Not too long ago, I had my wife, more respectably known as the Lady I Live With, try out a handful
of video games for the first time, and as I watched her, I learned a lot about what
games are like for people who didn’t grow up playing them.
There are a ton of barriers that exist for inexperienced players that make it hard to
figure out what to do without the assistance of someone more knowledgeable.
And from these various informal experiments, I’ve grown to view games through a new lens,
that of someone unfamiliar with typical video game mechanics and conventions.
So far, these tests have primarily focused on specific games and genres, but for this
one I wanted to look at how she approached a new platform altogether; one that stands
apart from the rest in its unique ability to immerse players and give them lines on
their face for wearing a headset for too long: Virtual Reality.
VR has grown in popularity a fair bit over the past few years, but it is still a pretty
niche hobby.
It feels a little inaccessible; to play the full catalogue of games, people not only need
a headset, that will cost a few hundred dollars but also a PC good enough to run it all, which
will cost even more.
Also, there’s a bit of a stigma surrounding VR, and I think it makes some people wary
of trying it.
VR headsets are made to block out the real world around so the player can become immersed
in the one of the game, and while there are plenty of VR titles that allow friends to
interact with each other, as well as a very active, open, and passionate community around
VR, the mere act of wearing a headset seems isolating, especially from the outside looking
in.
I think this all plays into VR not being a common entry point for non-gamers; it's a
seemingly big and complicated investment, so why would they ever start there?
Of course, I am far less interested in the social and financial barriers that keep people
from getting into VR than the potential gameplay ones.
So, I decided to run another informal experiment to see how VR titles onboard inexperienced
players.
For this one, I had my wife play a wide selection of VR games; those being First Steps and Contact,
Beat Saber, Moss, Super Hot, Job Simulator, Boneworks, Gorn, and, the reason it was so
hard to get my hands on a VR headset this spring, Half-Life Alyx.
I chose these titles partly based on recommendations I got from people on twitter, but also because
it gave a nice sampling of games that have different styles and use VR in unique ways.
As is usual for this series, I largely sat back as a silent observer, only offering assistance
when things became truly unbearable to watch.
So, this is how it went.
Virtual Reality is defined by its limitations more than any other platform.
Some of this has to do with it being so new that developers haven’t had enough time
to flesh out certain ideas, but it largely centers around how VR operates.
Most notably in terms of perspective.
Due to players wearing a headset that acts as the camera, the majority of games are in
1st person.
On top of that, most VR titles have the player hold two controllers, which more often than
not end up representing the main character’s hands.
While this certainly limits the kinds of games that work in VR, it also made it immediately
clear to my wife how she could interact with the virtual space around her.
She felt like a person within a game instead of just someone holding a controller and pressing
buttons when prompted.
This led to her being incredibly engaged with everything she was doing, even if it was just
basic human functions
There’s something about picking stuff up in VR that feels special.
You know deep down that nothing is actually in your hand except for a controller, yet
the action of reaching out and grabbing something tricks your brain into thinking there is.
I noticed most of the games my wife played started off with her simply grabbing an object,
and while it seems kind of silly, by having her start out with a basic task she does every
day in her real life, it signalled to her that, for the most part, the controls would
mimic reality.
With games she’s played in the past, she’s always had an easier time figuring out how
to do something when she was familiar with it in real life; so while she struggled with
video gamey things like pogoing from one enemy to another, she had little to no issue with
understanding activities like fishing.
VR takes this idea a step further by presenting environments where players interact with them
in roughly the same way they would if they encountered them in the real world.
By just looking at something, she could tell how to engage with it because the answer was
one she already knew.
Understanding typical game conventions didn’t really matter because she was being asked
to just understand human motor skills, which she’s spent her whole life learning.
VR had her interact with things in ways that she found logical, so where in the past she’d
often get hung up on how to interact with stuff because she didn’t realize the game
wanted her to press a specific button, with VR this never really happened.
Even when games asked her to do more obscure tasks like solve a digital puzzle or hit colored
blocks with lightsabers, it was easy to understand what was being asked of her because her options
were limited to what she could do with her hands.
It’s also important to note that due to the camera being tied to the movements of
the player’s head, she didn’t have much trouble navigating the virtual spaces she
played in.
Getting a clear look at her surroundings came naturally to her because it was no different
than what she does everytime she enters a room in real life.
In previous experiments, she constantly struggled when it came to handling the camera.
Whether it was first person or third person, controlled with mouse and keyboard or a gamepad,
she regularly wrestled with the camera, making it so she rarely had a good understanding
of the spaces she inhabited.
Where it takes new players some time to get used to wielding a mouse or a second joystick,
there isn’t a whole lot to get used to when controlling the camera comes down to just
moving one’s head.
With games on other platforms, she often would miss visual cues and instructions because
she’d be looking in the wrong place, but because of how much easier she found it to
keep the important stuff in her line of sight in VR, this didn’t end up being a problem.
Having this kind of control over the camera made every game easier for her to understand,
which in turn allowed her to engage with them in the way they were meant to be engaged with
instead of stumbling through them, not really knowing what to actually do.
She truly became immersed, and responded to things in a way she never would if she were
just looking at a screen.
*LOUD GASP*
Oh my god.
*SECOND LOUD GASP*
Ow.
Like my body has chills.
Like my body just got goosebumps.
In fact, the only massive barrier my wife ran into while playing had nothing to do with
comprehension or skill.
It was that moving in VR is kind of...bad.
With Virtual Reality, there isn’t really a perfect way to have players move around.
In an ideal situation, people would have a massive, wide open space where they could
walk around freely, but due to needing to be tethered to a computer along with the fact
that most players can barely find a 5 foot by 5 foot space to play, that isn’t really
an option.
A lot of VR titles are developed around this limitation.
Instead of having players go out to find the action, the action comes to them, so they
really only need to worry about moving around in a small area.
And In a lot of ways, games being designed like this make them more accessible to new
players.
Even now after a handful of these experiments, my wife still struggles to move the character
and adjust the camera at the same time when playing games on console or PC, so with only
having to worry about the immediate space around her along with finding the camera controls
of VR more intuitive, she had far less to juggle.
Of course, not every VR game is designed in this sort of way, and that is when movement
gets a little more tricky because having your vision move when your body doesn’t...feels
terrible.
The first time she tried using free movement, she literally almost fell over.
Raz: Is this better or worse?
Lady: I mean--oh ugh uugh
Raz: All right, all right, go back, go back and click, no no no
Lady: I don't like this!
Lady: I don't like it.
I'm gonna vomit.
Motion sickness with VR is not unique to non-gamers—I had a pretty similar reaction when I first
moved around with the joystick as well.
It really has more to do with being acclimated to VR itself, and given that it is a relatively
new platform, I imagine this is an issue that nearly everyone who has tried it remembers
running into.
With that said, my reaction to getting motion sick was wanting to keep playing so that I
could eventually get used to moving in VR, where she never wanted to play the games that
made her sick again.
With Boneworks, she ended up playing it sitting down, which helped a bit in that she couldn’t
really lose her balance, but it made her feel worse than she ever has when playing a game.
To help combat the motion sickness, she actually started to close her eyes when her character
moved, and then opened when she stopped so that she could look around and get her bearings.
While this helped, obviously had she been in a situation with actual threats, it would
have gone horribly for her, however, I did find it interesting that her approach ended
up being pretty close to one of the more popular movement options in VR called blinking, which
has players point to where they wanna go and then teleports them to that spot.
This option does make things a little less immersive as the screen constantly cuts to
black, but as the alternative for her was vomiting, it seemed like a decent tradeoff.
Along with it making her less sick, the blink movement option ended up making gameplay feel
more accessible.
For example, in Half-Life Alyx there were a few times where she got into combat situations
and was cornered by the enemy.
Typically when she is in a spot like this she panics and ends up getting stuck on the
enemy, leaving herself vulnerable to getting attacked.
But with the blink mechanic, she could just move past them without putting herself in
danger.
This also helped her avoid traps like the barnacles because she could just blink to
a space where there weren’t any.
I do see why some people might not like this kind of movement because it can trivialize
certain encounters, but for inexperienced players who struggle with precise movements
on joysticks or keyboards, it helps eliminate a common source of frustration, making them
less likely to want to quit.
While VR certainly isn’t perfect, the fact that the biggest barrier my wife ran into
was motion sickness is pretty notable.
The issues that she has continually encountered with typical games didn’t really show up.
She found it easy to keep track of her surroundings, interacting with things felt intuitive, and
the games didn’t require that she be skilled at things that take a lot of practice like
speed or precision.
After watching her play, it seemed to me that the skill floor for VR is lower than it is
for other kinds of video games, making it a really good starting point for new players.
However, at this point she obviously has become more familiar with video games, and while
she still falls into the category of an inexperienced player, I wanted to be sure that the reason
VR came naturally to her wasn’t because of the previous experiences...so I ran an
additional experiment.
In order to informally confirm my findings, I wanted to get data from sources with nearly
no gaming experience, so I recruited the people I used to live with, also known as my mom
and dad.
My mom has filled in for a few games of Mario Party and other multiplayer titles over the
years, but not much else, and my Dad’s experience with games has pretty much been him walking
in on my brother or I playing something, saying, “I rock at this game,” and then walking
out.
So, clearly, they were the perfect candidates.
For this experiment, I had them play the PC and VR versions of SuperHot in an effort to
see which of the two was easier to pick up.
I chose SuperHot because I hoped that the mechanic of time only moving when they did
would give them a little more space to react to the action around them.
They played 2 versions in opposite orders, with my mom starting on PC and my dad in VR,
to try to control for familiarity playing a role in my findings.
The order they played it in really only seemed to affect how well they understood the primary
objective of the game.
The PC version starts the player off holding a gun with a figure in front of them falling
to the ground, indicating that the player just shot them.
So, in my mom’s first session, she made the accurate assumption that she should try
to shoot the other red figures.
The VR version also starts off with the player holding a gun, but instead of there being
a figure falling to the ground, there is just one standing there passively.
When my dad first tried it he immediately dropped the gun on accident, watched it shatter
on the ground, and stood around for a bit not knowing what
to do.
*Laughter*
Raz: What do you think the game wanted you to do?
Dad: Either shoot the guy or not shoot the guy.
Dad: Or try to shoot the guy.
Raz: Drop your gun and have it break?
Dad: Probably not that.
In contrast, as my mom had already experienced the PC version
beforehand, when she did this part of the
tutorial, there was absolutely no hesitation.
In regards to how they responded to the actual gameplay of both versions, it ended up being
relatively consistent with what I’ve observed from watching my wife play games.
On PC, hey glanced down at the controls a fair bit to be sure that they were hitting
the right buttons, they struggled with looking around, making it so they didn’t have a
good sense of where they were in relation to enemies, and they didn’t have a great
grasp over the movement, which often got them into trouble.
Despite both of them trying out each direction at the start of the game, as they went on,
they mostly favored moving forward and almost seemed to forget that any other direction
was an option, leading to both of them trying to dodge bullets by running straight at them.
Mom: Oh poo.
I had plenty of time to get that one.
With VR, they didn’t have nearly as many issues.
As they only had to worry about moving around the small space they were in, they were able
to keep everything important to them in their field of view, and they didn’t really think
twice about the controls, as what to do came naturally.
If they needed to pick something up or make a fist, they just squeezed their hand, incidentally
hitting the trigger buttons which allowed those actions to work.
One of the most interesting things that I noticed came up after my mom finished playing.
She was talking about the controls, and I asked her if she knew what buttons she was
pressing and her response was, “I was pressing buttons?”
The controller became an extension of her body instead of just a tool used to play a
game, and I think this says a lot about the design of many VR titles and actual controllers.
While some games have slightly more complicated control schemes, the vast majority rely on
the motion controls and the trigger buttons because those things are easiest for players
to understand, and they’ll end up using them without even thinking about it.
And all this led to my parents being far more skilled at the VR version of Super Hot than
the PC one.
At times they actually looked like competent players, doing things like catching guns,
dodging bullets, and beating the crap out of bad guys.
There was an intentionality to their actions and their successes felt like they came from
having some actual skill.
Obviously, it wasn’t all perfect, like, my dad spent a few too many rounds trying
to kill enemies by taking pictures them and my mom was so frantic with her punches that
she kept accidentally pressing the menu button, pausing the game, but by and large, they played
it in the way it was meant to be played.
This wasn’t the case with the PC version.
When they beat a section it often felt like the product of either brute force or luck,
and they always seemed a little surprised when they got through an encounter.
"Oh my gosh, did I do it?"
And it makes sense because they didn’t have a good enough grasp over the controls to properly
survey the spaces they were in, making it so they didn’t always know the extent of
the threats.
As a side note, while my mom didn’t end up completing the tutorials, my dad finished
both, proving that he did in fact, kinda rock at that game.
So, from this brief, and perfectly sound, indisputable experiment I can fairly confidently
say that VR is a better place for non-gamers to start than traditional titles.
Virtual Reality is really promising.
It seems like it is finally getting to a place where games are more than just proof of concepts,
and that’s really exciting.
I still think that the financial and social barriers are going to hold it back from really
hitting the mainstream for awhile, but with specifically Oculus's push to make VR more
accessible both in cost and external requirements, it will be interesting to see if people who
don’t normally play games are drawn to them.
I think in a lot of ways VR sort of levels the playing field.
It is so new that it is really just starting to develop its own sort of language; one that
definitely borrows from what’s been established by other platforms, but given how fundamentally
different it is, there are a ton of new ways to engage with digital spaces, and game devs
are still establishing ideas that will eventually be staples in VR titles.
And I like that.
I do think people with more gaming experience will figure stuff out a little quicker in
VR than those who don’t, but in the grand scheme of things, the gap isn’t that huge.
All this makes VR an easy thing to recommend for people trying to get into games for the
first time.
It is certainly a more involved and less relaxing experience than sitting on a couch and just
playing a game, but for my wife and parents, it gave them a chance to feel skilled at a
game, which is something that doesn’t happen often enough.
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Anyway, thanks again to Raycon for sponsoring this video.
To everyone still watching.
Thanks.
I started a second channel where I am going to post highlights from my twitch streams,
so if you want some extra content that contains a way higher energy Raz, go check it out.
Anyway, I appreciate you and I hope you have a great day and/or night.
And I will see you in the next one.