Oculus Rift Virtual Reality System Will Showcase Team Fortress 2 Port At GDC 2013
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The Oculus Rift, brainchild of Palmer Luckey, sounds like something made by Thor’s Hammer, but it is actually the future, or rather the present, of virtual reality. Yes, that virtual reality, for years predicted and hoped to be the apex of video gaming, beyond a host of other applicable uses in our lives. It had been rattling around in the rumor bin for a while, sopping up over $2.4 million dollars from a Kickstarter fun, and the public finally got their hands on it at last weeks’s Consumer Electronic Show (CES). The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, which is startling for such a complicated piece of gear.
Though development kits won’t be sent to game developers until March 2013 — which puts consumer versions later in the year — the trendsetters at Valve Software will beat everyone to the punch when they unveil the Oculus Rift-optimized Team Fortress 2, the popular first-person shooter, at this years Game Developers Conference from March 25-29, 2013. Two presentations will accompany the gameplay. Joe Ludwig of Valve will be hosting “What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality,” and Michael Abrash, also of Valve, will present “Why Virtual Reality Is Hard.” Both will go a long way in providing future developers insight on how the process works, which will hopefully negate some of the trial-by-error effects of working with a new kind of technology.
The $300 price tag attached to the VR helmet is relatively expensive, but seems like a bargain if the Oculus Rift really is the revolution that so many are touting it to be. But even if it is, the kinds of games it supports should be extremely thought out in advance. An already established title like Team Fotress 2 is definitely going to bring in fans looking to experience a beloved game in a new way, so it seems a sound theory that the popularity of ported games will carry over. But developers creating original games should definitely figure out how to utilize every aspect of this new-found immersion to create one-of-a-kind experiences, and hopefully none of them have anything to do with a Mario Party sequel. I have always wondered what it would be like to be a Battletoad…
