6 Reasons VR Is Better Than Flat-Screen Gaming

Social

Gaming is a remarkably social hobby, World Of Warcraft is responsible for more marriages and more lasting marriages than every online dating website combined. Gaming is a great way to meet new people, make friends, and in some cases, find love. From my own experience playing online games, I find it easy to make new friends and bond over our mutual interests. Unlike in real life, we don’t just stare across a table at each other over coffee, but instead, we are forced to work together to overcome in-game puzzles and enemies. Gaming acts like the most fun and friendship trial to ever exist. However, doing so is not always easy, since we lack things like body language and being able to give your new buddy a high-five. That is until virtual reality gaming came along. I’ve not only met more people while gaming online in VR but we’ve also stuck together longer than most people I meet online. We now have a Discord server with just our fellow VR friends and our numbers are growing along with the list of VR games we like to play together. There’s nothing funnier than watching your friend accidentally drop the ammo out of his gun and having to yell over to him and point to his feet to help him realize his clumsy mistake. Giving high-fives or physically handing your friend an item in the virtual world is just one more way we can socialize. Lastly, is body language. Thanks for socializing in VR we have grown rather close and often discuss our hardships. Watching my online friend sit down against a virtual wall and hanging his head low as he talks about his problems is far more impactful than simply the change in their voice tone that you’d get from traditional gaming methods. On the flip side watching your friend laugh their head off as they slap their knee or watching their head flop up and down is hilarious. Socializing in VR is simply amazing.

Immersion

Immersion is a word that a lot of game developers throw around and its meaning has become vague. But it essentially means that the player doesn’t feel like they are just pushing buttons or are in some kind of virtual game. Instead, the player feels like they are in a new world with new people. Of course, VR has the advantage of almost perfectly filling the player’s field of view and using gestures to be a part of the game. This already makes it feel more real, which makes it easier for players to feel like the world around them is real. In traditional gaming being immersed is done by having fewer loading screens, more natural player animations, better frame rates, but not much more. I’ve never felt claustrophobic in a regular video game, but trying to pilot a WW2 submarine in VR has me gasping for air, especially when I almost flooded the dang thing. Everything you do in a VR game has more potential for being immersive. Take reloading a rifle for example. In a traditional shooting game, you press a button and a short animation happens where the character reloads the gun. Contrast that to reloading in VR, You physically have to pull out the empty magazine, grab a new one from your vest, slide it back into your gun, and then pull back a bolt which loads the first bullet into the firing chamber of your rifle. This makes a huge difference as to how you approach reloading and more importantly, it feels real and immersive.

Gameplay

Much like immersion, the gameplay is enhanced by developers being able to force players to do more with their hands. Reloading is just one of many ways gameplay is expanded upon and improved. The game Stormland is a great example of using VR controls to do, just about anything rather than pressing a button. To turn on a “scan mode” you tap the side of your head. In order to break apart items you just grab with both hands and rip them apart. There are loads of different methods for controls but the heads up display and information given to players are even another cool way to better a game’s gameplay. For example, checking your ammo is a hologram that is mounted to the side of your weapon. In some games, you have a watch on your wrist with tells the time or has a countdown to when a helicopter will come to rescue you. Beatsaber is another great game where not only is the gameplay better than traditional video games, but it’s not even possible in traditional video games. In fact, that’s the case with a lot of VR games and how their controls work.

Exercise

A consistent issue with gaming has always been a lack of exercise. It’s a difficult problem to solve and still be fun. Of course, sports are a great alternative since they are still games that give you exercise. But there’s no sport where you can wield a sword or a gun and kill your enemies or fulfill countless other possibilities that only can be made possible by the virtual world. There are very few sports that are fun to play by yourself and there aren’t any sports that you can find people to play with through the internet. Some inventions have come along to attempt to make gaming also an exercise such as the Wii Fit, Pokemon GO, Playstation Move, and a few others all get players moving. But nothing compares to Virtual Reality. Swinging a sword, wielding a lightsaber, squatting low to avoid gunfire, or leaning side to side to dodge incoming projectiles will have you sweating in minutes. When I play a fan favorite, Beatsaber, I often sweat through 2 or 3 t-shirts. Sometimes I just play shirtless to cut down on laundry. Slashing through boxes to the beat of fast pace EDM at inhuman speeds has sweat dripping down my legs and drenching my socks. VR doesn’t have a consumer-friendly solution to allow a player to run, but when the technology comes, you can bet gamers will be some of the best long-distance runners you’ll meet.

Learning

Sitting in a classroom with a teacher yapping at you or watching an educational video is a very boring way to learn, in fact, we often just forget what we were just told. It has been proven for years now that hands-on learning is the best way to make things interesting to the learner and make the information stick. This also makes learning more fun. However, it’s hard for teachers and schools to have access to everything it is that we need to learn. Also, we are seeing a rise in online schooling for both high school and post-secondary. However, from my own experience, this online learning is more like a chore that we get finished as quickly as possible and lack the ability to interact with others in the class and the teachers. All these problems I’ve just talked about can be solved with VR. There are already schools using VR to allow students to learn online and be able to see the other students in the virtual classroom. Students can interact with physical things in the virtual classroom and the virtual classroom can change to different locations to allow students to learn in different environments and interact with different things. For example, they could instantly take a field trip to a firehouse and learn how to be a firefighter, and the students can interact and practice what firefighters practice. They can try out equipment and experiment all for free and with no risk to the students. This is just one example, there are dozens more I’ve come across online. Online school will become more common and perhaps even better. It will most certainly become more cost-efficient since there’s no longer a need for anyone to drive to school to learn or teach, they also won’t even need a physical building which requires cleaning, maintenance, and in the case of most post-secondary school, places to get food. I recently got my hands on a game called Ironwolf where myself and three others have to pilots a nearly flawless recreation of a WW2 submarine, while a more experienced player was teaching me how to play, I felt like I was on my first day at a new job. Everything from controlling the engine RPMs, cooling fluid, reloading the guns, steering, fixing leaks, and a million more things to remember. However, after a few short hours of trying to learn as fast as I could in order to keep myself and my crew alive. I successfully learned how to man a WW2 submarine. Other than the $20 for the game, I didn’t leave my house or ever get bored. Thanks to VR, I learned something new and didn’t even care how hard it was. You learn quickly when everything is hands-on, either that or it’s because I didn’t want to die.

Replay Value Added Due To Tension

Gamers and developers are always looking for ways to add more “replay value” to a video game. Replay value is exactly what it sounds like, to add to the value of replaying a game. So when I play a game for the second time, what makes this time different? Well with many games, not a lot of changes happen other than changing spawns for you or enemies. Different weapons, maps, objectives, etc. Ubisoft’s shooter Far Cry 2 from back in 2008 used to have guns that could jam and your character would occasionally have breathing problems due to a disease he had. This added replay value because every time you went into combat, you had to have a backup plan in case your character begins to cough uncontrollably or if your weapon malfunctioned. Meaning each time this happened you’d have to find a creative solution that had unpredictable results which would completely change the situation you are in. On the flip side if your weapons didn’t malfunction and you recently took medication to reduce your chances of coughing, then you could pull off your plan of attack with no issues. Nothing is more satisfying than having a plan, preparing to execute it, and it just works. Especially in a game that makes your life harder than most. But VR takes this to a whole new level. In a military simulator that I play depending on which gun you are using, you reload differently, and when you are in combat, reloading is very different than when you are not in combat. The pressure gets to some people and making a quick reload is hard. This results in teammates failing to reload or dropping their ammo. This is the type of thing that is only possible in VR. Throwing grenades is also more challenging. Unlike traditional games you don’t throw a grenade the same way every time, in fact, in VR it’s almost impossible to throw a grenade the same way every time. If you are throwing a smoke grenade and you don’t get it right, then that means it will not be as effective, this is rarely an issue in regular gaming but happens more often in VR, meaning players must adapt more to these problems and it changes the situation they are in. This all means that the replay value is increased.

These are all major aspects of gaming which has been improved by virtual reality being added as a new way to play and interact with games. In almost every way I mentioned, it’s impossible for a traditional video game to recreate. This is 6 ways VR gaming is better than traditional gaming.