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Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

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Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#61

Post by nilved »

daenz wrote: post #22

I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games. For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally have to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot opt out. If Facebook became this... "Sign in with Facebook"... for all comm…

If you needed a Facebook account to use the Rift, I would avoid it like I do every other service that requires a Facebook account.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#62

Post by bane »

jader201 wrote: post #9

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. > If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are. The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general --…

> It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us.

Yes, look at social gaming. At least inside the retrogaming communities, people who take a very long view of gaming, social gaming is not well loved. It's seen as a shackle not a new experience by and large. Even among new games, Skyrim and GTA V are hugely popular even though the experience is mostly single player.

There have been some good examples of it (Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, EVE), but by and large you end up with Farmville and the new SimCity more often. Both of which are horrible and/or exploitive games.

Getting dozens of spams a day from your "friends" to play this or that shallow psychological-reward hack social game on Facebook is what people are envisioning with this acquisition when what people wanted was Half-Life 3 VR edition or a Star Wars 3D game...or even non-gaming "take a virtual tour around the Pantheon" experiences.

And just as important, social games have no lifespan. I'm used to being able to pull up a 20 year old game and get it working (even on PCs with a little work). Social games in general have a short half-life. Remember the huge hit that was Farmville? Is it even still around? I dunno.

I'm definitely in the camp that thinks this acquisition will come to no good. But to be hoenst, if somebody waived $2b in my face I'd take it and skip off to a comfortable retirement in Malta without giving two shits about the community that supported it in the beginning.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#63

Post by danabramov »

lawl wrote: post #11

Yeah well, I don't buy this. However, I think Oculus could easily kill any doubts over that aquisition by promising to release an open source driver. Because that would mean that even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttions, there's still the option to build an alternative open source universe using the open source driver. Personally I think that would restore my faith in the Rift.

>even if the Rift universe they built is beeing crapped on by like buttons

Why do a lot of people keep repeating this? Does Google create self-driving cars to show ads on the windshields? I just don't get it. What on the earth makes you think Facebook bought Oculus to show ads and like buttons inside your games? If, if VR becomes the Next Big Thing, will the like buttons “from the old Facebook“ matter as much, or will the social need to be re-imagined anyway?

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#64

Post by dwc »

kybernetikos wrote: post #18
officemonkey wrote: post #10

I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit. But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that? I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site. But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with t…

I pretty sure that they want to create something like a successful second life - i.e. a VR social network, where users have their own virtual property that they can customize and virtual spaces where they can meet. Basically something like the metaverse in Snowcrash. And I can completely see the high ups in Occulus thinking that this is a brilliant match of visions.

> Basically something like the metaverse in Snowcrash

More like the Oasis from Ready Player One, but owned by the Sixers from the start.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#65

Post by pnathan »

In the final analysis, deeds define you and your company, not words.

Oculus sold to Facebook. Fine. Oculus doesn't have to fundraise anymore, and has a theoretically unlimited R&D budget. Facebook has the cloud expertise to handle virtual worlds at scale. These are valid reasons to be acquired.

But more fundamentally, there are a variety of large corporations with big pockets that could have done the merger.

Facebook's interest will be in jamming the virtual world full of ads and mining the smallest action to increase ad sales. And everyone understands this and knows this. Google's interest would have been similar, but perhaps skewed towards AR and Glass integration. Microsoft would have likely skewed towards selling corporate VR solutions (these exist(ed) already, but have not gotten press or wide adoption). MSNBC or other media corp would have wanted more to sell talking heads and ads. Etc.

I don't much care about the gamer community here, but I really wouldn't want the VR world to be a 3d representation of Facebook (something I fled years ago).

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#66

Post by danabramov »

daenz wrote: post #59
officemonkey wrote: post #10

I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. Instagram definitely has location and social graph data to exploit. But Oculus? What is FB going to do with that? I think most people still think of FB as the site and advertising sales for the site. But if you see FB as a conglomerate like Google, Apple, and Sony then it makes more sense. FB is diversifying, buying up promising technology with t…

> I think it's because nobody understands what FB is going to do with it. I've been thinking about this Facebook acquisition for a little while, and in my mind, the only play that makes sense for Facebook is to become the login gateway to Oculus games. For many Windows games, there's Windows Live...a social-ish, login service that you literally have to register and sign in with in order to play the game. You cannot o…

Seriously? The only reason to own a VR problem is to stick in “sign in via some website that used to be popular in the old web“ button? What would it give them anyway? Drive up Facebook usage on the old web?

I don't understand why most people think Facebook is so dumb in this thread.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#67

Post by samstave »

jader201 wrote: post #9

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. > If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are. The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general --…

If FB wanted anyone to believe they had some mighty vision in social gaming, then why didn't they buy out Zynga or other game companies like that that actually had massive userbase on their actual platform.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#68

Post by venomsnake »

One thing I don't get is why did it have to be acquisition. If FB had just acquired 10-30% of the company at 2G$ valuation and left control to the other people they would have had once again first class access to the technology but the backlash would have been smaller.

Acquiring stake validates the technology. Buy outs - they mean you try to lock the other away from it.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#69

Post by bane »

baby wrote: post #47
jonlucc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that they think the public is becoming more alright with the acquisition because the anger is slowing. It's like they don't understand that after all bad news, the stories and comments about it will wane over time.

The anger slowed in a matter of hours though, it was pretty fast.

Probably because, like me, we've all just written off the OVR and are looking elsewhere. $2b means this is a non-reversible path that fighting against will go nowhere.

As exciting as Carmack and Abrash appear, neither of them have been at the forefront of 3D work in the last decade or so and have a monopoly on good 3d tech.

Re: Oculus Says They Didn't Expect Such Negative Reactions to Selling to Facebook

#70

Post by s3r3nity »

bane wrote: post #62
jader201 wrote: post #9

> Beyond our core community, we expected it would be positive. > If you actually understand [Facebook’s] vision of letting us be who we’re going to be, just like they wanted to let Instagram be who they are. The reason people don't get this -- or at least, why I don't get it -- and thus responded negatively, is because VR should have nothing to do with Facebook's vision, and Facebook -- or social gaming in general --…

> It's hard for many to see anything under the umbrella of Facebook doing a service to gaming -- look at the direction social gaming has taken us. Yes, look at social gaming. At least inside the retrogaming communities, people who take a very long view of gaming, social gaming is not well loved. It's seen as a shackle not a new experience by and large. Even among new games, Skyrim and GTA V are hugely popular even th…

Depends on what you mean by that -- The Halo & Call of Duty franchises have been getting by on great social multiplayer experiences. (Halo also has a great campaign, but I digress...)

The great experiment & test of your theory would be to see something like Titanfall only last a year or so, since it's ALL a social/multiplier experience.

In theory I think social gaming has strong networking effects that have to potential to cement a game, especially in crowds that aren't maybe hardcore gamers. For example, I thought one of the best things to come out of the Zynga era was the fact that middle aged mothers were the core gaming segment. Why is this awesome? Because as a life-long gamer I thought it was awesome that more than teenage boys were welcome into the community, regardless if the niche/genre was not my style.

Yes, there are a few problems that no one has quite figured out yet in regards to hyper-social, and solutions have been kind of lazy at best, but there's a big market opp here for somone who DOES figure it out.

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