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by Eisenstein 1253 days ago
Do you understand the point the parent was making? The children's market is not what VR developers are going for. For one: COPPA kinda makes monetizing VR spaces not possible; two: some parents might let their kids have one, but right on the device it says not to let kids under 12 use it, so I doubt most will. Mainstream consumer adoption is not squeaky voiced pre-teens.
2 comments

Right, so you are saying you've never actually used VR for an extended period of time.

Spend 15min on any popular VR multiplayer game and tell me kids under 12 aren't using it en-masse.

Do you not understand arguments or do you just ignore points you don't like? I am not contending that children don't use it. I am contending that children using it to any extent is not desired by the manufacturers nor does it count as mainstream consumer adoption. Please don't respond again about how kids use it.
So your argument is parental pearl-clutching will kill VR, despite that fueling the early market, because manufacturers don't want kids using it in the first place? Even though the wide adoption among young early-adopters is fueling its initial growth and the potential for tech/price to penetrate beyond niche casual/kid gaming to mainstream markets remains?

I recommend you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm the first early adopter market isn't the only thing that matters to a new technology but it's essential for survival.

No, I told you exactly what my argument was and you refuse to acknowledge it and make up your own instead. I find you frustrating to converse with so I shall exit this conversation.

Also, your 5 minute later post-edits are ridiculous. You add completely new sentences.

Since you don't seem to know the book or care to understand my point, I'll keep this post anyway: You don't mainstream technology via your early adopter market. To succeed you need to mature tech and adapt it to a general market.

So the fact some rarely-enforced children protection laws or hypothetical cultural parenting rules might hurt VR IF the only market was merely kids in the long run is bad, sure. But that's not what I said matters in my original comment.

VR's market in the future isn't casual gaming for kids. My point is that's all it is now. And for that it's doing a great job and has a real lively market to fund the tech. Your fears haven't born true for early adopters (because it's fundamentally a hypothetical mainstream critique), so it doesn't really matter, as long as it's sufficient fuel the tech til it bridges the gap and the tech matures.

(Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)

> (Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)

Then slow down and take a breath before hitting the reply button the first time. Pausing and then rereading and proofing as needed rather than fast-paced posting with fast-paced follow up edits is the way to go. This is coming from someone who also used to very often tweak my posts after initial posting.

FWIW where the original comment said

> It's not something you can do with kids around

I think the author of that comment meant that if you have little kids, you need to keep an eye on them, and playing with a headset that blocks your peripheral vision is not going to be something a parent can do in that situation.

That comment didn't mean to say that kids would not play VR. It was suggesting that parents wouldn't.

> (Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)

It is a problem for everyone who reads the comment thread. Please either wait to post long enough re-read and edit, or indicate which sentences have been added later. (Edit: the latter is commonly done like this.)

> The children's market is not what VR developers are going for.

I think VR developers would be happy to have children's market as big as Nintendo's