What kind of content will dominate virtual reality and why?
VIRTUAL & AUGMENTED REALITIES
COMING IN SEPTEMBER
The end of content as we know it?
You could argue that with virtual reality, the division between content and non-content ceases to exist. After all, inside a virtual reality simulation, all is content, or nothing is. This dual or undefined aspect of virtual space will have a profound impact on the types of uses we will find for the technology – which really means the kinds of content (or non-content) that will thrive there.
Difficult to predict
In a recent report and article by Business Insider analysts have attempted to predict the ways in which virtual reality technology will change the wider content production business.
The key problem so far seems to be that content developers are unwilling to invest much time and resources on content for VR headsets until these are widely used and offering a certain quality user-experience. A classic Catch-22, if you like.
And this makes predictions difficult. Beyond what is quite obvious, the report does not start to explore the potential revolutionary impact virtual reality could have on content-production as a whole.
While – if everything potentially is VR content, how can old content production models survive?
You’re the producer
As with the advent of the Internet, VR technology promises to upend the relationship between old-school content producers and the audience.
If you can record a 3D format video and project this to anyone in the world with a VR headset, you can become a vital part of a very wide content production landscape.
Imagine a Google search that delivers 3D VR headset videos that will show you what a place is like to walk around in, what a nightclub is like to be in on a Saturday night – and that multiple such videos exist for your various queries. What role will traditional content producers find in such a space?
If everyday life is one of the ‘key pieces of content’ for virtual reality, we are no longer exclusively dealing in content mediation and production via professional third-parties.
The continued role of entertainment
But judging from past media and internet consumption, people will probably not adapt VR technology to reinvent daily life, or: they will mostly be prevented from doing do so by international media and tech companies intent on selling entertainment and advertising.
Gaming, TV-shows, films, Yoga-instruction – this will probably be filling up your VR headset. VR will not so much be revolutionary as it will be a way of making us even more addicted to the things we are already hooked on.
There will of course be room for VR content that isn’t there to strictly entertain you, but this will be co-opted by already existing business-models that favours ad-bought content above the type of stream you recorded as you walked in the park, with your running commentary playing alongside, your epiphany, that: all is content and nothing is – but ‘real’ content costs money.
Or maybe it will be completely different. Let’s see when everyone walks around with a VR headset on, in a few years time. Or, when everyone is sitting at home with a VR headset on.