Some of the best virtual reality games developed for the Oculus Rift headset will come from independent developers, according to Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey.
In an interview with Polygon, Luckey said the makers of the Rift are trying to support game developers — especially indies — as much as possible because the success or failure of the virtual reality headset will be determined by its content. Oculus VR wants to make it as easy as possible for developers to make Oculus Rift-supported games.
In addition to announcing that both Unity and Unreal Engine will support the Rift, Luckey told Polygon that Oculus VR will also provide hardware and software support to developers.
"There's never been a virtual reality headset with a really good set of tools that makes it easy for game developers to work with it," he said. "In the past, if I wanted to support a VR headset, I'd have to get a headset, I'd have to find a tracker, integrate that with the headset and build all the software myself. I'd have to do recording and warping and everything. We provide all the tools to developers.
"There's never been a virtual reality headset with a really good set of tools that makes it easy for game developers to work with it."
"We're built into Unity and Unreal Engine, which a lot of games are made in. If I'm a developer, it's very easy for me to make my game support VR. It's not a huge research project. It's something you can have one guy working on, and get it at least sort of working in a couple of days and you can really flesh it out in just a few months."
Nate Mitchell, Oculus Rift's VP of product told Polygon that he believes some of the best experiences will come from indie developers taking risks and building new experiences, some of which will hopefully have mass market appeal.
"If the only games that Oculus has are Hawken and Team Fortress 2, we're not going to have a consumer mass-market appeal," he said. "But if you have something that appeals to a much broader audience say, for example, Minecraft, then that's very different.
"We're most excited by those made-for-VR experiences that the indie community will build," Mitchell said. "The more indie devs we have building games for communities and families, the more interesting and fun experiences there will be."