It’s time for Virtual Reality to look where it’s going

2016 should be the year that virtual reality breaks into the mainstream. But it depends on a lot of things going right (and righter than the false dawns of VR launches in the ‘90s).

Oculus Rift will ship in March, with Playstation VR and HTC Vive following shortly after. Meanwhile, Google Cardboard keeps trundling along with its lo-fi innovation, and Samsung GearVR is already live in their Oxford Street store — tomorrow it will get a big boost from the launch of #TheNextGalaxy.

So what could possibly stop the inexorable rise of VR?

VR’s language barrier.

New technology has to overcome two seemingly paradoxical points of view to be accepted by the mainstream: some people think it’s so radically different, they just don’t get it; others think it’s just more of the same old with an extra dollop of marketing hype.*

So how do you convince people?

Get the language right. Here are 3 reasons why:

First, you want both groups to reassess, and quickly.

VR has had a couple of false starts already, and it doesn’t have time for another one before the tech gets leapfrogged, and Scotty invites us all on to the holodeck for a game of intergalactic chess.

To make people reassess something, you can start by redefining it. You can raise expectations, like Apple did with the ‘Genius bar’. Or, you can soothe anxieties, like Tesla do with their in-store messaging structure around range anxiety.

What’s the equivalent of range anxiety for VR? ‘Content worry’ that there aren’t enough games? The ‘paper bag threat’ that you’ll need to throw up after 45 minutes? Or perhaps plain old ‘headache horror’, after 3 hours spent following pixels around the universe? Whatever it is, companies need to find a way to address it when they talk to customers.

Some companies have already started to use language to make VR seem a little less alien. Google Cardboard tells us that the future isn’t actually that scary after all because it’s made of, well, cardboard. That’s like giving the Terminator big floppy ears, furry paws and a waggy tail — it becomes friendly and familiar. It’s a great example of how lo-fi innovation can ready the ground for something more brazenly futuristic. Similarly, ‘Jaunt’ chose a name that connotes an easy afternoon trip to the seaside, and ‘HTC Vive’ chose a name that…well, actually, I’ve no idea what HTC are ever trying to do. ‘Vive’ sounds like a Renault hatchback from the late ‘90s.

Second, language gives you the sense of an experience in a way that visuals can’t.

Virtual Reality is like Blu-Ray or 3D-TV: you can’t experience it properly without the product itself. (Remember those blu-ray adverts at the start of a DVD? I’m sure it raised awareness but — really? Come on, guys.) So, if you can’t change people’s minds with the equipment they already own, you’ll need another way to conjure up the experience for them.

Luckily, language has a history of being able to do this, stretching back to early Aboriginal camp-fires, where the whites of the storytellers’ eyes cut through the night and their voices crackled as they told stories of gods and ghosts and the smoke from the fire climbed up into the massive dark skies.

So, if language can take you anywhere, tell me, where would you rather go:

• Option (a), ‘A beautiful resort that has every facility you could wish for to make your stay utterly relaxing. All around it are unspoiled beaches, uninhabited islands and crystal-clear water teeming with marine life, where you can while away hours in peaceful seclusion or explore the reefs on the regular island-hopping excursions.’ (The Maldives)
• Option (b), somewhere with a ‘100 degree field of view’, a ‘high refresh rate’ and a ‘low-persistence display’. (Oculus Rift)

It’s your call. I’m packing my trunks.

The question is: why doesn’t the language of VR transport me to another place? That’s the promise, isn’t it? And if the tech is amazing, the verbal identity should be, too.

Speaking of amazing, here’s the third way language helps:

Language can conjure the future into being

The key is to craft your narrative. Take the iPad as an example. Yes, it was an astonishing product, and a great user experience, but that didn’t just happen by accident. People already knew what tablets were, but they couldn’t really see where to take them next. Language allowed Steve jobs to see into the future, and to tell his design team all about it. It gave Apple’s engineers a strategy, and a concrete set of goals — the narrative they needed to build something people would love.

Steve Jobs referenced these goals at the top of his keynote speech when he unveiled it: “[We know it has] to be far better at doing some key tasks, some really important things. Like browsing the web…doing email…enjoying and sharing photographs…watching and sharing videos…’’.

Compare this to Samsung’s new Gear VR homepage, which talks about ‘a Super AMOLED display, wide field of view, precise head-tracking and low latency’. Better still, it’s ‘19% lighter’ with a ‘larger touchpad’** than the previous version.

Thrilling. I can’t wait to use the larger touchpad.

The challenge for Samsung is to stop talking functional tech to nerds. They’re not creating a narrative for the rest of us (and I consider myself 63.7% geek). Interestingly, other companies have started to address this. Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup with very serious, very smart money behind it, now employ science fiction writers to help them think big and think interesting. Hopefully they’ll create a brand narrative that we might fall for, because their technology is breathtaking.

Of course, Playstation VR’s narrative is tied to the eponymous console, so Sony will have to keep widening the whole brand to move the technology beyond gaming.

To be fair to Oculus, it seems like they’re pointing in the right direction. After Mark Zuckerberg reached down the back of his sofa to pull out $2 billion for them 2 years ago, he said that Oculus’ mission is ‘to enable you to experience the impossible.’ Now, if only they could tell me a little more about that, I’m in.

I work for Verbal Identity. We help leaders to shape markets and perceptions by crafting their thinking and their language. If you’d like to have a coffee and a chat about this, email us.

*We saw this with mp3 players, tablets and electric vehicles. Each of them were around for years before the iPad, iPod and the Model S. Cloud computing has crested the brow of the hill, and the IoT is climbing quickly.

**When Samsung talks about design, they talk about comfort, but they also use comparatives (‘19% lighter’, ‘larger touchpad’). Slow down, there, Samsung. Comparatives are only useful if your readers have some existing knowledge. Just how many people actually experienced your first headset?