I'm not trying to imply any "lazy devs" type stuff; "unimaginative" would be a much better adjective. This is a new branch off an industry where 25 years ago, the idea of realistic physics simulations in a game was a pipe dream - to say nothing of it being able to be handled in large amounts by entire tools written specifically to make this possible in a wide variety of games. I think throwing your hands up at the idea of figuring out a stand-in for tracking like "welp, can't figure out any other way to do this for the vast majority of titles" is a bit absurd, even if it may not eventually apply to things like that dev's game which sounds like a quick proof-of-concept.
Let me add that as someone who really enjoys a type of game that is also inherently not very accessible - arcade dance games - this is something that weighs on my mind quite a bit. Are good games worth less if they exclude players by design? These days, I lean more toward yes.
You say "unimaginative" as if that's not indicative of laziness by itself; it directly implies that the unilateral solution that would work for "the vast majority of titles," is something that the developers are at fault for not finding instead of something that is simply too impractical and/or uneconomical to 'discover' and implement.
Remember that porting a VR game to non-VR game with the same level of accessibility as most would require:
- Translating hand, body and head tracking to a 2D plane
- Translating said tracking to digital inputs or one/two-dimensional analog inputs
- Redesigning the game around the lack of depth perception
- Redesigning the game around the lack of physical 'presence' within the game world
- Changing or removing in-game interactions that require physical movement from the player
And likely much more. Compared to your example of a Halo player playing the exact same game as everyone else but with a more unique method of controlling the camera the work and ingenuity required is magnitudes higher.
And, yes, VR is a more exclusive medium than regular flat games. However video-games are already a more exclusive medium than any other; by choosing to develop in either medium the developer has chosen to exclude. The problem, to me, lies in situations where the exclusivity is done without good reason; for instance if a VR game has little-to-no comfort options or if a flat game has no colourblind options or, more controversially, if a difficult singleplayer game has no way of changing its difficulty. It does not lie in situations where developers don't go the extra mile (and then some) to make what they've decided to make into something entirely different.
VRChat does it and it worked well for them. There's even lots of games like murder that people play all the time in it between vr and non-vr users.
If a bunch of hobbyists can make compelling content that works for vr and non-vr so can devs
VR Chat is a first-person chat tool. VR itself adds nothing but immersion to it. Now I don't know what 'Murder' is but the fact that a few games designed with VR in mind have non-VR versions/components does not mean that all games can do the same. There's a good reason why the
vast majority of VR games with a flat counterpart are VR ports instead of VR-focused and it's not because the developers are too lazy or "unimaginative," to figure things out for themselves.
