Dear Immersive Reality Investors, I
Dear, Immersive Reality Investors,
May we talk? It is rather “intervention-level” important that we do. The topics involve your money, that of others which you manage, plus the output and livelihoods of those surrounding such investments. “Year-One” of VR is closing upon us (as of this post), and plenty of us would like to see many more, so please hear us out on some of these critical areas requiring improvement:
1.) Stop obsessing with your “toys.”
Honestly, this is getting embarrassing, it’s akin to children fighting in a sandbox, with the insecure over-compensating. If one considers the history of 20th century video games, their genesis, evolution, and extinctions throughout the years, it should be obvious what the end user thinks about them:
Yes, developers, geeks, v/bloggers, bored tech news outlets, and other hardcore gamers, will nerd-out over your specs and into flame wars on forums and other social media. Some investors and their team(s) are naïve enough to consider that kind of drivel as “traction,” counting towards “successful” marketing efforts in VR/AR.
It’s OK, I’m here to help. Say it with me now: KPI measured against ROI, engagements tied to results, not just views.
There is certainly a reasoning behind wanting to have exclusives, but we’re not talking about inexpensive hardware here, people. It may be one thing to drop $100-$200 for a used console to play and share games with friends or use via a service. It is quite another thing to drop nearly $600+ on just a VR HMD, not counting peripherals, gaming space, a VR-capable PC, high-speed streaming, etc. Companies such as Oculus can argue they’re trying to avoid the console game problem of the ’80s, when some games were made in the equivalent of a weekend, using exclusives so as not to destroy the potential of VR with consumers by having proper funding, testing and development:
However, let’s be honest: when developing for a closed platform, like Oculus (or VIVE), it means one must develop specifically for that SDK. This means the game, and its mechanics, are now locked to that system. A “port” now means one has to learn and develop for an entirely new SDK platform. A single company may or may not have the resources required to do this, unless the game is a huge hit, and if not, then the damage is already done.
If the company has the means going in, then the argument Oculus proffers in the aforementioned article, does not hold water, nor does a third party need to accept any deal on terms they don’t find agreeable. Simply put: serious video game makers learned from that period, and they’re not churning out junk (despite a lot of bad content out there, that blame almost entirely lies on investors themselves, but more on that later…).
CroTeam CTO Alan Ladavac is on the record for turning down a lot of money from Oculus to deliver Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope, as an exclusive for Oculus. His point of view was: we believe that truly good games will sell by themselves and make profit in the long run regardless. And also because we hate exclusives as much as you do.” For most who simply cannot afford this expensive gear, they will simply wait out the exclusivity window, meaning companies that pay for exclusivity are just doing this:
Stay tuned for the next part of this series: Dear Immersive Reality Investors, II
