Alterego-X said:
It seems to me there is a difference between wanting to turn Facebook, into a VR game, and wanting to turn Farmville into a VR game.
Everything that you named is done by people who are distinct from facebook itself and aren't interested in increasing the whole thing's overall public penetration, or access to actual socialization, but leeching from the userbase.
Oh, I'm aware of that. That's just a dig at the current market of Facebook games. Considering Facebook has made quite a decent cut of cash from people using this method (about 30% from what I've read). Given the costs I brought up, its not too farfetched to assume that a microtransaction model would be in place. Unless they plaster it with ad's. Or require a monthly fee.
Alterego-X said:
I'm pretty sure that it's not something that they would just release in early 2015, and have a billion users by 2016, more like the prototype of an abstract longer term plan. They haven't even said that they ARE MAKING such a thing, just that they "want to make" one.
For one thing, the first consumer version will still be insufficient for that kind of thing. Without body tracking and facial expression tracking, VR avatars would feel like every other MMO game avatar, stiff puppets with stiff faces standing around while the *real* players are chatting around. It would need to have something like SOEmote but better and applied to more of the body. Otherwise, visiting your doctor in VR would pretty much just consist of online chatting with your doctor while looking at some 3D model he made.
I don't doubt that this won't be out anytime soon. As I said in my post, I can't predict the future, so I could very well be wrong. But the technology for a 1 billion player MMO just doesn't exist is a costly manner. Could we have that technology down the line? Yeah, probably. There are still certain logistical issues that need to be addressed - like the mentioned peddling of 1 billion units. Even over a long term broadcast, selling a billion of something is a pretty huge accomplishment (outside of a daily necessity, like food).
Talking about it and reveling the grand plan for it just isn't logical right now. It would be like a car company saying in a public outing that "Yeah, we're totally committed to making consumer model cars that everyone will own that runs off of an infinite power source." It sounds grand - amazing even. But it doesn't mean anything if they're just blowing smoke up our asses.
Alterego-X said:
Well, people ARE already asking for medical advice, and having friends, on the internet. It just hasn't disrupted close personal interactions, but added long distance communications to it.
It is those long distance communications that could be disrupted again, if they would be brought up to a level more comparable to personal meetups, if instead of texts and emoticons, and blind voices, and video chats (that are awkwardly failing to even make eye contact), people from all over the world could actually sit down in the same bar, or have walks together in picturesque gardens, or just have each other appear in their room through AR. (which could be a followup to VR with another camera on the front).
Medical advice online is kind of a thing. The dream mentioned of visiting your doctors over the Rift in the Facebook press release from the Facebook buyout is not something that could realistically be done. Most doctoral issues require personal contact. No matter how good the Oculus becomes, I doubt it'll ever get the kit a doctor needs to examine your vitals over the internet. Even something as simple for checking for the flu would require them to check your throat - even with a webcam, you'd be hardpressed to find an angle where the doctor could check it out. Ditto for the ears, and nostrils. There are several functions in doctoring it would be good at, I don't doubt that. But realistically, I feel safe putting my money in the camp of "it'll never happen."
As for the online friend bit - I'm fully aware. I have two good friends who I've met and primarily interacted with over the internet. I'm also kind of tech savvy. Most people I know wouldn't consider that a norm. And even if they did - there are still a lot of social interactions that require a level of personal contact. There is a huge difference between sitting at your desk, getting smashed off drinks with your friends while you all hang out in a VR world and going to a bar. Same with a movie. Or a restaurant. Not only would culture have to change drastically for these things to work, but the experiences of hanging out with your friends in an online space already exists today.
I just don't see the plausibility of a game with 1 billion users. The market has gotten less homogenized as a whole, not more.