Tyler Realistic - #1 Index Infodump

A few days ago Valve released one of the first updates to SteamVR Home since July, and within it are some of the first leaks on a project called Citadel! A completely new Valve game that’s being worked on has been found! Is it a VR Game? Will it be talked---

[Screen fades to static and tunes into a news report]

Good Evening, I’m Tyler Realistic, and here is your much needed dose of reality. Valve will be giving the first major details about their internally created Virtual Reality head mounted display. The long rumored device, revealed to be named, “Valve Index,” is set to release this June according to Valve’s own PR manager, Doug Lombardi. However, going into this reveal, I feel as if the community needs to be explained exactly what the event is, and what will be explained, as the expectations out in the wild are very much not lining up with reality. 

Before explaining what will be stated at the event, there are a few things about Valve that need to be explained, and I’ve separated this into three categories, Communication, Expectations and Perspectives. 

This disparagement between the communities perceived expectations and Valve’s known reality is the result of a lack of true direct communication. Valve, famously, doesn’t discuss projects until they are almost ready to be released, and even then, they usually want the “software to speak for itself.” What’s happened in the last decade is a decrease in software releases from the company, and a significant increase in long periods of complete silence on many major topics. What changed was Valve’s need to survive, and what was once a move that has to occur to make enough money to continue operating, such as releasing a game, has turned into something that never needs to happen, and instead would only happen if Valve wants it to happen. This lack of necessity has chilled out the company, and has most likely resulted in some incredibly massive experimentation, such as VR in general, but while all this is changing, so too is the community. Because when a company builds it’s name of doing one thing, and is widely regarded as one of the best groups doing that one thing, then that group completely stops publicly doing that thing, the people consumers that helped build the group start to ask questions, and if enough time passes without any official answers, then the community starts looking themselves for answers. We now live in a situation where Valve hasn’t been direct or honest on a few major questions in the community for over a decade, that some, specifically including myself, have grown from children into adults in the time between the answers, and a world without answers is all that they really know, and they learn to thrive in it. This needs to be stressed, the inaccurate expectations in the community regarding what will be announced on May 1st is Valve’s own fault, not the fault of the community. 

So while Valve’s external communication is almost nonexistent, their ability to communicate internally, being between team to team, is also fairly lacking. There is no systems in place that allows an employee in the company to know exactly what is going on in the company at any given time. Now, while this is fine for most cases, as the CS:GO team doesn’t really need to know what the Artifact team is doing to create value, in other cases this is a huge problem, like if the VR hardware and software teams didn’t have offical systems to organize and communicate. That isn’t to say that the VR hardware team doesn’t know what the other team is doing, and vice versa, it is to say that it’s likely very difficult to organize a long term plan for simultaneous release. The VR software team is keen in finishing their software as quickly as they can, and although that doesn’t mean they will be doing so incredibly fast, it does mean that any and all distractions from the goal of “create game” are not valuable to the team, and therefore are not done. A great example of this is how most, if not all third party development relations are handled by the hardware or business development people, not software people.  The announcement occurring on May 1st is one made by the Hardware team. So third party titles could, and likely should be highlighted, however aside from hardware features, cost, and ship date, that’s it. 

It also seems that most people out there are expecting the Index to cost a specific amount of money, and have ideas in their heads of the announcements importance in the history of the VR industry, and from what I’ve read, most people are wrong. Under no circumstances will this kit be cheaper then the Vive was when it launched. This is top of the line equipment, and it will sell at least at cost, and likely slightly higher. Even though Valve’s profit margins on hardware may be razor thin, that doesn’t mean the hardware is cheap to begin with. This is Valve’s attempt to push the fidelity of VR hardware as far as they realistically can, and the cost will reflect that. In an interview with Greg Coomer, a very long term Valve employee, in response to a question about if the VR industry needs lower cost hardware and systems, he said. 

"For VR to catch on, that [lower prices] has to happen, but Valve actually isn't tackling that right now. Valve's kind of doing the opposite end of the problem which is increasing the fidelity of the experience, and other companies are going after cost and accessibility."

That raises some questions about how Valve perceives themselves within the industry. There are many VR enthusiasts, developers, and other independent people who have financial interests in this industry that are looking to Valve and the Index as VR’s iPhone. Meaning a product that brings together niche technologies and releases them into a product that takes the mainstream by storm. This isn’t what’s happening, because Valve doesn’t see themselves as the most important entities in the industry. Even though it’s entirely possible for Valve to single handedly make the careers of hundreds of talented creators very quickly by taking a more active, lawful good approach to how they operate, they just don’t see things like that. They are one of many players in this space, and nowhere near the most important, because that isn’t even how they think. They are creating the best VR tech, regardless of price, to set the new bar of what’s possible, and what’s expected, so that overtime, these now thought to be revolutions will become standard in other companies lower cost equipment. The Valve is more focused on creating a platform that allows other creators to organically succeed on their own terms. Valve is focused on creating the open ended, independent tools to allow this to happen. That’s why Steam doesn't have any human curation, and that’s why Valve haven't bought any VR exclusives like Facebook has. That’s why anything that comes out of the software team will work on Rift, even if you need third party software that Facebook tried to shutdown to play the Oculus games. Valve isn’t the mid-2000s apple of the games industry, Valve is Valve, and there isn’t really another company out there like them. 

So, what can a person expect to see come May 1st? The full Index feature set, the high, yet understandable price, the release date, pre-orders, and possibly some third-party title announcements and news updates. That doesn’t mean they aren’t working on their VR games, but those two teams are working on two completely different timetables.