A Reality Check for the Rift
Here we are, yet again. Poised at the edge of the precipice, one step away from the consummation of every adolescent boy’s wet dream and every science fiction author’s worst nightmare. The Oculus Rift is the long awaited holy-grail of virtual reality.
A virtual reality headset is worn over your eyes and has two miniature screens that simulate 3D videos or games by projecting a slightly different image to each eye. The Rift is an advanced model which not only encompasses your entire field of vision and adjusts the image based on your head movements, but does so fast enough so as not to make you nauseous. This creates the illusion of being present inside an alternate reality.
The headset is largely the creation of Palmer Luckey, age 21, an obsessive home-schooled gamer that was not satisfied with any of the head-mounted devices in his collection. He began tinkering and hacked together a prototype which elegantly and economically solved some of the technical issues. With the backing of a few prominent figures in the tech and gamer world and financed through the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, Oculus VR was founded to develop their first consumer model — the Rift.
Mark Zuckerberg, fearful to lose his position as prime mover in current day culture, decided to buy the newly founded Oculus in a deal which is expected to close some time later this year. This provoked frenzy in the video-gaming community due to a fear that the company would no longer be dedicated to the world of games. Luckey has countered that with Facebook’s financial backing, they will be able to focus on improving the quality of the device and adding features, such as outward facing cameras.
The concern in the gaming world is based on the premise that Facebook is a social-media company. But perhaps Facebook can actually be classified more accurately as a gaming company. I am not referring solely to the mundane time-wasters such as FarmVille, CandyCrush, or the variety of other games played through the site’s App Center. What I mean to say is that the entire site is a mundane time-waster game. The origin of Facebook is Facemash, a “hot or not” game, and it remains this, despite all the constant renovations and slangeneering.
A game is an activity with clear objectives and well-defined rules for achieving them. A person at any instant has an option to engage in it, and typically does so because of the positive feelings that accompany the achievement of the goals. The universal appeal for playing games suggests that there are deeper motivations at hand.
Despite our scientific advancements, the nature of the reality in which we live still eludes us. Even if there is an inherent order and an underlying purpose, and even if humans were capable of understanding it, we are seemingly ways away from this happening. While there are some aspects of our psychology and biology which yearns to grapple with these complex issues, our time is limited and our energy supply scarce. This produces a natural proclivity towards escaping from reality, which is achieved by playing a game.
If this urge to play exists then one would expect gaming to be much more prevalent. One possible explanation is that the reward of playing needs to be perceived as outweighing the costs. For an adult with many responsibilities and limited energy, playing a game in the real world is just not worth it. It requires going outside, finding friends, convincing them that they should stop what they’re doing and play, and then exerting yourself in the game. There are exceptions with solitary games, such as Solitaire, and mind-intensive games, such as chess, but these are not as inherently rewarding and so their practice is limited.
The revolutionary aspect of video games is that they make playing games so damn easy. Today you are able to sit alone in your room and be stimulated for hours on end. There is a barrier to entry into this world, which is the cost of the equipment and the familiarity with the mechanisms of play. But this barrier has been receding of late. The internet provides a platform for many simple games, the modern gaming consoles have poured a lot of resources into creating intuitive controls, and the phones we use today are essentially portable gaming devices.
The Oculus Rift will complete this trend. Anyone with eyesight and neck movement would be able to strap one on and transport themselves to a more pleasant place. The video-game culture used to exist on the fringes of society, but it has increasingly become the mainstream, and the Rift would be the final push. It is this that the hardcore-gaming community laments in the Facebook acquisition. And while I am very far from being in any version of the gaming community, I agree with them on this issue.
If our entire culture becomes a gaming culture, then there will be disastrous effects on our society. This is not because there is anything inherently wrong with gaming. Although I have classified it as a titillating form of escape, I would not consider partaking in such an activity as negative. And besides, there are positive therapeutic, creative, and community-building qualities to them. It would be tough to claim that these qualities are essential, unique, or particularly potent in the form of digital games, but that’s beside the point. Games are here and they are here to stay. While I personally try to avoid them, others are in a different position and make their own decisions.
The problem arises when games are played in excess. The brain is constantly adjusting its understanding of the world, and if one spends too much time with a reduced version of reality, then this may come to replace reality. Instead of escaping from your typical life by playing a game, you can continue living your typical life and achieve the same effect by turning your entire life into a game. When one is engaged in a video-game for too long this conflation may become so severe that the gamer dies due to a mixture of starvation and exhaustion. While these are without doubt extreme cases, they are still exemplary.
This is not true only of video-games. There are two other games which consume many lives in our society: the quest for money and the religious cult. The goal of the former is improving one’s wellbeing here on earth, while that of the latter is gaining entrance to the afterlife. The overlap between these two games has a long history, and that is where virtual reality lies.
In Ancient Egypt, only the wealthiest were granted entry to the netherworld, and were buried with all their greatest riches to use there. The priests maintained their power largely because only they knew the rituals to perform on the dead bodies. In Medieval Europe anyone wealthy enough to purchase a papal indulgence from a local priest was granted entry to Heaven. The Rift promises to complete this chain of the democratization of the afterlife. Soon you will be able to walk to your local Best Buy and for the shallow price of $300 purchase a portable portal to Heaven on Earth.
There will surely be a few cases of people that die due to not being able to take the Rift off and attend to their bodily needs. And the time squandered will have ripple effects on our economy. But these are minor problems compared to the problem of large amounts of people with distorted visions of reality.
One problem with this is that the digital world fosters an extreme form of individualism. In the case of the websites we visit this means careful management of the content we are exposed to so that we will be faced with as little adversity as possible, to keep us from leaving. The virtual world as experienced through the Rift would likely take this a step further by personalizing our entire environment. This may sound appealing, but the more pampered we become, the less likely we are to handle any form of conflict in a graceful manner.
Another problem with the digital world is that it trades substance for symbols. Nowadays, even when engaged in the real world with a group, one often does so for the sake of capturing symbols to display on a narcissistic, neatly manicured dossier. The Rift would enable the simulation of many real-world experiences, and many will likely come to favor the simulation. Walking in the court of a digitally reconstructed Taj Mahal would serve as a suitable alternative to the real building, despite the fact that the latter provides an immediate engagement with the history and culture that permeates it.
Facebook employees are a clan of priests with Zuckerberg at their head, and as is usually the case with priests, they want to maintain their power. The acquisition of Oculus is a means of keeping the keys to the virtual kingdom. The odds are that they will. The allure is too great to resist. But it may also have the opposite effect. People may begin to question the power Facebook has over their lives, and call the entire enterprise into question. Sure there are conveniences which the site affords, and there is an excitement about the possibilities of immersive experiences, but is any of this really worth it?
When I was in middle school a friend of mine gave me a copy of the game Age of Empires II, a Real Time Strategy game in which you control a civilization. I enjoyed it immensely and spent hours busy at play, ordering wood to be chopped, temples to be built, soldiers to fight, etc. One day I was in middle of playing when all of a sudden I had a flash of insight: if I stopped playing, and never started a new game, I wouldn’t have to worry about all of the responsibilities of running a kingdom. I haven’t played an RTS since, and although I’m sure I would enjoy it, I have no desire to.
A similar effect may happen with the Oculus Rift. It will enable us to explore the wonders of the world, to communicate with anyone and everyone, and to fight fictitious battles with fictitious enemies! And yet, I am far more excited about exploring the wonders of my immediate surroundings, communicating with a living being standing in front of me, and celebrating real victories with real friends.
We live at a time in which our technology has afforded us ample free time and an abundance of food. How dare we squander this gift, for the sake of such petty amusement! The Oculus Rift will come, and many will embrace it. And if you come to be one of those who embraces it, my only hope is that the unbridgeable rift between reality and the virtual is maintained, and that you always favor the former.
