Editorial: For VR To Shine, Film And Gaming Must Overlap

Virtual reality has an identity crisis. Whether talking about games or movies, the medium can’t seem to escape the shadows of the past. But, three years on, the template for what makes VR tick may finally be starting to emerge.It was the recent surprise announcement of Groundhog Day VR that got me thinking about this. Sony Pictures’ decision to continue the original’s story not on the screen but inside a headset is an intriguing one. It made me question which other films should get VR sequels. I even started to wonder if we had got it all wrong. Instead of trying to trace Fortnite and Skyrim into VR, should we instead look at iterating on the big screen experience? Is that where VR’s true power lies? Then I realized the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Just as VR game makers could learn a lot from film, so too could filmmakers take a page from developers. A hybrid of these two approaches may be where VR finally stakes its claim.Gamifying VR can make it strange. Character stats and progression systems are excellent barometers to judge a traditional game by, but VR feels different. Simply put, these factors aren’t, y’know, real. Why do I need to level up my strength to swing a sword? How am I surviving being riddled with bullets? The very tenants of a lot of game design are at odds with the core of VR’s immersion.