Do you feel it – that massive movement to prop up virtual reality on a pedestal? It’s a movement that swept the 80 and 90s with movies like Tron, Lawnmower Man, and eventually The Matrix. While some might have seen the movement as a setback to mid-90s cinema that promised more than reality could deliver, others have continued to dream of a world within our computers.
With Mark Zuckerberg recently coming out to the world to back the Metaverse, it looks like those dreams will soon be reality. However, it isn’t cinema that we’re talking about here. We’re talking mainly about VR’s impact on the gaming industry and what we hope to see in the next decade from the new juggernaut.
Foremost, it’s time we sit down to play games in real-time with anybody in the world. Many online gambling sites do a great job of increasing customer engagement by offering live dealers to go along with their games. This gives customers the freshness of genuine in-the-moment reactions to the games they’re invested in. It amplifies their excitement by bringing in another human to see the action. But what happens when these interactions can be expanded to other players and even spectators who get to view games real-time in virtual space? That would once again intensify the immersion and improve the experience.
Casino sites such as Buzz Bingo could aim to capture that immersion in their games as gamblers would be able to go from watching live dealers pull bingo numbers and deal their cards to being able to read opponent’s expressions at the poker table. Honestly, it’s about time. Virtual reality not only allows us to sit down and converse with our competitors in cyberspace, but it allows us to be immersed in a bustling casino complete with a lively atmosphere and staffed by humans rather than programs. It’s time we visit Las Vegas from the confines of our kitchen if we want to.
This takes us to cooking simulators. Although Cooking Mama, Overcooked, and Battle Chef Brigade are plenty successful without the help of VR, it’s about time we’re able to step into the kitchen and virtually cook meals. This not only serves gameplay purposes, but can also teach people skills applicable to their everyday life.
And for those not interested in highly detailed tutorials on how to make risotto, a more streamlined version could keep your hands busy during downtime in RPGs. People clearly liked the cuisine in Zelda: Breath of the Wild (so much that people are making it in real life), and the addition of the mechanic was well-received, so having a mini-game that has players physically putting together the ingredients would be the obvious next step.
Speaking of taking the next step, our last wish for VR gaming comes in the form of relationships and dating. Dating sims such as I Love You, Colonel Sanders, and Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator have always been good for a laugh, but it’s about time we’re able to go on a virtual date with either a real person or a computer in the bodily form of our choosing. There are some experts that already expect VR to have an effect on human dating habits, but with careful monitoring, this could open up the dating pool exponentially for the world.
Virtual reality could even solve the age-old problem of the dreaded long-distance relationship. And with people all over the world going on virtual dates with each other, we expect it would need to.
Of course, like the 80s and 90s, this could be an overwhelming disappointment. We just hope that if it does flop, we still get a couple of nice advancements for gaming.
