'We Expected VR To Be Two To Three Times as Big', Says CCP Games CEO (roadtovr.com)

CCP Games, the Icelandic studio known for their long-running MMO Eve: Online (2003), shuttered their VR production studios in a surprise move last year, selling off their Newcastle-based branch behind their multiplayer space dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie (2016), and completely shutting down their Atlanta studio behind sports game Sparc (2017). Now, CEO Hilmar Veigar Petursson speaks out in an interview with Destructoid about the studio's return to traditional desktop gaming, and his thoughts about the VR landscape. From a report: In short, he thought VR would be bigger by now, and more capable of supporting a healthy multiplayer userbase. EVE: Valkyrie, the company's flagship VR game, was the result of over three years of development before becoming a day-one launch title on Oculus Rift and PSVR, arriving shortly afterwards on HTC Vive via Steam in 2016 -- a seemingly best-case scenario for any multiplayer-only game.

Under CCP direction, EVE: Valkyrie saw a number of updates designed to entice players back, including new ships, maps, and weekly events; CCP even pushed a major update to the game last year that brought support for desktop and console players, a move to help boost sales and revive the ailing VR-only playerbase. Still, the multiplayer game just didn't perform as CCP ultimately expected, and the company officially stepped back from VR shortly thereafter. "We expected VR to be two to three times as big as it was, period," Petursson tells Destructoid. "You can't build a business on that."

Comments

No VR for me

[Oswald McWeany]

I never expected VR to be bigger.

It always seemed like a no-go for me. At least for now. Most people play games to relax and de-stress. When playing VR is as simple as sitting on the settee and wearing something as light and simple as a pair of sunglasses, people will play VR in numbers. When the sights looks lifelike and not uncanny valley, and don't leave you nauseous... people will like it.

VR probably will rebound in the future but for now it's a dying fad for a niche market. As long as you have to wear bulky contraptions with head straps and fit into awkward devices I'd much rather just have a keyboard, mouse and a monitor- you can keep your VR.

Someday in the future VR will take off- but today's generation is not good enough to warrant a big market. All the best gaming experience is still to be found on a flat screen. VR is a curiosity for those willing to spend money on unproven tech but not what most people want.

Re:No VR for me

[Immerman]

There's an easy way to avoid the uncanny valley without enormous horsepower - just stay away from it. There's no need for realism in a fun game. Nintendo has embraced that aesthetic - Mario, Zelda, etc. make for fun, immersive games without any uncanny valley problems, and very little computational demand. It seems likely that consumer-level VR would be wise to embrace a similar aesthetic for the forseeable future - otherwise the target market is limited to people willing to spend an outrageous amount of money on a high-end gaming computer, plus a bunch more for the headset, etc. At a $2-3k entry price to desktop VR, I'm not at all surprised the market is currently very limited - that's well into the seriously hard-core gamer price point there. Fortunately there's the professional market to help drive the development of high-end stuff that will eventually trickle down. Engineering, medicine, etc.

As much as I dislike Facebook, I think the Oculus Quest is heading in the right direction to create a market for consumer VR - cheap and easy, with full immersion. It's not sunglasses, but so long as it's light enough to not be particularly uncomfortable - so what? You can't see them while playing, and opaque sunglasses aren't exactly going to make you look a whole lot "cooler".

And really, sitting on the settee misses much of the potential of VR - if you're going for full immersion, you want to actually move in and interact with the world, not just look around. Racing, flying, and other such "cockpit games" can work well by presenting a compelling scenario where you're just sitting is expected (especially if you have proper physical controls and are only using the headset for audio/visual immersion), but the real promise is in actually being in a virtual world. Plus, that lets you actually *move* while playing, which stimulates both health and endorphin production (a.k.a. pleasure) - something that the rise of digital entertainment has largely stripped from modern playing. There's a reason that the Wii was so popular - heck, I know lots of people that still have and use them, many who never bothered to upgrade because the only thing that's improved is the graphics, which are largely irrelevant to the fun. I still bowl, play golf, shoot pool, etc. that way on a semi-regular basis.

And, if they can work out the details to let a desktop PC drive the same cordless VR headset, then there'd an easy path for more serious enthusiasts to get more involved. Whether that means pushing many millions of pixels wirelessly, or utilizing the on-board processing power to apply zero overdraw, perspective correct texture fills to pre-transformed and pre-clipped geometry.

And then of course there's AR - now *that* I think will really shine once they make AR "sunglasses". But despite much technological overlap, that's targeting a *very* different experience.

Lack of Pron

[voss]

None of the big VR headset makers want pron on their store so noone buys $400 headsets and $1000 rigs when there is no content.

RE:We Expected VR To Be Two To Three Times as Big'

[mandark1967]

They should use the "zoom" feature

Re:History repeats itself

[Wescotte]

This will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it.

Lost interest

[DarkRookie2]

I lost interest in VR once Oculus was bought by Facebook.

Re:History repeats itself

[MBGMorden]

Yes, but admittedly it's always simply because the tech isn't good enough.

This time, admittedly, the tech was SIGNIFICANTLY better than in previous attempts, but it's still not to the point of true seamless immersion.

Unlike other techs, VR pretty much has to be more or less "perfect" or most people aren't interested. That makes developing it incrementally hard - you can't finance the next gen of it with profits from the current gen. Instead every few years we just have to try it again based on technological advancements made due to other segments of the industry and hope that everything has gotten good enough.

I'd say that whenever VR is finally perfected, it will be nothing short of amazing. That said, I don't think it's there yet. I don't even though the next attempt or two will be there yet. Maybe in 20-30 years.

Don't forget bitcoin

[rsilvergun]

and miners. For the last 18 months you couldn't get a VR capable graphics card for less than $500 and the PS4 Pro just isn't powerful enough.

Re:History repeats itself

[drinkypoo]

Unlike other techs, VR pretty much has to be more or less "perfect" or most people aren't interested.

I don't agree. What it has to be is either perfect, or cheap. Since it is neither of these things, it's a non-starter suitable only for tech demos.

Re:History repeats itself

[Anonymous Coward]

The issues currently:

1. Low resolution, most "VR" games are half resolution, and since it takes up your entire visual field unlike a computer screen, that makes it equivalent to looking at a 240p game. That's nowhere near good enough for an immersive game, and at best gives you 80's nostalgia.

2. Input is the shittiest thing ever. You can not see the game controller. VR needs to quite literately go back and re-invent the power glove at the minimum and work from there. It may be possible to mimic this with multiple cameras on the HMD and the environment, but the requirement is still there.

3. No haptic feedback, if you bump into something in the game, you should be knocked to the ground/aside, which won't happen with a HMD or game controller. This lack of feedback is the same reason why people won't switch from a mechanical keyboard to something like a software-keyboard based on a touch screen. There is no way for the user to know they are in fact giving input when they can't see their hands or the input buttons.

That's the issues that need to be overcome, how they can be overcome:
1. 8K support when GPU's hit 5nm.
2. Bring back power-glove style input at the minimum, some alternive BCI (Brain Computer Interface) would be ideal, and we know they exist, but are too invasive.
3. This goes back to needing a 500sq ft room to really use VR, you will never be able to properly play a VR game sitting down. But you can largely improve the experience if you have "force feedback" built into a chair or bodysuit. The game shouldn't need to physically throw you to the ground, but you should feel like you're being pushed, and that part of your body actually being pushed.

Films like Ready Player One, kinda try to oversell VR in a way that would never be practical. Yes the VirtualBoy was trash, but pretty much everything regarding VR looks like it.

Like this is what needs to happen:
1. Intel needs to quit being shitty and put 64 PCIe lanes on the CPU so that 4 GPU's can be used at 16X instead of the present situation where you can only do this with a $40,000 workstation. AMD could step up their game here as AMD X399 has 66.
2. Route separate GPU's to each eye, and "SLI" them to get the necessary resolution to wrap around the player's head and peripheral vision.

That would solve the HMD issues.

3. Re-invent the power glove using existing wireless input technology. There has been attempts https://mimugloves.com/
4. Haptics are also on the "attempts" list https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/02/holosuit-promises-full-body-vr-tracking-and-haptics-by-november-2018/

The largest problem is really software support for all of this. At best a "VR" game right now just a conventional "3D" game with the camera shifted and warped. It's not really VR by any measurable means yet. A 16-button 6-axis controller is not an appropriate input device inside a world where you should be able to move your arms.

Re:History repeats itself

[rockmuelle]

As someone who's tried most VR tech since the early 90s, all my experience with the current generation suggests that the tech is indeed good enough.

In particular, I get lost in the Steam/HTC Vive setup my friend has every time I use it. Google Earth alone is a killer app, if you know where to go (I'm a climber: try Yosemite or Eldorado Canyon in Boulder, they've imaged the cliffs in both places to the point where you can actually see the handholds and make out routes). The paint programs are surreal as well.

I get motion sick easily. This is the first generation of VR gear that I've been able to spend 30+ minutes with the headset on and feel fine afterwards.

So, why don't I have my own VR setup? Two reasons: (1) cost and (2) I have half of it. For the latter, I purchased an X-Box One X for my son specifically because MS was setting it up as a VR platform. $500 for a game console was steep, but the hardware was right for good VR. Unfortunately, MS has now signaled that VR is not coming to the platform and I've overpaid for a gaming console. (yes, I should have just bought a PS4)

Cost, and to a lesser extent the hassle associated with that cost, is what I think is the real issue. Without a consumer friendly setup in the $500-700 range all-in that supports all VR content (PS4's problem is content), it's just too expensive to get started. I don't want to drop a few grand on a high end gaming PC, then the hundreds on the VR gear, plus the time it will take to setup and maintain the PC. It's just too expensive in money and time commitment.

The tech is there. There are compelling apps. It's just still too expensive to get started.

-Chris

Re: History repeats itself

[Type44Q]

I think you meant it's biological. In any case, I had no problems until I put a car through a wall and didn't feel the expected deceleration. I became instantly more nauseous than I can recall ever having felt and I was left with a 24hour migraine; that was a first as well.