First time I fired up the first Tuscany demo in DK1, I noticed particle effects floating around me and instinctively waved my hand to try to get the "dust" out of my eyes. I paused for a moment and realized 1) there was no dust 2) I had no hands 3) I felt every so slightly warm from the imagined sun. It's come a long way from there, but Tuscany is still impressive every time I step into it simply because it feels like a place, in spite of it's pre-alpha nature. There are much better experiences in every way, but the fact that you can be totally enthralled exploring essentially a 1 room hut with a small yard for a little while is telling about just how VR works on different levels than everything that's come before it.

How long would it take you to get bored of a similar space on a monitor? Probably a minute. You'd run in, spin around, run out, run around the building and then wonder why you don't have a gun, and there are no enemies. If you think of the advancement of games technology, it was initially essentially 99% mechanics and 1% "space" (think pong, if the ball didn't move you'd have a boring picture). Games advanced and the mechanics improved, but the spaces improved more (zelda 1, amazing mechanics for it's time, but it actually felt like a world). They continued to advance and the graphics started to overwhelm even the spaces (all modern FPS games are essentially the same, minor minor differences in sub mechanics underneath other mechanics, the stories are getting dull because they've given up on innovating there since that doesn't sell, better explosions and particle effects are where it's at). But with VR we're reaching a point where the world itself can tell a story independent of the graphics and the mechanics. We have to start building from a different point. You don't say "we're going have a game where you shoot, and we're going to make it post apocolytpic" you say "we know how to make a post apocolyptic setting enticing, you want to be there. NOW what do you want to do there?". This is a subtle but crucial point to why traditional games won't translate 1:1 very well into VR. There will be both mechanical issues (motion sickness if you just slap VR support into an FPS for example) but your world will also seem like a cheap cardboard cutout compared to a world actually designed around VR. Who wants to be sick on cardboard when you could be in the deep future ruling the galaxy from your personal star ship? You can see the quality of the alloys used on your bulk heads that cost you extra credits, not just see an armor stat raise a little... And you can see it all in how the most boring thing is totally engrossing, even if it's an ugly prototype, as long as it's done with intent, for VR.