A good friend of mine worked in VR for quite some time before I did, and a while before I got into VR (this was while I was still skeptical about it, more info on that here), I asked him what the prospect of VR was— and he said (roughly) the following:

“VR is a bubble. But! After it has launched, it won’t burst. It’ll shrink and solidify down to a solid foundation and slowly grow from there.”

VR’s “Bubble”

VR had a HUGE launch — articles touting VR becoming the next revolution of gaming. Investors threw over a billion dollars into VR (Lots of it to the elusive magic leap). It was really hyped, it had people interested, people wanted to see it, learn more. They wanted to be a part of it.

VR’s life has shared a lot of parallels to that of the life of a star. A space star, not George Clooney. (I have a degree in space, you didn’t think I’d sneak a blog out without making a reference, did you?) A star spends a long time slowly growing, and growing, until it rapidly expands and becomes HUGE and hot. It stays there for a little while, until it explodes and becomes a much smaller, denser star. A foundation for things to orbit around, to grow(ish) around. The star didn’t die, nor was it ever “dying.”

And thats what happened to VR. It slowly grew over the past few decades, then it rapidly grew. This past year it exploded, and whats left is a solid, foundation. You’ve actually probably heard of this before — it’s called the Gartner Hype Cycle. I’m not a huge fan of the graph exactly, but the general terms and progress work.

(Ring Nebula, Source: APOD.Nasa.gov)

So, what we have now in VR is a quickly solidifying foundation. VR isn’t failing, it’s doing precisely what it means to. A lot of people focus on the negative, and you admittedly hear about the “negatives” of VR more often than the positives (guilty!). But, that doesn’t mean it’s dead or dying. For those statisticians and scientists keeping track at home, this is called observation bias.

We have many individuals and groups and of highly motivated, highly energetic artists, writers, programmers, designers, composers, engineers, business people, investors — all a part of that foundation. We’re moving forward with VR, building a foundation. A code, a doctrine, a bible or whatever the heck you want to call it, is being built for VR, for the future. Yea, it might sound stupid to you that we need to create something like, design do’s and don’t, or a standard for managing social interactions. But these are 110% necessary for creating a solid foundation for VR.

Simply put: VR isn’t dead and it’s certainly not dying. It’s died down… but thats OK.

So chill out.