VR has become a buzzword for almost a decade. Quite honestly, it has never truly taken off, People unfamiliar with the technology would mock it like a scam alongside other buzzwords like Big Data. I used to be one of those doubters myself as well, until I got the first Oculus Go in the summer of 2018 while I was on a business trip to LA. Then owning Quest 1 & 2 become fairly natural just like getting PS5 after PS3 & 4.

To this date I still cannot say with clarity what exactly converted me into a believer. It’s the same thing GODS & OG Prince of Persia set me up to become a lifelong gamer but I can’t really put my finger on it. Nevertheless I thought I’d give this a try – it’s impossible to follow a vision in the cloudy crystal ball for anyone, myself included.

Definition of an “True VR Game”

Now, there are many different ways to make a VR experience great. A 20-hour journey in Half-Life: Alyx has shattered my mind to pieces; simply wandering in Google Earth was a great cure for the itch of travelling during pandemic; Beat Saber has been massive(albeit not my cup of tea). But none of those speak to me on my gamer’s core the same way other PC/console titles do, like League of Legends, Sekiro, Hades, for they

• Are fun to play for 100+ hours, and hard to stop there
• cannot be conveyed in another form of media(e.g. movie)
• Have different watching vs playing experience, but equally enjoyable

So here goes on what my ideal true VR game should be. This vision is entirely subjective, personal, and one day it’s very likely that I am proven all wrong and this article would not age well. Hopefully by then I have grown a skin thick enough to be laughed at without any shame.

No wires & no surprises please.

No matter how much of a Ghost in the Shell fan you are and think cables behind your head looks futuristically cool, after a few instances where you startled yourself during super immersive and intense moments(Five nights at Freddy’s?) because your cable was strangling you, the mental burden to pick up the headset again next time would just keep adding up.

VR games are all about immersion(over simplification, I know), and a tangling cord is one of the most intrusive ways to break that(other than maybe smashing your hand against your desk). Therefore I would think for a game to be successful, it needs to be on a standalone device.

In fact, I would go even further and say streaming over technologies like Airlink wouldn’t count, simply because a beefy PC shouldn’t be in the requirement to start the fun.

Graphics don’t matter, at least not that much

Growing up, I was amongst the most fanatic fanboys of high fidelity graphics. I have watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Child for at least 50 times, and had great fun tirelessly capturing its frames as my daily rotating desktop wallpaper and screensaver. I used to frown at games with “ugly visuals” and wouldn’t spare an hour of my “precious time” to give them a try. Over the years, several games changed my mind 180 degrees(with obvious reasons I won’t spell out):

• League of legends
• Uncharted
• Undertale
• “When they cry” series
• Final fantasy VII Remake (vs OG FF7)

Don’t get me wrong, I still love games with top notch art styles and execution. I am simply saying that without a good foundation of fun mechanics and/or outstanding narrative, art will not be appreciated to the amount it deserves. Great art has layers of aesthetics that stands the repetitive appreciation over time, and plays a way more important role than just luring players to play for 30mins because the key art is fantastic.

When it comes to the VR land, it’s no doubt that one day the headset will be beefy enough to run stunning 3D art that look realistic(in fact if you have a top notch graphics card some PC VR games have that for you already). But I feel the same way as many AAA games on other platform, the “eye catching” part is way over invested compared to the exploration of fun game mechanics that’re exclusive to VR. Beat saber is great and all for the general population, but it can’t be the only thing you try to sell to your friend to join you in VR, especially if that friend of yours is a core gamer.

Stationary will outlast room-scale

Let’s admit it – as gamers, we simply don’t like to get up and move around, period. Is it a good habit for health? Surely not. But I’d rather pay my due visits to the gym 3 times a week plus other outdoors activities to earn my hours binge playing in my man cave(one day I’ll have it properly!) than mingling physical activities and gaming together.

People might argue that it’s because other gaming platform is not as immersive as VR. Firstly, at this stage, wearing a heavy headset already puts more burden on players than any other form of digital games(I for one cannot go on for 2 hours without headache), not to mention any motion sickness triggered by bad implementations.

Secondly, even if the hardware problem is magically solved one day, not everyone has the physical space that is private, safe and spacious at the same time. Maybe am biased because I lived in cities like Hong Kong and Singapore where apartment size is comparable to the interior of cars, but I think that stays true for most environment where gamers game. And that’s also exactly why people pay to have more full-body room-scale experiences like SandboxVR in relatively shorter sessions.

Following the tendency of being extremely opinionated in this article, I’d say the true VR game would not even require you to rotate/turn very often. Now, it might seem to you that am suggesting to lock the player down as much as possible like chaining an inmate, but consider this – the current input control scheme of PC/console/mobile does not even engage all your 10 fingers plus minor wrist 2D movement, adding 3D spatial relativity in hand positions and head movement(to look around) is already a very big ask.

Closing Thoughts

What does a true VR killer game look like? I think it needs to have a really unique mechanics with low physical requirement and not necessarily have a stunning graphics in the beginning. However, I do not have the answer in terms of how that type of mechanics work exactly. I have been toying around with prototypes and various ideas, only to realize there is a very long way to climb. Until then, this very article could be proven fully incorrect at any point, but I’d be over the moon as a VR gamer if that happens, for I have a masterpiece to throw hundreds of hours at.