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Half-Life: Alyx

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Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#211

Post by outworlder »

mlindner wrote: post #200
aresant wrote: post #54

I think a fascinating part of Alyx is Valve choosing a female protagonist. 85%+ of VR users are male, compared to say 70/30 male/female balance of say Fornite. (1/2) Any way you carve it the audience for Alyx is going to weight heavily male. And research suggests that gender-swapping in VR is a profound psychological experience: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8260949 (1) https://www.rakutenintelligence.com/blog…

Female protagonists in game is the new fad. It has nothing to do with the gender ratio of the players playing the game.

As sibling posts are pointing out, that's not new for Valve at all. They have been doing this for decades at this point.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#212

Post by dvtrn »

riversflow wrote: post #199
zerocrates wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When Valve puts their full muscle and creative energy behind something as a flagship, lead-off hitter, they've yet to disappoint. Genuine question: when would you say is the last time they did that? I don't really think of Dota 2 or CS:GO or whatever to be "flagships." I'd have to go back to, Portal 2, I guess, but I'm not sure even that I would call a "flagship," just a really good game. Certainly the Orange Box a…

Seriously curious, how is CS:GO not a flagship? It’s core to the esports scene, and is always one of the most played games on steam.

A great deal of CS:GO (minus the Source engine) was developed by another studio with, admittedly, a lot of collaboration and investment from Valve, so in this case when I think "flagship" for a game studio it's referring to a game built by employees and developers of the studio as a first-party.

At least, in my initial comment, that's the intention I had in mind.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#213

Post by swalsh »

atonse wrote: post #10

A cool idea that I'd never ever ever try. Half Life 1 on low res was scary enough. In all seriousness though – is there any studies done on potential PTSD-like effects that arise from this sort of VR game?

I play mostly FPS games in VR. To be honest stabbing a dude was a pretty jarring experience the first time I did it in VR. I also remember hitting the ground pretty hard the first time I heard rounds whizzing over my head. But that kind of adreneline pumping experience goes away really quickly. Once it's normalized your body stops having a reaction to it.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#215

Post by habitue »

kbenson wrote: post #95
whatshisface wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're all waiting with bated breath to see if Valve can push VR into the mainstream with this or anything else they do. I'm not going to buy a kit just to play glorified mobile games, but if this is really the future of entertainment then I can see myself buying a headset.

> I'm not going to buy a kit just to play glorified mobile games I assume you're referring to the Quest? Is that a statement based on your experience playing games on it, or what you assume they'll be like? I view it less like mobile games, and more like games put our for the Gameboy. Specifically tailored to achieve good and consistent gameplay based on the target platform. This is partially because Oculus is being…

Valve is clearly pushing their own Index hardware with this game

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#216

Post by cwkoss »

foolfoolz wrote: post #112
mmanfrin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate how popular Half-Life was. The #1 game played on steam right now is a former HL mod, Counter Strike. I don't think the market for HL is small at all. VR, though, is a different story. That absolutely limits the market. That being said, I'd wager that a majority of people who play VR games on PC will likely buy this game, as it's probably the first true AAA title developed specifically for VR…

counter strike is a completely different game than half life. it's been sold as a separate game for decades. just because they share a former history doesnt mean anyone who is interested in counter strike is interested in this new half life game. i'd say its almost completely opposite userbases. one more hard core competitive multiplayer fps, the other casual single player VR. VR is an incredibly small market and i t…

Counterstrike and TF both started as half life mods.

This is going to expand the market vastly because it will make it much cheaper to develop quality VR games. In a couple of years, I predict the average purchase of this game will be to play the mods rather than the core game.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#217

Post by canada_dry »

> "Hammer - Valve's level authoring tool, has been updated with all the game's virtual reality gameplay tools and components.

Community built environments are possible - that's a pretty huge thing!

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#218

Post by shadowgovt »

purpleidea wrote: post #12

Pretty lame that there's no Linux support. Valve was supposed to be on our side. Oh well :(

How is Linux support for VR in general? I wonder if Valve looked at the ecosystem and decided Linux support at this time would be volunteering to boil the ocean.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#219

Post by fhood »

criddell wrote: post #210
fhood wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to play games that make them sick. Ever. It will not happen. This is not a solved problem, and VR will never be anything but a niche technology until you can walk in a video game without needing to throw up.

Not all video games involve walking or lots of motion. I think a game like Myst with puzzles that you manipulate with your hands could be pretty interesting.

Oh for sure. And there are clearly great games that can fully utilize VR, such as beat saber. But obviously VR lends itself best to a first person experience (though maybe that doesn't need to be the case) and the best examples of these games (Doom for instance) are not full experiences in VR.

Re: Half-Life: Alyx

#220

Post by cdirkx »

fhood wrote: post #180
cdirkx wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do people still get motion sickness from 3D movies?

1. A movie is what 90 minutes? 2. Movies aren't often filmed from first person perspective for any length of time.

I'm merely curious, as when 3D movies came out a major complaint against them was that people got sick from watching them.

From my very thorough research (googling "3D movie sick", and looking at the dates; all from the period 2010-2015) this doesn't seem to be a big problem any more. Now this could of course also be because people have just accepted that it is not for them, the people who get sick don't talk about it any more, or people in general have just moved on from 3D, but it does make me wonder. Could the motion sickness not also just be a temporary thing for VR?

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