Virtual Reality is turning out to be a weird new medium. It's not what most people expect it to be, which is 2D video games plus immersion - my implementation of Oculus support in FRONTIERS was a lesson on that score. No, it's something entirely new. Trying the
tech demos for the VIVE prototype is what really convinced me of this. There's a
massive design space out there waiting to be explored, and each new idea will have to be implemented simply & on a small scale. Perfect for our purposes - and the best part is there's absolutely no risk of these games failing! Just kidding it's risky as hell. But it can't possibly be worse than mobile, and even failures have a decent chance of breaking new ground.
The upsides of diving into a new medium are self-evident. The downsides are numerous, and the biggest downside of all - namely that the number of people playing VR games is currently tiny and will stay that way for a while - is obviously at odds with the goal to support FRONTIERS. So for a while it would be wise to choose ideas that are playable
without VR until those numbers can support exclusivity. Other downsides include the strict requirements for simple controls and near-perfect performance / optimization, but this has a silver lining: simple controls means simple gameplay, and that plus good performance makes VR games contenders for post-conversion to mobile devices. (So I guess in the long run I may end up dipping my toe into mobile games after all...)
