14 DAY TRIAL // A programmer who worked on Valve's augmented-reality projects and later on virtual-reality prototypes, has spoken out against the upcoming technology, saying that it foreshadows a grim future.
Fabian Giesen has made the comments that VR tech is "bad news" a while back on Twitter, and then offered a better explanation of his meaning on GitHub.
"With AR, there's a variety of information display/visualization applications, all of which are at the very least interesting and could turn out to be tremendously empowering in various ways. The endpoint of VR, on the other hand – all engineering practicalities of first aiming for a seemingly easier goal aside – seems to be fundamentally anti-social, completing the sad trajectory of entertainment moving further and further away from shared social experiences," he begins.
"I'm not a fan of online gaming in general, and as such the inevitable framing of VR as the gateway to the ultimate MMORPG (which is what tends to happen) is a sore point for me. I prefer my social interactions to be in person if possible, and so far what of it made it into online games is just incredibly basic... Certainly, it's easy to imagine an interactive environment with a richer set of interactions than voice chat and going on raids," he continues in his GitHub post.
He claims that his last year in the industry offered him a pretty good idea of where all of it is headed, and he jokes around that it's not just some vague futuristic concept that he got scared of after reading too many cyberpunk books, but instead a very real concern.
His main beef is about the VR-enabled MMORPG experience that many people are dreaming about, and that is exactly what many of the devs working on VR tech have repeatedly stated as their goal.
"Having an immersive virtual environment - hey, MMORPGs even without VR get people to sink lots of time into them, and if anything that's probably gonna be more pronounced in the VR version - that is set up to, ultimately, generate ad revenue (and hence prioritise the needs of the advertisers over the desires of its users) is just an inherently gross concept to me," Giesen states.
"The thing is, as has been pointed out numerous times, once you're selling ads, the ad-buyers are your customers; the people on your service are, depending on how cynical you're feeling today, either the product or your work force (in the sense that they are the ones doing the work - generating ad impressions – that actually keeps your business running)," he continues.
Giesen expresses his worries that major companies will run various psychological experiments (as Facebook already does) designed to make their products earn more money at your expense, and the addictive potential of the powerful VR tech is something that will greatly aid ad companies in achieving that goal.
"So imagine a shared universe MMORPG, expressly operated by a company that *already knows all your friends*, that's trying to maximize your engagement ('hey, all your friends are playing right now, don't you want to join too?'), selling your attention to advertisers, and by the way, also building a detailed profile on everything you do so they can do all of this even better in the future. It's okay, go on doing whatever you want, we just want to watch! (Through your own eyeballs if possible.)," Giesen details.
Imagine gobbling down a Mountain Dew health potion next time you decide to take your Nike-sponsored combat boots for a stroll through Azeroth, and it might just seem as bleak as Giesen paints it to be.