If you don’t already know Cliff Bleszinski from his involvement with the Unreal Tournament and Gears of War franchises, you may remember him from Oculus’ 2012 Kickstarter video. Now under the banner of his own studio, Boss Key Productions, Bleszinski says he’s been seeking funding to develop a big budget VR title.
According to Gamasutra, who watched long time game designer address attendees of the Reboot Develop conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia, Bleszinski says he’s been into VR since the ’80s and hopes that this latest resurgence of the tech will be the time that it succeeds.
Bleszinski indeed believes in the technology. In fact, he personally invested in Oculus, and was among a number of high-profile gaming industry vets to make an appearance in the 2012 in the Oculus Rift Kickstarter video.
Despite his early enthusiasm, Bleszinski hasn’t shown much interest in developing his own VR game, instead spending the last several years working under his newly formed Boss Key Productions studio on the PC FPS, LawBreakers, which is expected to launch in 2017. But it seems development of a VR game is not out of the question as Bleszinski says he’s been seeking funding to create a big budget VR title, though the ‘big budget’ part may present a problem.
“What you’re seeing right now is a lot of the wave shooter game—‘here’s a wave of robots or zombies.’ They’re great, but VR, when it comes to the trajectory of the industry, is mimicking the arcade games of the ’80s. If you want to make a good VR game, start there, and move on to what’s next.”
The challenge is creating a game that goes beyond those wave shooters and tech demos that Bleszinski openly laments. Gamasutra reports that he’s been pitching a game to investors, but having trouble finding investors willing to back the budget that he knows he needs to develop a game of that scope. “Unfortunately this costs a lot of money,” he said at the conference.
In an early ecosystem like VR, major productions are risky because the addressable market is small compared to the wider gaming ecosystem. Facebook, Sony, and HTC—all who have VR ecosystems to jumpstart—are actively investing in the creation of high-quality VR content, but traditional game publishers and only dipping their toes into the water at this point, and will likely continue to do so until the VR install base sees significant growth.
Bleszinski has some ideas about what’s keeping VR from taking off at present, including the need for systems that are easier to use, and games that are designed for comfort.
“Oculus requires me to re-set it up on a regular basis,” he said. “If you remember VCRs, your parents could just barely connect it—they couldn’t even set up the clock […] are they going to figure out how to set up a VR headset?”
“Some people say ‘you just need to get your VR sea-legs’ [in order to avoid nausea in VR]—I say no, if you’re saying that and you’re a developer, you fucked up [by not designing your game for comfort],” he said.
Despite outlining the challenges faced by VR today, he’s still a believer. “It’ll get better, it’ll get faster. Just give it a little bit of time,” and maybe one day a VR game of his will make others believers too.