Oculus's unexpected entrance into the gaming market has been receiving a wide array of positive reviews over its third-person "Lucky's Tale" game exclusively made for its Rift headset in partnership with Playful.
While many observers questioned the move initially, after seeing the game and how it functions, the overwhelmingly solid reviews for the game have many expecting more solid efforts from the companies moving forward.
Virtual reality is dominated by first-person games, whereby users get to be the experience rather than simply directing through the game via third-person, which is more common in traditional gaming platforms for adventure games.
What is surprising is Oculus's own guide to gaming specifically states that first-person user games are the most ideal, as they allow the gamer to be the focus of the game rather than to be "looking down and having no body [which] is disconcerting."
Playful founder Paul Bettner, however, says that they have with this game been able to work out those initial kinks with "Lucky's Tale."
"I was like, 'you guys gotta trust me,' " says Bettner, recalling the hard sell he made when presenting the prototype of "Lucky's Tale" to Palmer Luckey and his team.
"I think this is the first [VR] game where I'm going to be able to move a player smoothly through the environment and not make them sick, the way an FPS would."
Online, users have begun to talk about the gameplay functionality and believe that third-person VR could be a work in progress, but one that has massive potential to change the way gaming can be made and employed in multiple platforms.
The first version of the game was created to be based on human scale, but after Bettner and Playful put the game into the Rift headset, they saw where they had gone wrong and were forced to go back to the drawing board.
"The character was huge, he was creepy-looking," says Bettner. "His head was giant and he had to stand like 10 feet away from you for you to even be able to see what he was trying to do," which made the whole experience feel remote and uncomfortable.
In order to get the VR world just right, the game was changed in order to make the virtual world appear smaller by increasing the scale of the camera. This helped to ease the immersion process for the players.
With Oculus being purchased by Facebook earlier this year, the company has seen its stock increase. As more and more investments come in as a result of the deal, Oculus has been able to branch out and continue to innovate in the virtual reality world.
