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.
-
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.
-
Zuckerburg is smart. This is the man who led the charge in social media and changed it from something that small time bands and teenagers used to something that has become ubiquitous and transcended the boundaries of the traditional tech audience to include an audience from nearly every group that owns a computer. This is the ubiquity that Occulus and Facebook are chasing.
-
In his announcement of the buyout, Zuckerburg noted that the buyout was a forward looking plan that would expand Occulus beyond the boundaries of its original plans. With the backing of a large, tech based entity like Facebook, Occulus could see itself expand into communication, virtual tours, medical technologies and a host of other applications. Most importantly, this could make the Occulus marketable to an audience beyond the games community. Why the hell does this matter? Simply put, this will mean more units in more homes, and more units means more developers on board. Just as the iPhone led to a booming market in apps and developers becoming wealthy overnight, this sets up Occulus developers to build the next big thing. With a large adoption rate comes a large audience. This allows developers to create software without worrying about whether the platform will have enough users to support them, a problem that has led to the death of many otherwise solid products.
-
Another factor to consider is the way that Facebook has brought in a non traditional audience to the games scene. While some might snicker at what passes for a videogame on the platform, which is admittedly flooded with manipulative free to play titles, the fact still exists that it has brought in people from 13 to 80 year old bracket. In fact,a significant part of this audience is also female, which traditional games marketing has struggled to capture. A far cry from the traditional high school and college male that games are almost exclusively targeted to. Combined with intuitive approaches to games or controls the Occulus would create an immediately tangible appeal much like the way the Wii and Kinect were able to.
-
The community will again lament the mention of these platforms as they were largely seen as failures void of the kind of “hardcore” software that the traditional audience enjoys. Despite that both pieces of technology sold incredibly well and were huge successes for their respective companies.
-
Another thing to keep in mind is no matter how the audience and market expands, the tech and game enthusiasts are always going to be the early adopters. These are the people who will create demand by giving their opinions to friends, and the ones who will set the initial templates and ideas that will define the tech. We’re already seeing interesting ideas that do more than simply apply the tech to existing genres. There are experiences that take advantage of the new view to create ever expansive environments, projects that emulate the experience of swapping genders, and discussion abound about the challenges and needed mental recalibration needed to build for VR. Along with this massive financial boost in resources to Occulus, I can only think that it means that VR is here to stay. Time will tell, however. As a community, we are defined by our passion and spirit for the medium, though sometimes this passion means that we lose sight of the big picture.
-
Let’s keep our eyes on the long game, until our peek into the Rift truly gives us a sense of where VR will take us.
-
Friday April 10, 2014 9:16PM By siegarettes Published by suppadoopa