A year ago I told Palmer Luckey's story, about how he'd invented what would become Oculus Rift in his parent's garage. He was the boy wonder swept up in a rollercoaster of success after John Carmack demoed his VR headset at E3 2012. Zoom went the Kickstarter campaign; zoom went the flood of excited, experimental game support; zoom went the increasingly massive piles of money raised by investors. A year later he was a millionaire, and now, two years later, he's a multi-multi-millionaire, his company acquired by one of the biggest around, Facebook, and for a staggering $2bn.
It's against that backdrop I meet him face-to-face at Gamescom 2014, and I have lots of questions. I worry Facebook has changed Oculus' priorities and that games - those things so responsible for putting Rift on the map - are no longer the reason for being, the prime concern. I worry Palmer Luckey is drifting with Oculus VR into a sea of money, on a boat stuffed with well dressed corporate clones who shave each morning and smell... neat. Bye bye games, thanks for the lift.
It's encouraging Luckey is here at all, mind you, at a games show half-way across the world for him. And when I emerge an hour later I also feel reassured; Luckey and his co-host, co-founder Nate Mitchell, are genial and generous with their time, and they're making all the right noises. Those noises I've loosely grouped into topics below.
from Eurogamer.net http://ift.tt/1xa67Vm
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