This morning, we all woke up and learned that Facebook had purchased Oculus, the developer of the Oculus Rift headset. And predictably, the internet wasted no time in getting outraged over the deal, apparently because a gaming company is per se selling out if they acquire corporate backing. It’s not just internet stupidity, either, as we’ve heard Notch claim that he cancelled Minecraft for the Rift because Facebook “creeps him out.”
It’s the same general complaint we hear every time some smaller, independent company is bought out by a larger corporate entity. I guess there’s some sense in the gaming community that our hobby should be safe from The Man, and that in order to keep things pure, we need to resist corporate intrusion at every level. And just like every other time the complaint is made, it’s absolutely baseless.
Let’s start with a premise: businesses are formed to make money for their stakeholders. Seriously, that’s the sole motivation behind their existence. We can thus safely deduce that the moves of a business, like Oculus, Facebook, or Sony, are made in anticipation of eventually making more revenue than they spend. I bring this up because a lot of gamers still seem to think that are two types of companies: the evil ones who just want to take our money (EA, Microsoft, etc.), and the good companies who prioritize gamers over their own pocketbooks (Sony, Valve, et al.). That people have bought into this BS continues to astound me: I would argue that Sony is inherently no more “pro-gamer” than Microsoft, as both companies are simply trying different approaches to make as much of our money as they can. At the end of the day, they are selling products and services, just like Apple, General Electric, or any other number of companies. Despite that fact, there seems to be a sentiment in GIO and other gaming outlets that Sony values gamers more than Microsoft, and that they are better stewards of our hobby because they aren’t some kind of evil empire. People who believe this are being taken for a ride, and I think anyone who thought that Oculus would never go down this road is stuck in some bizarro-nostalgic world where all game developers work out of their garage, and the whole industry is decentralized.
That isn’t the way gaming works anymore. Like it or not, it is now a money-driven entertainment industry, with annual revenues in the tens of billions of dollars. Like most of the technology arena, growth has been absolutely explosive over the past decade. And also like those arenas, competing has become risky, difficult, and insanely expensive – good luck releasing a fifty-million dollar AAA title unless you’re a large developer backed by an even larger publisher. And don’t even think about trying to compete in the hardware arena unless you’ve got easy access to money, on the order of tens (or hundreds) of millions of dollars.
Let’s look at this from Oculus’ perspective: it is true they are a promising company, with a product that might revolutionize gaming as we know it. But the more likely scenario is that it will fail. Remember, for every iPhone, there are dozens of Palm Pre’s. For every Rumble Pak, there are countless Power Gloves. My point is that potential will only take you so far, and that eventually, tech companies need the capital backing to correctly execute their ideas. And while the Rift is promising, it is absolutely not ready for primetime. It will take a lot of research, development, and money to get that thing to a pricepoint and form factor that is acceptable to the general public. Right now, it is a cooler and more powerful Virtual Boy. Kickstarter is nice, but crowd-funding is not going to raise the kind of money that Oculus really needs to compete effectively against Sony, Microsoft, and others jumping into the VR arena.
One more thing worth mentioning: corporate participation in gaming has, on-balance, been beneficial. Without big corporations, there would be no Xbox. Or Playstation. Or God of War. Or Halo. Or World of Warcraft. The list goes on and on, and while I think indies and smaller projects certainly have their place, gaming would be much less enjoyable without those blockbuster products and experiences.
So let’s give this thing a chance to breathe: in securing capital from a backer, Oculus has obtained a chance to breath, develop, and be free from money crunches that could endanger the product. Facebook buying out Instagram provoked all kinds of outrage, but you’d be hard-pressed to find any real differences as a result of the acquisition. The world keeps on spinning. And hey, who knows? If Facebook is able to effectively integrate VR technology outside of the gaming world, it could lead to quicker acceptance of the medium. Most of the growth from last-gen consoles did not come from hardcore gamers – it came from casuals and non-gamers, who were convinced by MS/Sony/Nintendo that their products were good for other things, too. Their interest keeps our hobby going, for which reason I think that if the Rift has potential, Facebook’s funding will be able to harness it in a better, more efficient way.