Even though no one actually has one of the shiny new VR headsets in their hands (or on their heads), the roadmap to the platform’s success is becoming clearer. For gamers, it’s a no-brainer. They’re already on board. For HTC Vive and Oculus Rift to become integral to our daily lives, VR needs to become a social experience. Luckily, how exactly developers are making that happen is also finally becoming clearer, too.
“The first applications of VR that are standalone games are going to be incredibly cool when we first see them. But the interconnectedness and the growth that the Internet enabled, that is what we are going to see with virtual worlds,” says Philip Rosedale, one of the founders of Linden Lab, the company that built the virtual world Second Life.
With 1 million users that in total earned $60 million last year by selling virtual goods, Second Life proved the viability of virtual worlds. Rosedale has since cofounded High Fidelity, which is working on software to make virtual worlds for virtual reality. And he isn’t the only one that is working on a future with social VR.
Read the full article at Fast Company.