Technologies have made an impressive leap forward in the last decade, and VR gaming is no exception. The VR gaming technology provides brands with many benefits and helps them improve customer experience and expand in the niche. If you have thought about making your brand more successful and competitive, you may be better off adopting Virtual Reality in gaming. Be that as it may, what is VR gaming, why is it helpful to businesses, and how do you use the technology to develop games? The following article sheds light on each of those aspects.
What Is VR Gaming?
In short, VR gaming means playing games in the Virtual Reality environment, which is simulated and immersive and uses VR hardware. Virtual Reality centers around the first-person perspective to bring the most tangible experience of the real world while in specific gaming accessories.
Types of VR Games
Despite many VR game classifications, two stand out. First is the category based on the VR gaming experience. Simple as that, such experience is either stationary or room-scale:
- Stationary: Games relying on a stationary experience have a limited number of moves. For instance, different simulators use VR stationary experience, with affordable accessories like Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard designed for such games. Businesses short on a budget usually lean toward this type of VR gaming.
- Room-scale: With a room-scale VR experience, it’s much more complex. Not only does room-scale experience allow for head-tracking, but it also controls other moves with hands. This type is considerably more immersive and lets users merge with the virtual gaming environment. However, it requires more advanced sets of accessories.
There is no need to provide genres in which VR operates. From racing to shooters to sandboxes, VR games entail nearly any genre. Instead, it’s better to break them down into the platforms where users can play them. These are:
- Smartphones
- PCs and laptops
- Game consoles
Benefits of VR in Gaming
As a business owner, you may wonder: how could virtual reality games benefit my brand? There are many reasons to believe that virtual reality video games positively influence the company and its image. Let’s look at three fundamental advantages of VR in gaming.
Assigning more value to the company
Honing in technologies these days portrays your brand as a player who thinks strategically about clients and the company’s value on the market. With soaring competition, businesses have to look forward to polishing their products. Implementing VR in gaming will help attract more people and prove that you are well-aware of cutting-edge technologies. It will also lead to higher profits, recognition, and reputation.
Providing a clear vision and philosophy
Developing a virtual reality game requires thoughtful planning, passion, and dedication, but its benefits outweigh the efforts. VR technology will help you envision your position in the future transformed game industry that will most certainly depend on virtual reality games and become a mainstream technology.
Giving a significantly better gaming experience
The gaming experience has become mesmerizing and fully immersive thanks to VR accessories. Offering users to play games through various VR gaming accessories and devices, you automatically take your game-developing brand to a new level.
Virtual Reality Gaming Accessories
The variety of virtual reality gaming accessories is overwhelming, from pointing devices to suits and treadmills. Below, however, we outline essential accessories enabling players to dive deep into your game and feel its ins and outs.
Headsets
A headset is part and parcel of any virtual reality game, and it resembles goggles with two mounted monitors inside, serving as a window to the 3-dimensional, artificially created world. As mentioned earlier, headsets vary by price, setup (tethered/wireless), and experience. More advanced headsets, such as Oculus Quest 2 or HTV Vive Pro 2, offer full eye and head movements, thus providing a room-scale experience.
Gloves
Gloves for VR gaming have been viral lately for a reason. With the industry’s development, games have been focusing on providing a more profound experience related to the sense of touch. Gloves allow for picking up objects and carrying even the tiniest items, and they are also excellent pointing devices.
Gamepad
Controllers like gamepads or joysticks are standard in Virtual Reality games. Although more solid alternatives exist, such as gloves, gamepads are time-trusted devices that give users an exquisite gaming experience, especially when paired with headsets.
How Expensive Is VR Gaming?
With all the benefits VR gaming can provide to your brand, it’s crucial to consider the costs of such implementation. Virtual reality technology gaming isn’t cheap, and the price depends on numerous factors, from the game complexity and type to software used and game developers hired. An approximate cost for a primitive VR game would range from $5,000 to $10,000. The price will most certainly soar if you plan to create a more complicated game. The motion capture technology (the thing that generates human avatar animations for video games) can cost a ballpark of the mentioned price range just for creating a single motion capture system. In addition, remember that you might also need to find an appropriate facility, hire personnel, and seek expert support–this will all add to the costs. You can expect the prices to increase even more if you want a custom VR game.
How to Develop VR Game
Assume you plan to develop a VR game. Where do you start? While approaches range, these steps will come in handy when building a virtual reality game:
- Selecting the device: Once you decide on the genre and its available modes (single/multiplayer), it’s vital to determine the type of your game, mainly whether it will provide a stationary or room-scale experience and be playable from smartphones, laptops, PCs, or consoles.
- Choosing the graphics: Specifying the design and graphics is the second step toward creating a VR game. You can purchase readily available assets from reputable resources or hire a 3D professional to develop graphics from scratch.
- Deciding on an engine: After you choose graphics and the platform, your next move is to pick the VR game engine. The game-developing heavy hitters in this niche are Unity, Unreal Engine, CRYENGINE, and BuildBox.
- Testing & launching the game: Once everything is polished up, you are ready to release the game.
Of course, the mentioned is a simplified view of the VR game developing process. In reality, it requires more complex steps to ensure the game ends up amusing and, above all else, coherent and successful. Suppose you are looking for low-cost, practical solutions. In that case, WE/AR qualified professionals are at your service to help you realize your virtual reality gaming endeavors and boost your business shortly! Contact us at hello@wear-studio.com and leave your request; we’ll reach out to you momentarily.
