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Really cool tech, but kind of a depressing start to this young industry. I feel like desktop apps are making huge strides in being cross-platform, both in atte

Really cool tech, but kind of a depressing start to this young industry. I feel like desktop apps are making huge strides in being cross-platform, both in attention from developers and the lower development effort required thanks to a myriad of software platforms and tools. It's just sad to see games still clinging to "exclusives" as if that's a positive thing.

davesque 10y ago
Well, when you get a big player like Facebook involved...
- pekk 10y ago
  It's strange, though, because Facebook wasn't in the games business like this before, so they did have a choice of what approach they were going to take. There's no real reason they couldn't have come out swinging for open standards, for example.
  - davesque 10y ago
    True, although Facebook is still a massive company. At a certain point, it's extremely hard to keep the hard-nosed business types out of the game and they're going to have a more closed-minded approach to things.
api 10y ago
Today's Internet industry is all about vertical lock-in, app store lock-down, and surveillance (customer is product), so an "eyeball grab" and "platform grab" for VR is to be expected. This is particularly true when we're talking about a company where this is their entire business model.
zanny 10y ago
The natural progression of all software industries has always been to use proprietary first movers to dominate and control the market with DRM and lockin, burn it down, destroy all consumer and fan engagement, and then slowly flicker out where the corporate goliath that dominated first is eventually supplanted by an open community that should have been there in the first place, but everyone drank the koolaid. Be it web standards, OSes in general, word processing, graphics editing, CAD, 3d modeling, compilers, network protocols, graphics APIs, video game engines, and now VR. The only industry that I've seen even resist for a moment this tempting devil of profit has been 3d printing, which has been in many regards losing to "ease of use" DRM restricted proprietary tonka toys in recent years.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Wow sounds positively Marxist. Some imaginary 'natural' progression is not really science, its just a convenient narrative. Anything can happen, including folks abandoning open source and embracing a new walled garden (think iPhone). Don't have to look far at all to see refutation of the convenient storyline.
  - zanny 10y ago
    There was never an open source smartphone app-based OS before iOS, and Android has demonstrated an open source alternative that has risen in the wake of the iPhones success to take 80% of the market, which absolutely supports the narrative. Also, comparing observable industry trends to Marxism is on par with Godwin's law. Obviously you are a communist if you observe natural trends in software towards open interoperability and/or community participation in development of established paradigms?

davesque 10y ago

Well, when you get a big player like Facebook involved...

pekk 10y ago
It's strange, though, because Facebook wasn't in the games business like this before, so they did have a choice of what approach they were going to take. There's no real reason they couldn't have come out swinging for open standards, for example.
- davesque 10y ago
  True, although Facebook is still a massive company. At a certain point, it's extremely hard to keep the hard-nosed business types out of the game and they're going to have a more closed-minded approach to things.

api 10y ago

Today's Internet industry is all about vertical lock-in, app store lock-down, and surveillance (customer is product), so an "eyeball grab" and "platform grab" for VR is to be expected. This is particularly true when we're talking about a company where this is their entire business model.

zanny 10y ago

The natural progression of all software industries has always been to use proprietary first movers to dominate and control the market with DRM and lockin, burn it down, destroy all consumer and fan engagement, and then slowly flicker out where the corporate goliath that dominated first is eventually supplanted by an open community that should have been there in the first place, but everyone drank the koolaid. Be it web standards, OSes in general, word processing, graphics editing, CAD, 3d modeling, compilers, network protocols, graphics APIs, video game engines, and now VR. The only industry that I've seen even resist for a moment this tempting devil of profit has been 3d printing, which has been in many regards losing to "ease of use" DRM restricted proprietary tonka toys in recent years.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Wow sounds positively Marxist. Some imaginary 'natural' progression is not really science, its just a convenient narrative. Anything can happen, including folks abandoning open source and embracing a new walled garden (think iPhone). Don't have to look far at all to see refutation of the convenient storyline.
- zanny 10y ago
  There was never an open source smartphone app-based OS before iOS, and Android has demonstrated an open source alternative that has risen in the wake of the iPhones success to take 80% of the market, which absolutely supports the narrative. Also, comparing observable industry trends to Marxism is on par with Godwin's law. Obviously you are a communist if you observe natural trends in software towards open interoperability and/or community participation in development of established paradigms?