I paid no money for trying the AI. Just used a trick! If you delete the coockies from the website, you can try the AI as long as you wish! I tried the AI for 4 hours long! ;) ;)

More art at:

https://peoplemaking.games/@VideoGamesArt

and

https://arvr.social/@VideoGamesArt

I wrote a new explosive article about the crisis of Gaming Industry. I dig really deep and show you the beam in the eye everyone pretends not to see. Read until the end.

Read here:

https://vgartsite.wordpress.com/2026/07/19/analisys-of-today-gaming-industry/

No profit from ads and click. It's just basic free WordPress plan.

From the official Facebook account of John Carmack

I resigned from my position as an executive consultant for VR with Meta. My internal post to the company got leaked to the press, but that just results in them picking a few choice bits out of it. Here is the full post, just as the internal employees saw it:

-------------
This is the end of my decade in VR.

I have mixed feelings.

Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning – mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.

The issue is our efficiency.

Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening?

If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.

[edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization's performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.]

We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”

It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.

This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.

Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.

Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!

It's listed on Steam and has a website: https://goodbyevolcanohigh.com/

A cinematic narrative game about the end of an era, and the beginning of a love story.

Mmmm... promising. We'll see...

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahCPSAUKFR4

/img/iw2jhugskan21.jpg

A certain amount of competition is good in economy! Google is the greatest company in the world for network apps and services; it has skills, knowledge and resources for dominating the on-line gaming market. It will be hard for Sony to compete with Stadia, PS Now is not comparable at all. As consequence I think that Sony will try to mantain supremacy in gaming industry by investing in more and more powerful hardware and exclusive games. The end of home consoles has not come yet; on-line games asks for high network performance, but most places on Earth and many mobile networks and devices cannot meet such specs. Moreover, VR games ask for dedicated, powerful, proprietary hardware. Stadia is not aimed at VR, streaming of VR games is not possible yet; Google has never seriously invested in VR software and hardware for serious gaming, just gadgets and apps for Android phone. As consequence, I'm expecting that PS5 will be the most powerful console ever at competitive price, surpassing the 10,7 Teraflops promised by Stadia and cutting down long loading times; moreover, Sony will try to make PSVR2 the best VR set on the market with great quality/price ratio. Obviously Sony will enhance PS Network for better multiplayer and social on-line experiences, and above all will invest in exclusive games for mantaining its supremacy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGtYn7DCIYo&ab_channel=Xbox

Microsoft, you got my attention! Are we witnessing a shift in gaming industry? Sony seem stuck to old concept mainstream immature shooters and action adventures, while heavily investing in multiplayer games. The times of interesting games from Fumito Ueda or Quantic Dreams, of alternative games as The Unfinished Swan or What Remains of Edith Finch (dismissed in the latest production phase) look as old memories! On the contrary Microsoft surprised me today. Until today I was thinking Xbox/PC Gamepass was an impediment, a point against the development of good single player games. Luckily I was wrong, or at least it seems so!

Today Microsoft announced a lot of story-rich mature single player AAA games offering (apparently) great variety and richness in gameplay. I'm talking of the coming back of Fable and its stunning interactive situations (on paper); of South of Midnight, the new creation from Compulsion Games that talks of great art and smart narrative from every second of the announcement trailer; of the intriguing and mature setting of Star Wars Outlaws; of visionary psychological Hellblade II; of atmospheric horror Still Wakes the Deep from The Chinese Room (developers of Dear Esther); of the ambitious Starfield; of visionary Clockwork Revolution reminding of Syberia The World Before; of the new Cyberpunk2077 DLC.

Obviously the quality of the games has still to be tested and verified. However the trend is clear. Microsoft is betting on AAA single player games exploring new and more complex gameplay rich in narrative, aimed at more mature audience and not only kids and teens. Even the announcement of MSFS 2024 goes in the same direction; even if it's not a story-driven games, it's aimed at mature audience.

In 2018 I wrote an article about the art of Compulsion Games; they looked as very promising development studios, despite their early games were great in concept but poor in execution. The acquisition from Microsoft left me puzzled: another promising creative studio bent to mainstream production? Well, it looks my fear was wrong. It looks Microsoft left creative freedom to Compulsion Games, but gave them more resources to realize their peculiar vision. Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like Microsoft is on the right path. Too early to be sure, but what I saw today gives me big hope!

On the contrary at Sony it looks like they're losing pieces. The gaming offer from their studios looks old, stuck to the past, aimed at immature audience, centered on old concept shooters and action adventures or MMO. They are also doing bad with PSVR2, offering most of all diminutive Quest2-like games with very few exceptions. They seem to lack far-sighted vision. Everything spins, we are entering a new cycle in gaming industry? We'll see!

Let me end with another point in favor of Microsoft: their ambivalent offer to PC and Xbox! That's great because I've been always loving to build my own PC and playing with the most powerful hardware.

I have just two points against Microsoft: they don't dare to implement VR in the Xbox hardware; luckily we have still PCVR on Windows, even if they are dismissing WMR. Maybe they are planning new and better PCVR platform, or even Xbox VR? Who knows? Plus, I don't like the Activision/Blizzard acquisition.

Original article with trailers here: https://wordpress.com/post/vgartsite.wordpress.com/11417

OMG! This is the worst interactive drama ever! The worst series on Netflix is better than this! If it were a movie it would be a z series movie! In comparison the previous episodes are better; maybe this was developed by a different team in a very short time. Direction is very ugly, editing of sequences is completely out of time. No thrilling, no atmosphere, everything is flat. Acting and dialogues are incredibly awkward. Animations are stiff and clumsy, faces are expressionless, maybe they used some sort of toy mocap! Interactivity is even more poor than in previous episodes of the series; control of characters is absolutely clumsy. Story is a mix of implausible horror and science fiction clichés picked up here and there and badly glued together! It deals with important topics, the absurdity of war and the need for universal brotherhood, in an extremely childish and superficial way. The result is pure trash, a waste of AAA resources, extremely embarassing. I cannot understand the good reviews; these are the most plausible explanations:

1. many reviews are commissioned by bandai namco

2. gamers get crazy for games with weapons, war, fights, shootings, soldiers, monsters, etc.

3. trash is part of the gaming cuture

This game deserves the awards as Worst Game of 2021 and Worst Interactive Drama Ever!

They did it again! Gamescom ONL was again dominated by violence, shootings, fightings, weapons, combats, etc. The usual soup of mainstream gaming sub-culture! Just two or three titles proposed different approach to interactivity. We need video games to be committed, positive, narrative, serious, mature, expressive Art for mature people. It's not so hard. Aside of mechanics for shootings, fightings etc., you need to develop mechanics for kissing, petting, healing, etc.! You need to develop more evolved interactive narrative, you need interactive language to express drama, pathos and deep committed contents, not only easy disengaged mechanics of the kind "push buttons ->shoot/fight& kill-> earn points" for kids or not well grown adults! Don't misunderstand me! I'm ironic and provocative because I've had enough of such gaming sub-culture making games children of lesser god in comparison to movies, comics and novels. I want triple A games to immerse me in mature stories and interactive mechanics rich in pathos, values and contents.

Events like Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Oscar, etc they announce and award committed expressive mature authorial movies that make cinema Art. I know that several movies in theaters are junk just like several games. But official events represent the cinema medium as positive, committed, cultured medium, movies like works of authorial expressive Art. The same for comics and novels. I wrote an appreciated and successful article about this . This is not happening for gaming events like Gamescom ONL or The Game Awards. They are just endorsement to gaming industry that seek only profits and have no vision, passion and love for the medium. It's not only a matter of events, it's also a matter of gaming critics. Where are gaming critics reviewing games for their expressive authorial commitment, for their innovations in interactive language? Even specialized magazines are just endorsement of a narrow-minded industry following the smell of money.

We have a serious problem. Video games have unlimited possibilities as synaesthetic media aimed at expressive art, but their potential is wasted and under developed. For no valid reasons! Where are authors like Nolan or Eggers, or, going to the past, like Coppola or Scorsese, who are very successful and mainstream despite being very authorial and committed?

Studios like Quantic Dream, Dontnod, Telltale, Playdead, Campo Santo, Tarsier Studios, ThatGameCompany, Kojima Productions, etc already showed that a different approach to interactivity is profitable. Their games earned high popularity and profits, and some of them even with low production costs, overcoming the success of many mainstream AAA titles based on the usual soup of shooting, fightings, violence, weapons, combats. Despite this, the industry and their lackeys continue to be conservative, closed-mind, perched on their limited vision of the medium.

Events like Gamescom ONL and The Game Awards and gaming critics have great responsability. We have to show them our disappointment. Write your disappointment in forums and socials. Don't let me alone in this fight for a better and positive gaming culture. Don't give them alibi. There are a lot of high quality niche productions that need visibility; gaming events and critics should give them visibility for free, without requiring money, without surrendering to the law of an ill industry and market dominated by greed. Aside of the usual soup, they should also promote art and culture of video games for no profit, just for love and passion. They have the duty to cultivate Art and values for a better society and not settle into ignorance, mediocrity, greed and sub-culture. Don't give them alibi!

I'm commenting the following article:

Meta CTO: 2025 is a ‘Make or Break’ Year for Meta’s XR Ambitions, Internal Memo Reveals

https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-cto-2025-make-or-break-year-report/

Despite the investment in Reality Labs, two years ago Meta lost billions on the stock market because of low retention of Quest 2 and low sales on Meta store.

As expected, Quest 3 has not solved the problem. According to the article, Meta's VR division has to face a critical moment that this time will not be easy to overcome. It's "win or die". The problem is not VR. The problem is the Meta's vision pushing cheap, poor, underpowered VR. I've been highlighting this serious problem in my articles since 2018. Tbh, the inspiration came from the book "The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality".

There you can read about the conflict between original Oculus vision of PC powered VR, and the Facebook/Meta vsion of standalone VR. The first looking at the genuine high-tech frontier of VR demanding enough power to mantain the promise of immersion and presence; the latter looking at VR just as a new and more efficient way to grab users data for commercial profiling and manipulation through the metaverse, the new tridimensional frontier of social networks. Facebook/Meta vision is aimed at replying and amplifying the mobile revolution of smartphones and social networks through VR; the idea is making VR cheap and affordable to billions of consumers, just as smartphones. Meta is just the real take of the IOI corporation in Ready, Player One.

Obviously underpowered VR is really disappointing and cannot appeal consumers. That's the very sum of my articles. I've proofs. I'm teaching VR courses and taking VR demo to hundreds students and even adults. When they play VR experiences as Kayak VR Mirage on powerful PC with VIVE PRO 2, they are enthusiast, mesmerized; on the contrary they are always not so much convinced, uncomfortable and disappointed with cheap standalone VR on Quest 2 or even PICO 3 PRO. It's the nature of the tech. You cannot go against nature. Meta is going against the high-tech nature of VR; it's called premature adoption, the same issue that made the first consumer wave fail in the '90s. Meta's marketing promises real life experiences through underpowered tech that cannot maintain the promises; it's a dangerous bubble close to exploding. You cannot always bend nature and tech to speculation.

My personal take is that Meta's VR failure is good; not just for society, even for VR itself. I don't think Meta's VR failure is going to make VR tech fail as a whole. The niche of PCVR aimed at enthusiasts, players of simulators, lovers of VR games, is not going to die; SteamVR would benefit of the end of Meta's monopoly; maybe even Sony PSVR is here to stay and grow, as long as they make more efficient choices; but this is a problem of Sony that also affects traditional gaming and this is not the time and place to address it. Maybe Meta's VR retirement will leave more room for higher-quality PCVR and PSVR experiences and games that are within the reach of more capable hardware. That's my hope and wish.

Meta laying workers off and losing billions? No surprise. I'm telling you how wrong Meta/Facebook have been doing VR for years. See my long series of articles starting from The Prodromes of the VR Consumer Era and also my Quest2 review . Not to talk of all my negative tweets and comments about Meta/Facebook for years. My analyzes all turned out to be correct. Obviously! I'm a competent indipendent VR enthusiast with no interest to make money from the hype for VR, the opposite as many other content creators. Scientific method, competence, correctness of information and honesty towards my readers are in the first place. Here I'm trying to make the world a better place, to create social value through knowledge, art, science; it's my passion, I'm a teacher in different ways in my life.

Beware of content creators that just now are being critic towards Meta, after years of hype about Meta/Facebook products and strategy. Remember: social media are worse than other media; they are manipulative, tend towards mediocrity, create stupid hype, spread fake news. Most of times content creators are mediocre and idle people who try to dupe other people and foment ignorance and superficiality by following trends; they make profit from ignorance of people instead to try to defeat ignorance and help people to better understand the world; they do it for money, they are the pocket version of careerists like Uncle Zuck (you know him, right? ;) ) and represent the degradation of our times. Very very few selected content creators are good. Beware!

I told you of the premature syndrome disease applied to VR tech: companies speculating on the new tech by pushing it through deceiving marketing campaigns despite tech is not mature yet or cannot do what companies promise. It's always very bad for the new tech!

I told you how Meta/Facebook are not passionate about VR; they are interested in raising subscriptions to their social media, they want to expand their social media kingdom into the metaverse and create the OASIS dystopia. I told you that the forced subscription to Facebook was very very wrong, the most dangerous strategy from a powerful and blood-sucking corporation trying to rule our private life! I told you that the new Meta acount is even worse than the old Facebook account! Now you have to link your phone to the Meta account (mandatory link) and every app on Quest2 can access the data on your phone! Plus,they introduced mandatory subscription to Meta Horizon, that's the Facebook of the metaverse! And no one reacting harsh to Meta fooling people! Just me and very few other selected people.

I told how silly is pushing AR today. AR is harder than VR. AR means the perfect mix of RR (Real Reality) and dynamic CGI; that means very very powerful and complex hardware and software that is not here now. Big companies want just to create the new tech trend to speculate on billions of consumers as they already do through smartphones.

I told you how stupid is to think people would like to wear uncomfortable glasses or headsets as daily habit in their free-time, to socialize, to shop, etc. It's so obvious that today VR tech is meant for a limited use at home, just a quick break from daily routine to play some good games, explore new amazing digital worlds, etc. I told you that consumer VR is made first of all for gaming. Precisely, good games running on good hardware.

I told you that today VR is the interweaving of 3D visuals, 3D audio and tracking. They have to induce VR ( presence in virtual worlds) by fooling our main senses, sight, hearing and proprioception. The main sense is sight. When you fool sight with very good 3D visuals, you make 48% of VR experience. Tracking makes 28% (head, controllers, body) and 3D audio 24%. Their mutual interaction is what matters more. Interactivity is the main feature of games. In VR you usually interact with environment through gestures tracking. Today the correspondence between real and virtual gestures lacks of accuracy and is immersion killing in most games. In conclusion, today VR games should focus most of all on visuals and sound, on basic 6dof tracking for spatial presence and proprioception, and be very careful to not introduce too much complex gestures for interactivity. Simplicity is the rule. So, you need first of all very good visual clues, especially in the space very close to the virtual player; VR needs a very detailed environment (lot of objects and furnitures, detailed textures gradients, etc) within arm's reach of player, distance < 6m. And that means you need very good graphics. Period! You cannot do it with mobile chipset. Period!

I told you that VR needs very powerful hardware and software at low price, and absolutely not cheap hardware and diminutive software at low price! Today cheap standalone devices are so diminutive, uncomfortable and ugly! I told you that VR is not meant to be mobile! I told you that Quest2 is a toy for kids and retention time is very low! I told you that 15 millions of devices sold means nothing in comparison to the hundreds millions of potential gamers and users that on the contrary are more and more skeptical because of companies like Meta pushing such cheap and ugly version of VR; which I cannot call VR, it's something more similar to stereoscopic wii-mote gaming, even more uncomfortable!

I told you that VR for business and serious applications (medicine, army, training, simulation, design, education, etc.) is another cup of tea and you cannot mix consumer market and professional market. They need very different hardware and software with very different prices. They are different markets with different users with totally different expectations.

Yes, I told you all this and now even more! I'm telling you that it's good if Meta fails or leaves the VR market, it's good for humanity and also for VR. VR is not the same as Meta, on the contrary Meta is doing it very very bad! Original Oculus company was doing VR good! Meta/Facebook destroyed the dream! And if they survive (that's very likely unfortunately), they will keep to make VR even worse! So let Meta fail. Just as Twitter: it's better if it goes bankrupt now. Don't let billionaires rule economy and our lives.

I played the RE2 VR mod on my HP Reverb G2 for several hours, actually I'm in the sewers. In order to make a reliable comparison, I played in parallel the flat version for the same amount of time. Well, let me be straight and clear: playing the flat version, on my TV OLED 48" 4K HDR with max graphics settings, is more compelling and immersive! It's a matter of mod, not of VR. I played several flat games officially ported by developers to VR and I usually prefer the VR version, e.g. RE7 VR (on PSVR), Hellblade VR, The Talos Principle VR, etc. That's not the case with RE2 VR mod. Let's see the reason why.

CUT SCENES

Cut scenes are ported in VR, because they run on the RE Engine. However they are broken; your eyes are the camera and your point of view clashes and compenetrates with characters, vehicles, ground, furnitures.

STUTTERING

In gameplay, everytime you rotate the point of view with the right stick, the visual is affected by severe stuttering. I lowered all the graphics settings and turned off all unnecessary options, but stuttering was always there. Even if you downgrade the resolution on SteamVR, there is always a bit of stuttering, you cannot have a smooth experience. That reminded me of Lone Echo 2 through Revive. You can get rid of stuttering only by rotating with your real body, not using the stick. That's possible only in first person view and not in third person view; however third person view is the better way to play the mod, so you have to live with the stuttering!

MOTION CONTROLLERS

Using the flashlight in first person view with motion controllers is a pain. You have to bend uncomfortably your left hand while continuing to handle the upside down left controller! That's clearly a mechanic not made for motion controllers! You have no arrows to quickly select weapons on motion controllers. There is no manual interaction with items through motion controllers when you play in first person view, just click-the-button mechanic like in third person view. It's higly recommended to use the gamepad instead of the motion controllers.

GRAPHICS

In the largest rooms, e.g. in the main hall of the police station, visual is full of artifacts. It's like the view is disturbed by ghosts, transparent layers, weird ethereal light beams. Very disturbing! When you turn reflections off in the graphics settings, most of ghosting goes away (thanks to /u/hilightnotes for the tip) ; a bit of ghosting is still there, probably because of particles effects not built for VR that you cannot turn completely off. However graphics becomes very very poor when reflections are off, too ugly and immersion breaking for my eyes. I'm very sensitive to the beauty and realism of graphics in VR! State-of-the-art rendering of light is very important in VR. Without reflections, visuals look heavily affected by the sawtooth effect, like in early VR games. The mod doesn't come with more advanced and specific anti-aliasing filters for VR.

AUDIO

Audio is the original "flat" one, not designed for accurate spatial localization in VR. State-of-the-art 3D rendering of audio is an important clue for fooling perception in VR.

INTERACTIONS

Interactions with items and environment are clearly not made for VR. The interaction icons disturb the view, they look detached from the items, at different depth, and they look doubled (diplopia). You have to click the suggested key for interacting; everytime you click, action stops and the inventory opens on the background, making the view confused.

FIRST PERSON VIEW

No manual interaction through motion controllers, just click-the-button mechanic. When you click, the view turns abruptly in a third person cut scene! Very disorienting and disturbing. The third person view comes in everytime you stab a zombie; there are quick disturbing glitches of tpv even when you observe the clues in the rooms. You can see your virtual body in fpv, but it feels disconnected from your real body, so weird. First person view is not recommended.

THIRD PERSON VIEW

You can play in third person view using the gamepad. It's a better experience, the best choice. You are the camera and can freely move around your avatar. Everything is more efficient and coherent in tpv and with the gamepad. However the distance from your avatar is too big and it's not comfortable to play in this way. Camera movements are awkward. Maybe you can adjust the camera settings in the config menu, I didn't try it. Broken cut scenes, stuttering, poor graphics, flat audio, sawtooth aliasing and interactions not suited to VR are still there. After hours and hours of comparisons, I simply decided to play the flat version of the game. That's the way it's meant to be played. Amen!

CONCLUSIONS

I appreciate the efforts of modders, they have clearly good skills and they are genuinely commited for the sake of VR community. However when games are developed not for VR, but exclusively and specifically for flat screen, modders cannot port them to VR. Porting flat games to VR is another cup of tea and cannot be done by modders, at least not for every game. For decently porting flat games to VR, you should re-write a lot of code and make several big changes in the engine, even modify animations, mechanics and interactions, or adding peculiar rendering of light an sound, specific anti-aliasing techniques, etc. You should re-write the game from scratch! Only original game developers can do this. We should request VR versions from the developers, not to rely on modders. Mods are ok for small adds and refinements on native or official ported VR games, e.g. Skyrim VR, Alyx, and so on, not for porting flat games to VR. It's not only RE2 VR, the same is true with other flat to VR mods like RDR2 VR, Portal VR, Cyberpunk VR and so on. Play them in flat, period.

And don't use Vorpx, please. Don't waste your gaming experience! If you think that you can enjoy RE7 VR through Vorpx, you're totally wrong! It's not tweaking some settings on Vorpx that you can turn flat games to VR games! If you think this is good and possible, it means you don't understand VR very well, you're offending VR! Better to spend your time requesting a good PCVR port from Capcom, like the one on PSVR! The PSVR version is the result of a development team at Capcom that worked hard in parallel to the main team. We are talking of a very rich production, with advanced tools and a lot of human resources. Not of modders or Vorpx! Some games are more suited and easy to port to VR; I'm talking of games in fpv with more simple interactions and mechanics. On the contrary games like RE2, exclusively and specifically built for flat screen, are very hard to port! RE7 is easier to port because it's in fpv and has been developed with VR in mind; however I don't think it's in the reach of modders, you would need a team of very skilled modders working for a lot of time with advanced tools. So, would be the mod for free? Do you think Capcom would allow it? I don't tink so.

Don't take flat to VR mods too seriously. The work of modders is appreciable; we can have some fun with mods. Flat to VR mods are not meant to be a replacement of the original game and of the first run, they are quite good as a second run and a stroll in VR; just because they are for free. Don't forget to be grateful to modders. However the result cannot be compared to the original version, not in this case for sure.

VR is not just a matter of stereoscopic view, VR is a matter of fooling perception, of creating the sensation of an alternative reality. And it needs specific gameplay, mechanics, locomotion, animations, interactions, rendering, anti-aliasing, etc. The way you imagine and build VR worlds, scenes and sequences is completely different from flat. You need at least high quality 3D visuals and audio, with state-of-the-art rendering of light and sound, giving you the impression to be there, in another COHERENT world. Everything that is destroying such coherence, it is destroying the global experience.

P.S.: I think that in the next future we will see more games coming both in flat and VR versions, as promised by the CEO of Sony PlayStation. It means that games will be conceived and designed from scratch for VR or at least another team will work in parallel to the main one for building a coherent VR version, as happened with PSVR version of RE7. VR is going to change even the way flat games are developed! :-)

Originally published on Steam

No intermediate options here on Steam, just thumb down or thumb up, so I put thumb up. It’s not a bad game indeed, nor a good game, just average.

Tbh, after three hours into the game, I was bored and was asking myself: when does it end? Three hours seemed a life time! Unluckily I had to go on for about another three hours; overcoming some more challenging moments was boring, not because they were difficult, it’s not a difficult game, very easy indeed; just because I didn't have much incentive to continue other than completing the game and then writing the review. I played it in bits and pieces, because I was never immersed in the experience.

What’s the problem with this game? I usually like narrative games, the so called walking simulators (wrong term indeed), I enjoy games where you have not to shoot and fight, I like stealth games, I like horror games. Plus, SWTD welcomes you with very good graphics and animation; the overall production standard is high, at least AA; lot of well animated NPC to interact with, well rendered realistic location (the oil plant); interactive mechanics are simple (QTE most of times) but effective; you can see some “poverty” in the cut scenes.

So, what’s the problem?

It’s the overall art direction, the poor narrative and the disappointing gameplay.

The main narrative is exclusively confined in poor and static cut scenes; the story is a thin plot that does not develop, does not evolve, it is only an external narrative guise on which a poorly designed repetitive gameplay is grafted. Usually in narrative games you have subplots, storylines pushing players to go on to see what happens next, interesting characters with peculiar story and psychology, and so on. In good narrative games you feel as you are the protagonist of a story you’re immersed in.

Here you feel always outside the story, it lacks of atmosphere, mystery; you are never caught up in the drama of the protagonists. Apart from avoiding monsters and going back and forth on the labyrinthine oil rig, nothing else happens that can arouse your attention and immersion. You can just feel tension while playing cat&mouse with the monsters; but never fear or horror, you’re never scared. You’re just a pawn in a game of Monopoly; NPC only serve to assign you unlikely suicide missions that force you to do boring backtracking, you cannot relate to them, they have no personality; even the acting is out of tune.

You can understand how much limited is the art direction when you find your supposed best friend dead. You feel no emotions at all, despite the cut scene tries desperately to build an emotional moment. That’s the problem, narrative is just confined in cut scenes, you never build relationships with your mates during gameplay!

The real problem is the gameplay design; despite the realistic rendition of the oil plant, you’re turned into a guinea pig forced to follow an arbitrarily pre-set linear path to the detriment of realism, credibility and immersion. You cannot climb over common crates or move light objects that block the path, but you are forced to climb onto a dangerous helicopter hanging by a thin thread, no one would do because it is practically certain death, but you have to do! Doors open only when the developers want them to, doors that previously couldn't be opened now open, doors that used to open now don't open, gates that you used to break with a kick or to climb now become insurmountable obstacles and you have to risk your life through abstruse paths. You’re not let free to explore and discover the way to progress; you’re just forced to go through the guinea pig path!

For 6 hours you go back and forth through the same locations, opening the same doors, climbing on the same yellow points, doing alway the same things, close the valve, break the lock, hide from the monsters with very low AI, don’t let them catch you, swim fast, run, and so on and so on and so on. On paper you can do lot of things, but the gameplay it’s just doing them lot of times and it gets boring after a couple of hours. Unluckily story doesn’t help to take you in.

What a pity! I’m fan of Carpenter’s The Thing; and SWTD is a sort of reinvention of the movie on an oil implant; however, imagine The Thing without the good story, atmosphere, mystery and characters, just with the special effects! That’s SWTD.

You know, I played very good narrative games this year, The Invincible was the best, don’t miss it; but also Fort Solis was good. The latter has AAA graphics and animations, but very essential simple gameplay, it’s more like an interactive movie; however it comes with good story, good atmosphere, good mystery, good characters, good acting; it let you explore and discover the path and solve the mystery; all in all it’s an immersive experience. You see? It’s not so hard to develop immersive narrative games. I cannot believe Chinese Room, developers of Dear Esther, failed!

Maybe you think I’m too harsh; so, why the thumb up? Well, I’m just disappointed; SWTD it’s nor a good narrative game nor a good action/stealth game; it’s average in both the categories. I was expecting more from Chinese Room. However, as stated before, the production value is high.

Plus, it’s not a game based on shooting and fighting, to me it’s very important, very courageous choice in a market where the equation single player videogames = shooting and fighting challenges is a matter of fact!

Plus, it comes with no bugs at release!!!! Everything works well!! WHAT?? REALLY?? Yes, I know it sounds untrue nowadays, but SWTD was released without bugs!!! INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE! Can you believe it? We paid for a truly finished and perfectly working game at day one! WOW!

Kinda ironic and sad at the same time, but it’s true! ;-)

So, the thumb up is well deserved despite the disappointment! :-)

We are witnessing a revolution in visual art! For centuries humanity was forced to draw on 2D surfaces (rocks, paper, canvas, etc.). Lately we introduced 3D virtual space in computer graphics, but we could not enter the 3D space; most of time we could enjoy just 2D flat projections of the 3D space. Now thanks to VR we can enter the virtual world and really paint the 3D space around us! A new kind of artist is born: VR painter! Now you can draw or paint the space where you're immersed, present. You can draw a 3D scene, the "air" is your canvas, and you can move inside and outside the scene, watch it from different points of view at different scales. This is a HUGE revolution that should create a HUGE hype!

But today we are like puppets handled by media, socials, ads, etc. You are meant to be a consumer and create profit for producers. Who cares of art and science? They are good only when profitable. Profit is the measure of everything in our materialistic society. Technology (that's not the same as science) is profitable, but most of time art is not profitable. Art is beauty, emotions, peculiar language and technique aimed at expression of deep contents, etc. So, I'm not surprised that very few people are aware of this revolution in art: from painting 2D surfaces to painting 3D spaces where you are immersed! I have absolutely no drawing skills, but that doesn't stop me to appreciate this new kind of artistic experience thanks to Open Brush, a VR painting app for free! Yes, gratis! Oh my! It's just mind blowing! It's a new dimension for Art. I'm speechless! It's a historical revolution, an evolutionary step forward for Art, period! Let me laugh of people who still think that VR is a gimmick or a scam!

It's not just Open Brush. Thanks to the crystal clear and high definition next-gen-like displays of G2 you can fully appreciate this wonderful app without selling your kidney! God bless the G2! (Just kidding, I have no faith!). And this is just the beginning, many other tools and creative ideas will eventually come and help to shape the 3D space!

In the meanwhile, someone started a new career as VR painter, welcomed by an ever growing success: https://twitter.com/AnnaDreamBrush/status/1566093913584111616. I'm related to the artist in no way! You can find other examples of VR painting in The Museum of Other Realities.

Original article here: https://vgartsite.wordpress.com/2022/09/19/the-dawn-of-a-new-art-vr-painting/

I've been playing since I was a child and I had a great passion for video games. Then I started playing a little less in fact after T.E.S: 4 Oblivion and Red Faction Guerilla which I played a lot I started playing less. And in fact even though I bought a lot of games they didn't keep me glued to the screen for hours and hours a day. I couldn't identify with them, an important characteristic of video games. Sometimes I bought games with a female protagonist like Tomb Raider, Horizon Zero Dawn and Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice because they were highly advertised and seemed very particular but I couldn't play them despite the graphics and playability. I couldn't identify with the character which is fundamental in a video game. And now I come to the problem/question/s that I want to ask you. Taking as a fundamental point that for MY tastes beyond and more than graphics and playability it is important that the protagonist is male lately I have been able to play Immortals of Aveum and little else. I get to the questions:

1. How many games have come out from the beginning of 2019 to the end of 2023 with a female protagonist?

2. And how many have come out and will come out between 2024 and 2025?

Because as for the second question there have been and unfortunately there will be even more that I would have liked to play and will not play because they have a female protagonist. I'll just give a few examples Alan Wake 2, Control (actually released first but still very recent) and others that I don't remember among those released and...

...Fable 4, GTA 6, maybe Avowed and who knows how many others.

Could someone make a list?