Palmer Luckey's Belief in Virtual Reality's "Inevitability" Seems Non-Falsifiable

Palmer Luckey and I had a really interesting conversation on his Facebook post announcing that it's "inevitable" VR will rule the future. Since Luckey is a pioneer of virtual reality's latest wave, I'm copying it below with some light edits. I think it shows that this belief in VR's dominance is non-falsifiable, i.e. an article of faith that can't be altered by contrary facts, but I'll leave that up to the reader:

WAGNER JAMES AU: If it's inevitable, how come hardly any Vive/Oculus owners even use them on a daily basis? 

PALMER LUCKEY:I think you mean "If it's inevitable, how come hardly any Vive/Oculus owners even use STEAM on a daily basis?" The answer is CONTENT!   

WJA: There's already 1800 VR-compatible games on Steam, way more content than a console has at this stage of maturity. Yet somehow there's less than 2000 Steam users playing a VR title at the moment. Why?

 

 

Above: Number of VR compatible games and software currently on Steam

PL: There are 1800 VR "games" on Steam. Most are terrible. Engagement is driven by QUALITY, not QUANTITY. There are probably more people playing a single VR game right now (Lone Echo) than there are playing those bazillion tech demos combined. You keep trying to conflate low VR engagement on Steam with VR engagement in general, as if Steam usage is a good indicator of when and how people are using their VR rigs in general. That is stupid.

WJA: Superhot, for instance, is an awesome game. But in the last 24 hours, only 102 people TOTAL have played it for VR in Steam. Why? And if you reject Steam usage as a metric, which metric will you accept? 

WJA: Superhot, for instance, is an awesome game. But in the last 24 hours, only 102 people TOTAL have played it for VR in Steam. Why? And if you reject Steam usage as a metric, which metric will you accept?

PL: Superhot came out last year, and most people bought/played it on the Oculus store, not Steam. It is indeed awesome, but was never intended to be a sticky game that brings people back day after day after day. The same factors are why millions of people continue to play games like Call of Duty and Destiny instead of Portal.

Mass use of VR is inevitable. Low engagement on Steam VR does not suggest otherwise. Heck, low engagement of VR in general does not suggest otherwise. Inevitability is determined by long term needs, not short term accomplishments. Man has never stepped on Mars, that does not mean there won't be millions living there someday. I am not saying there is another better metric you can point to. There is not. That does not mean you should take a badly flawed metric and use it to make baseless claims. 

WJA: When you say, ”I am not saying there is another better metric you can point to. There is not,” I think that suggests the idea of VR's inevitability is non-falsifiable. 

PL: We are talking about predictions based on data that currently exists, not a scientific hypothesis. VR usage data exists, you just don't have access to most of it yet. 

Emphasis mine, because it bears emphasis -- apparently there's good VR usage data that exists, we just can't see it yet. I could mention that there's several multiplayer games for VR on Steam similar to Call of Duty and Destiny, at least in terms of trying to create long term engagement, such as Raw Data (multiplayer combat) or Star Trek: Bridge Crew (multiplayer simulator based on the world's most well known sci-fi brand), and those aren't played much either. But at this point, what's the point pointing that out?

I don't mean to single out Luckey here, by the way, as other leaders in the VR industry say similar things, when challenged on their faith in virtual reality, until they're basically saying "VR will be big because I believe VR will be big." Thing is, at a certain point, the companies which have invested billions in that assertion will start refusing to take that as an adequate answer.

Oh yeah, speaking of the game Portal:

... on Steam, there are currently almost twice as many people playing Portal 2 (3,658), a PC game from 6 years ago, than are currently playing all the VR games and software on Steam combined -- at the moment, 1982 total.

Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

I was curious after the last post covering this so took a look at that list you linked to and watched the demos that came with them. All the political, ideology and societal questions aside (and Anoia knows there are a few..) the boy lucie may have a point.
The content all looked a bit - naff. 'Superhot' reminded me gameplay wise of something I used to play 20 years ago where the swarming blobs were green in a Doomesque setting only on the mac. A fair few demos - fine, nothing wrong with that. A lot of 'this is an alpha release and..' including '..we will be raising prices as more content magically appears..' and the trek crew one ('hello look we can wave at each other and press buttons') although that might be me and 'social' stuff. Even some of the vids had long patches where nothing happened - in FPS mode:) In night vision:)
The one I did like was Gorn just because the real life living room carnage was how I could see my gaff looking only even more clumsily. The blobby cartoon gore (complete with nsfw warning haha) was just that. Meh.
Very early days I agree and reminded me of PC games arriving via a CD on the front cover of various mags, where you waded through a dozen bits of rubbish in hope of a gem.
A question - is the disembodied hands and waving sticks of light around actually meant to be a plus point here?

[Carlos Loff]

If you ask a wine sailsman what he thinks about the importance of wine in the future, would you need much imagination about what His opinion will be ? Specially one sailsman that just publicaly made a fortune on His last sale to a major market player ???

[Flashing Merlin]

Interesting that "Ready Player One" also assumes VR is inevitable.
If we skeptics are correct, by 2045 that idea will seem quaint.

Sort of like "2001" assuming everyone would use video phones in the future. What "2001" didn't predict, was that everyone would carry video phones in their pocket, but mostly use them to send text messages.

By analogy, in 2045 VR might be miniaturized to the size of contact lenses, but everyone will mostly use it to watch old 3D movies.