Rethinking the Virtual Reality Bust

About a decade ago I was coming around to the conclusion that, certainly as judged by the expectations of the '90s and the unceasing hype inflicted on us by the press, the actual rate of technological change has been wildly overhyped.

I have, of course, found that not only is this not a popular opinion, but that people tend to jump right down your throat when you express it. And sure enough, right after expressing exactly that opinion on a radio show I received an e-mail contesting it. As I had pointed to virtual reality as an example of how technological developments were falling far short of commonly held expectations, they did not fail to dispute that particular point, insisting that all the popular video games "these days" were based on "virtual reality."

Equating virtual reality as I did with what we were promised back in the '90s--full bodily immersion in a more or less convincing virtual reality with which we can interact haptically--I thought this was an extreme lowering of the bar on every count, so much so as to leave us not talking about the subject at all. Later, however, I encountered the arguments of economist Edward Castronova, who in books like Synthetic Worlds distinguished between the "hardware" and the "software" of virtual reality. The hardware is the equipment by way of which we experience a virtual reality, like the gear that would enable that bodily, haptic immersion in a convincing reality; the software what renders the world that we would be so persuasively immersed in. Castronova admitted that the hardware had been oversold--but argued that the software, the creation of artificial worlds which people experience, had most certainly arrived in such forms as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). As he acknowledged, people experienced them through a small two-dimensional audiovisual display, but already millions happily spent tens of hours a week there, and in the process became quite deeply involved in their avatars and their doings.

As of early 2021 it seems we have had another boom and bust where the hardware is concerned. The technology has certainly become more developed and more accessible. And certainly it has been making a bigger splash in gaming than its '90s-era equivalents ever did. Yet it seems to be falling short of the everyone-will-own-several-of-them ubiquity supposed to be imminent for the last five, six, seven years. And it is not hard to see why. Inadequate technical performance in areas like resolution and frame rate, "clunky" hardware, and the high cost of the requisite gear, make for a prohibitive combination indeed. And so at the very least the technology's affording the kind of physical immersion a standard part of the vision a generation ago, certainly in a way that would make it appealing and accessible to a really wide audience, seems some years off--awaiting, among other things, still lighter, faster, cheaper computers.

Yet there is no question that the software of virtual reality has only gone from strength to strength. When Castronova wrote Synthetic Realities single MMORPGs had been used by hundreds of thousands. Now single games of the type have had hundreds of millions of accounts opened (Runescape the record-holder here, with a quarter of a billion), and many have millions of active users at once. It might be added to this that much of what was once unique to MMORPGs--customizable characters interacting in a shared online world--has expanded far beyond the mostly high fantasy-oriented role-playing game to become a standard feature of gaming from first-person shooters to puzzlers, considerably lengthening the list of users in the process. (It has also helped that the hardware needed to access them in the more modest fashion we take for granted has gotten cheaper and more convenient. Back when Castronova was writing MMORPGs were still something people accessed primarily via desktops. Now they take the 2-D experience of those worlds wherever they go, on the laptops, tablets, smart phones they consider bare necessities, through cityscapes where everyplace anyone goes is expected to afford satisfactory Wi-fi.)

Indeed, it does not seem for nothing that, realizing early on just how consequential virtual reality software running even on primitive hardware could be, Castronova warned that we would see an "exodus" to the virtual world from this one, driving those concerned with the welfare of this world to make reality more palatable. This is not to say that I think such an exodus--or even the fear of such an exodus--prompting reform to make this world a better place, has ever been very plausible. So long as humans have bodies out here in the offline world, with their requirements for food, protection from the elements (e.g. shelter, clothing) and the rest, and the necessity of paying for the gadgets, electricity, Internet connections and the rest without which they cannot have online fun at all, there can be no exodus, really. Instead people have to submit to the demands of this world, regardless of its terms, something of which may be said of the way one "Worst since the '30s" economic catastrophe has piled atop another, the price of everything but one's own labor seems to go up endlessly, and the word "millennial" is equated with a revolution of falling expectations--with, indeed, life expectancy in America falling for years, even before the pandemic.

Consequently, rather than an exodus to wonderful worlds online, or a happier reality offline, what we have got is a rising tension between the allure of the online and the unavoidability of an ever-less rewarding offline existence. Economic necessity prevails in the end--and will so long as the bills have to be paid. But as anyone who gets out much knows only too well, a good many people steal every moment they can from the onerous duties of offline life for online experience--relying on their devices to make their commutes tolerable, and looking at their screens in class, or even on the job, whenever they can get away with it.