Osiris397

VR can SHOW weather phenomena and put the player in the phenomena visually, but it can't simulate weather...which is kind of weird to read I'm sure. The haptics go a good way to linking the of say raindrops sensations to the player in the in-game world, but it has it's limitations. This is where something like location based entertainment can eventually fill the gap, where yo can have wind machines, physical obstacles and the like. For anything like this to happen there has to be a solid foundation of standards for these off-shoots to build from.

This game and Clair Obscur which has a similar art direction/color palette have been like a breath of fresh air for me. Feasts for the eyes, mysteries abound in fantastical worlds.

Also eye tracking as a key base function of in-game telekinesis, like in the game Synapse, grabs a player by the collar and makes the unique characteristics of VR and obscure tech that previously was just a few words on the page very known to the player.

Aside from putting you in a game world environment often forcing you to reevaluate your use of the term immersion for other forms of media with 3D audio and other more tangible experiences translated there's an even deeper level of immersion that can, in certain circumstances, trigger emotional responses to in-game actions that you don't typically engage in a gaming session. For example if you've never smoked in your life or if even you have, if you're a character that's smoking and you blow air over the mic then watch as smoke streams out from the character's mouth in real-time your emotional response in the moment will be closer to whatever it would be if you were actually smoking rather than watching a character do it on a screen in a game. Another example is if an in-game character or player walks over to you leans down while looking you in the eyes, whispers in your left ear your response will, for most people, be 1:1 as if someone has done that in real-life and whatever your emotional frame of reference from real life with that kind of scenario is what you'll experience. Experiencing game scenarios/simulations like a pulpy hard boiled detective novel game with little to no shooting arguably becomes more engaging than the standard gaming fare.

Gawd I still want the sequel to that game so bad. So many possibilities, so many potentially impressive battle areas, so much potential werewolf and vampire lore to explore. Now back during that time I can see why they would have declined it. I still believe that The Order was the first review bombed game and at that time I don't think companies could differentiate non-fans from actual fans and I believe the end of public discourse around the game killed new purchases as new games kept releasing.

I have a similar "Live and Let Live" as far porn games are concerned. I do think expanded and enhanced forms of intimacy and general explorations are keys to growing the gaming audience and satisfying a larger swathe of gamers in general long term. I saw and interesting video a couple of days ago: https://youtu.be/xFg4bN85S-c?si=zWUn0BKUXxfCBsEH

damn, wish I could edit, anyway: ...moving past the limited audience meat-head aim and pull the trigger only medium it is the aim of lots of game developers and publishers not simply to do something creatively different, hopefully attract and captivate new kinds of customers to grow the base in the process. While not directly related, VR offers a unique window often ignored by the irrational. A game like Before Your Eyes proves unflinchingly that the most powerful application of gaming is not necessarily gun slinging.

Just started with Darklight on PC.

I think it's starting to be forced now probably because of partial platform failure with the BHaptics vest adopting support for PS5/PSVR2 and the Omnidirectional treadmill adopting support for PS5/PSVR2, gun stocks, golf club accessories etc. These were all accessories that developed years ago but passed by PSVR1 and were exclusive to PCVR but now they're flowing to PSVR2. The low volume games purchasing VR userbase of yesteryear is not large enough, the peripherals have been too experimental with too limited practical applicability and too expensive. The variability of hardware and performance in many scenarios created user nausea from not having software optimized for specific hardware is real. The biggest ally of VR progression is a predictable moderately powerful hardware foundation to build on, there are simply too many ways to poison the well with a constantly shifting and/or too severely underpowered foundation.

UploadVR article: A memo was recently leaked from Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth noting “Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.” 2025, it is said then, will determine whether Meta's hardware and metaverse division is “the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure”. Meta's shifting priorities adversely affecting developers.

I don't know that it has completely stagnated, but mobile graphics based VR has a hard ceiling and Sony has been mostly willing to concede to Meta's billions used to corner the market on VR developers. Typically in the Fall since the original PSVR release Sony has organized bigger holiday VR launches, which have apparently been successful as this is the 8th year with Metro, Aliens, Behemoth (VR Shadow of the Colossus) with Wanderer and Hitman: The World of Assassination promoted in the Fall for Spring releases. Obviously, it's not enough and remaking Playstation's first party titles of the past (PS3 and further back) could have and maybe should have the safer and more successful path they would have been innovate much further along by now, but that wasn't the path they chose, both because of questionable leadership decisions during the first generation of PSVR and then allocating massive resources to failed high risk projects during this generation of PSVR2. Previous leadership in both cases let VR down. While not impossible, it's difficult for me to see new leadership being any more conservative with VR development PSVR2 than the prior groups. The problem with PCVR from a development standpoint has always been the low volume of users with all the necessary hardware to run a high end VR game that wouldn't get them sick, but never really bought a ton of games. Without being heavily subsidized it very quickly became a "no bueno" for most studios that weren't named Valve. Most studios just weren't going to gamble with their mortgage money and then hope for the best, which is why it became the domain of Valve and they only built one game. Meta had a lot of developers over a barrel and railroaded them into Quest development. To me the road out of this mess is through more aggressive PSVR2 1st party development that grows VR as platform until there's a locked in LCD (lowest common denominator) standard that's significantly higher than the mobile standard. After that PCVR will have an opportunity to flourish particularly with Steam VR if Steam releases a console and. a new VR HMD for that console.

Given the myopic view of the vocal minority (maybe?) on full display in the form of constant thinly veiled racist, misogynist and homophobic public criticisms turned predatory influence on games sales I definitely think that some portrayals of intimacy in games offer an important nuanced exploration of human relationships, complex emotions, personal connections and vulnerability. Even in cases where there is controversy and the value is questionable a lot of it should be chalked up as trial and error at this stage IMO. It's rare to find romance in games and thus rare to to see iterative progress in that area. Gaming certainly wasn't developed as a potential tool of human exploration and there's been a not insubstantial offensive launched against this kind of direction, but there is a lot of potential. Also, the gaming industry hasn't grown substantially in something like 20 years, moving past the limited audience meathead aim and pull the trigger only medium is the aim of lots of game developers and publishers not simply to do something different, but to captivate new kinds of customers and grow the base. While not directly related VR offers a unique window often ignored by the irrational to something like Before Your Eyes a game that proves unflinchingly that the most powerful application of gaming is not necessarily gun slinging.

On one hand I suspect they won't add much only because the modding community has really overtaken the mantle of community development/redevelopment with closed source games thus incentivizing more and more publishers to green light modding instead of open sourcing the game. Also, there are more game assets and game templates available today for the modern game engines then there have ever been to developers and with all the major game engines being free to Indie developers it's made so many games available at so many different pricing levels it seems inconceivable that most of the opensource games could compete with all of that. Even Source 2 will be made free and publicly available. Where/when open source games do get traction I almost feel like the open source games themselves won't benefit, but later games that cut time to develop by standing on the shoulders of the open source games benefit. Right now i can't think of any super popular games that are also open source and that's what will be needed, I suspect, to make the open source games "main stream" or to get enough eyeballs on them to make a difference. There again I don't know if like Dead Cells may have used Abuse as a foundation or what other games that kind of thing might be true for. To me, there's a small kind of specific developer group for which Open Source games will be ideal: It's really the veteran solo dev that has a bit of a following from previous releases but the licensing fees absorb too much of the revenue for them to really get ahead financially, so they look at building on top of something open source. Alternately, I know that in a lot of cases Unity is not very efficient if veteran dev feel limited by that they may look to some OS game that's light and efficient with resources.

The current strategies are still to be revealed since the change of leadership, but global territory expansion seems like something that's always been in Playstation's plans considering the China Hero Project, India Hero Project initiatives, it's just a question of how fast or slow. The MENA Hero Project (Middle East and North Africa) is part of that. It seems' like these Hero Projects are a way to fund smaller development, but also a way to get Playstation reps on the ground in these places to get larger groups of developers/games when they exist from the same region like for the games Black Myth Wukong and Phantom Blade Zero.

I'm not so sure I would lump NMS in here only because I suspect people that are hesitant about the title are people that generally wouldn't like a game that's primary game loop is exploration and resource mining/farming. The odd thing about NMS is I feel like every major update has been a mini relaunch of the games for new players and it's VR edition is pretty groundbreaking in VR gaming.