Yet VR is extremely fun and provides a set of experiences unmatched by traditional gaming. Especially for the Wii/casual crowd. Much like TikTok-hate on HN, it's probably another example of adult nerds who fail to grasp the value in early-adopter zoomer heavy tech (even though adult nerds have plenty to love if they actually spent time investing into trying it, just like TikTok).
> It's not something you can do with kids around
Whenever I played multiplayer Quest 2 games 99% of the voices were kids/young teenagers. Apparently it doesn't need parents to care, the kids in up their bedrooms is good enough.
If anything the problem is that good VR isn't cheaper than it already is, to hit the market for parents to buy it for their kids. The current selection of games on Oculus store is basically glorified Android games. But PC/Steam VR games I've tried like Half Life Alyx were mind-blowing.
Maybe when $2000+ PC VR setups finally mainstreams adult nerds will care. I highly doubt that's reliant on AR.
What's your point? That parents won't want to buy VR for their kids because they want to protect them a different video game interface that will ignore their surroundings slightly more than what they were doing before? If that's what you're saying it only shows you're someone who hasn't actually used VR much.
Anyone who has used VR knows it isn't even a permanent replacement for hardcore day-to-day gaming. That's why I used the Wii/Casual analogy. It's amazing for small spurts of lightweight gaming. Which just happens to be very attractive to kids/young teens (and yes non-gamer adults) who aren't hardcore gamers (Nintendo/mobile shows this is a massive market).
Do you understand the point the parent was making? The children's market is not what VR developers are going for. For one: COPPA kinda makes monetizing VR spaces not possible; two: some parents might let their kids have one, but right on the device it says not to let kids under 12 use it, so I doubt most will. Mainstream consumer adoption is not squeaky voiced pre-teens.
Do you not understand arguments or do you just ignore points you don't like? I am not contending that children don't use it. I am contending that children using it to any extent is not desired by the manufacturers nor does it count as mainstream consumer adoption. Please don't respond again about how kids use it.
So your argument is parental pearl-clutching will kill VR, despite that fueling the early market, because manufacturers don't want kids using it in the first place? Even though the wide adoption among young early-adopters is fueling its initial growth and the potential for tech/price to penetrate beyond niche casual/kid gaming to mainstream markets remains?
No, I told you exactly what my argument was and you refuse to acknowledge it and make up your own instead. I find you frustrating to converse with so I shall exit this conversation.
Also, your 5 minute later post-edits are ridiculous. You add completely new sentences.
Since you don't seem to know the book or care to understand my point, I'll keep this post anyway: You don't mainstream technology via your early adopter market. To succeed you need to mature tech and adapt it to a general market.
So the fact some rarely-enforced children protection laws or hypothetical cultural parenting rules might hurt VR IF the only market was merely kids in the long run is bad, sure. But that's not what I said matters in my original comment.
VR's market in the future isn't casual gaming for kids. My point is that's all it is now. And for that it's doing a great job and has a real lively market to fund the tech. Your fears haven't born true for early adopters (because it's fundamentally a hypothetical mainstream critique), so it doesn't really matter, as long as it's sufficient fuel the tech til it bridges the gap and the tech matures.
(Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)
> (Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)
Then slow down and take a breath before hitting the reply button the first time. Pausing and then rereading and proofing as needed rather than fast-paced posting with fast-paced follow up edits is the way to go. This is coming from someone who also used to very often tweak my posts after initial posting.
Fair enough, I tend to over use edit on HN more than other sites because I never cared to win flame wars, but it does help improve the quality of the replies you get from people, as seen here. So noted.
I think the author of that comment meant that if you have little kids, you need to keep an eye on them, and playing with a headset that blocks your peripheral vision is not going to be something a parent can do in that situation.
That comment didn't mean to say that kids would not play VR. It was suggesting that parents wouldn't.
Again all I'm saying is what matters is that enough kids do in fact play VR, today, to fuel the tech so it can mature into a mainstream technology. The only way this hypothetical (future) parent issue would discredit VR as a mainstream technical innovation is for VR companies to have bet solely on causal/kid gaming for their long term success.
This is why OP missed the point. Because I didn't agree that that was an important point he a) got emotional for being disagreed with b) assumed that I thought it wasn't true. But I only ever said it didn't matter, not that parents or regulations dont have power in this dynamic.
Evidence points to Quest 2 being very popular among kids and their casual gaming platform via Android-esque VR games has provided a strong and sufficient market from which multiple companies can mature the technology to a wider market.
It was a faulty premise to dismiss the technology, because it fundamentally mischaracterizes how technology normally mainstreams (by first having a real and successful initial early adopter market from which you adapt and mature to mainstream markets - not betting on early adopters to BE the mainstream).
Although I will agree I probably should have said "yes you're right" so OP didn't feel I misunderstood. Altough if he wasn't so quick to win an internet "fight" he might have let me explain.
> (Edit sniping is your problem, my goal isn't to win fast-paced internet arguments but to communicate my points as well as I can)
It is a problem for everyone who reads the comment thread. Please either wait to post long enough re-read and edit, or indicate which sentences have been added later. (Edit: the latter is commonly done like this.)
He replied to 2 of my comments <1 min when I made some additions 2-3min after (and I didnt change my arguments just expanded). I'm not on HN to win fast paced arguments. But I do understand that some people are.
In the future I will take this into consideration re: using "Edit:" for people who reply before you even notice.
> It's not something you can do with kids around
Whenever I played multiplayer Quest 2 games 99% of the voices were kids/young teenagers. Apparently it doesn't need parents to care, the kids in up their bedrooms is good enough.
If anything the problem is that good VR isn't cheaper than it already is, to hit the market for parents to buy it for their kids. The current selection of games on Oculus store is basically glorified Android games. But PC/Steam VR games I've tried like Half Life Alyx were mind-blowing.
Maybe when $2000+ PC VR setups finally mainstreams adult nerds will care. I highly doubt that's reliant on AR.