Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/639267
6 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 6 V I E W P O I N T ne of the fundamental goals of game devel- opment has always been about bringing to life fantastic worlds that we otherwise would never get a chance to live in. From the very beginning, creating games has been about making the player become the hero (or even the enemy, occasionally), giving him or her the opportunity to live out the empowerment fantasy and accomplishing feats that were otherwise unattainable for most of us in the real world. When something like VR comes along and gives us a whole new set of tools to build immersive experiences that completely trample anything we've been able to build before, it's not hard to see how game developers become instantly enamored with the potential in this emerging platform. With VR, you get this amazing level of presence (for free!) that both gaming and film have been chasing since … well, forever. Classic gaming experiences, such as a first-person shooter, which have been the mainstay of games for many years now, almost seem absurd once you've seen what a VR first-per- son experience is capable of. That presence, that immer- siveness, is exactly what many developers have been chasing throughout the years with PC/ console game development, and it's incredibly invigorating to see how VR will dramatically leap us forward in regard to what we're now able to create. I've yet to give a VR demo to a fellow developer who hasn't come out of the experience immediately churning out a hundred ideas of what we could do or what we should proto- type next. The potential of this platform, even if not perfectly realized by today's hardware availability, is hugely attractive to anyone who is looking to build interactive digital content. T H E C O S T O F N I R V A N A Of course, the blessings of VR come at a steep price, and there are incredibly brutal obstacles to overcome for the seasoned game developer when building content for this new platform. For example, in my career as a game developer, I've probably written at least a couple thou- sand lines of code aiming to manipulate and nudge cameras ever so slightly, to get just the right transitions or just the right framing in the various games I've worked on. For years, devel- opers have worked to engineer and master these incredibly complex camera systems, since they were such a crucial tool to use in manipulating player attention and attitude. But with VR, you can't touch the camera at all unless you're willing to risk making the player ill. All camera control is essentially gone with VR at this point. No longer can the developer simply grab your attention and force your view toward a specific point, to make sure you see some crucial plot point unfold. Now we're forced back to the drawing board, to find new ways to encourage players' attention so that they witness the import- ant events at hand. The price we end up paying for this whole new level of VR immersiveness BEING THE HERO IN VR BY RAY DAVIS O EPIC HAS BEEN PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES WITHIN VR WITH ITS BULLET TRAIN EXPERIENCE.