After extensive beta testing through App Lab, Gun Raiders became Quest's first free-to-play multiplayer shooter game on October 7th, 2021. VR gaming is currently niche, but Gun Raider's combination of free play alongside arena gameplay has proven lucrative in gaming. Games like Call of Duty and Fortnight are household names. For VR, this means the successful creation of this type of game is lucrative to the mainstream adoption of VR gaming and therefore, mainstream VR adoption beyond gaming. Because of my familiarity and comfort in playing similar games on different hardware, Gun Raiders was the first game I downloaded On the Oculus Quest 2. This is important as this genre of games is synonymous with gaming culture. Other game studios are developing competing experiences, like VAIL VR. The creation of an immersive, accessible, free, first-person shooter game like Gun Raiders could accelerate or impede the development of the XR industry as a whole. That is why this analysis of the Gun Raiders VR experience for Oculus will focus on breaking down if Gun Raiders designed reality achieves social presence, embodied interaction, and cognition as these are the traditional aesthetic qualities of immersive media. When designed right, players will achieve immersion.
To begin, the main draw to download Gun Raiders is the opportunity to experience a social presence in an arena style battle. I and many others have had their first Gun Raider experience only to enter a room or map void of players. When players do pass by it’s a quick flash of an avatar in a black suit. This makes you feel as though you have no chance of interacting with your competitor if they don’t just shoot you right there. The agency to customize your avatar's appearance seems to be coming in a future release. That could be an easy way to begin enhancing the games social presence because it would help other players feel more approachable and individual.
Beyond that, the lack of social presence in Gun Raiders VR is a result of the lack of UI that promotes community during gameplay. It is difficult to tell who's in the space with you and who's coming and leaving. Not to mention, there are no real-time updates of what players have been shot and who made the shot. This removes dramatic agency from the game as you feel detached from what’s going on in other parts of the map. The only way to see who's playing Gun Raiders is to use the Oculus Social friends list in the game friends feature. You would need to add each other as friends and allow friends to view your activity in the privacy settings for the functions to work normally. Building a UI that promotes community would enhance Gun Raiders' social presence as well as enhance the game's narrative.
As Gun Raiders is a multiplayer game with no single-player option, social presence is essential. Despite these barriers, Gun Raiders has cultivated a vibrant following. These users often compensate for the game’s design owe’s by planning battles in the game developer-endorsed Discord channel and their subreddit. Even though there are workarounds, Gun Raider's current social presence hinders the game's likelihood of mainstream success. How can you become immersed when you have no one to play with? When there are people online, it becomes a separation between the advanced and newbie players. Advanced players avoid newbies because they get a protective shield that makes them almost impossible to kill. Many Gun Raider fans have raised the point that this is unfair and makes the game boring. Game developers could enhance Gun Raiders' social presence with dedicated maps for new and advanced players.
Next, future design iterations of Gun Raiders should improve upon embodied interaction and cognition to help users better understand the game’s environment. For example, if you want to aim straight ahead in the game you must point your real hand at the ground. The mismatch between the real world and Gun Raider's designed world prevents immersion. What is the point when you can play Xbox? In the same vein, Gun Raider’s melee weapons can be changed and retrieved when pressing the change weapons button then making a selection from a weapon wheel. This follows suit of many commonly known games on XBOX and PS4 but in VR it prevents immersion as it is not a natural flow. Creating natural flow is an essential part of the aesthetic immersive quality of embodied interaction and cognition. This interaction should be embodied by making weapons retrievable from a place, like over the shoulder. Reaching over the opposite shoulder could allow you to get the weapon before the current. This natural movement allows you to get weapons quickly without removing you from an immersed state. As it removes the need for the change weapons button and the weapon wheel. The order of the weapons and preferred shoulder could be customized in settings. Just imagine your typical game. Suddenly you want to get a katana, you just pull it over your shoulder and start chopping, everything is simple. No need to open the weapon wheel.
Beyond that, Gun Raider's weapons themselves lack embodied interaction and cognition. Fans of the game agree to feel a Bow is missing from the current weapons offered. That is because a bow used in a shooting game like this plays up the aesthetic qualities of VR. This is because it adds to the experience through the sensation of "squeezing" and "releasing" the bow alongside haptic feedback like gradual controller vibration. To elaborate, the initial speed and distance of the arrow will increase step by step according to the amount you squeeze the controller. An accessible alternative could be the power of the arrow could increase in steps according to the time the bow is squeezed, and the player's movement speed decreases in steps. The lack of a bow speaks to the fact there are no weapons in Gun Raiders that use the aesthetic quality, embodied interaction and cognition, to their advantage to make gameplay immersive Lastly, one major issue with Gun Raiders' embodied interaction and cognition is the control to adjust the gun tilt like there is in other popular VR shooter games such as Pistol Whip, and Gun Club VR. Adding the option to customize the gun angle, user height, trigger sensitivity, and auto-aim will all bring the game closer to the user's world. Some might say that this gesture is respectful of the user’s space but I disagree. Safety is paramount and if you can’t put your hands out in front of you I don’t think it’s safe to use a VR headset at all in that space. The more you allow a user to move their body the more their sense of cognition.
In short, Gun Raiders Entertainment Inc.'s namesake game Gun Raiders could be an important link to mainstream adoption of XR beyond gaming. That is only if developer's build upon the social presence embodied interaction and cognition in their experience. Only then will the game be truly immersive and put players in a state of flow. There is a clear gap between what is offered for VR multiplayer shooter games and what is wanted and Gun Raiders could be it.
