Ben Lang has been covering the VR ecosystem for The Road to VR since 2011, which is before the Oculus Rift kickstarter even launched in 2012. I had a chance to interview Ben at last year’s Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference 2014, which was really the first large consumer VR conference. So it was nice to be able to catch up at SVVRCon again to reflect upon how much the VR industry has grown over the last year, but also where he sees VR is headed.
Over the course of 2 years, the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup has gone from a monthly meetup of 60-120 people to the San Jose Convention Center with over 1400 attendees from around the world. It’s only been about a year since Oculus released the DK2, and since that time Ben hasn’t spotted a DK1 at any VR-focused event.
Ben says that the enthusiasm about VR from the community is palpable, and that it’s important to remember that this popular resurgence of VR was catalyzed by a grassroots movement of people who wanted to make it happen. It was a corporate marketing push, but it started with people on the ground believing in the potential of this medium, and evangelizing it to their friends.
It’ll be very soon when consumers will be able to purchase a VR system that previously would have cost then tens of thousands of dollars. But yet, there will still need to be a grassroots sharing of VR on a one-to-one basis. Ben says that having a VR advocate to share their enthusiasm of VR is part of the transformative impact of having your first VR experience. People aren’t necessarily seeking out their first VR experience, but instead it’s coming from recommendations from other people that they know.
Marketing VR is a challenging problem because overhyping the potential of VR can actually have a negative backlash of setting the expectations too high. One example of this is the Samsung ad advertising the Marvel Avengers VR experience by Framestore that shows all sorts of hand-tracking, implicit haptic feedback, and interactive room-scale immersion that the Gear VR — or any consumer-level VR equipment — is capable of doing today.
Ben advocates using truth in advertising as a long-term strategy to grow the market, rather than using overhyped promises that are going to cause people to become disillusioned and disappointed about what VR is actually capable of. VR is a hard to convey through a 2D medium, and so the best way to demonstrate the power of VR is to have an actual experience of this immersive medium.
As for the future, Ben sees that there’s a lot of potential for VR experiences that make you feel different emotions. He cites some of the experiences that VRSE.works have created that get people tuned into their emotions, and that there’s a huge opportunity for more of these types of experiences.
He also sees a huge potential to extend fictional worlds that we have emotional connections to from various stories. It could just be either a meditative, emotional, scary, or creepy experience that you have to within an environment that is inspired by your favorite book or movie could be really powerful. Storytelling in VR is going to go to the next level when we are able to have interactive conversations with characters driven by AI.
Finally, Ben hopes that the VR community can maintain the tight-nit and collaborative nature even when there may be a lot of competition for the same dollars.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.028] Ben Lang: My name is Ben Lang. I'm the co-founder and executive editor of Road to VR. And I have been reporting on the virtual reality space since 2011, when I founded the website. And we're here at SVVR Conference and Expo 2015. And actually, you and I had an interview a year ago at a much smaller venue. Still exciting industry, but a much smaller It seemed amazingly large at the time. That was a collective, you know, SVVR 2014 was this collective of the VR community, and it was like, wow, look at all these people come together. SVVR 2015 is, you know, an order of magnitude larger. We just walked out of an expo floor of a hundred companies here, and it's just daunting to think I have to go wrap my head around every single one of those if I'm doing my job well, which hopefully I will. And so yeah, it's a great time, this conference, to mark one year difference, one year later. And there is every indication that things are just on an incredible rise. So it's a super exciting time to be paying attention to this space, and I'm in a very lucky position where I I do my very best to report upon what is, you know, really important in the industry and there are tons of really smart people that do the work that I report on. So I like to try to give credit where credit is due. It's the smart people driving this industry. As much as I'd love to be involved, I like to also think my role is important and getting that information out there. But yeah, it's just, the climate is crazy exciting. I mean, we're in the San Jose Convention Center, right? Carl said, from a meetup, you know, a little meetup of 20 people or so, to the San Jose Convention Center, two years. Like, that's pretty cool.
[00:01:52.290] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I was there last year, and it was kind of the inauguration of my podcast. I had done, like, three episodes. But actually, it was the pitch session that I had decided to not pitch the idea of a project and then actually switch and doing the podcast. So I said, hey, I'm going to do a bunch of interviews. And that sort of, like, kickstarted the Voices of VR podcast. So it's been about a year since I've been doing the podcast. And it's pretty amazing to look back that last year, DK1s were out. The HD prototypes were kind of the hot buzz of developers. Some of them had them and were showing them against the direction of Oculus, but DK2s weren't even out. And now, to see the level of growth and maturity of the ecosystem, how do you sort of describe that, or how do you wrap your mind around that level of maturity in terms of both the businesses and what type of experiences they're putting together?
[00:02:45.146] Ben Lang: Yeah, so like you mentioned, it was back last year. It was really funny because the DK2 was actually kind of new at the time, and so it was like Oculus had a little booth with two of them, if I remember correctly. And, you know, everybody else said the DK1, and they were like leaning around the corner, peeking over, being like, oh man, DK2, I gotta try that. I wish I had that for my booth. Now it's like you go in there, everybody is, like, there's literally zero DK1s. I haven't seen a DK1 at, like, a focused VR conference in a year, at least. And that just kind of speaks to the DK2 is a huge improvement, and there was so much adoption that people were like, this is a huge next step. It wasn't just, oh, the resolution's a little better, you know, the positional tracking added so much. And now we're here where the DK2 is like more than a year old. And now we're approaching the consumer launch, which was recently announced for Q1 2016 for the Oculus Rift. And I think the progress that's happened here and what everybody here notices as being like, holy crap, every year that we get together, this thing is exponentially larger, speaks to an incredible enthusiasm for this industry. And I have said this before, but it's worth repeating. It is a grassroots movement, like it is the ideal example of a grassroots movement. It is people who came together and said, what VR is just as a concept, we think should exist. It wasn't the corporate hand down, here's the next big thing. It wasn't a mandate from somebody else, it was a bunch of little people who said, let's all come together and make this. And you go into the expo hall over there, and the enthusiasm is just palpable. Everybody is excited about what they're doing. Everybody's excited about what everybody around them is doing. And that, I guess, is how you get a really, I mean, and it's VR. It's just an incredibly exciting concept to begin with. But these people are inventing it, right? It doesn't make itself. Michael O'Brash has this really interesting idea that he talks about, which I think he would credit somebody else for it, actually. What he says is it's kind of this idea of like technological necessity or something along those lines. This idea, I'm missing the particular term which is bothering me right now, but it's this idea that technology just kind of does progress. It just happens like magic. But that's not the case at all. It is the case of people sit down and say, we want VR to exist and let's start working toward that goal. And that's what this industry has been. Whereas if nobody ever said that, VR wouldn't just happen. It has to be made. It has to be intentional. And it takes this really interesting collective of people to have the commitment to do that. And consumers are now about to be able to just go out and buy. hardware and experience software that is better and more immersive than $100,000 VR systems and that's like crazy and they're gonna be able to do this for under $1,000 for the hardware alone. It's just like it's awesome. It's an exciting time to be alive.
[00:05:36.579] Kent Bye: Yeah, and going to the IEEE VR was interesting in a number of different ways. One of which is that I really got to see that when you think about virtual reality and the innovators and early adopters, we kind of have assumed in the consumer VR that everybody involved with consumer VR were part of those early adopters and innovators. But yet, I kind of see the people that have been doing it for the past 20 years as though those are real innovators and early adopters of VR. and that there is still that phase of about to cross the chasm into the mainstream. And so that's where I see we're at with the VR is that it's about to make this big jump of these big consumer releases and that it does still feel like in some ways that the people that are here are very pioneering and innovating and trying to figure out the content side in terms of what's going to make really compelling VR experiences. What do you think is going to be some of the critical things for VR to actually succeed when it crosses that chasm and goes into the mainstream consumer release?
[00:06:33.336] Ben Lang: I think that demonstration is really important, being able to see what this is. Having somebody next to you who's like, hey, VR is amazing and you have to try it, helps people get over that hurdle of like, I don't want to put on this thing on my face, right, this weird helmet mask thing. I've seen stuff like that, but I don't think it's cool, you know, whatever they've heard about, you know, the VR of the past. or even maybe even tried and had a bad experience. Having somebody, an advocate, there to say, this is really cool, just look for 30 seconds, transforms people. Like, it's crazy. But I think that one really big challenge is going to be, you know, people won't necessarily self-seek out VR and say, I need to go try that because it's amazing. It's almost like they have to have somebody else help get them there. to see it and understand it. I mean, I don't think I've ever put anybody in a VR experience for the first time and had them come out and say like, yeah, well... I'm just going to go home and that didn't influence me at all, right? It's always like, whoa, like, oh, can you do this? Can you do that? So the key problem is like this mass market, a million users, 10 million users, 100 million users, 500 million users. I mean, these are coming up on smartphone numbers that we're talking about and we want to get there, of course, right? But if you need to have one person convince one other person every time, if you want 500 million users, that's you have to start with 250 million. So it's like this self-growing kind of entity, where you have people like us who have tried it, and anytime somebody else comes around, it's like, hey, have you seen VR yet? And they're like, no. And you're like, get in here. And then they know. But it's like, how do the marketers, the big level marketers like Samsung, they're going to launch their Gear VR, not Innovator Edition anymore. They're going to launch the real consumer product soon. How are they going to approach that? We have events like this where people can come, but this is largely kind of everybody, you know, I would say 95%, 98% of the people here have probably used VR before. So in terms of getting new inductees to the VR empire, that's not necessarily productive for that, but that needs to happen. Whether it's in a store or some sort of, Samsung might do a traveling road show and go show VR all over the place. It's a really big challenge. I feel like the smartphone was just to draw a parallel. You go into a Best Buy, and it's there, and you touch it, and you poke it, and you see what it does. It might be useful in my life, right? If your headset is just this different thing, it's this new thing that people haven't seen before. So like I said, people who aren't already in the space aren't necessarily going to seek it out if they're not already in this very niche category of gamer, like high-end gamer. So that, I think, is one of the core challenges to growing this to true mass market levels, not just like, oh, we have a million people. we have 100 million people.
[00:09:17.333] Kent Bye: Yeah, and the thing that comes to mind is the Avengers ads. I'm not sure if you saw those with Samsung starting to advertise the Gear VR and basically creating this very highly polished version of doing all sorts of things in VR that are clearly not possible in terms of hand tracking and haptic feedback and just all this stuff that is just not there yet. And so I guess I get worried about the overpromise of what VR actually is and like setting the expectation bar too high so that you know you have another sort of like oh yeah well it's not quite at the matrix yet so I'm not gonna like meet VR where it's actually at and that's where I feel like the grassroots movement is actually able to promote VR from where it's at but yet with these big consumer launches then you know I guess I just get worried about these kind of overhyped marketing campaigns that are kind of selling something that's not really there yet
[00:10:09.363] Ben Lang: Yeah, I come from an advertising background and I think that honesty is extremely important. I think that not making claims that you can't back up or that you know are misleading is not going to actually help VR in the long term. So if you're a company who wants to profit from virtual reality and you're going to use some cheap marketing tricks to try to say, oh, we have the biggest field of view and we really don't, or we have the greatest head tracking when it's not actually great. Ultimately, you're just convincing people that your experience is really good and then they're going to come and try it and say, well, geez, if yours is this and everybody else claims to be the same thing or you're claiming to be the best, VR is not really great then, right? Whereas if you're just honest about it and say what is good about the product and not try to kind of pull punches, that is ultimately going to grow the industry larger and ultimately mean you have a larger consumer base rather than being misleading and leading people to think that VR is one thing and then have them find out it's not and actually end up not helping the overall progress of the user base. That could be harmful. Largely, I think this applies to all advertising, but especially in VR when it's a thing that is so hard to show, If you're a VR user and you're working on these marketing campaigns and you're trying to explain what it's like to a non-VR user, there's a risk that may not actually be purposeful in misleading somebody, right? Because it's hard to convey. So that's why I think, you know, back to the demonstration thing, I think it's important to have some good way of doing that. Some super accessible means of someone being able to come and see it. Interestingly because of the grassroots movement like the best place to do that right now It's like just get in touch with somebody who already uses VR or as part of this VR community And they'll be happy to bring you in and show you what's going on Yeah, and some of the most effective advertising I've seen is just reaction videos of people being like oh my god.
[00:11:58.386] Kent Bye: This is incredible You know, and it's hard to convey what they're actually seeing, but just to see their reaction, you're like, oh, what's going on there? But in terms of, you know, just to kind of wrap things up here, here at the Expo, we have over a hundred companies here. We've got a lot of players and startups and development shops that could be mainstays in the VR industry in the years forward. And I'm curious of your take of what you see really compelling of like either markets or development shops or technologies that you see are going to make a big impact on the future of VR.
[00:12:29.632] Ben Lang: I think that there is a really ripe space for just experiences that aren't necessarily, they don't necessarily have objectives, they just make you feel things. If you look at something like Verse, which is Chris Milk and his company did this really neat, it's not even necessarily a story, it's more of just a visual treat and an opening look into virtual reality and what kind of things it can make you feel. there's this train that comes flying at you in this demo and then it like explodes into birds right before it crushes you and it's like you see people react to that and they go crazy and it's like and then at the end there's this baby where you feel like you're in the womb of this baby and it's kind of weird but kind of neat and kind of something you've never felt before and this like reaches in and touches people I think this experience end of things of making people tune into emotions is really a huge opportunity that I've not necessarily seen as big as I'd like to so far. So if you've ever seen like if you ever read like a really amazing book that you you finish the book and then you're like that was a great book but I don't really want it to be over. I don't really want to leave that world that I just got involved in. Virtual reality has the potential to extend those worlds, right? To make those worlds physical. And even if it isn't necessarily a game, I mean, let's just say you're reading, you know, Lord of the Rings or whatever, you don't need to necessarily see the Lord of the Rings story played out in virtual reality. But if you can walk around some of the iconic places in that book or the forests or, you know, just sit in a forest where people have traveled through that you've read about and just hear the ambient noises. I think that this extensionary world in this high immersion space could really have huge potential. And of course, you know, gaming is huge, but that's kind of obvious, right? I think that these experiential kind of moments, these emotional, peaceful, or maybe scary, maybe creepy, kind of just experiences where people, almost like a meditation, where you go somewhere just to be somewhere, and just think, or see, or hear, or feel, I think that these could be really neat experiences that I haven't seen so much of yet. And I think that's largely because it would also be really cool to tell an amazing story in virtual reality, right? It would really be cool to connect with characters that look at you and speak to you in VR. But again, that's the obvious stuff. I think there's other areas where this is going to spill into and be really, really cool.
[00:14:51.105] Kent Bye: Awesome. Any other thoughts or anything less than said that you'd like to say?
[00:14:55.160] Ben Lang: But really just, I guess, it's interesting how tight-knit the VR community has been. And even as it grows, it still has this really nice kind of sticky good nature to it. Maybe a little change after the launch and people start really seriously competing for dollars. But I hope it doesn't because you know, it's really nice to have such a welcoming community I feel like anybody could come in off the street here and say I've never done VR before and there'd be a hundred people in that room Ready to show them something cool, even if it wasn't necessarily their product and so I guess VR industry if you're listening out there try to remember that and maybe try to be a little bit different than every other market that we see out there and
[00:15:36.941] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just to add on to that, just talking to people over the years that part of the reason why VR may have failed previously is that there was a lot of competition, and that part of the reason why it succeeded this time around is there was a lot more collaboration, and that there's still so much of VR to be figured out that we still need to help each other out and share as much information as we can and just give feedback, critiques, and all that stuff just so that we can produce the best VR that we can for everybody.
[00:16:02.107] Ben Lang: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. Awesome. Well, thanks so much.
[00:16:05.548] Kent Bye: Thanks, Kent. And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
