Opinion: TIME Illustrates Virtual Reality's Uphill Battle

TIME's cover story on the future of virtual reality, and its associated profile of Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, made waves across the gaming landscape yesterday. But lost in the flurry of reactions to the goofy, meme-ready photos and odd, tone-deaf nerd-shaming, was a reminder of a simple reality: virtual reality has won over our relatively small community of tech enthusiasts, but it has a long way to go to entice the mainstream that it needs.

The reactions were vicious. Some Twitter prognosticators even gave the dire prediction that this would kill virtual reality. Keep in mind, though, that this was ostensibly meant to be a positive story on the potential of VR. The cover called it a "surprising joy" and argued that it would "change the world." It called Luckey and others like him "visionaries." None of this would sound out-of-place in the hands-on previews and impressions we've given of the various devices so far. So why did it ignite such a firestorm?

Sure, the photos of Palmer Luckey, photoshopped akwardly into various settings with mouth agape, look silly, but let's be honest. From the outside looking in, virtual reality does look silly. Wearing the headset can be a transformative experience, but observing someone else wearing it isn't. Instead, it's consistently dull or even humorous. Just watch Andrew playing horror games.

In a way, the TIME cover story simply illustrated the fact that we all fear about virtual reality, and one we've touched on before. First-hand experience is required to really understand the appeal. We can read about it, or watch videos that show someone else's reactions, or even see gameplay trailers that use visual symbolism to illustrate being immersed inside a world. What we can't do is experience it without an expensive headset, and in the case of virtual reality, experience is everything.

That makes the task of selling to outsiders particularly daunting. It's no secret that Facebook has bigger plans in mind for Oculus, and we've seen plenty of speculation that the future holds great things for VR. But if TIME showed us a visual representation of how awkward and unappealing it is to be on the outsider end of an Oculus player, imagine how it must feel to be someone just learning about the device.

In fact, "outside looking in" is more than literal in this case. TIME lacks the reach it once had, but it's still a major name in publishing that represents an older but still vital mainstream demographic. If virtual reality really will change the world, it needs to be a disruptive technology that's widely adopted. Devices like tablets and smart phones have become commonplace because it's a technological concept that's easy to explain. Even older, non-tech-inclined people now regularly use devices like the iPad or Kindle to read books. Virtual reality defies such easy comprehension, and that's its major obstacle. Without really meaning to, TIME reminded us of that uncomfortable fact.

So will this magazine cover story kill virtual reality, as the most pessimistic reactionaries suggested? Doubtful. But the danger here isn't that TIME is going to change public perception of virtual reality. It's that it's reflecting an unappealing perception of virtual reality that already exists.

It's easy for us to become wrapped in our insular community, and coming off E3 this year, the ascendance of VR certainly seemed like a foregone conclusion. However, there's a whole world out there to win over for the technology to really have an impact. It's not going to be easy. TIME didn't make the task harder, it just reminded us how hard the task is.