Reid Main

I am a huge fan of StressLevelZero and what they have been doing to push VR development forward. Boneworks is the culmination of years of experimentation and it looks super slick.

In most VR games your perspective is either looking directly through the eyes of the protagonist or you are a bodiless, godlike being that simply choses to be an inhabitant of the world. Regardless of your perspective there are usually so many rules and constraints as to how you can move around in and interact with your environment that you're always acutely aware you are in a video game. While a lot of these games can still be incredibly fun and interesting (Superhot, Beat Saber and Space Pirate Trainer come to mind), virtual reality has yet to have its moment where you forget you are playing a video game and become lost to the possibilities that are laid out before you.

The idea of getting lost in some sort of virtual reality has been a dream for decades going all the way back to the 80s with the the film TRON and the novel Neuromancer. In 1999 The Matrix brought it back to the foreground and most recently Ready Player One has inspired another generation as to the possibilities of VR. I am not saying that Boneworks is there just yet but it is really encouraging to see some developers taking the leap and trying to get us there.

I find it interesting that independent game developers are the ones pushing the boundaries as compared to the usual big developers and publishers. It was always Nintendo or Microsoft or Id Software or Epic doing something really unique that helped define a generation of gaming. But the playing field seems to have been levelled when it comes to virtual reality. The big players look to be sitting out the start of this generation and it is the independents who are picking up the slack. I am very much looking forward to the next year or so as next generation VR hardware like the Steam Knuckles controller is released and developers like StressLevelZero continue to innovate.