What new genres will VR open up?

We previously spoke about how virtual reality, specifically the HTC Vive with its hand tracked motion controllers and room-scale tracking, will bring back certain genres from the dead. Point and Click titles, Rhythm games and rail-gun shooters all have a chance of becoming popular genres again thanks to the very nature of VR.

But as exciting as that is, virtual reality has us champing at the bit for something new. What can we do with virtual reality that we can’t do with traditional game genres? What kinds of new experiences is virtual reality bringing that we can look forward to?

Climbing Games

Climbing is a fun sport to take part in, but the idea of playing a game of it with a keyboard and mouse or perhaps with a gamepad isn’t the most exciting. In virtual reality though, it could be truly breathtaking. The giant vistas as you scale monumental landscapes and buildings, the tense feeling as you dangle over huge precipices – the sense of scale you get from VR is very real, so there’s a lot of potential in this sort of experience.

And in-fact there already is a couple of games that are taking advantage of this. Crytek’s The Climb, is the first high-end title to attempt this sort of game and it works rather well. It features climbing walls and real world locations, letting you climb up a canyon or a mountain in the Alps, as well as a few other locales. It’s a stunningly pretty game and you get a real feel for how high-up you are when in virtual reality

Unfortunately at this time it’s an Oculus Rift exclusive and therefore can only be played with a gamepad. While there are mechanics like holding gently with a trigger and re-chalking your hands to make it interesting, the reality of reaching for holds when you yourself are stood stock still with your real-life hands at your waste, isn’t as engaging as it could be.

This is a game that needs motion controls for your hands, badly. Presumably it will gain that added support when Oculus VR releases its Touch controllers towards the end of this year, but in the mean time it feels a little gimped.

Fortunately Paintey exists. It’s still in the very early stages of development, but the developer has implemented climbing functions, which lets you use the Vive controllers to haul yourself up buildings when you aren’t painting them from your trolly.

It’s a start, but a strong one. I wouldn’t be surprised to see us all hauling our asses up everything that we can in a few years’ time.

Painting/Drawing games

Paintey actually acts as an excellent segway into our next category: art games, more specifically: painting and drawing experiences.

Unless you are doing something professionally or consider drawing or other art forms your hobby, you are unlikely to spend much time painting or drawing to pass the time. If you’re playing games, you’re playing games. But games based around drawing and/or painting have a lot of scope too, especially in VR.
The one experience I’ve spent the most time with since I began playing around with virtual reality is Google’s TiltBrush. It lets you paint in Virtual reality, which might sound dull, but in reality it’s fantastic. You can paint entire virtual environments for yourself to spend time in or explore. You can create a cabin, or a dragon, or a mountain-top – whatever your imagination decides.

Better yet, you can even watch it back afterwards in real time as you painted it, letting you show everyone just which brush strokes went into your latest masterpiece.

It’s even proved fun for fashion designers, with people ‘painting’ 3D dresses and then stepping into them to see how they look.

But if none of that strikes your fancy or you don’t think you have the skill for VR painting, VR sculpting with pixels is also a lot of artistic fun. SculptVR is already out there making it a reality and some of the constructions people have made with it are simply staggering.

While they aren’t going toppled FPS and RPG genres any time soon, VR painting is going to be something a lot of people spend a lot of time doing in the years to come.

Games with no purpose

Although perhaps less likely to stand the test of time than the other two entries in this series, for now, random games with almost no purpose are proving a lot of fun too. Two games that have drawn lots of praise and lots of hours of people’s lives, include ModBox and Job Simulator, two games where there is no point to their experience whatsoever.

In the former, you can mash items together like a VR Gary’s mod and can simply make up something for yourself to do, while in Job Simulator you are given some basic tasks to perform. In either case though, there’s no way to win, no real point in playing and yet they are some of the most fun you can have in VR.

Throw things at people in Job Simulator, make their food wrong or irradiate their pets – who cares, it’s fun and experimenting and discovery are all part of that.

While that sort of useless experience may not have a place in VR a few years from now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some ‘games’ where you just sit and fish on a dock, or lie back and look at the stars. Games designed with relaxation in mind.

Maybe we won’t call them games at that point, but that’s their genesis in VR and I’m excited to see what else I can do in experiences designed with little purpose in the future.

Image source: MixiinosChannel/Youtube