Have you heard about VR!? It's super cool! I hear that anyone can make a game and become RICH! It's super easy. You just load up a program, make a thing, and BAM! MONEY! Everyone has a headset now. The games are great. You should become a VR developer too!*
*The only true statement in the above paragraph, is that VR is super cool.
We need to talk about VR hype, and why it's dangerous. Especially to new developers.
I've been working as a VR developer for about 4 years now. My game TECHNOLUST was a launch title for the Oculus Rift. It's critically acclaimed and I think it's pretty cool. I did in fact get some money for making and am doing much better now than I ever have. BUT, we need to talk about why I am the exception, and not the rule.
First of all, times have changed. In the early days of VR's recent resurgence (Thanks to Oculus and their Kickstarted Rift), there was a very small community of developers and enthusiasts that were truly excited about VR. We got out development kits and spent our waking hours trying to figure out what worked and what didn't work. It was the wild west.
In order to get noticed, all it took was to have something a little better looking than a potato.
As a generalist computer artist, working as a minimum wage security guard, I managed to build that -better than a potato- prototype and get it out into the world, running my own Kickstarter and making enough money to live off of for a year or two, while I learned how to build a game. There was almost no risk for me. Even if the game didn't sell and VR flopped, I would be better off than I was the year before.
Man, oh man, did the hype build over those 2 years. While I worked, I was in skype chat group called the VR Mafia with over 100 other VR developers. We were excited. As the release of the Rift and later the HTC Vive approached, we thought we were all going to be rich!
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None of us got rich :P
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It turns out that not a lot of people out there have a high end gaming rig and an extra $500+ dollars to spend on a new toy. On top of that, people aren't willing to pay any reasonable amount of money for a game that did not cost a reasonable amount of money to create. Who would have thought right?
Now, as mentioned, I did alright. The reason for that, is that I'm pretty much solo developer. I sunk all of that Kickstarter and pre-order money into the my game and made it the best I could. 100% of the meager profits went back to me (minus distribution fees) So, let's say 70%. Anyhoo. When I say alright.. I mean alright. I am far from rich. I'm not allowed to give numbers on sales, but they're pretty shit. Across the board for all PC VR games. I know this because they were shit when TECHNOLUST was at the top of the Top Selling list.
Since then there have been articles announcing that a few VR games that have made over
ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
"Sounds great!" You say. "That's a lot of dollars!"
Right? WRONG.
Nobody at any of those game companies is rich either. Making games is expensive. Do you know what the average salary of a game programmer is? Me either.. but it doesn't divide into a million that many times, no add artists, overhead and all the costs of a development studio. Lots of money. And rightly so. No everyone is an artist, not everyone has right stuff to make games. Passion, tenacity, mad skillz. Game developers should be paid well.
That is why I cringe when I see things like this:
Now.. I'm not really sure what Chet's qualifications are, I believe he was a writer at Valve, but he is(was) a pretty big deal in the VR world. He was the front man for the Valve VR department and worked with HTC on the Vive.. wait.. you know what, I don't know what he did for VR either. Doesn't matter. He doesn't even work at Valve any more. He's not even in VR as far as I can tell. By his twitter feed it seems that he's some kind of political analyst? (I joke, that's what everyone's twitter feed looks like these days).
Regardless, why is he telling people that there is "no excuse" to not develop VR content? I think I've named a few already (it's hard, customer base is small, niche, etc.), but here is one more:
Steam is full of enough shovel-ware, vomit inducing VR titles for a life time of sadistic torture. Please don't make more potatoes!
Okay. Now let's bring it all back to the beginning. VR is indeed super cool! I plan to write some articles about how cool it can be and why it's important. If you're passionate, driven and have a great idea, OF COURSE YOU SHOULD BE A VR DEV.
I'm still a VR dev. I'm working on multiple projects as we speak. I founded 3 VR companies. I love the idea of it. My 4.5 year old daughter loves it too. She's flown the Apollo 11 mission 3 times. She's been to the bottom of the ocean, she's shot NERF guns at a robot. VR is dope!
But please; if you're trying to get rich quick, suck at making things in general, or you think it will be easy... just don't.
For all of our sake.
To continue listening to my rants, follow me here @anticleric
Keep it real.