Playing with Virtual Reality: Early Adopters of Commercial Immersive Technology Maxwell Foxman Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Maxwell Foxman All rights reserved ABSTRACT Playing with Virtual Reality: Early Adopters of Commercial Immersive Technology Maxwell Foxman This dissertation examines early adopters of mass-marketed Virtual Reality (VR), as well as other immersive technologies, and the playful processes by which they incorporate the devices into their lives within New York City. Starting in 2016, relatively inexpensive head-mounted displays (HMDs) were manufactured and distributed by leaders in the game and information technology industries. However, even before these releases, developers and content creators were testing the devices through “development kits.” These de facto early adopters, who are distinctly commercially-oriented, acted as a launching point for the dissertation to scrutinize how, why and in what ways digital technologies spread to the wider public. Taking a multimethod approach that combines semi-structured interviews, two years of participant observation, media discourse analysis and autoethnography, the dissertation details a moment in the diffusion of an innovation and how publicity, social forces and industry influence adoption. This includes studying the media ecosystem which promotes and sustains VR, the role of New York City in framing opportunities and barriers for new users, and a description of meetups as important communities where devotees congregate. With Game Studies as a backdrop for analysis, the dissertation posits that the blurry relationship between labor and play held by most enthusiasts sustains the process of VR adoption. Their “playbor” colors not only the rhetoric and the focus of meetups, but also the activities, designs, and, most importantly, the financial and personal expenditures they put forth. Ultimately, play shapes the system of production by which adopters of commercial VR are introduced to the technology and, eventually, weave it into their lives. Situating play at the center of this system highlights that the assimilation of digital media is in part an embodied and irrational experience. It also suggests new models by which future innovations will spread to the public. Table of Contents List of Charts, Graphs, Illustrations ii Acknowledgments iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Literature Review 14 Chapter 2: Methods 52 Chapter 3: Virtually Everywhere: Media Coverage of VR 71 Chapter 4: Content Creation in VR 117 Chapter 5: VR Development in New York City 148 Chapter 6: Meetups as Sites of VR Adoption 193 Chapter 7: The Rhetoric of Early Adopters 218 Chapter 8: Playful Adoption 247 Chapter 9: Why Do I Play? 279 Conclusion 320 Bibliography 336 Appendix: Meetups and Industries 364 i List of Charts, Graphs, Illustrations Figure 1 Time magazine cover, August, 2015. 1 Figure 2 The 2017 VR Landscape. From the Venture Reality Fund 9 Figure 1.1 The Virtuality Continuum. See Milgram et al., 1995, p. 283. 18 Figure 2.1 Number of meetups attended over the two-year period. 57 Figure 2.2 Demographic information collected and observed based on interviews. 60 Figure 2.3 Professional interest of interviewees. 62 Figure 4.1 Immersive meetup membership in NYC for June, 2016. 143 Figure 4.2 Immersive meetup membership in Los Angeles for June, 2016. 144 Figure 5.1 Industries focused on Virtual Reality at observed meetups, 2016 - 2018. 158 Figure 5.2 Industries focused on Augmented Reality at observed meetups, 2016 - 2018. 159 Figure 5.3 Industries focused on Mixed Reality at observed meetups, 2016 - 2018. 159 Figure 5.4 Industries focused on 360° Video at observed meetups, 2016 - 2018. 160 Figure 5.5 Industries Without an explicit focus on immersive technologies at observed 161 meetups, 2016 - 2018. Figure 5.6 Top 10 company appearances at observed meetups, 2016 - 2018. 161 Figure 5.7 The top 20 immersive media companies in NYC based on "CB Rank" from 164 Crunchbase.com. Figure 5.8 Proportion of hardware, software and other services provided by top 165 immersive media companies in NYC on Crunchbase.com. Figure 6.1 Locations of NYC immersive meetups attended from 2016 - 2018. 205 Figure 8.1 A Playbor Production System 276 Figure 9.1 Attendee playing Space Pirate Trainer. 314 ii Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank the many Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality enthusiasts who so honestly and wholeheartedly let me observe and interview them over the course of this study. They are the bedrock upon which this document is built. I would like to sincerely thank my adviser Todd Gitlin for not only the many spirited conversations we had regarding the medium of Virtual Reality, but also for giving me the freedom and respect to pursue the technology. I would like to also give special thanks to my chair Andie Tucher. It was her constant guidance on all parts of the dissrtation that brought it into being. I am truly proud of how this work has turned out in no small measure as a result of her excellent recommendations. Furthermore, I would like to acknowledge and thank the other members of my committee, Brooke Erin Duffy, Robbie McClintock and Dennis Tenen for their detailed comments and thoughts both before and during the defense. This dissertation came together because of the many peers and colleagues who sustain my intellectual inquiries. To that end, I would first like to thank David Nieborg, who has acted as a consummate professional and intellectual sounding board, Charles Berret who inspired key sections of this dissertation, Pete Brown who provided input on methodology, and Peter Schaefer who offered invaluable advice about my academic pursuits. I come from a unique department where the counsel of fellow students remains one of the great joys of research. I would like to recognize Colin Agur, Burcu Baykurt, Gal Beckerman, Jonah Bossewitch, Diani Citra, Rosalind Donald, Elena Egawhary, Shant Fabricatorian, Alexandre Goncalves, Bernat Ivancics, Joscelyn Jurich, R. H. Lossin, Malwina Lys-Dobradin, iii Kathryn Montalbano, Travis Mushett, Lluid de Nadal, David Noel, Tracy O’Neill, Ri Pierce- Grove, Annie Rudd, Soomin Seo, Caitlin Shure, Madiha Tahir, Danielle Tomson, Angela Woodall and Emilie Xie among many other incoming and outgoing Comm PhD students for their unceasing intellectual curiosity. Some of the theoretical work for this dissertation was the fruit of great conversations of the “Doctoral Reading Group on Organizational Ethnography,” a consortium of students from NYU and Columbia. Thanks to Elizabeth Anne Watkins, Andi Dixon, Kevin Lee, Larah Lebovitz, Anat Hurwitz and Rohini Jalan for exploring all that is Organizational Ethnography. Finally, I must acknowledge Gloria and Margaret Foxman. The two of you make everything I do possible through your neverending love, encouragement, consultation and care. Thank you. iv 1 INTRODUCTION On August 6, 2015, Time Magazine's cover heralded the coming of a new age: Virtual Reality (VR) would "change the world" and "revolutionize the way we live, play and learn" (Stein, 2015). Splashed across the cover was a photo of the VR wunderkind and Oculus founder Palmer Luckey. Figure 1. Time magazine cover, August, 2015.1 Wearing the iconic "Rift" headset, which was acquired (along with his company) for $2 billion by Facebook, Luckey, described as a "tinkerer," hovers, arms outstretched, almost in mid- 1 "TIME Magazine The Surprising Joy of Virtual Reality," Time, accessed March 12, 2018, http://time.com/3987059/in-the-latest-issue-41/. 2 flight. In a pastel polo and jeans, eyes concealed by the head-mounted gear, he floated above a beach with the tether of the Rift stretched out into the distance. The image is awkward and goofy. It is the portrait of an unlikely harbinger for the latest and greatest technology, or at least that is how he had been dubbed in enthusiast and mainstream media. Unsurprisingly, the cover was quickly lampooned, and photo-montages appeared of the suspended Luckey on ponies, flying through the air with Peter Pan and the lost boys and in the arms of Leonardo DiCaprio on the deck of the Titanic. Even the article demeaningly compared him to other "Silicon Valley nerds." Together, the picture and text created a dissonant view of Virtual Reality as an eccentric innovation; hardly an inevitability, but rather "A Surprising Joy." This attitude—at once optimistic, sarcastic, and guarded—has bedeviled the slow adoption of Virtual Reality over the last six years. Starting in 2012 with Oculus' Kickstarter campaign, when it surprisingly met its fundraising goal in 24 hours, the medium has increasingly diffused to the wider public, spurred by significant corporate investment and hype from media outlets, while hardware manufacturers vie for commercial dominance. Despite past failures and nagging skepticism, Virtual Reality—or at least the idea of it—is gaining popularity, even though its technological cousin "Augmented Reality"2 is stealing some of its limelight. But who are its faithful admirers? Why and how are they spreading its gospel? Current users have a different agenda from innovators like Luckey. They are not necessarily the offspring of major tech and games companies that manufacture devices, or outlets for venture capital that are looking to profit from the technology. Instead, this group of enthusiasts, excited about VR's potential, are independently