This is either the worst time to get a concussion or, the curious journalist inside of me says, the best.
A week before I’m set to fly off to San Francisco for GDC, the annual Game Developers Conference, I lose my footing on a slushy mountain while hiking in NY and slam my head on a rock. I feel the world slow around me as I fall backwards, until my skull bounces off the rock I’d just slipped on and time (and pain) rushes back to me. I make it all the way down the mountain with throbbing temples, a whole lot of whiplash and a fear of rocks — a minor concussion, fortunately.
A concussion is a type of brain injury — any kind of which can be tricky. It basically means you’ve rattled and bruised your brain in your head enough that you either pass out, lose memory or, in a less worst case scenario, deal with a terrible, persistent headache coupled with long-lasting sensitivities to light, sound, etc. Depending on how bad a hit you suffered, symptoms can last a few hours or a few months. And there are tons of symptoms.
The general rule of thumb when it comes to recovering from a concussion is to take things slow. No exercise, no alcohol, no heavy lifting or taxing activities in general and, most alarming, no screens.
GDC is a meeting grounds for game developers — they’re either looking to learn, pitch and share their ideas, to hire or to get hired. Despite writing about video games for roughly 10 years, this is my first time at the show. Press can attend panels, take private meetings, go to semi-private conferences and presentations, play demos on the showfloor and go to parties at night. Though I don’t last long at the parties (and I certainly don’t drink at them), I decide to do a mixture of all of these to get the most well-rounded first-GDC experience possible.
I also decide that, because what better time to do so than at a big video game convention, I will focus on mostly new VR experiences. Probably terrible timing. I don’t know, I’m not sure. The first few days are foggy.
GDC Day One: The Calm Before The Storm
With a freshly-popped, prescribed muscle relaxant, I half-doze on the short flight from LA to SF and land some time in the late afternoon. I attend one press conference held by Ubisoft, a portion of which is about VR.
“We all knew, or at least we all thought we knew, that there were some truths about VR,” Chris Early, VP of digital publishing at Ubisoft says during a presentation. These previously-held truths: locomotion, game length and social interaction are issues in developing games for VR. You can’t move around too much, it can’t be too long of an experience and it’s difficult to create a social atmosphere within VR games. “We pretty much found that none of these are true,” Early continued. The locomotion aspect is most relevant to my current situation, but Early promises that, at least for Eagle Flight — Ubisoft’s flight simulator — the general problem of locomotion has been solved thanks to synchronized eye, ear and head movement, and tricks like a nose focal point or dynamic blinders that create a vignette shape around the screen when you’re moving particularly fast so that your peripheral vision doesn’t distract you too much.
I leave to prepare some news on a new Avatar game Massive Entertainment is apparently working on and rush off to grab dinner with some old colleagues.
No actual VR gaming today, but the best is yet to come.
GDC Day Two: Don’t Look At The Screens
It is now nine days after my questionable shoe choice led to my demise atop the highest peak in Hudson Highlands and, after I pick up my badge, my very first appointment is a VR game and CCP’s newest: Sparc.
Think virtual dodgeball but, if you’re anything like me, with a higher chance of skill improvement. You can spin the ball, bounce it proficiently off the floor or the walls and catch your opponent’s ball mid-air and one-handed. There’s a limited range in the shape of a box around you where you can reach your arms out to their corners or duck around in.
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Finally, Rick and Morty reappear. They urge me to pull a lever, opening a portal, and then urge me to step into the portal that looks out into space.
Stepping inside is weird. I almost don’t want to do it. My legs buckle a little under the uncertainty of my reality — it sure looks like I might fall into a deep well of nothingness and stars, but I know there’s carpet and a floor underneath me back in the real world.
This uncertainty isn’t the concussion speaking, it’s all VR.
After a few meetings following Rick and Morty VR, I run off to my second VR appointment of the day: Survios’ Sprint Vector. The developers boast the same kind of development fundamentals of aiming for that 1:1 tracking system: they believe their fluid locomotion system emulates the realistic experience of your virtual running as closely as it possibly can to how you’re actually moving in VR gear. Ensuring you don’t get sick while playing is all about nailing your intended motion, and translating that into your VR experience, I’m told.
Sprint Vector is currently more of a prototype than a fully-fledged game, but it feels like a fully-fledged workout. It’s a racing/running game, and there’s one track for me to try. Another tightly-laced headset strap-on and I’m off.
The track twists and turns, and so it requires me to physically turn and look around quite a bit. My head — and neck — already does not like this. My eyes, tracking around the field, are already in pain, but swinging my head around means using the muscles of my whiplashed-neck and putting more stress on my brain from all the rapid movement.
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Upright, humanoid robots come after me. I alternate between catching their bullets and tossing it back at them and turning to shoot them one at a time. I teleport myself down the street and shoot more, catching robots and bullets and shooting out robots and bullets.
I’m having the kind of fun I used to have on roller coasters, but that I get too motion sick for now. Once my heads-up display indicates I have shotguns at my back to use, I’m beaming. I throw my arms over my shoulders to grab at my virtual shotguns and shoot out at robots on my left and right sides simultaneously. Once my ammunition runs out, I toss the shotguns to the side and grab at the pistols at my waist. I’m shooting off high on the right and low on the left, switching my arms’ positions to confront new enemy angles as they creep up behind and in front of me. It’s non-stop. I’m tossing guns and grabbing at my newly-downloaded ones as they respawn on my body. When I’m in a tight spot, I teleport away and attack from a safer angle. Everything is fluid.
I’m giddy. Somehow, moving and turning around doesn’t even feel too bad. Actually, all I feel is like a badass gunslinger. Maybe it’s the day 11 recovery effect. Maybe it’s Robot Recall. Either way, I can’t believe how much fun I’m having.
Concussion Day 15: 95% Recovery
Concussion Day 1 was painful: a sharp spike to the head and a whole day of headaches. Concussion Day 2 and 3 were really bad: intense neck stiffness and pain, and throbbing temples and eyeballs. Sound, movement, light, existence hurt. I kept a heat pad wrapped around my neck and sunk into my couch on those days. Concussion Day 15 is a fairly normal day. My eyeballs still feel a little slow to move but my brain doesn’t feel slow and every step I take doesn’t feel like lighting rushing from my feet to my head anymore.
My doctor told me my minor concussion pretty much brought out symptoms for a problem I was already prone to: namely, migraines. I suspect my experience playing VR games can be summed up similarly. I never took too well to VR. Back when the Oculus was still just a devkit, I’d get motion sickness and wasn’t able to explore VR worlds for too long in one sitting. Nowadays, with advancements in understanding how certain VR conditions contribute to motion sickness and how to avoid them, my issues are more contained to matters of balance for any locomotion that doesn’t work off of zone-based teleportation like in Robo Recall or Rick and Morty VR.
So how does VR gaming stack up to a previously-concussed player? Well … just try not to move around too much if you find yourself in a similar situation.
And what does my doctor think? “It usually takes about two to four weeks for the pain to improve after a concussion so you are doing really well,” she wrote to me recently. “Keep up the good work.”
She thinks I’m doing good work.
Source: Mashable