs, seems to point to Oculus being able to do a lot more with the technology now. I am not sure how that stacks up with the open nature of the hardware -- we'll see. If FB is indeed looking at this as the next generation of social networking, they might try to seed the hardware into the mainstream by keeping it open and available, and focus instead on creating experiences for the platform.
In the meantime, I'm hoping more people try to sell FB stocks so I can pick it up at a discount. Speaking of monetizing.
I can certainly see Facebook pulling in the reigns on this and moving this technology away from games and towards their own platform. (which in my opinion could be a negative thing)
I understand a "Meta-Verse" could also be very cool. I just believe many gamers want a gaming VR experience and are now worried the rug may be pulled from underneath them at any time.
Hats off to Zuckerberg though, I do believe it was an extremely smart purchase. I like to imagine that I would have done the same thing.
I'm currently involved with another open-source release of our product, for which there is also an enterprise version. We are required by FB to keep our open source stuff in line with the enterprise product. I personally like the idea of open-source and the open source community has been very kind to my career. But frankly, this requirement has also been a pain in the ass: FB, or at least this part of FB, are uncompromising when it comes to making sure their infrastructure tools are open, and we've had to scramble a lot just to make sure it happens.
Now, if FB want to control the Rift platform, they can do it. What I described is for their infrastructure, not a product one of their portfolio companies is selling. I suspect though, this attitude is baked into their DNA. It isn't even a matter of saying things that the open-source community want to hear; they are more anal about it than we are. As much of a pain in the ass that requirement has been for our work, at least when it comes to infrastructure, they really do mean it when they say they want open standards for their infrastructure.
And yes, it makes the whole history FB has with privacy strange to me.
In other words, just because the NSA builds and uses Accumulo, doesn't mean they've been good actors with what it does.
There are two issues with the open data.
The first is that our society is still in a transition process where we realize, there is no such thing as a trusted third party. The concept of a trusted third party is the very basis for governance and rule of law. We're seeing an emergance of technology and social constructs built around the idea of untrusted third parties, and this is still an ongoing process. It has not touched issues with privacy, yet.
The other comes from my weird perspective on life. Well, weird with this group of people :-) Spiritually speaking, there is no such thing as privacy. One of the things you quickly learn in meditation, or in psychedelic experiences, is that you cannot hide the things in your subconscious. You can try for a time, but eventually it has to come out. That applies to every individual.
When people talk about privacy, they are not really talking about privacy. Again, it is a power issue. If I know something about you that you are ashamed of, I can use that as psychological leverage to get you to do what I want, to an extent, or at least, influence your thoughts and behavior. This is a form of power. Ordinary people in societies tend to project their personal power to authority figures. Modern societies tend to have this story, this myth that power is vested in the collective, and there is no personal power. Yet, even with this denial, because people yearn for personal power, it manifests in the form for demanding privacy, rights, liberties, guns, etc.
When taken together, the transition to acknowledging that there are no such thing as a trusted third party will mean having to accept developing personal power ... and the responsibilities that come with that. We've already seen several swings and shifts related to that -- p2p filesharing vs. RIAA/MIAA, bitcoins/digital currencies, NSA, etc. So far, what has been happening is another large organization supplants the legacy organization (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), but my point is that those very organizations are tied to our notions of trusted third parties. It'll be sometime yet before we thrash our way through this, of which, the privacy concerns of FB + Rift is just a small part.
Put another way: VR goggles have come and gone in gaming several times, failing each time due to a combination of price, poor experience, and general dorkiness (see also: Google Glass). The Oculus may be different, but the question remains: if VR goggles have failed in the past in the one area they were most likely to succeed, what is the magic sauce that will make them finally succeed in the mainstream?
What is the path you see to VR becoming a widely accepted computer interaction method (which I'm not sure I see happening in general), how do you see that adoption happening without first being strongly established in gaming (the most likely early adopter market), and how do you see Facebook helping on that path?
His mind was totally blown away. He kept talking about the aversion to wear something so ridiculous on there. He had never experienced what it felt like to step into another reality.
He said that there "is no edge". The screens wrapped around the peripheral vision. The lag is below the threshold that many would get that sense of "this is not quite real". It goes with the "VR-induced existential crisis" that has been reported with the Rift, and not with any previous technology. You start to forget you're wearing something.
I had not experienced that existential crisis when I used the Rift back in Oct, since my astigmatism distorted the viewscreens enough that I can see the edge. But more importantly, I have had a lot of psychedelic experiences and dream experiences where, now, shifting from one seemingly reality to another is not a big deal. The way these folks describe that existential crisis, about how there is no edge reminds me of what everyone says after coming down on their first trip.
From my perspective, this technology has the potential to bring to the mainstream what meditators and psychonauts have known about for a long, long time. I've seen an interpretation of the Matrix movie, about how the movie was about a virtual reality that is real; but it misses the main point, that this reality that you are in right now is not as real as you think it is. You're making an interpretation based on sensory data. It is no wonder that this tech induces existential crises :-) And it is in that experience of the existential crisis that something wakes up in the experiencer.
You ask some good, specific questions about adoption, and how Facebook will help with that. But that is also looking at it without a sense of how groundbreaking this tech is. It's the kind of tech that someone in the mainstream -- and not gamers who have these expectations in their head -- puts it on, tries it for the first time, and will get it. The game mechanics and the interactions are completely secondary to that experience of the existential crisis, and that alone, I think, will mean some form of the Rift technology, whether it is by FB or not, will emerge. It solves a problem people did not know they have, did not even realize they needed. The demand will be too great for there to be a vacuum.
It's a cool display tech, it's not an experience in itself - that comes from the software. To me it feels the same as if Microsoft invested billions to buy a CRT monitor company back in the day - why would they?
Edit: it is, of course, possible that I'm completely wrong on one or more of the above assumptions. That's why this is such an interesting discussion.
The real issue is a matter of control interfaces. Right now the norm for 3d games is keyboard and mouse, which is duplicated on consoles with dual analog sticks (and then maybe improved with the steam controller). One set of controls move your virtual "body", the other set controls your orientation (which feels like where your head is looking).
The difficulty with VR is and always has been the necessary decoupling of your virtual body orientation from your head orientation. This is trivial in vehicle oriented games, your car or helicopter etc. is your "body" and the controls for orientation map nicely. But for games like fps's, which have planar movement (forward-backward, strafe left, right) you need a new orientation control now that the rift take over your viewpoint orientation. Put another way, to turn around in an FPS with a VR headset on, you need to turn your entire body around, which means you need to be on a swivel chair or standing (and then you need to figure out a way for your controllers to travel with you).
The solution is obviously to maintain body movement with one control set (forward, backward, strafe), your mouse or other control set changes to control your body orientation and your headset handles viewpoint orientation -- so you can now sit stationary in front of your control interfaces. But many years of VR experience shows that this has the potential to introduce motion sickness in a huge percentage of participants. It's exactly like car sickness because your "body" is moving while your inner ears don't register anything.
So there's lots and lots of interface problems to resolve. The headset is pretty much just the first step for workable, general purpose, VR. Which is why most VR systems are very specialized, with the control surfaces built to fit the one kind of experience they intend to support.
I'd be happy with just something where I can cover my entire peripheral vision :-D At one point, I had thought about getting three big LCD monitors to play Bioshock, just so I can get that immersion.