Should Oculus Invest just in AAA Studios and ignore Indies?

[pekayatt]

The Virtual Reality Market is really strange.
At the beginning there were only Indie applications and demos, almost all shared for free with the community that was eager to try this amazing new platform (DK1 and DK2 days).
Them we saw CV1 launching and GearVR, we started to see a lot of new content coming in. A lot of paid experiences, great and bad games and applications, and them we got great news from funding for amazing projects.
But since this days I only heard that Oculus ("Studios") has only invested in studios that are AAA or have been funded by AAA veterans. We got amazing new game from that, like Dark Days (GearVR) and Robo Recall, and I am very happy with that! Have any Indie studio received investment? 
Will the future of VR be in the hands of big companies like EA and Ubisoft? Or should Indies get some love? Is Oculus going against new policies of MS and Sony in the partnership with Indies?
Or would be the future something more like Mobile Gaming? Where several Indies have make great games? Where innovation doesn't stand as a "commercial" problem?

What do we need more? More games? More LONG games? More high graphics games?

Please, share you thoughts with me 😄

[Anonymous]

I'm going to be pedantic here, but Facebook funding has been given 100% to indie developers - the likes of Epic, Crytek and other producers of the AAA quality games are all indie developers...they're just AAA indie developers. An indie developer is ANY developer, regardless of size or income, that isn't tied to a publisher or platform holder by part or full ownership.

And yes, Facebook are funding the smaller guys too and have been since before the Rift launched. They didn't mention another $250m worth of funding at this year's Oculus Connect which is disappointing but hopefully they'll still be funding indie developers otherwise I won't be able to release the game I'm working on lol 😮 😄

[BeastyBaiter]

Funding should go where the most bang for the buck is. I do not have the sales information necessary to make any sort of statement on what exactly that means.

I can say that they haven't gotten a return on that investment from me. I like Robo Recall, but would have bought the Rift even without it. The only game I've purchased from Oculus Home is Arizona Sunshine, but I didn't like it much and have no clue if it received any special funding. I have a fair number of VR games, but they are direct from the developer or from Steam as they are not even offered on Oculus Home.

I mostly play traditional PC games that also have VR support such as flight sims and racing games. I also really like shooters in VR, but those are fairly rare at the moment outside of boring gun range type "games" and cover based wave shooters (fixed locations = boring imho). I do care about graphics and value as well. Most of what's offered as a VR exclusive fails to meet minimum graphical fidelity for me to be interested. I just don't care for cartoon-ish looking games or the minecraft block art style. Value wise, I'm willing to pay more for a good VR game of proper length but also believe that any game worth playing is worth spending some time with. 2-6 hour games with no replay value do not meet that standard.

[pekayatt]

snowdog said:

I'm going to be pedantic here, but Facebook funding has been given 100% to indie developers - the likes of Epic, Crytek and other producers of the AAA quality games are all indie developers...they're just AAA indie developers. An indie developer is ANY developer, regardless of size or income, that isn't tied to a publisher or platform holder by part or full ownership.

And yes, Facebook are funding the smaller guys too and have been since before the Rift launched. They didn't mention another $250m worth of funding at this year's Oculus Connect which is disappointing but hopefully they'll still be funding indie developers otherwise I won't be able to release the game I'm working on lol 😮 😄

I do understand your point, well, Overwatch was the winner of some Indie contest, so this is really a complicated field to discuss.
Nevertheless I included AAA and Veterans from AAA games, what I do believe include the likes of Epic and Crytek. In fact, Robinson and Robo Recall I would not include as Indies, since they have been "sponsored" by both Oculus and Sony.
Usually I call Indies studios and games that were not paid to create that game, but instead depend on the success of the production to get return of investments.

The main point here is: It is better to give 5 Million USD to Epic to create Robo Recall, or it is better to give 100k USD for 50 smaller studios to create more "experimental" games?

My point is that, as in mobile, people are not yet aware of how to create really good content in VR, there is the need of experiment, is not as a AAA game that you know what to do. Take a look at RE7, amazing game, horrible VR support, but at least it has VR support.

@BeastyBaiter
That is exactly what I mean, they invested a lot in things like Henry. Was that a good idea? It gave a good feedback, but that was really profitable?
On the other hand, I agree that if it is to compete with Graphical Quality, VR doesn't stand a chance, it needs time and horsepower under hoods to really get as nice as it is in PC Gaming. That is another motive that I do believe stylist games have more chance of success. One example? Limbo, it is a indie game that has great graphics, more because of the style than the realism. Even the Cup Head is a great example. Of course this are 2D games, but this could be translated to VR as well.

[Zenbane]

pekayatt said:
That is exactly what I mean, they invested a lot in things like Henry. Was that a good idea? It gave a good feedback, but that was really profitable?

The success of an idea isn't necessarily determined by its ability to obtain short term profitability. Long term impact on multiple fronts - not just monetary - is the smarter choice. Facebook is in this for the long game. Works like Henry and Lost are just one of many components that make up the building blocks that determine long-term success in what will ultimately become a self-sustaining industry.

[Anonymous]

Crytek and Epic are still independent developers, they're just independent developers that have the pull to attract big publishers and platform holders into big contracts.

Oculus will continue to fund both smaller indie devs such as myself (hopefully!) as well continuing to fund AAA indie developers. They're not better off doing one or the other, they're better off doing both.

[pekayatt]

snowdog said:

Crytek and Epic are still independent developers, they're just independent developers that have the pull to attract big publishers and platform holders into big contracts.

Oculus will continue to fund both smaller indie devs such as myself (hopefully!) as well continuing to fund AAA indie developers. They're not better off doing one or the other, they're better off doing both.

Love to hear that, but can you give me some insights about which "small" studios received fund? I believe this is a better term for the discussion, not Indie or AAA, but small teams and big studios.

[BeastyBaiter]

pekayatt said:

@BeastyBaiter
That is exactly what I mean, they invested a lot in things like Henry. Was that a good idea? It gave a good feedback, but that was really profitable?
On the other hand, I agree that if it is to compete with Graphical Quality, VR doesn't stand a chance, it needs time and horsepower under hoods to really get as nice as it is in PC Gaming. That is another motive that I do believe stylist games have more chance of success. One example? Limbo, it is a indie game that has great graphics, more because of the style than the realism. Even the Cup Head is a great example. Of course this are 2D games, but this could be translated to VR as well.

Only Oculus knows on profitability. We in the community can try to guess based on how many forum users bought it but that is of limited value since forum posters tend to be the hardest of the hardcore players. Our purchasing habits may or may not be consistent with the overall customer base.

When it comes to graphical quality, it does take a more serious PC but at the same time, I think it's reasonable to expect a fairly beefy PC from anyone willing to go out and buy a $400+ VR headset. But maybe I'm just crazy. I do see and often respond to all those threads in the support section wondering why their 10 year old budget laptop doesn't work with the Rift. :confused:

[Anonymous]

pekayatt said:

snowdog said:

Crytek and Epic are still independent developers, they're just independent developers that have the pull to attract big publishers and platform holders into big contracts.

Oculus will continue to fund both smaller indie devs such as myself (hopefully!) as well continuing to fund AAA indie developers. They're not better off doing one or the other, they're better off doing both.

Love to hear that, but can you give me some insights about which "small" studios received fund? I believe this is a better term for the discussion, not Indie or AAA, but small teams and big studios.

The developers of Dreadhalls and Technolust got funding from Facebook, and I'm hoping to get funding myself too. I just need to get a playable demo going so that they can judge whether it's worth funding or not I think. I'm hoping that me having all of the proceeds going to cancer research will do me a few favours too.

[Kevinaki]

@snowdog weren't those games already completed? I guess the funding they requested was to convert it to VR? I wish there were case studies available of the companies that received funds that showed how much they requested, how much they received, what they had to do to receive the funds, what they needed the funds for, team size, and time it took to complete the project after funds were received.