clickbliss

On Defeat

“ALL HANDS! ABANDON SHIP, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 3, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 2, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 1, CRITICAL C-…….”

And thus ended the 100th run of the Kestrel. Futilely blasting away at the impenetrable shields of the rebel flagship, unable to deal the final few points of damage to the behemoth ship.

And two hours of my hard work evading rebel patrols, slugging it out with evil slavers, and fighting off giant alien spiders vanished in front of my eyes, along with all my progress. Two hours of watching my little ship develop into a true warship, shedding its initial armament of four basic lasers, acquiring a flak weapon, upgraded shields and thrusters, and two combat drones: a tried and true battle plan.

And I smiled. And I picked up the game again.

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FACING THE RIFT: On Occulus and the Facebook buyout

On March 25th, Facebook and Occulus announced that they had struck a deal for the purchase of Occulus, the Rift VR Headset’s parent company, for 2 BILLION USD. Predictably, the gaming community erupted into a vitriolic reaction, with many immediately casting down Occulus, demanding refunds, and in what seems almost horrifically standard now, threatening to kill the developers and their families. There seemed to be some consensus that this meant the death of the future that the gaming community had in mind for the project. A betrayal of the grass roots Kickstarter origins of the project in the face of a handover to a mega corporation. The buyout was not unexpected, and there were also talks of other tech companies such as Apple or Google as potential buyers.

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Where the most anxiety exists seems to be around the buyer itself. There is some sense that Occulus had not only sold their company, but in a sense also “sold out”. Facebook is a company that has been rapidly changing over the years, with some actions that some would say were at best questionable and at worst invasive. Privacy concerns, data mining, information selling, Facebook has been a target of its own share of vitriol and anxiety. Even the Facebook origin drama The Social Network ended up casting CEO Mark Zuckerburg in a bit of a negative light near its end. All this has the community casting stones and declaring the death of the VR project. They’re wrong. This is big, and it could make Occulus even better.

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All hail the Virtual Boy