Almighty Video Game Designer - Chapter 97

Chapter 97: Chapter 96 Flaws of VR Games

The specifications of the game were also written with great care. Players will receive tickets for driving offenses, fines for jaywalking, and in the event when the player gets hurt, they’ll have to pay hospital fees too.

Of course, one good thing about the game was that players couldn’t die, but could faint and recover in the hospital.

This game was designed with helping players feel the void they have in real life, as well as to utilize the biggest advantage VR games have.

Chen Mo left the room and walked around and indeed, everything looked really realistic, and the flaws suggesting that it was only virtual were barely noticeable.

For example, the bodies of the players aren’t as detailed as in real life, similar to high quality CGI from his previous life. Although it looked incredibly realistic, you could tell it was computer generated.

This included the walls, tables, cars, street lamps… Although they were also very detailed, it was possible to tell that they were computer generated.

However, it still shocked Chen Mo that it was this detailed.

Of course, despite being named Earth Online, it was just a name, the developers didn’t recreate the entire Earth.

Earth Online was just placed in a city, similar in size or slightly larger than GTA 5 in his previous world.

But the resources required to render one virtual city was incredibly eye watering.

After trying out some more features, Chen Mo exited Earth Online.

He didn’t exit the game pod however, instead going into another VR game.

This was Zen Entertainment’s poster child, and was one of the best performing VR games in China.

Chen Mo also tried it out a bit. The game was essentially a Wuxiao world in a VR environment. Other than the great feeling of being able to walk on air, its combat system as well as playstyle was fairly average compared to other MMORPG.

Chen Mo tried out another seven popular VR games before getting out of the VR pod.

Chen Mo felt tired after having played for around four hours, but at least he didn’t have a headache or felt dizzy afterwards.

This was one of the problems of VR games. The players must be completely immersed in the game, meaning that all their senses are cranked up to eleven to take in all the information. Therefore VR games are as tiring as working a day job.

Players might even have to focus even more during key battles or quests.

Therefore, VR pod manufacturers recommend that players play for a maximum of eight hours at a time, taking a break afterwards. The players will face a test to test their cognitive abilities every time they log in. If they were considered to be tired, they would not be able to enter the VR world.

This was designed with the health of the players in mind.

However, this also exposed another flaw of VR games, they are much more taxing on the body than PC games.

Many would be able to play PC games through the night, and many teens would play over ten hours in one setting. They would also completely recover after those sessions after a good night’s sleep.

However, you couldn’t do that in VR games as it will forcibly close connections. It would most certainly affect the health of the players if they were allowed to play twenty plus hours in one sitting.

This was also a problem that wasn’t addressed with current technology, severely impairing the expansion of VR games.

Many of the players would be working a day job, and after their job, they would go back home and do some chores, not to mention the need for a good night’s sleep. They might only be able to squeeze out two or three hours for VR games during a workday.

They might have more time on weekends, but not by much, as it gets more and more difficult to have a calm relaxing weekend.

This was another reason people would choose PC or mobile games as their source of entertainment during their free time, because VR games were more physically demanding.

The rich and carefree would have much better things to do, such as planes and yachts, or beachside parties. They wouldn’t be spending their time in a virtual world in a VR game.

There were various reasons VR games replacing PC games would still be a long time away.

In other words, with current technology, it’s impossible for VR games to replace PC games.

Basically, when VR games came out it was groundbreaking, but everyone slowly got used to it.

Just like when the first triple A titles were released, drawing much attention from gamers. But as triple A titles got more common, they didn’t even bat an eye.

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According to Chen Mo’s research, VR games could compete with PC games in these Genres.

First, action games, shooter games(FPS), or fighting games.

These games had a strong emphasis on realism, and were basically extinct on the PC ecosystem.

After all, shooting a gun in a VR game compared to a PC was a completely different ball game.

Second, adventure games.

There wasn’t much to talk about, looking at views on PC compared to VR, or rock climbing or surfing on PC vs VR were completely different.

Third, RPGs. These were also quite significant, but with different reasons from the previous two. As RPGs didn’t rely on being realistic at all, but rather the social aspect as well as the composition of the world.

A key point of RPGs was the roleplaying aspect, which is why the world they live in were hugely important as well. VR games took a huge amount of resources. Using the same resources, a PC could render a world ten times bigger than the VR world. In terms of richness, VR games couldn’t keep up with PC games at all.

Moreover, many developers would release PC versions of their VRRPG games to test the waters, only continuing development if it was well received. This meant that many RPGs were available on both VR and PC.

Therefore there were quite a few RPGs that were doing quite well on PC.

Fourth, strategy games, and business simulation games. These types of games weren’t affected much by VR.

Because there was too much micromanagement required by the player, requiring them to play from birds eye view. Adapting them to VR only made it more satisfying to play, and didn’t add much to the gameplay unlike the aforementioned genres.

Moreover, because of how big the investment was to develop a VR game, it would be wiser to make the first few genres rather than strategy or business strategy games.

Therefore, despite being challenged by VR games, PC games still remain competitive, and would likely remain so for quite some time.