Cover Your Eyes

Unless you’ve had a Virtual Boy stuck to your face for the last week, you’ve probably already seen the Time Magazine cover featuring Palmer Luckey.

Just in case you haven’t, here it is again. If you’re a fan of VR, you might want to look away now.

Luckey, the founder of pioneering virtual reality company Oculus VR is pictured prancing around on demi pointe like a forest nymph on magic mushrooms. In one click of a lens shutter, he went from being the face of the virtual reality revolution to its dancing monkey.

Of course, you can guess what happened next. Exactly; the good citizens of the internet rallied around Palmer to defend his honour and intelligence and the whole affair was never mentioned again. Actually, that’s a lie. Instead they did this:

And this:

And this:

I could go on, and on, and on… and on.

Unless Palmer had just acquired a controlling interest in Photoshop, this seemed like a bad business move. Gerald Ratner bad. The collective response was perfectly encapsulated in one tweet:

@Noodlecake Games “Did @TIME just kill VR with this cover photo?”

All of which is absolutely fine. I completely understand the derision the Time cover has received and the concern over the potential damage it has done to this fledgling sci-fi fantasy. Currently, there’s a massive hit to your wallet and an even bigger one to you self-esteem in just putting one of these headsets on. And all, judging by Luckey’s spritely stance, so you can be Neo performing the Nutcracker.

It’s not hard to imagine Palmer arriving for work the next day at Oculus HQ and being greeted with a similar reception to the one Donald Trump would receive turning up to guest edit the Feminist Frequency blog.

All that said, though. On seeing the original picture for the first time, my instinctive response was:

1.What the hell is he playing? Some sort of rickets simulator? A Grease dance game (Ah-wella-wella-wella-oooo)? Followed by,

2. Whatever it is, it looks awesome.

Before the Time photo, I was pretty lukewarm on the whole idea of virtual reality. Like voice and motion controls (remember them!), I thought VR had some potentially cool applications, but I had serious concerns they would be lost in an industry-wide race for ubiquity and a quick buck. In an ideal scenario, I wanted virtual reality to be seen as another string to video-gaming’s bow, not some sort of doomsday weapon to be used to crush all alternative forms of entertainment.

Since VR systems like Oculus and Sony’s Morpheus started to be unveiled, the thing that’s been emphasised over and over again is that simply describing them can never do them justice, you have to experience them. To date, I’ve seen nothing that conveys that message anywhere near as strongly as that one picture of Luckey footloose and fully Facebook funded.

Sure, Time could have gone with a different leading image. Repurposed a part of the ghost of VR past. Something from Tron or The Lawnmower Man, perhaps. It would have been slightly more respectful, but much less memorable.

Until now, the term ‘virtual reality’ has always been a by-word for failure. Scientific idealism over technological ability. This is a snapshot of a new horizon. A fresh hope. To me, this photo was one that said that there’s something inside that headset that’s worth the money and public humiliation. Palmer doesn’t look like he’s peering into a pair of gimp goggles; he looks like he’s gazing into the future. Perhaps, he’s even foreshadowing, prophetically recreating the exact pose all the people who looked at him, laughed and made a beeline for message boards will strike the first time they don a Rift device.

Along with all the clever cut-and-paste jobs I’ve seen, the image the Time cover made me think of the most was this one:

It’s easy to assume that somewhere right now Palmer Luckey is busy flushing his own head down a toilet for being the dumbest nerd in school. But he’s still on the road to becoming a god of virtual reality. I mean, what in heaven is he looking at? I’d love it if it was just a menu screen.