“The big tech companies have co-opted the games industry into thinking that it’s thanks to tech that games are social now. No, we started that way!”


pushing the limits of the medium. Discussions over whether VR games are successful in comparison to those on console or smartphone don’t interest him at all. “I don’t care. I don’t sell the stuff. That’s not my


job. It’s like saying, ‘Is the theatre ever going to take off? Marvel superhero movies are so much more successful!’ The theatre is fine, it’s just not mass market, and that’s okay. Does everything have to be mainstream before it’s valid?”


BEHIND THE WHEEL It’s fortunate that our meeting came shortly after a week that not only saw Meta announce the Quest 3, but Apple finally reveal the Vision Pro. Two headsets at very different ends of the value spectrum. What does it say about the state of VR gaming to see Meta forging ahead with new hardware, despite its obvious metaverse woes, and Apple coming out of stealth mode with its more conceptual proposition? “I think, finally, the very boring and stale


question of ‘Do you think VR will ever take off?’ can be put aside and people can understand and accept the fact that it’s here to stay.” As to the the merits of each device, despite what he called the crazy price of Apple’s offering (likening it to Tesla’s flagship Model X), he’s excited more by what it will mean for subsequent and competing devices than for the Vision Pro itself, which will clearly


August 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 45


in its first iteration be beyond the budgets of most VR gamers. “The fact that Unity is involved is very exciting, because whatever R&D they’ve put into [the Vision Pro] it’s going to trickle through to all the other platforms, whether it’s Quest or Pico or Vive, etc. So I think it’s amazing to have this big player there.” Of course it’s Meta, nee Oculus, that has laid much


of the groundwork for the current success of VR, and is reaping the benefits of it by being neck-and-neck in the current gen console race with Xbox. “They’ve opened so many doors,” says Tittel. “They’ve legitimised VR, but to me VR is exciting because it’s a place where there are no rules yet. We haven’t been told what the mechanics should be.” Tittel likens 2023 VR gaming with the era of the


Atari VCS, in the sense that gaming was constantly pushing at the limits of the technology, unlike today’s AAA games, it would seem: “I feel like I’m still playing Tomb Raider, except with better graphics, 30 years later, all the time. I’m


The Last Worker was Tittel’s first VR game of the year, a narrative fetch ‘em up that blurred the distinction between being a cultural prisoner and Amazon warehouse worker.


If the eyes are the windows to the soul, what does that make Apple’s Vision Pro?


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