The state of VR (Patreon)

Or, "You can put your hands down now, citizen" []-D

I was recently interviewed by Tomislav Bezmalinovic from German website https://mixed.de/ about my Patreon, VR modding and the state of VR gaming in general.

Tomislav's questions led to a rather interesting discussion, which of course had to be summarized in the published article, so I've decided to put the full transcript to the original interview here. I'm also opening this post up for public discussion, as I believe the points we touched are of relevance to the VR industry as a whole, not just to my Patreon mods.

Hi, I'm Tomislav and I've been covering the VR and AR industry since 2016 for the leading German XR outlet MIXED, which as of recently also has an English version at https://mixed-news.com/en/. The articles are automatically translated with machine learning.

I would like to write a short portrait of you and have a few questions.

I saw that you have almost 2,000 Patreon supporters. That's quite a number and shows how important VR modding has become. So, what's your background?

Hi Tomislav, thanks for reaching out! I'm grateful for your interest, and quite happy to provide answers to all your questions.

Before plunging into this modding adventure I was a freelance developer and software engineer. I've also been a gamer all my life and I always loved new technologies, especially when they allowed the gaming experience to become more immersive, like with 3D glasses. So VR was just a natural fit and I became passionate about it right away. I was one of the original Oculus Kickstarter backers.

How come you started developing VR mods?

It happened almost randomly. One of my favorite games a decade ago was No One Lives Forever 2, a now almost-forgotten gem by master designer Craig Hubbard. The game code was open-sourced at some point in the past, and I had already worked on it when NVIDIA 3D Vision was all the rage, in order to make the game compatible with stereoscopic 3D rendering. Thus, when VR became available, I decided to see if I could mod the game to transform it into a native VR experience. That was back in 2017: my old thread on the Oculus forums is still visible here and the mod can be seen featured in a video by SweViver.

The reaction from VR users was very friendly and encouraging (I even got to chat about the conversion with Craig Hubbard himself!) and that prompted me to later tackle a much bigger and complex game: GTA V. My free GTA V VR conversion has been downloaded by more than 150K users! After that I just decided to take the plunge and see whether I could become a full-time modder.

Is there a team helping you or is it just you?

It's just me for the moment, although things are growing fast! There's recently been talks about creating a Chinese community, and I don't even speak the language, so I will probably need some help pretty soon :-) My mods also attract a lot of attention in Germany, and it would be great if a local community could be started there too.

Why do you think the big companies don't port their big games by themselves?

It's a sad combination of many factors.

VR as a technology has been around forever: most people don't realize it, but the first HMDs came out in the 60's. However, the current wave of interest became popular between 2012 and 2016 when Oculus came out with their first consumer models. In those magic years, everybody started experimenting with VR. Studios were born around ideas, publishers were thinking about investing, there was sort of a gold rush.

But it all happened too suddenly, and soon several blocking factors came out:

a. adoption was slower than expected, so returns on investment was very poor or nonexistent for many studios;

b. hardware and software requirements, as mandated by some "purists" who were too enamored with the tech and not sufficiently concerned with the reality of the market, were way too steep. 90 Hz (in stereo, so actually 180 fps!) at the high resolutions and FOV needed for VR were out of the realm of possibility for most game engines on one side, and for most accessible video cards on the other;

c. the introduction of motion controllers (virtual hands in game) was ill-timed and put the final nail in the coffin. I know that's a wildly unpopular opinion, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Game developers were suddenly expected to create games using a completely different paradigm than they had perfected for many years in the past: everything in their games was now supposed to be interactive and respond to the presence of your virtual hands; shooting and reloading mechanics were expected to be utterly redone for VR; driving cars needed to happen with imaginary hands on an imaginary wheel; even inventory management supposedly had to be redone by making use of invisible pockets and backpacks and holsters.

So, studios and publishers reacted in a very natural way: when pressured to deliver a completely different product, tailor-made for a niche market that was still in its infancy and could guarantee no big returns, they simply clammed up and decided to ignore VR as a passing fad.

With that many Patreon supporters you must have a good income. Are you having another job beside VR modding and if you do, how do you manage that?

When I started the Patreon, my dream and stated intention was to put my freelancing work on hold and devote all my time to modding. Fortunately, as you said, the community reacted positively enough, and at least for the moment I can afford to do just that. It's not guaranteed to last forever of course, and there are many factors that could still turn this adventure into a commercial success or failure. But as long as people are interested in playing huge open-world games in VR, I will keep doing this!!

Which VR project or achievement are you most proud of?

It's hard to tell. Every project feels a bit like a child to me, and I love them all equally :-) But the VR conversion that enjoyed the most widespread success for now is without doubts Grand Theft Auto V.

Would you like to get hired by a VR studio or company at some point or do you want to continue working on your own projects?

To be honest I'm not looking to get hired. I had a few interesting offers, and I will certainly consider any proposals that should come my way with the attention they deserve, but I feel that I can have a much larger impact (and with greater professional satisfaction) as an independent modder.

After finishing your current projects, what's coming up next?

There are many titles that I'm considering, and my Patrons give me new ideas almost each day!

How do you see the current state of the industry and what are you looking for the most?

As I was saying, the industry has been badly burned by the excessive and pretentious expectations that VR-tech creators put on them. Even Valve, in a sort of schizophrenic way, hurt themselves irreparably in the process. On the one hand, they raised the bar to almost unattainable standards with Half-Life: Alyx and their insistence on "everything must be done in new and awesome ways specifically for VR". On the other hand, that forced them to pour lots of money into developing HL:A, and at some point they did an unbelievable about-face by revealing that they would abandon all VR-related projects to focus on the Steam Deck. What a weird way to set an example for VR adoption.

My (not so hidden) agenda is quite simple: to restore faith in people, both on the consumers' side and the game developers', that VR is possible, right here and now. Without waiting another ten years, and without falling back on ultra-simplified, mobile-like cartoonish games. It just takes a few easy steps:

a. employ alternate eye rendering (a technology I've been using successfully in all my mods) to let up the unbearable pressure on developers to deliver a steady 180 fps at ultra-high resolutions;

b. let go of the unrealistic expectation that every interaction model must be redone for VR, or as some extremists like to say, that it's "not true VR if I can't use my hands". Hundreds of thousands of users of my GTA V mod prove beyond any doubt that a gamepad-based interaction model is perfectly feasible and enjoyable in VR. What defines VR is being "inside" the game, not being forced to flail your arms about every time you need to interact with something. That is especially true of games that last for hundreds of hours, like the huge open-world titles that I focus upon. You want to be seated, with your hands relaxed in your lap, for that kind of prolonged gaming sessions.

If I could achieve those results as a lone developer (and without access to the source code of the games I mod!), game studios can too, with very conservative investments.

When people start seeing this, VR as a meaningful branch of the gaming industry will finally be able to take off. At that point, when the market grows enough, investors will be ready to consider new paradigms of interaction. Trying to do the opposite, i.e., asking for huge investments before the market is ready, is a sure way to kill the golden goose and be left with nothing.

I find your theory why the VR industry failed in the early days very interesting. Never heard that before and I'm sure this will lead to discussions in the comment section.

Do you think the studios or publishers could take your projects down similar to how Nintendo is known to proceed with similar projects? Or is it to their benefit and they're happy to see somebody else working on VR support?

I know, right? It's quite the radical theory :-) I stand behind it though, even if it's an unpopular position. I do hope more people will start to see the powerful socio-economic factors at play, instead of focusing only on the technology and what it could enable in an ideal world of bottomless investments, because I really don't want VR to be killed off like they did with 3D movies.

There's always a chance that somebody could be bothered by my conversions, but I think the situation is very different from what befell some other modders because I only provide an additional way to enjoy the original games, which in the end means more copies sold for the developers and publishers. It's not like I was reusing the assets or the intellectual property to develop competing games or products: people still need to buy the original game to play it in VR.

The only scenario in which it would make sense for an IP owner to come after me is if they were developing their own in-house VR conversion and they felt that mine was in direct competition. Not much chance of that happening! But if it did, I would be quite ready to take down that specific mod and/or to negotiate with the original owners a solution that makes everybody happy. I like win-win scenarios, and in the end I believe that what I'm doing is good publicity for the games I mod.

Many thanks for the effort you put into this. The article will come out at the end of the next week [it's out now].

Thank you for having me!