What VR needs is a Nintendo: a UX perspective
If you’re a gamer and you read the title of this article, you might be quick to think “Nintendo? And VR? Do you remember the Virtual Boy?” Certainly, the Virtual Boy has stood as one of Nintendo’s greatest failures, but considering the technology at the time, it would’ve been more surprising if a VR system had succeeded — that didn’t happen until 2016 after all. Still, while modern VR systems have been available for 4 years now, it still remains a niche platform that has barely progressed beyond its initial introduction with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, so that begs the question: what is holding VR back, and how would Nintendo solve that problem?
A Brief History of VR
It may surprise some of you, but VR technology has been around for nearly 70 years, and with it, a history of repeated failures to achieve an ideal VR experience. The first VR machine can be attributed to cinematographer Morton Heilig, who invented an arcade-esque machine to showcase 6 specially-shot movies. Dubbed the Sensorama, the first VR machine sported a stereoscopic display, stereo audio, and the ability to produce smells, wind, and vibrations that operated in tandem with the movie— all in the mid-1950s. A few years later in the 1960s, inventor Ivan Sutherland would conceptualize The Ultimate Display and The Sword of Damocles, both of which would go on to serve as the foundations for the VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) that we have today.
While HMDs have been the most popular type of VR system, other types of systems were developed in the following years. These included the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE), which utilized multiple projectors to display images across 4–5 walls around the user, and simulators, which were often scaled-down vehicles with displays often used for military training purposes (e.g. Visually-Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator [VCASS] used by the US Air Force). Despite these systems having some benefits over an HMD, such as greater field of view and sense of immersion, they were limited by the sheer amount of space that it would take to set up compared to a standard HMD. Ultimately, these systems would primarily be utilized by institutions and organizations for research, training, or displays rather than as a product for the general consumer.
Despite the numerous variations of VR systems, there‘s a rather obvious reality as to why it couldn’t reach mainstream appeal: the technology wasn’t ready yet. Discounting the fact that VR systems would cost thousands of dollars, being able to experience VR during the 1980s and 90’s meant dealing with low quality visual and auditory stimuli, tracking systems that couldn’t keep up with normal movements, and an almost-guaranteed case of simulator sickness (motion sickness induced by VR/simulator use) after a short period of use. Furthermore, VR had to overcome an even greater obstacle that, in some ways, still persists today: public expectation.
At its core, VR isn’t the hardware, but the experience, and the hardware was unable to fulfill what the user’s idea of what a VR experience should be like. This discrepancy can be attributed to cultural series like Star Trek and its Holodeck or The Matrix’s world (sans killer overlord robots), each one proposing a new take on what a VR experience should feel like. The quality of VR is defined by its capacity to elicit senses of immersion and interactivity, and while great strides were made to address both factors, it was never enough to meet the subjective perceptions of the public as to what VR should be. By the time the world entered a new millennium, VR faded into public obscurity for a little over a decade.
This changed in 2012 when Palmer Luckey introduced his vision of VR to the world: the Oculus Rift. It was a passion project that took on a life of its own: it garnered the interest of gaming industry titans like John Carmack and Gabe Newell, became one of the most iconic Kickstarter success stories, and led the charge towards the revitalization of a technological platform wrought with a history of failed attempts. 4 years later, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR HMDs would be released to the public, both of which addressed many of the fundamental issues that plagued their predecessors. There were, of course, still some limitations that had been carried over from older VR systems, but this was the first time when VR felt viable. The only question left was, “is it enough?”
New Body, Old Soul
As VR was given a new lease on life, the most important matter was whether it would be able to cement its relevancy within the consumer space this time around. The technologies that modern VR HMDs were comprised of had come a long way since the ’80s and ’90s, and to its credit, the hardware does facilitate a high degree of immersion and interactivity. High-resolution stereoscopic displays, high refresh displays, directional audio, and responsive tracking systems have all contributed towards a stellar VR experience that the majority of users could immerse themselves in with very little threat of simulator sickness. While I’d argue that it’s still far behind what a typical user may expect a VR experience to be like, it utilizes enough illusions and mental trickery to bring us closer to that ideal experience.
Although VR received remarkable hardware improvements, the core of VR, again, is in the experiences that it can elicit in its users. This time around, those experiences come largely from gaming.
Whether by pure coincidence due to initial support from Carmack and Newell or by genius intention, placing the primary focus of modern VR on gaming was a smart move— it established a target audience rather than trying to appeal to the general consumer, and gaming is a natural fit for VR. No other entertainment medium has encouraged user interaction to the same degree as gaming, and the physical immersion afforded by VR only serves to enhance the player’s overall experience by eliminating the divide between the player and the game’s world.
While gaming theoretically is the best medium to showcase what VR was capable of, it has rarely distinguished itself and surpassed games found on traditional consoles from Nintendo, Playstation, and XBOX. Major AAA studios are notably absent, and the majority of titles that they’ve released have largely been ports of relatively old games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Borderlands 2. The recent release of Valve’s Half-Life Alyx could be considered the first title built specifically for VR by a major developer, and that was earlier this year — 4 years after the initial launch of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
VR is currently driven by the indie community, and while there have been some breakout hits like Beat Saber, Boneworks, and Pistol Whip, there’s a looming sense that developers just have no idea how to approach VR development. Rather than rethinking how gameplay should work as a VR title, developers are using traditional gaming conventions that simply don’t translate well in VR.
Conventions as an Obstacle to Innovation
By now, you might feel like this situation feels oddly familiar, and you’d be right — it’s eerily familiar to the Nintendo Wii.
In 2006, Nintendo debuted the Wii, a console that, while not as powerful as the PS3 or XBOX 360, was in a league of its own. It’s defining feature was the Wii Remote (i.e. Wiimote), a controller that enabled motion controls and expanded how games could be played and experienced. Players were suddenly using their whole body to play a game rather than with just their thumbs, and with controls that mirrored real-life actions (e.g. rolling a bowling ball, aiming a gun, swinging a sword, etc.), games felt more immersive and interactive. The Wii, in essence, had the spirit of modern VR just 10 years prior.
Despite a new innovative control scheme, however, the Wii had a glaring issue: third-party developers rarely understood how to take advantage of the Wii’s unique capabilities to create a game defined by the platform it’s on. As Nintendo created the hardware, it had a clear vision as to how they wanted to use it to push their crusade towards new, unique gameplay experiences, but third-party developers often either stuck with traditional gameplay conventions or mimicked the foundations laid by Nintendo to varying degrees of success.
VR is currently in a similar predicament, as the majority of games and experiences available on the platform are roughly indistinguishable from one another in relation to gameplay. While the physical immersion facilitated by VR is certainly a unique feature by itself, VR games have rarely defined themselves as “a game playable only in VR” and moreso as “a game in VR.”
Unlike the Wii, VR unfortunately doesn’t really have a figurehead developer, one that exemplifies the approaches one could take in establishing VR-specific gameplay mechanics. Valve, having contributed to both VR hardware and software development, is perhaps the closest thing VR has to a Nintendo, but with only 2 tech demos and 1 full game under their belt, there aren’t a lot of references as to how other developers could approach VR game design. A lot of the exploration has been left to indie developers setting out to make a name for themselves, and while there have been some successes (e.g. Beat Saber), there’s just too few worthwhile experiences to justify purchasing an HMD that retails in between $500–1000 USD.
Searching For: A Leader to Define VR
Of all the developers in the gaming industry, no one has been more dedicated to gameplay innovation than Nintendo. While at times it appears to stubbornly reject industry standards (e.g. online connectivity), they’ve continually and consistently created new gameplay experiences for both new and existing IPs that take advantage of the hardware that they were released on. VR needs developers like Nintendo — an embodiment of the UX principle of “function over form” — who understands and appreciates what distinguishes modern VR from other technological mediums to craft gameplay experiences that other developers can learn and branch off from.
The current generation of VR systems are still a ways away from fictional depictions like Sword Art Online and Ready Player One, but like any technology that has come before it, there’s a need for software that can encapsulate and convey the uniqueness of a VR experience before it can transition from a niche platform to something with widespread appeal.
VR needs a Nintendo, lest it falls back to obscurity again.
