If you have been in the XR field for many years, like me, I have a question for you: don’t you have the impression we are keeping repeating the same things?
I mean, I love our field: I love the people, the technology, and feeling immersed in another world. But sometimes I feel like being in the movie Groundhog Day, where the same things keep happening over and over, and it wears me down. Let me make some examples.
Let’s start with the VR use cases. 10 years ago, I was avidly reading about every minimal use case of XR technology. “VR training made a company producing dildos in Turkmenistan increase its productivity by 0.15%” could be a title that made my day in 2015. I would have happily shared it on LinkedIn and Twitter (RIP), highlighting how this proved that VR was not only the present, but the future. Someone would have probably answered “What a time to be alive”, or “2016 is going to be the year of VR!” and we would have virtually high-fived. Now, thousands of posts about the usefulness of VR training after, if I even read a LinkedIn post about a company that thanks to VR training has been able to make 10x its production, I just yawn and say “yeah VR training blablabla”. While scrolling away the post, I would probably just see one comment to it: It would be Bob Stone writing how he already did that in 1892 using a stereoscope.
The same holds for content. I was trying every piece of content possible back in the day, excited by all the opportunities in the field. Now, I have a lot of deja vu. Puzzle VR games, single/multiplayer FPSes, roguelites/roguelikes everywhere (btw every 6 months I have to Google again what is the difference between the two genres), magical elements stuff, etc… Recently, with all the kids using the Quest, there is an invasion of games for kids, like “I am cat”, “I am raccoon”, “I am potato”, “I am someonethatcopiedtheideaofanotherstudiothatsucceededwithhisgame”, many of them with Gorilla-Tag locomotion. Luckily, sometimes there are still some original ideas or amazing executions that really excite me: Laser Dance, for instance, is a game that implements an original use of mixed reality. Echo Arena invented a totally new genre (and its studio was rewarded for it with the shutdown). Batman: Arkham Shadow was a game with an astonishing execution (and its studio was rewarded for it with the shutdown… I have a sense of deja vu also related to this…). But most of the time, when I’m reading the review of a new piece of content, I’m like “ah, it is like that other game, same but different, but still the same“. But it’s not only about games: for instance, when I read about a new meditation experience, I’m like “Another one??”. Probably, there are more meditation experiences than active Quest users now.
Then there are the discussion topics. We all talk about when XR will become mainstream. And we are also having endless discussions about why it is not going mainstream. It is the price; no, it is the comfort; no, it is the content; no, it is because of Mark Zuckerberg. In my 12 years in the field, I’ve seen headsets improving on all these sides (apart from Mark, who is still there), and for sure, adoption has improved. But not enough. So we are keeping chanting the same reasons again and again. Or wait, someone sometimes says “XR is already mainstream”, and I feel a bit relieved, then I look at the people around me, and no one has a headset or smartglasses, and I become confused. Then there is always the same debate about the actual utility: we all say on LinkedIn that VR is a game changer technology, and then when we meet in private between us XR professionals, maybe in front of a coffee, we just whisper each other “But, tell me the truth, outside of work, do you actually use VR every day?” (spoiler: the answer is often a no).
My favorite thing related to predictions is that whatever we imagine for the future (including XR becoming mainstream) is always coming in “5 to 10 years”. I joked so much on this that I created a law with my name about it, the “Vitillo’s law of technology”, which states that every future technology is always coming in 5 to 10 years. In another article, I explained why this is a convenient time frame:
“5 to 10 years” is a common expression we use for things for which we don’t know the actual timing. It has been carefully crafted by scientists this way, because it is a time that is short enough that your readers feel it close enough, but distant enough that your readers would have forgotten your wrong prediction when it actually arrives. So, trust the science, and repeat “5 to 10 years” with me.
Then we are still labeling whatever cool product launch as “The iPhone moment of XR”… we had more iPhone moments in XR than actual launches of Apple iPhone products. Still, I don’t see people using XR devices like iPhones.
And I still remember when someone thought that the movie “Ready Player One” would have made XR mainstream: Vive even sponsored that movie, hoping that it could happen. And the irony is that the movie could actually become reality in the sense that we will soon have only One Player using Vive headsets at home (they have mostly pivoted to glasses, LBVR, and other technologies).
Since I mentioned Vive, don’t get me started about the devices. After the success of the Quest headset, most companies started basically copying every Quest model. We had Quest clones everywhere. Now that Quest failed in becoming mainstream (maybe because of the price, or the comfort, or the content, or Mark Zuckerberg), everyone started copying Apple. Pico, Meta, Vivo, etc., are all allegedly working on a Vision Pro clone. Everyone uses gaze+pinch. Everyone aims for “spatial computing” (whatever this means). Everyone is putting a price that normal people can’t afford. It’s like seeing the same device again and again.
And don’t get me started about Meta. If I had one euro for every time someone debated if Meta was more a positive force for XR (because it made XR development faster) or a negative one (for the privacy issues, the under-cost strategy), I would be richer than Mark Zuckerberg itself. And yes, we still haven’t understood if, when we are watching porn on the Quest, Mark is watching them with us or not. But at least now we know that when we are watching porn with the Ray-Ban Meta, some buddies in Kenya are enjoying it with us. Guys, I hope you like my tastes on the matter.
These are just examples, but there are many more:
- Journalists who want to look cool and still write “VR is dead” articles or mock the metaverse
- The debate about whether Roblox is a metaverse or not. In general, the debate about what the metaverse is (I already wrote a piece on the matter)
- Headsets that are just an incremental update on the previous ones
- Are smartglasses part of XR or not? “They are a first step towards AR glasses!”, “No, you blasphemous person, they are just like smartwatches strapped in front of the eyes!”
- The problem of screaming kids in the VR world
- The same memes repeated again and again. Oh no, don’t show me another video of people falling down using a headset…
- “What headset should I buy?”
- “Consumer VR is lagging, but in the Enterprise world, there are a lot of use cases”
- And so on, and on, and on.
And the problem is going to become worse in the future: with people writing more and more articles with ChatGPT, which basically parrots what people have said in recent years, we are going to have the same thoughts repeated again and again in low-effort posts.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m part of the problem, too. I keep repeating the same things myself, too. I keep redoing the same things, too. I’m probably the Bill Murray of the story. And I’m not criticizing anyone who says anything that is not super original, or any indie game studio that publishes a game in a saturated genre. I’m sure everyone is just trying his/her own best. Probably it’s just that, after so many years in the field, I’ve already been part of so many discussions, read so many posts, tried so many devices, that it’s hard for something to sound new to me. And I’ve noticed that this makes me lose a bit of enthusiasm. Luckily, sometimes there is still something that excites me, something that is new to me and makes me happy again about being in this field: for instance, when at United XR I tried the Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation by Neural Balance Innovations, I was happy like a kid after he just received the gifts from Santa Claus. I kept telling everyone about this experience, with a bright light in my eyes. But these moments keep being rarer to me.
I wonder if it’s only me, but I guess not: a few months ago, my buddy Christian Steiner said a similar thing during a dinner. Are we just two grumpy guys, or is it a common issue? Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments of this post (here below or on social media channels). I would like to hear what you all from the community think about this matter…
(Header: original Image by Columbia Pictures, modified using ChatGPT)