Key Virtual Reality Takeaways
Oculus is inarguably the leader of virtual reality these days, attempting to bring the technology mainstream with the help of its Oculus Rift headset and recent funding from Facebook. Kris Graft of Gamasutra recently got a chance to sit down and speak with the CEO of Oculus, Brendan Iribe, to get some insight on VR and where it’s headed.
During the interview, Iribe put an emphasis on gaming applications for VR, but also explained how virtual reality can be used for general entertainment applications. He also discussed the company’s focus on ergonomics and growth of the general VR community. For the full interview, click here.
App Store Price Surges
Four major countries will be seeing Apple App Store price hikes within the next few days - Mexico, South Korea, South Africa and Turkey - as a result of taxes and foreign exchange rates. South Korea’s price hike will now include a 10% VAT on top of existing app costs.
For more information about the price surges, you can read this article on PocketGamer.
Emotional Alignment in Game Development
Keeping your players emotionally aligned is key to keeping them engaged with your video game. One way to do this is by designing a fully-immersive experience that gives players control over their choices, without unnecessary barriers. For example, if a player is walking along a path and sees an interesting forest in the distance, they should be allowed to explore it fully, and not have to walk straight into an invisible wall.
By determining your players’ motivations during the development process, you can design accordingly to create a barrier-free experience, in turn emotionally aligning them with your game. Also, create intentional motivations to further interest them - especially if the goal is linear. For a full guide on GamaSutra created by Dan Felder, click here.
Alternate Reality Predictions
Virtual reality is finally taking off the ground - but what about its counterpart, alternate reality? Digi-Capital thinks that by 2020, AR will be bigger than VR. Why? AR supports broad markets and applications, compared to VR which is mostly tailored towards the game and entertainment industry. Digi-Capital predicts that AR will generate $120B in revenue by 2020, with applications for the enterprise, commerce and voice communication. For the full report on PocketGamer, click here.
