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The article mentions a certain type of naysayer, lacking in vision, that has also bothered me for some time. How could you not see the potential for VR? It seems so obvious, I have difficulty explaining it. It's like trying to explain vision to the blind. What sort of culture differences there must be to make communicating this idea so difficult. At the same time, a lot of VR enthusiasts bug the hell out of me, too. They have their pet project and they think that's the only thing worth doing in VR. It's going on in this very thread right now: strong opinions on what is and is not VR and any dissent otherwise is foolhardy. People who talk about "oh, augmented reality is the only way the hardware is going to make it, VR isn't enough." Or the folks who insist that "only a PC-based platform will work, thus it is doomed, because the PC is doomed" or "only a smartphone-based platform will work, thus PC-based work is doomed." Or "you should be working on virtual tourism apps, that's the only thing people are going to want to buy, hardcore games are too small of a market to worry about." That might be even worse than the visionless naysayer problem, because the complete skeptic is most likely only so because he is ignorant, whereas these guys are quickly becoming a new form of religious zealot. I'm still waiting for the doom of the (PC|console|mobile|casual|hardcore|client|server|centralized|decentralized|what have you) market that has been predicted ever since I can remember. And regardless of what will be the most popular, why should one ever preclude the other? The market is vast and diverse! Work on what you want! Failure to find a market is not proof of the lack of a market. I'm actively working in VR right now. We talk about "the community", but there is no community. There's very little interpersonal support. I think everyone has a fear that, unless they are the first to market with a killer app, then they are doomed to languish in obscurity and aren't going to make anything important. Maybe it's because everyone thinks it's going to be like the smartphone app market gold rush. If you don't get in early, there will be no money for you. And it's a good point, if you forget that the bulk of the app market is junk. Of course the 200th compass app isn't going to make any money. Yes, Flappy Bird shouldn't have been such a runaway success. But it was just another Pet Rock, and that lack of predictability in the market should be a sign that the consumers aren't completely jaded yet and are looking for novel experiences. Who would have predicted the success of WhatsApp, which got started long after everyone declared the gold rush dead? What I see is that the majority of the VR developers right now are going down much the same road of style over substance, cranking out a ton of apps versus spending time on a quality app. Part of that is timeline: we've only just now reached a point where anyone could have had enough time to develop something meaningful. But I fear that part of it is just the way we've trained developers to act, with all of the cheesehead "growth hacking" and "SEO" emphasis over solid art and engineering. And I know, I'm engaging in criticism when complaining about criticism. But come on, you have to be able to see the difference. Let's make a real community of developers, not petulant children all trying to one-up each other. Let's try to learn from the mistakes of our past and try to be inclusive, not exclusive. |