Blips: Virtual Reality, Real Headaches

Source: Falling, flying, and headaches: the physical and unique demands of development in virtual reality
Author: Ben Kuchera
Site: Penny Arcade Report

No one said developing games to use the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset would be easy, but turns out it's a bit more physically taxing than standard flatscreen monitor development. In a report by Ben Kuchera that made me slightly nauseous just by reading it, he speaks with the team behind AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome, which is easiest to understand as a first-person skydiving game. You fall through the air and maneuver yourself through various targets as you go to score points.

Now imagine having to fine tune that experience to minimize the amount of cases where players feel ill playing the game. This means that developers have to undergo all of those headache-inducing bugs and design flaws themselves. Just thinking about a bug where you're falling and then one of your eye-views just begins spinning uncontrollably is enough to make me never want to play a VR game before it's finished lest I find myself strapped inside some Clockwork Orange reeducation machine. Luckily the developers of AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome are taking precautions and take days off from working on the VR when the physical demands of the task become too much. Why do I feel like crunch time at big studios is about to get a whole lot more stressful?

Blips: Support Indies, Buy Direct

Source: Want to support your favorite developers? Ditch Steam and buy direct
Author: Ben Kuchera
Site: Penny Arcade Report

I was quite pleased to find an article on a well-trafficked site like Penny Arcade Report about buying games directly from developers so that those teams earn more profit from game sales. And it's true, as Ben Kuchera points out, that in sales through Stream, Valve takes a certain percentage of each sales, leaving less for the actual game makers. While Steam is a pretty impressive and worthwhile service, if I already know about a game from other media and decide I want to buy it, I will always search for a direct purchase option before resorting to a middleman service.

This is part of what makes Humble Bundles so great. When you purchase a suite of games through Humble Bundle, you can choose to divide up where your money goes between developers, charity and Humble Bundle services, meaning you can ostensibly give it all to development teams if you would like. As someone who doesn't care for most of the meta-game services that platforms like Steam offer (automatic updates are nice though), I don't have any reason not to buy as directly as possible. In fact, I get a little bummed when I have to buy through Steam, as is the case with Antichamber and Kairo.

I'm not vouching for the abandonment of Steam and similar services across the board, but on a case by case basis where the option is available, it's worth the extra effort (if it actually ends up being extra) to find a developer site and purchase directly. This is a plea to the informed consumer to take action in greater support of some of the most creative voices making games today.