cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Do you think developers are thinking enough about gaming fatigue?

NoRestarts
Protege
In my opinion, developers are making some great experiences, but haven't put a lot of thought into long term gameplay using the touch controllers. Standing experiences are great, but after a certain amount of time you just want to sit down. The amount of time varies, but it's certainly not in the same ballpark as some of the marathon sessions I've had on my PC monitor.

I've been able to play a lot of standing games just fine while sitting in a chair. Some games, like The Unspoken, all the action takes place in front of you, so there is no need to turn around. In other games, like Robo Recall and Arizona Sunshine, you can teleport to change direction and look behind you. Once I mastered that mechanic, I was able to play the games moving only my head and arms. Turning my body became a pointless exercise, and I was able to play the game for much longer periods.

Is it just me, or has anybody else been having a fun time in the rift and had to put it down because of fatigue, wishing you could still play, and then went back to playing 2D games on a monitor or console?
23 REPLIES 23

Expediter
Expert Protege
I have been playing ONWARD starting at 9 pm and going to bed around 4am on Saturdays. I have not noticed any fatigue well playing and I'm all over the place playing that. From prone to standing on my toes trying to get a better look over a wall.

 Now that I have VR I kinda enjoy being active in games, and playing a game where I sit and do nothing (or worse use a controller) just doesn't seem interesting to me anymore. 

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Expediter said:

I have been playing ONWARD starting at 9 pm and going to bed around 4am on Saturdays. I have not noticed any fatigue....

We see a common issue of personal experiences overarching the actual wider audience experience. This was seen with some posters saying they preferred gamepad against Roomscale, or they did not see the God-Rays, etc.. Just because you don't see it yourself does not mean it is not an issue for the minority (or majority).

The reality is that fogging HMD's (and users glasses), fatigue and sweat - have all been issues discussed by developers of content. Though the new VR games may be AAA quality and offer great play, the fatigue and the issues this brings has seen a curtailing of 'long' play experiences (best illustrated by the short burst-play nature of Robot Recall).

More and more devs are speaking about the best timescale for a VR experience in a single play - and the magic three minutes on a highly active game seems best for "arcade style" games - while other users can use Tiltbrush and the ilk for hours at a time with no issue. We will see some games perfect for long duration while others are best played in "short bursts".

Another aspect to consider is the physical fitness of the user and their stamina. Many feel that the Nintendo Wii was mired in the long-term by the highly repetitive and physical nature of its offering - that at some point the player-base got over the novelty of the controller and tired of the strenuous nature of many of the games. Home gaming in the whole a more sedentary activity than many would like to admit.

For those working on VR Arcade approaches the idea of "arcade style" play model is perfect and could be a factor in which games we see played more in an Out-of-Home entertainment venue setting against those that will entice the home users. 
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

zork2001
Heroic Explorer

Bought a motion stool with the VR cord above your head on a pulley makes for a great sitting VR experience. You can spin around, lean forward, pick things up from the ground and have full range of motion all while sitting. Was just playing Robo recall in the Stool last night.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFOX34WDSw

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
Looks interesting. B)

There has been an explosion in posture-promoting chairs and stools.

For a list (and price) of some of the unique ones, try this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1158680/Are-sitting-comfortably-The-latest-chairs-gadgets-...
https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

kevink808
Superstar

zork2001 said:

Bought a motion stool with the VR cord above your head on a pulley makes for a great sitting VR experience. You can spin around, lean forward, pick things up from the ground and have full range of motion all while sitting. Was just playing Robo recall in the Stool last night.



Ummm...no.
Rift-S, Quest 128GB, GO 64GB.

NoRestarts
Protege


zork2001 said:

Bought a motion stool with the VR cord above your head on a pulley makes for a great sitting VR experience. You can spin around, lean forward, pick things up from the ground and have full range of motion all while sitting. Was just playing Robo recall in the Stool last night.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozFOX34WDSw



That's one solution. What I've taken to doing is dropping the virtual floor and playing in a regular swivel chair. To do this, in the Oculus configuration menu, set your height to whatever your actual height is, then it will then want you to put on the headset and run a scan. Sit down in a chair, before running the scan, and the system will look at your head position and subtract whatever height you entered in the configuration menu. What this does is move the virtual floor lower than the real floor, which allows you to play a game while seated, but in the game it appears as if you are standing (thanks to nalex66 for telling me how to do this).

What I would love to see is either an option in the Oculus home menu to adjust player height (in a similar fashion to centering the camera), or an option in game to switch between a sitting and a standing position. That way you can stand when you want, and sit when you're tired, but still be able to play the game.

While there certainly are gamers who enjoy moving about, there are also gamers who just want to sit on their couch and game for several hours (or more) without breaking a sweat. While the benefits of physical exertion are undeniable, you are not going to get these second type of gamers out of their chairs and exercising, overnight. There needs to be enough low activity (and enjoyable) games out there to keep that second group satisfied, to keep them using the system, rather than falling back to traditional PC or console games, which aren't as physically demanding.


Anonymous
Not applicable
Gaming fatigue is for wimps. Thanks to my SAS/Ninja training it isn't a problem for me lol  😛

NoRestarts
Protege

snowdog said:

Gaming fatigue is for wimps. Thanks to my SAS/Ninja training it isn't a problem for me lol  😛


Somehow I don't think you're representative of the typical hardcore PC gamer. My guess is that most gamers (myself included) are less like ninja's and more like this:

6gos3ox5rctd.png

YoLolo69
Trustee
I agree. A Robo Call session for me over 50yo can last more than 1hour standing up. I'm thinking about a solution I'm working on:
phea8zbp2f62.jpg

“Dreams feel real while we are in them, it's only when we wake up that we realize something was strange.” - Dom Cobb

"Be careful, if you are killed in real life you die in VR too." - TD_4242

I7 10700K,  RTX 3070, 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz, Oculus Rift CV1