The Video Game Industry

On Steam, the examples that most stand out to me are the porn games.

But I have to wonder. Don't you usually need both hands to operate a VR set? Doesn't that kind of defeat the point?

I have a Valve Index and later got a Kat Walk II treadmill to go with it. So my two cents on VR:

Virtual Reality is awesome. It's not just some gimmick, being in an environment in VR is often a very fun experience and I'd usually much rather play a game in VR than "traditionally". For example, playing Skyrim in VR, there's that moment where Alduin resurrects a dragon, seeing that "in-person" is breathtaking.

As for motion sickness: It's a legitimate problem, yes, but I also think it's not as much of a hard barrier as people make it out to be. The first time I tried using continuous motion it was awful, but I did get used to it. Nowadays I can do platforming shenanigans and not feel sick much at all. And again, you often do have alternative movement styles like teleportation that can be used to help "practice" until you get your VR legs.

If there is a hard barrier for motion sickness, I'd probably say games like Portal or maybe heavy-platforming games like Mario 64. But most games really don't have you bounce around that much even if you do move a lot.

A much bigger problem for mass adoption is the price tag and the lack of games for it. These two problems are mutually reinforcing, too: less games, less reason to buy one, less reason to make games for it.

I play H 3 VR to get as close as I can to the "firearm range" experience, because I both love firearms and because I live in a country with one of the strictest goddamn firearms laws in the world.

Also because I don't have enough money to actually hit up a range on a regular basis even if my country didn't have strict gun laws.

Edited by Cordite-455 on Mar 24th 2024 at 12:56:56 AM

As stated, VR's biggest problems aren't anything innate to VR as a concept. It's that the hardware (+ a computer that can run it tolerably) is expensive and takes up space, and that companies like Meta keep trying to push it for shit that nobody wants to use VR for—usually grocery shopping and glorified conference calls.

The former issue will very likely change as the technology improves, because it already has: Remember that full-fledged VR used to be confined to giant arcade machines, and home VR could only vaguely approximate the experience via eye-straining monochrome stereoscopic 3D you held up to your face.

Edited by Chortleous on Mar 24th 2024 at 1:38:21 PM

Without getting too into the weeds, a lot of those will include content or scenes that doesn't really need any player input. Or simplistic enough that it could be done with one hand.

Can't speak towards VR specifically, though. Never used one at all.

It's also plain useless for things like 4X games and other highly-evolved board games, I'd think.

The endless quest for eyeball time.

Honestly VR is never gonna get big unless the porn industry gets investing it.

Although honestly at this point I'd say we should just invest in making SQUI Ds/Braindances (From Strange Days and Cyberpunk 2020/RED/2077 respectively).

There is so much setup for VR that unless it becomes as convenient as opening your pc or console, youre going to have a hard time selling VR on the same price as them than just be seen as an optional companion

The porn industry is investing in VR, though its still niche at this point.

...Not that I would know anything about that.

Edited by diddyknux on Mar 24th 2024 at 4:41:59 AM

I feel meta want to do the same think nintendo did with the Wii, promoting VR not only for games but for other uses, everyone know the Wii have this fame of "your parent using your wii for karaoke and not letting you use it" hell a friend who have the wii describe that experience.

@Ramdiel

This is mostly true, but in fairness strategy games are a mildly niche genre. And if you have something that can run VR, you presumably have something that can run 4X games out of VR.

It's not completely useless either, you could do a VR Strategy game if you wanted to:

On the gimmicky end, you could make the board game-like nature literal, have there be a VR board game with the units being actual pieces.

On the less gimmicky end, my thought would be to do something like combine it with a VR version of Papers Please. I'd have it so you're in an Oval Office-like building or command base behind a desk, and the traditional strategy game map is projected on a screen in front of you. You get actual letters on your desk, that sort of thing.

There's also experiences in VR that you can't easily put in non-VR games. Even something like Half Life Alyx takes advantage of the physicality of VR in its design. For example, one of the things they noticed was that physically rummaging through shelves and cupboards in VR was mechanically interesting in and of itself. In response, they put in a collectable (Resin) which you have to look physically look for and grab. They also added in an enemy that likes to hide in small spaces and move around so you have to physically search and hunt for it.

Or for another type of game: Battle Talent, a swordfighting simulator (mostly), which would be a lot harder to do without VR.

Now I wonder how easy wars could be one if they put it in a strategy game simulator and crank the AI to the max in efficiency

Ender's game.png

Another story I encountered over video game production in this day and age:

https://boundingintocomics.com/2024/03/26/microsoft-publishes-new-inclusion-guide-for-video-game-devs-recommends-against-creating-female-characters-with-exaggerated-body-proportions/

Long story short, Microsoft won't accept games with unrealistic character designs for women, especially if sexualized. While I agree that there must be more to women in video games than appearance, my problem is that by going after particular character designs, I find it uncreative to limit what you can do with character designs. I mean, too much sexual fanservice is distracting (I differentiate between fanservice in the form of a Panty Shot and fanservice in the form of continuity nods but the buzz over this reminds me of the "video games inspires too much violence" argument that I find baloney.

Point being, I find it excruciating people who complain about how female characters in video games are designed are now running these consultation firms and that no game these days might not get past pre-production lest there is a consultation firm involved. Is it even right to be restrictive how female characters in video games have to be designed?

Bounding Into Comics is a garbage fire of a website and should not be used as a source for anything. Ever. Under any circumstances. They very routinely lie and distort things to feed their culture war bullshit about how dipshit straight white vanilla as hell men are being marginalized because companies have noticed that other people exist and spend money.

I'm also going to note that the thing in the guide about unrealistic body proportions does not actually say "never do this ever". It's just "hey, maybe consider this when designing a character". I don't think Microsoft would be like "hey, everyone's really exaggerated in this cartoony game, MAKE THE WOMEN STRICTLY REALISTIC", it's more towards how a lot of older games would have really generic, normal looking guys and insane looking women who'd look out of place on fucking Baywatch because of how over the top they are.

The bullet point immediately after it is like "do you show male characters with a full range of emotions?" The whole bit is just "are you reinforcing negative gender stereotypes?"

Nothing in the guidelines is bad, it's just "hey, deeply stupid and extremely vanilla conservative straight white men aren't the only people playing video games, our audience is everyone, so we should try and avoid alienating everyone else just to appease the most goddamn capricious people possible who will scream and freak out if you remind them about pronouns, because people who feel included and like what we do will spend more money and people who scream and wail about inclusion and diversity don't actually appear to be a lucrative demographic."

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 27th 2024 at 9:42:11 AM

Sorry about using Bounding Into Comics. They were the only source I found that was detailed about Microsoft's guidelines. If you have a better source, I can use that and replace the BIC link.

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/games/resources/productinclusion/

This is the direct link to Microsoft’s own guidelines. I think letting people actually look at it themselves would be best. They're, uh, very plain language and easy to understand, it's notable that Bounding into Comics makes it sound like they're complicated and convoluted, likely in an attempt to make people not look at them directly.

Edited by Zendervai on Mar 27th 2024 at 9:47:25 AM

I bet that Bounding into Comics garbage threw in some whining about Sweet Baby Inc. too in that article.

I'm not reading it to see for myself because I don't want to give that site a click.

I must ask: what are the good websites dedicated to video game journalism? The only gaming journalism website I knew of before I encountered that Bounding into Comics article is Kotaku though are they still a good source of video game news?

Making fun of absurdly proportioned female characters in video games is something of a hobby of certain game journalists, and I do find it a little off-putting just how fetishized they can be at times. The same does exist for male characters, but rarely to the same degree.

Anyway, it's not like Microsoft is the only vector for games. Steam is loaded with fetish stuff if that's what they want.

While it's not exactly a website, I am a devoted follower of Second Wind, which is where most of the video team from The Escapist set up shop after being screwed by their corporate overlords in a tale as old as time. There's still written content but it's distributed through Patreon.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 27th 2024 at 10:22:14 AM

Kotaku was always kind of all over the place, but they're getting hollowed out at the moment.

A lot of the problem with game journalism is that it's mostly captured by the actual game publishers. EA, Ubisoft and Activision are absolutely notorious for being really stingy with review codes and for throwing huge events when a big deal game comes out in order to try and get better reviews, and they get really angry when an outlet starts talking about stuff like working conditions. Most of the game journalism places will immediately buckle when that happens.

Turns out there actually is a problem with ethics in game journalism, but it's not the thing that shitty people are claiming it is, it's actually that the vast majority of the gaming press is effectively owned by the biggest publishers. And that many of the smaller ones are like...insane far-right propaganda rags where the existence of a woman without breasts the size of Jupiter is a huge deal.

Most gaming outlets these days aren't so much captured by the industry as by the overwhelming push for engagement from their corporate overlords. Far more than publisher demands, the pressure to become content mills to drive clicks is what's killing them and has led to quite a few journalists going independent. Second Wind is a major example (and the one I'm most familiar with) but there are others as well.

The thing to watch out for is journalism brands becoming owned by venture capital firms. There's a brief honeymoon period during which everyone gets reassured that it's "business as usual", and then the whips come out.

Well, there's the fishing for clicks, sure, but I'm less concerned about the occasional stupid clickbait article as the fact that game journalists need access to publishers in order to thrive, and so publishers get to effectively set conditions for what the journalists get to write.

Bit of an extreme (and old) example, really, but I still remember when Jeff Gerstmann got fired from Gamespot.

That's always been a concern, but I'm not convinced it's the most important one. Even so, I would never depend on an IGN review (for example) without seeking additional, independent sources.

Frankly I think the issues with publishers are best address by either

• Making "previews" illegal. Namely Review copies.
• Or require all publishers to hand said previews out to the press and make discriminatory practices punishable by legal Disproportionate Retribution (as I'm sure mere fines would not be enough to enforce it)

Both would had their issues (the former would render dlc and more to the point microtransactions hidden bar other regulations for instance) but taking away the publishers ability to withhold review copies for whatever reason would neuter their leverage a bit.

The part about clickbait is a matter that is both more general to news in general and more complicated to tackle with just one regulation. Esp since any attempt will have sophists coming out of the woodwork to find and exploit loopholes.

Either however would have several hurdles. Most of all being the stigma that comes with the forbidden hashtag using it as a dog whistle (meaning that opponents can accuse a good faith actor of chuddery for trying to raise the issue and poison the well. And also that a chud can interfere and ruin it by other means) and the idea that coverage on media in general is low priority compared matters like geopolitics, and hot-button topics. Though the latter can be a disguised blessing as it means that such regulation would fly under the radar and maybe gather enough bipartisan support to pass.

That is all I'm willing to say on the matter, as I fear further words on certain aspects on the topic risk derails and thumps.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 27th 2024 at 10:44:08 AM

I cant even find the body type stuff on the linked page, did they change it, or is it such a minor mention its hard to find.