Oculus Rift Reaction: Think Not Of What You Can Do For Facebook But What Facebook Can Do For You

So I went to bed, woke up, and Facebook bought Oculus. If that doesn't slap you in the face to make you wide-eyed, nothing will.

And while Oculus has nothing directly to do with ROG, making this editorial seem a bit strange here; ROG is a gaming brand that listens very closely to the gaming community and ASUS as a whole is a company that prides itself on diversity of products: AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Qualcomm etc: if it's a good platform - the right platform - we're behind it! I've been reading the reactions - both high and low profile - and discussing the potential of such a deal online. Here is my reaction.

The views and interpretations are quite polar: from Notch's very public 'I quit', looking at it in a direct way:

"Facebook is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts. Facebook is not a game tech company. Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build."

to CTO John Carmack voiced a brief example of what might be the benefits:

I have a deep respect for the technical scale that FB operates at. The cyberspace we want for VR will be at this scale.

— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 26, 2014

Now I can't fault Notch's perspective that - yes - Facebook itself and Facebook gaming is about as far differentiated from those of us who want Oculus and VR to happen, as chalk is from cheese. This is something that John Carmack himself commented on as recently as 2011 in an interview titled: Facebook offers the 'Walmart experience of gaming'. As an SLI toting, VG248Q GSync modded gamer, this is what Facebook games feel like to me too.

However, Carmack's interpretation of what Facebook offers in server infrastructure, technology expertise and scale (as well as funding) can yield something that Oculus VR would never have otherwise had the opportunity to grasp. Facebook is as much leading technology company as it is the biggest social one so it's pretty evident that Farmville (or whatever is played now?) is not 'Facebook the company', and I'd be extremely surprised if their intention is to create the next Second Life MMO as a direct tie-in. The bottom line: we as gamers can benefit from this!

It's also worth noting that (at the time of writing) neither company has made a public statement on future roadmaps and intents, and even if it  eventually does go pear-shaped, the huge wake of Facebook will inevitably yield alternatives and similar start-ups looking to jump into a growing marketplace. 

I'd like to encourage gaming fans to take a wait and see approach. To encourage and support Oculus (and other open PC solutions) to stay committed to their PC gaming roots (hopefully with 3rd party co-operative opportunity wink-wink,) with Facebook supplying bundles more opportunity, rather than insisting on a login prompt.

Addendum 26th March 2014:

Well shows how effective my GoogleFu is. An article by CNN Fortune/Tech reference's Mark Zuckerburg's statement on the buyout, emphasizing Facebook's vision is much bigger than games.

After games, we're going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face -- just by putting on goggles in your home.

The team at OR posted their own blog post too:

At first glance, it might not seem obvious why Oculus is partnering with Facebook, a company focused on connecting people, investing in internet access for the world and pushing an open computing platform. But when you consider it more carefully, we're culturally aligned with a focus on innovating and hiring the best and brightest; we believe communication drives new platforms; we want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see virtual reality as the next step.

So gaming is still their first port of call, but the fact they have a greater vision than only gaming is not a bad thing. PCs, for example, are not just a gaming platform, yet we still make it our own for gaming (and gamer's are still a strong growth market!). Equally we don't demand Nvidia and AMD abandon any other market ambition other than GPUs for gaming; that Microsoft and Sony drop everything for Xbox and PlayStation. If you don't need the other aspects the Oculus Rift team aspire to, then simply ignore them and continue to strongly voice positive support for the ones that matter to you!

Further into the statement they backup the other aspects John Carmack briefly touched on in his tweet, and ones I encourage gamer's be mindful of:

This partnership is one of the most important moments for virtual reality: it gives us the best shot at truly changing the world. It opens doors to new opportunities and partnerships, reduces risk on the manufacturing and work capital side, allows us to publish more made-for-VR content, and lets us focus on what we do best: solving hard engineering challenges and delivering the future of VR.

This all benefits us consumer directly as it can yield cheaper products that can be faster to market. I like the partnerships part too: I'm certainly available for testing!! Call me!

Addendum 2: Mashable has a great post on the subject too.