When creating anything, art, writing, movies or videogames, getting helpful criticism is important. not only does it help the creators spot the flaws in their work, but it also helps them to gauge the mood of the audience and help figure out what customers do and do not want.
During E3 2018, Jason Rubin, VP of Content at Oculus, and Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games spoke about a number of topics relating to virtual reality (VR), among the issues discussed was how Oculus gathered and responded to feedback from players.
Price first confirmed the importance of getting feedback: For us as developers getting the feedback from players as they are playing the games is really important, because it helps us turn the knobs, tweak things and figure out what people are responding to,” he said, “We’re early in the VR life here, and we’re still trying to figure out what VR players respond best to.”
Rubin then revealed that he was in fact an avid user of Reddit: “I am a devout r/Oculus reader. I do not post, but I read every comment from every player. I go deep to see where people want VR to go. The future is clear to us, but how we get there is not. So when we hear what users want, it impacts what we do next.”
Asked by Price what were the most though provoking comments he found on Reddit were, Rubin said: “I tell you one thing that really surprised Oculus recently; I started seeing more and more posts with people saying ‘I really wish there was a seated play mode’. When we started working on VR we assumed everybody would be standing, it turns out that a lot of people at the end of a hard day of work would like to just sit down but they appreciate the immersion of VR.”
Rubin confirmed that Oculus were taking this feedback into serious consideration: “Now Oculus is aware of the fact that a lot of gamers who love VR also love playing seated, which seems contradictory, but isn’t the case at all,” he said, “We didn’t even know it was a thing, that people wanted seated games. Now we have to figure out how to get this to work in all our future games.”
For future coverage and news from E3 2018, keep checking back with VRFocus.