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Every kid loved videogames. I see no such enthusiasm for VR. My experience mirrors that of many others here, and of those I handed the 3 VR headsets I bought ov

by cm2187 3y ago

Every kid loved videogames. I see no such enthusiasm for VR. My experience mirrors that of many others here, and of those I handed the 3 VR headsets I bought over the years: interesting, but just interesting. One off experience.

latchkey 3y ago
I was just house sitting for some friends who went out of town and my partner and I watched over their 3 boys. Good kids, but addicted to screens. None of them cared anything about VR. The youngest just watched the equivalent of tiktok on TV for hours on end, until we could pry him away to go for a bike ride outside with us. The two older ones just played games on their computers. I found this quite interesting cause the family has the money to pay for stuff like this, the kids just don't care about it. For me, the only game I really enjoyed was beatsaber and I got to the point where I wasn't going to get any better and stopped. That's when I realized this thing isn't for me and sold it before it ended up collecting dust.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  You can’t let any kid under 12 play VR yet, so we have to keep telling our son this. He can’t play BeatSaber until he is 12, it’s almost like a law.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Two of the boys were over 15 and one under, but none seemed to have an interest in it at all. Oh interesting, I didn't know that. Looking it up [0], it is actually 13+, so you're safe for another year. =) [0] https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/ https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/ - Meta accounts are available for ages 10+ on Meta Quest 2 and 3 (may vary depending on country); all other Meta Quest headsets are for ages 13+.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      I think they are being overly conservative but here we are. My kid is 7 so it’s a long time before he is old enough. But there is enough popularity about BeatSaber here that he wants to just play that.
      - latchkey 3y ago
        I'm pretty well convinced that unless you start beatsaber at a super young age, you'll never get the skill to hit the advanced levels. I got fairly high up and just realized that I physically just can't move that fast, but I'm old now... so it is what it is.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        You don't have to play expert+ to get enjoyment from the game.
        latchkey 3y ago
        I am competitive with myself and got bored.
mrguyorama 3y ago
If you DGAF about the small niches where VR makes a huge improvement, like flight sims, driving sims, basically any sim where you just sit in one place, and also shooting games are pretty good, then VR provides no improvement to video gaming. The vast majority of games are NOT improved by vague "it increases immersion" claims. Nobody would play FIFA if you had to put down the controller and run around and buy $200 worth of trackers for your feet so you could kick an imaginary ball with no feedback. Nevermind the fact that some portion of humans will never be able to do basically anything with a screen attached to their face because they are too sensitive to motion sickness.
- int_19h 3y ago
  There are some similarly small entertainment niches outside of gaming, too. For example, high-res (think 8K+) fractal videos in VR are amazing to watch, and I use it for that regularly. It's just not clear that all this stuff in aggregate adds up to enough users to sustain a business model that would allow for VR as affordable as Quest 3.

by cm2187 3y ago

latchkey 3y ago

I was just house sitting for some friends who went out of town and my partner and I watched over their 3 boys. Good kids, but addicted to screens. None of them cared anything about VR. The youngest just watched the equivalent of tiktok on TV for hours on end, until we could pry him away to go for a bike ride outside with us. The two older ones just played games on their computers. I found this quite interesting cause the family has the money to pay for stuff like this, the kids just don't care about it. For me, the only game I really enjoyed was beatsaber and I got to the point where I wasn't going to get any better and stopped. That's when I realized this thing isn't for me and sold it before it ended up collecting dust.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
You can’t let any kid under 12 play VR yet, so we have to keep telling our son this. He can’t play BeatSaber until he is 12, it’s almost like a law.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Two of the boys were over 15 and one under, but none seemed to have an interest in it at all. Oh interesting, I didn't know that. Looking it up [0], it is actually 13+, so you're safe for another year. =) [0] https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/ https://www.meta.com/quest/safety-center/ - Meta accounts are available for ages 10+ on Meta Quest 2 and 3 (may vary depending on country); all other Meta Quest headsets are for ages 13+.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    I think they are being overly conservative but here we are. My kid is 7 so it’s a long time before he is old enough. But there is enough popularity about BeatSaber here that he wants to just play that.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      I'm pretty well convinced that unless you start beatsaber at a super young age, you'll never get the skill to hit the advanced levels. I got fairly high up and just realized that I physically just can't move that fast, but I'm old now... so it is what it is.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        You don't have to play expert+ to get enjoyment from the game.
        latchkey 3y ago
        I am competitive with myself and got bored.

mrguyorama 3y ago

If you DGAF about the small niches where VR makes a huge improvement, like flight sims, driving sims, basically any sim where you just sit in one place, and also shooting games are pretty good, then VR provides no improvement to video gaming. The vast majority of games are NOT improved by vague "it increases immersion" claims. Nobody would play FIFA if you had to put down the controller and run around and buy $200 worth of trackers for your feet so you could kick an imaginary ball with no feedback. Nevermind the fact that some portion of humans will never be able to do basically anything with a screen attached to their face because they are too sensitive to motion sickness.

int_19h 3y ago
There are some similarly small entertainment niches outside of gaming, too. For example, high-res (think 8K+) fractal videos in VR are amazing to watch, and I use it for that regularly. It's just not clear that all this stuff in aggregate adds up to enough users to sustain a business model that would allow for VR as affordable as Quest 3.