VR Only Interface?

[TechLord]

@Slayemin;640352

Here’s my steam store page: Spellbound on Steam

That’s pretty Awesome. Wizards & Zombies, one heck of a combination.

@Slayemin;640352

I kind of had the same thought when I began development. I believed that if I supported desktop gaming and VR gaming, then my total addressable market would be huge, and players could purchase and play my game and have it in their library, ready to go, whenever they decided to take the plunge with VR – they would have a game they’re familiar with. From what I can tell via sales, I was wrong. Nobody buying a VR game cares about desktop support, and people buying desktop games automatically assume that every VR game is incompatible.

Perhaps the turnout is based on the advertisements, from what I see the emphasis is placed on VR. Virtual Reality is also emphasized in Answer to the Question of Traditional Support:

“Q: I don’t have a VR headset. Can I still play Spellbound?”
A: Yes. Mouse, keyboard and traditional monitor work just fine and are fully supported. Keep in mind that spellbound is designed for VR, so many of your game play interactions will be more limited and feel much slower. If you want to experience the content of a VR game before deciding to purchase a VR headset, this game can support that and give you a general idea on what you can expect to experience.

I would interpret this information collectively as this is a VR-Only product. Perhaps with some emphasis on Traditional Support you’ll see a boost in purchases from Players who want to play with Traditional Controllers.

@Slayemin;640352

The “way” to think about VR is in the name: Virtual Reality. The goal of a VR developer is to fool people into believing that the reality they are experiencing is as real as reality itself. This means you have to take as many senses and familiar ways of interacting with reality as possible and bring them over to virtual reality. Every concession you have to make is a step away from VR. This means that every expectation a user might have in VR needs to match their internal expectations. Make sense? So, for example, if a player sees a desk with drawers on it, they’re going to want to reach out and grab a drawer to see whats inside. If they reach out and grab the drawer but nothing happens, you have an expectation / response mismatch. The more closely you can mirror reality, the better your VR is going to be. We still have to design for the lowest common denominator in terms of hardware configurations, and unfortunately, Oculus fragmented the market by releasing Touch six months after releasing the Rift, so there’s always going to be a subsection of VR gamers who only have a gamepad but no motion controllers.

I think… it’s worth taking the time to completely segregate VR from desktop gaming. The problem is that you’re going to end up designing too many concessions into your VR game in order to support the desktop version of the game, and that’s going to hold you back and add unnecessary complexity. Instead, just dive into the deep end and don’t look back. It’s hard enough as it is to build a good VR game and launch it, let alone add in desktop compatibility, and even if you do, the market won’t care because its not going to be a compelling selling point. Going forward in my own game, I’m going to end support for desktop. There’s no viable business case for it and it just holds me back. If you’re scared of jumping exclusively into VR, you may not be ready to get into VR yet. It doesn’t hurt to wait another 6-12 months for the market size to grow into a business viable industry

I do understand and agree on the points of VR immersion and its very exciting. I’m also in favor of making VR control the priority. I do see value added for the inclusion of traditional controls for development and testing. Especially with Multiplayer development testing. I’m certain once the code base is setup, its reusable and should not require constant fiddling.

I’m going to start testing some of my theory with Leap Motion.