Ex-Valve staffer thinks VR MMORPGs are a bad idea

Fabian Giesen is a programmer and he worked at Valve as a contractor through nine months in 2012 and a further three this year, helping it develop virtual reality technology. With a gig like that, you'd expect him to be champing at the bit to see VR hardware like the Oculus Rift hit the mainstream and for developers to really push the boundaries of what gaming can be. On the contrary though, he's really not impressed with the VR future we've envisioned and thinks it could actually be really bad for everyone involved.

He's not just bad mouthing the technology for the sake of it mind you, or because he doesn't know what he's talking about. Giesen has tried many VR prototypes and is excited about the programming aspects of working with such hardware, making demos that feel real and for the potential applications of being able to do things in a virtual world that then effect the real world. VR has huge possibilities, but it's the gaming side of it that Gieson believes is far too solitary.

This image, created by Eran Folio, has become somewhat synonymous with the idea of VR making us hide from the real world

“The endpoint of VR […] seems to be fundamentally anti-social, completing the sad trajectory of entertainment moving further and further away from shared social experiences. (As I have mentioned multiple times, I find the limited, formalized, abstracted and ultimately alienated social interactions in most forms of online gaming to be immensely off-putting),” he said.

On top of that, he sees the future aas one dominated by adverts. 

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