Game Design Pioneer Warren Spector on the Cultural Roadblocks to Virtual Reality That Few Are Talking About

Influential game designer Warren Spector recently wrote this about virtual reality:

VR will be a game-changer (as it were) in many aspects of our future lives but not necessarily in gaming. I want to see VR succeed as a gaming device, but see potential roadblocks being ignored.

Which is a provocative thing to say, and stirred up a lot of controversy, especially by game industry admirers of Spector who are also boosters of VR. So I asked Warren what roadblocks he was talking about, and he put it this way:

"If you use any of this," he said at the start of his message, "PLEASE don't paint me as the anti-VR guy. That's all I ask."

So noted: Warren Spector is not the anti-VR guy. And so said, Warren then went on to explain VR's challenges as a gaming platform that aren't being addressed:

"[I]t's important to emphasize that content, tech and price point aren't challenges at all. Smart people are working on those problems and I'm 100% confident they'll be solved. "

He also sees virtual reality having a number of valuable real world applications that are feasible and important: "I also see great value in VR for certain uses where putting on a headset and separating oneself from the real world are appropriate and even necessary. Among those are business meetings, training sessions of all kinds, long-distance relationships (familial and friendship) and so on. Those are situations where entering an alternate liminal space and leaving the real world behind are entirely appropriate. The problem with the responses to my comments is that they all think I'm saying VR content will always suck when I'm not saying that at all."

And then Warren went on to describe the challenges that the VR industry has yet to address -- not technical, creative, or commercial, but deeper, bound up in the basic fact of VR users having to literally block themselves off from the rest of the world, and the people who are supposed to matter to them:

"The challenges I don't hear being addressed at all (or without appropriate seriousness) are cultural and social. Problems abound, but the big one I see are the isolating effect of simply wearing a headset. I believe most people will be genuinely frightened of and disoriented by being effectively blind to the outside world for the sake of entertainment. When you can put in a headset at E3 and not know if someone's watching you there's a problem.

"Even if I'm wrong about all this, I think people around VR users - spouses, friends, other family members - will be offended by a user's preference for virtual interactions over real ones right there in the room. I think the ridiculous look and feel of current headsets (which represent no advances over what we had in the 80s and 90s) will discourage people from looking foolish wearing them. No one wants to look stupid...

"At the end of the day, I'm not anti-VR, and at no point have I commented on content - you don't need to know a damn thing about content to see VR problems. And though it may sound like I'm anti-VR, I just want to hear people talking about non-tech problems the tech faces. Not thinking about and solving those seems likely to reduce VR to the fad I predicted it will be."

I share his concerns, I should say -- while virtual reality remains an exciting new technology, I notice that its most dedicated enthusiasts tend to brush off deeper, fundamental questions like this. Just as they did with Second Life -- until those questions, unanswered, also made it seem like a fad.

Update, 4:10pm: While this photo of Warren shows him wearing Google Glass, the Deus Ex designer's take on that augmented reality tech was decidedly "meh".

 

Please share this post:

Tweet

 

Comments

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

Actually that does bring up an issue--will immersive VR connect to the EAS (Emergency Alert System)? I can just imagine the headlines the first time somebody gets involved in VR and doesn't notice the tornado sirens going off.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

You know what I hate when I'm gaming? Distractions. You know how much I care about what I look like when I'm gaming? About as much as the cell phone zombies or the average television viewer. It's fragging, not America's Top Model.

There. Issues resolved. You seriously overestimate how much Americans really give a flying fark about anything else when the entertainment is cool enough.

[JS Saltwater]

Good points. But over-ear headsets have similar issues of masking environmental cues (e.g. sirens, parents yelling :). Headsets with variable opacity could reduce concerns. People can be rudely closed off with TV and books, so that's a matter of degree, not kind. MUVEs tend to be more social than games, so not as isolating as a solo FPS. So I don't see these major issues.

[Lagomorph7]

My wife and I were discussing this just the other day. I like to sit in the living room and roam through Second Life while she watches television. Even with earbuds on she can still get my attention. (Marshmallows help.) But VR headsets? Forget it. What was pleasant example of parallel play becomes something much more isolating.