I've played a few of the leading titles on PSVR but then hit upon this simple puzzle game that has burrowed into my mind. I can't wait to get back to it, I lose hours to this game
> What was magical about it? I don't remember anything especially weird here.
IIRC the general tech level was essentially the recent past, but the technology to support this full-body VR game existed with no other consequences. And I think there was also an implication that it was multiplayer with another star system? (again, through unexplained technology with no other consequences).
>Video game characters aren't consciously autonomous though.
What distinction are you claiming exists between your own subjective experience and that of a video game character? (follow-up question: why do you believe this?)
>I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.
there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world. A good percentage of that are partaking in games that easily qualify as virtual worlds.
no personal anecdote needed, huge amounts of people are already spending time in places that qualify as virtual worlds.
Our interfaces are clunky, and you can shift 'virtual world' around to mean something else, but it feels evident to me that this isn't an uncommon pastime/desire among people.
> Except it doesn't work for me. It's in an uncanny valley of near realism, where I notice every flaws and bugs that instantly break the immersion.
Same for me. The high-fidelity of graphics promises me a realistic simulation of the world, while the gameplay immediately breaks immersion (e.g. if I punch one of the friendly NPCs in the face, they usually don't take offence and continue as if nothing happened etc. etc.). In the lo-fi games, it was clear from the beginning that the game is just a richer chess or minesweeper or mario or any other purely mechanical system and there were no pretense of realism - they were more coherent this way.
> We're running millions of crude, low level simulations today.
Hardly. They’re nowhere near a simulation of a “reality.”
How does a game character “see” something?
By a global agent checking the position of that character, along with the position of other characters, and a bunch of other variables and conditions, then tells the character if it sees anything.
This is a far, far, far cry from everything being made up of particles, emitting countless photons every “tick”, and those photons being absorbed by certain materials, emitting electrons and chemicals that travel to a neuron....
Nothing inside a game actually generates sound waves, or infrared and other parts of the EM spectrum that can only be perceived by certain creatures and tools..
It’s not even a simulation of that, just an extremely simplified and filtered representation of the end result as perceived by us, that we find convincing enough for the context.
> I recently dusted it off to give friends a demo and they were floored, reminding me how great it is. It just didn’t hook me. Maybe it was the solo aspect. I don’t have friends who do VR so there’s no one else to play with.
Convincing my friends to buy a Quest 2 was difficult, but now most gaming time is VR gaming time. The reality is that playing with friends, especially in VR is the #1 factor in making the experience enjoyable for me.
> And as you say, the form in which this experience is irrelevant. What matters is the quality of the experience.
This eclipses and outweighs what I would have to say.
I think the author of the article, in those terms, was saying that the experiences created by recent games are often, and more and more, far inferior in quality; I've followed the correct sequence of buttons, I am rewarded with a scene of my character doing awesome things. If done well, I might even feel a tidbit of attachment and of feeling that this was the result of my success. But it's not the experience of being a super-spy in a high-tech facility. It's the experience of seeing a super-spy do stuff after I complete my homework, and I will have more homework to do so the super-spy can go on to do awesome things.
The problem is that these lower-quality experiences still sell better, often because they abuse certain hacks or dopamine bypasses of the human brain, without necessarily reaching all the way through to what makes an experience fun and pleasurable for the player.
Of course, to make such an argument successfully, you first have to convince people that humans do not always act optimally rationally, and then that humans do have such "hacks" and twists that control what they want and do (which in turn requires an audience to be convinced that brains control actions, not "the soul" or some other immaterial entity). Think that's a high bar? It's not even the start.
> Well, one of the core measures of a well-designed game (for a given player) is the felt experience of immersion, or flow. Specifically, an immersive game should hold the player in the flow channel at all times.
In life, that's not the case. We sometimes choose to do things that are frustrating or boring, because they must be done. Because they're worth doing. Not everything needs to be entertainment.
> Instead, I want to play an infinite game
That's why I came to believe in reincarnation, actually.
Life on its own can seem pretty meaningless -- you can try to learn all you want, achieve your wildest dreams, and then we all die and in a few centuries will be utterly forgotten.
A bit like how a single game of rock, paper, scissors is not especially interesting. There's no real strategy to a single game.
But repeated rock, paper, scissors, there are tournaments in that, computer engines, there are several strategies and ways to exploit other strategies. The "optimal" play (always random) is guaranteed to end in the middle of the pack. There's much more to think about.
So I choose to assume reincarnation exist (with no possible way to communicatie between lives). And now what I do in this life may influence my next one. Everything has more meaning, just by a simple assumption.
Yeah, I've been surprised to learn recently that it's still alive and kicking. I'll check it out eventually, I'm gearing myself to do it for more than 10 years now :).
> I'm pretty sure Sword Art Online was about how VR could be a... bad idea. Just saying. :-)
Yeah, well, one of the reason I like it is that, despite every single VR and AR system presented being abused by some villain to do evil things, including just straight imprisoning and killing people thanks to mentioned microwave death-triggers, the anime series and the movie still manage to present a lot of positive sides too, and do a decent discussion of the social impact of such technologies.
I guess it's like with all anime - focused on both extremes, at the exclusion of the mundane :).
> All I seek is a full sensory experience of what I see and feel within a virtual environment.
Escapism is definitely aiming at that future we just don't have the tech, but that doesn't mean they can't be enjoyed anyway. Personally I thought we would already have VR and so I keep playing to experience it as soon as possible.
> Think of any popular game (csgo, valorant, Fortnite, apex) ... Of course, they have differences like unique visuals, new items, and various ults/powers, but at the very core, it’s the same rotten stew.
I think this criticism is coming from an angle that would surely include chess... it's boring, has 8/9 pieces only, and it hasn't changed in decades or centuries. I think that is missing the point, especially with multiplayer games.
I haven't tried the Quest 2 yet, so I don't know how good it is, but to me, it's not "completely immersed" until you can interface directly with my brain to feed it false visual, auditory, smell, touch, etc. signals, as well as interpret signals I make to move around, which causes me to interact with the virtual world instead of the real world.
Anything else to me just feels kinda clunky. Certainly the stuff available now is way better than stuff from 20, 10, or even 5 years ago, but it's a far cry from complete immersion.
> Ouch. This is the one I identify the most with. I am, or was, a huge gamer. I used to play shooters, MMOs, and grindy RPGs and loved it. I could easily spend the whole day playing.
> the fact that I don't have the option to do them is depressing to me.
> I definitely am less able to enjoy pleasure as I was many years ago
> Once I get back in front of the screen, it's back to the usual self.
>The worlds and experiences are reminiscent of Stephenson's Snow Crash or Cline's Ready Player One in so many ways. It's eery, fascinating, and altogether odd.
It looks more like VR Idiocracy to me. Especially if you check out twitch and see donation stuff and stream overlays. It's just a platform for vomiting memes. https://imgur.com/ZkJq1cr
On the other hand, if it were super-serious-Deus-Ex-plotting-the-control-of-the-proletariat-VR-Chat, I don't think I could take that seriously either (and would be quickly overrun with Uganda knuckles anyway).
They didn't say everyone experienced it.
> I’ve done similar things in VR and found it wasn’t any different than when I had a robot body or a cartoon carrot body.
Did characters treat you like a carrot?
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