Do Independent VR Developers Care that Facebook Bought Oculus Rift?

The Oculus Rift mask. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Andrew Ellem is a fedora and popped collar short of looking like a spy. Waiting for a streetcar in Toronto, wearing a long coat, and holding a small black case branded with an eerie eye symbol, he’s en route to meet about 30 other dudes with their own identical spooky cases. They are tinkerers, programmers, and enthusiasts. The ominous box is the proto-packaging for the Oculus Rift, that face-hugging virtual reality gizmo that has caught the attention of newbs after being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. This marked a seismic change in the attitudes of Oculus diehards, who helped the product grow through Kickstarter donations. The fate of Oculus, as it has joined the big leagues, is an oft-debated issue in the VR geek community. So I tagged along to learn how independent developers in Toronto feel about Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of the highly futuristic VR platform.

Facebook interrupted the device’s grassroots narrative. While the acquisition drew deep, immediate loathing from Reddit and Minecraft creator Markus Persson, developers working with Oculus, who penned this meet-and-greet before the Facebook deal surfaced, don’t give a shit. The Silicon Valley stir is barely mentioned. Instead, the evening’s subject of in-jokes is the goofy-looking Omni, a treadmill add-on—which, if it were made 20 years ago, would be rediscovered only through VHS tutorials at a garage sale.

Ellem, like many others, sees this Facebook glass as half full. That doesn’t mean he and many other developers don’t know there’s still a glass half empty.

“Would I rather they get their $2 billion somewhere else?” says Ellem. “Probably. Facebook games are not taken seriously, and they have no other history in games. They’re a big unknown, not only for VR but games entirely. But people seem to be forgetting they’re a business. They spent $2 billion on something; they think this is at least worth that. The worst case for me is, I spent $300 bucks on a Kickstarter and got a toy.”

The paranoia is that Facebook is disinterested in, and therefore gutting, all their weird and wonderful games. Gaming, as it exists on Facebook, is less about immersion and ingenuity and more about annoying your friends, or buying virtual knick-knacks on

FarmVille

. No indie developer wants to make Facebook-style games, but frankly, they shouldn’t worry. There is zero evidence that Zuckerberg and Co. are hoping VR is exclusively a realm for virtual farm simulators.

A trailer for VR game

Technolust

As a professional game designer, Ellem’s Oculus Rift program, Echo Chamber, is just a side project. He’s not banking on it. He was just one of the presenters at the social, but not all of the speakers had games in mind.

Moments after Ellem demonstrated his software and moments before carefully spreading his business cards on a table, Trevor Koverko said he wanted “to be the first to monetize on the Oculus experience.” The young entrepreneur was recruiting programmers who’d be interested in creating a real estate app, hypothetically allowing buyers to explore properties regardless of how many oceans are between them. “Let’s be real,” says Koverko, “Facebook’s not going to trifle with the culture of this company. I don’t think they’re going to co-opt it, make it blue, and put logos all over it.”

The reality is that the Oculus wasn’t going to belong to gamers forever. While many who saw the Oculus as a platform built exclusively for gaming would likely view Trevor’s real estate ambitions as a personal nightmare, Koverko had been making his Oculus pitch before Facebook ever stepped in, and later in the evening another programmer demoed a home-brewed VR web browser. Even David Attenborough’s throwing his soothing omnipotence on to the Rift with a VR film.

“I see a big opportunity with the Rift,” says Koverko. “I liken it to when the iPhone came out. It’s just a free-for-all, a land grab. The companies that move the fastest will establish themselves the quickest.”

Games made on the ground floor, crowdsourced and outside big industry, often have an underdog complex—entertainment for the small folk made by other small folk. The week before Facebook’s Oculus purchase, Sony set up a David-versus-Goliath scenario by introducing their new VR headset, Project Morpheus. So nuts to that. Whatever disappointment exists doesn’t justify the death threats lunged at Oculus Rift co-founder Palmer Luckey’s family.

You’d think if anyone were booing the system, it would be the most prominent cyberpunk in the room, Blair Renaud, who is is working on a project called Technolust, which only sounds like a porn. He thinks those upset with Oculus are big baby whiners.

“It’s just the internet at large,” says Renaud. “All the trolls came out to play. The Reddit thread for Oculus was just flooded that day. I’ve never seen it so angry, which says something. The funniest were people posting on Oculus’s Facebook page, complaining about the Facebook deal, on Facebook.” Like other developers, Renaud doesn’t see any problems. At least not for themselves.

“I think a lot programs are going to tank now,” says Renaud. “Perhaps the porn business won’t do as well, because if Facebook decides they want an app store, they won’t allow certain content.” Renaud also says a lot of the prototypes he’s seen don’t even follow the suggestions that came with the development kit.

Facebook's purchase of Oculus Rift means change. It’s going to alter the course of virtual reality, the most obvious change being that there’s a lot more money behind it. Oculus, till now, has been fueled and bounded by forum posts and fans.

Programmers are going to continue doing what they were already doing. For most, the change is welcome. Some spectators still seem to think the Oculus won’t be as disruptive or impactful in a post-Facebook-acquisition world—but anyone who’s hoping to develop a viable product for the device now sees a larger audience waiting. Children and grandparents are now part of Oculus’s virtual reality, not just Kickstarter backers and fringe developers hoping for holodeck orgies. And that is, most likely, a good thing.

Follow Zack Kotzer on Twitter.