Gamer rage: Facebook buys Oculus Rift

Earlier this week it was announced that Facebook has bought the parent company of Oculus Rift for $2 billion. What appeared to be the shining light of innovation and progression for gamers has now seemingly been pulled agonisingly away from our grasp in the name of social media, or has it?

Oculus Rift's rise has been well documented: after becoming noticed following a massive kickstarter campaign, many saw the virtual reality tech piece as a future staple for the hardcore gamer. For some reason though the general thought following Mr. Zuckerburg's intervention seems to be that the gaming community have lost something truly revolutionary. I'm not sure that's entirely true though.

Source: oculusvr

In a press release following the take over announcement, Facebook's chief executive said that he believed Oculus 'has the potential to be the most social platform ever.' Not that I have any firm statistics to back this up, but the majority of gamers out there would say that they find gaming a massively social activity, one that adds to the enjoyment of the experience and one that has recently become more involved with other entertainment areas such as film streaming, Skype and social networks including Facebook.

In my opinion, Oculus being under the control of such a strong powerhouse of the modern world can only increase its scope, and that can't be a bad thing for those who play video games. As long as games remain profitable (something which this take over is no doubt likely to support), the influx of cash for development from systems such as Oculus Rift will continue. As sad as it might be, we all know that more people being involved means more money and more money means faster improvements and better technology for the games we love so much.

Attempt at featuring

In my latest attempt in creating a professional blogging and journalistic set up on my small corner of the internet I'm going to start with a couple of features that should, if I can stay on top of things, run in tandem together.

Essentially, I'll look at franchises that are set to be realising new titles, give my thoughts on what would be great to see and where mistakes might be made. I'll also offer my opinion on the life span of the series and whether it really needs another game at all.

In a mirror image, I want to look at series that have finished or ceased new development. What new titles could be released, if any. What would they be about? What would they do on next-gen that they didn't do before or would they move to handheld (or vice-versa)?

We'll see how it goes, the format will inevitably develop from these original ideas, but hopefully it will create something to pique the interest of some avid (or not so avid) internet browsers.

Increase your gaming power- with some crazy headwear?

A new headset designed to stimulate brain activity has been released for the gaming market. The Foc.Us headset releases a small electrical current through the wearers head, which is designed to make the synapses in the brain fire faster. All very high tech I'm sure, but will it actually do anything for the average gamer?

As it happens, I can't actually tell you, because I didn't feel like spending £179 of my poor student money on a piece of funny shaped plastic that was going to send electricity around my head so that my reaction times on Rayman may or may not increase.

source: foc.us

You don't need me to tell you that I'm not the only person approaching this with skepticism though. With that said, the technology used in this attractive little headpiece is impressive, not to mention scientifically proven (its already been used as part of medical treatments for stroke patients and for those with learning difficulties). 

There is one thing that seem particularly odd about the Foc.us. That being it's being aimed at people who play games. Sure, it's already been used in the Armed Forced in the US, but as a consumer product, the primary function of this device isn't to help change the world, or even the way people go about completing necessarily annoying tasks; it is to improve your high score on Candy Crush. It makes me wonder if micro-transactions weren't enough. But in all seriousness, I never realised that so many gamers had enough money to make this a feasible market for such a product, particularly after you look at the big price tags we are having to fork out for current generation consoles. 

For some the Foc.us is sure to add to an already ingrained stereotype that depicts gamers as effectively plugged into the games they play. Even though this is a product that does have a proven benefit when gaming and the technology is totally risk free, I simply don't see it taking off; I can only go back to the price that is far too close to £200 for the casual gamer, as well as many hardcore ones as well. 

As with most pieces of technology however, I wouldn't rule out the price dropping in the next few years, and when that starts to happen, this could be a piece of kit that many will feel the need to add to their gaming kit. More significantly though, it wouldn't be that surprising if in time we see the Foc.us branching out and having a much wider audience than our small niche in the console and PC world.

More information on the Foc.us can be found on their website: www.foc.us (imaginative, I know)

Titanfall: did it need some alone time?

If you were to ask people with a real interest in gaming what they were looking forward to most this year, a good proportion of them would have said Titanfall. A first person shooter exclusive to Xbox One and PC, that has got main stream reviewers using words like 'groundbreaking' and 'revolutionary', to take us away from a generation of consoles defined by Call of Duty.

There's no doubt Titanfall will be successful. In fact it already is. Microsoft have aimed it as being the game that sets the bar for their new console, not to mention helping them reel in the PS4 after disproportionately better sales in the first six months after release. This isn't just speculation either, the release of Titanfall has coincided with the introduction of a bundle offered at £399 with the game, which is £30 less than the original RRP of the stand alone console.

Through the 360/PS3 generation one of the biggest emergent class of gamers was the online first person shooter. Indulge me as I paint the all too familiar picture of the masses sitting in front of TV's with their headsets playing against other like minded, COD loving gamers. Online multiplayer may as well have taken over the console world in a way that before you might have only imagined PC's to achieve.

Yet in the corner of all of these games, Call of Duty, Battlefield or anything else you might have been interested in was the pitifully short and effort lacking single player campaign. In then what is being seen as the proverbial game changer of the genre there were two ways to go: firstly, increase the time and effort put into the campaign to improve the quality to keep players interested for longer before they move on to the multi player as well as giving it some replay value that has been sorely missing in recent games. Alternatively, as the developers of Titanfall have opted for, scrap the single player all together and focus totally on multiplayer.

I might be tempted to say that this was a complete mistake. How can we call a game revolutionary if it just carries on down the path it's predecessors were pointing towards? That's simply not the way to think about it though; in my view these games that put minimal effort into the single player campaign were wasting time, no one that was buying the game was buying it for anything other than the online play, and lets face it, if you owned an Xbox and wanted single player, you bought Halo.

In my view, Titanfall wont attract new people to the FPS genre, but it might just steal some of the PlayStation faithful, and Microsoft knows that is something that is desperately needed.

Preview- Goat Simulator

Not that I want this to set the tone for all the content to come, but this can't be a bad place to start...

Goat Simulator. Where do you start with this game?

Well, it was developed by Coffee Stain Studios for Steam and will be released on the 1 April. As far as anyone can tell from the trailer and what little other information that has been released there is no storyline. This might not be a bit problem though; there are plenty of compulsive, popular, successful games out there though aren’t there? Let’s use Candy Crush for example, one of the most popular, small and plot lacking games in recent years.

However, Goat Simulator will not be the next Candy Crush. For those outside the bubble of know, Goat Simulator lets you play as a goat, roaming around a reasonably sized world, falling off of things, destroying other things and generally being quite ridiculous. The early signs show us a physics engine not quite like any other, with goat limbs twisting in unnatural directions and your poor four legged friend flying around in a way that will guarantee to either make you laugh or stop playing the game.

Goat Simulator will not change the gaming world. It probably won’t make much money and it probably wont have much of a following while it is selling on Steam for a monstrous $9.99 (British price TBC). Saying that, the developers will be the first people to tell you that this is a game that really should not be taken seriously and no one is going to argue with them.

This though is a game that contrasts to other current releases not just because of its physics engine: most games take themselves far too seriously and although that doesn’t make them bad games, it does often mean they lack humour. It’s not possible to argue this of Goat Simulator. Also, for those into mythology, this game takes the surreal, other worldly connotations of a goat to a whole new level.

I’m not sure many people can say they’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to live as a goat, and for the few of you out there that have, this probably wont actually give a true representation. Regardless, you will have fun, even if, like me, you’re a bit confused as to what’s going on while you’re doing so.

What's it all about?

Hi, my name, as you may have realised, is Sam Brewer. I'm a History student at the University of Exeter with an irrational and unjustified loves of games and technology.

This blog has been sparked by two things. Firstly a friend of mine writes a blog similar to this with some great stuff (feel free to take a look here http://thinkthereforegame.wordpress.com/), secondly, at the start of year I started writing for this year for Exeposé Games.

Basically the idea is to write stuff, get it on the internet and potentially get some people interested. I'll release new and back catalogue material and I hope that someone out there will have a bit of read.