David Braben urges caution on VR

[[VR] Mad Mike]

The thing which DB seems to ignore - and this is a huge worry for me as a gamer - is the whole Kids and adult thing!.

Yes, as an adult I may choose to restrict little jimmy from playing on the rift and also yes, even when i do let him play I may insist on turning mirroring on

and This i think is key... empowering parents to make decisions and have the ability to control the experience. I am all for parental locks and what not..

but imo this part I find especially concerning

"Braben also suggests a degree of transparency, allowing others to see what you're doing inside the virtual world. "I think it's important that someone when they come into the room they can see what [you're] doing.

To this I would say WHY? I am not a child, so what I choose to have or not to have mirrored to the outside world is my choice imo. I am absolutely against hamstringing adult experiences just becasue a number of parents are lazy and neglect their kids... we do not talk about banning alcohol because it is bad for kids...... If i have a kid it is my job as an adult to keep my children from accessing it.

it is like games like hatred and postal, COD and GTA etc.... these are all adult rated games, and if little jimmy gets hold of them and plays them and is upset by them that is my fault (assuming he plays on them in my home) or it is the fault of the guardian who is looking after him if he is elsewhere.

so long as childlocks are there, then it is a win win for all imo.

Also I do not buy the whole violence in games -> violence in real life anyway. I play all sorts of violent videogames, and it has no effect other than the entertainment factor, however a friend of mine showed me "for a laugh" a video of a person who got decpatiated. It turned my stomach and made me feel odd on and off for a week after it. ie fantasy violence in no way shape or form prepared me for seeing real life violence and i was still sickened by it.... which in a way I guess is a good thing and is, I hope, a healthy response.

 

[ranix]

Your kids can fish devices capable of getting wireless Internet out of the trash in 2015. If you're worried that they're sneaking content you disapprove of you have a lot more problems than a VR headset lol

 

[Soliluna]

The problem as I see it is - that most games with the "excessive violence" tag are simply just awful games - with no real violence, and much hype. Look at Hatred for an example - not only is it an incredibly rubbish game - it has awfully "bad" violence in that although the premise of the game is to be a pew-pew innocent and police-killer - it's outright awful. Alien: Isolation has better executions.

Manhunt and Postal 1&2 are oft-cited games, but really, who can honestly be offended at the idea of killing off innocents with exploding diseased cow-heads? In the UK they were deliberately feeding them to people

Have to agree, Alien Isolation did brilliantly, really loved that game but stopped playing as soon as I had the flame thrower, definitely need to revisit it though.

I agree also, where it concerns the truth in the violence, games are an aberration. In the US I hear they still are feeding the population diseased livestock; bovine aids, bovine leukemia etc ... the problems with feeding dead cows to chickens and chicken faecal pellets to cows and so on and so forth.

With TTIP it is no doubt we will see these American products washing up on British shores. Using sensationalist and lurid news stories to break our bond to the EU and potentially losing their more stringent policies on food and safety risk assessment has occurred at a far swifter rate than I envisioned; hooray for the companies though right?

Back on topic, I really do see VR as niché and there are few games that do VR well because of the difficulty in acclimating to the disconnect of running around yet.. not moving. ED is a great VR title, I also have a racing setup [that I'm selling :'(] that works amazingly. I hope these comments don't stop them from fully supporting the latest Oculus implementations and Gameworks VR.