When I wear my Oculus Quest 2 headset, I look ridiculous and I don’t care. Imagine: thick, retro-futuristic goggles that you clip to your head while holding two joysticks in your hands. Anyone who watches you play VR games will see you gesticulate wildly and move inexplicably while playing EDM, or while poker chips rattle on a poker table, or toxic waste bins explode.
I have long been an early adopter of new technologies. I like gadgets, but VR never spoke to me. Until Silicon Valley could promise me a holodeck experience, I wasn’t interested in the virtual. And then a cable network sent me a VR headset as part of an advertisement for a new show. I put the headset on (it doesn’t require a computer or cable) and immediately became absolutely obsessed.
Photo: Michael Murtaugh
It turns out that spending time in a virtual reality is a lot of fun, especially when the reality is … a terrible mess. As ridiculous as I look, when I put the headset on, the world falls away. And the virtual world is surprisingly impressive. The user interface is intuitive and the apps are great fun. There is Walkabout Mini Golf, an enchanting mini golf game that is unexpectedly convincing. The 18 hole courses are whimsical and I don’t understand how it all works, but it really does feel like I’m on a mini golf course. (The game is also more fun with an adult drink, just like in real life.) Superhot VR is a strange first person shooter where you shoot amorphous characters on different levels. You have to dodge bullets and various enemy attacks, and the longer you play, the more you feel like Sydney Bristow doing your business. If you’re still not moving, there are ping pong, bowling, and exercise apps. You can watch movies on Netflix, listen to music, travel to exotic locations and attend concerts.
One of the things that Oculus doesn’t emphasize nearly enough is how much training you can get with most of these games. In Beat Saber you hold two lightsabers in your hand and have to destroy flying boxes that are coming your way – the beats of the music show not only when, but also how. It swings, crouches, slides from side to side while trying to keep up with the increasingly frenzied pace as you advance through higher levels.
Photo: Flutter Entertainment
But my favorite game is PokerStars VR. I’ve been playing poker for over 20 years. I played online when internet gambling was legal. I was playing in bars for the wrong money when the poker craze hit the nation and suddenly poker was everywhere. Before the pandemic, I played Hollywood Park Casino a few times a month and whenever I travel I am always looking for a good poker room.
When I found PokerStars VR, I desperately missed the casino, the shabby energy, the hours huddled over the poker table and flipped up the corners of my cards, surrounded by overly talkative men who always, always underestimated me. In VR, you can only use play money, but people take the game seriously. Really seriously. As in real life, it is mostly men who play and they still underestimate women. They talk endlessly. When they lose to a hand they disapprove of, they scold and rave about how terrible you are at poker. Two hands later they are playing the same hand and pretending to make a brilliant move. There are funny people and assholes and very, very weird people.
The technology isn’t perfect, but after a few minutes of getting used to the virtual environment, I believe I’m at the poker table. You can buy all kinds of silly virtual props to play with at the table – cigars and cigarettes, an alien in a tiny UFO, guns, swords, a can of hairspray, a birthday cake. There is a core group of players so many people make friends and create poker leagues and servers on Discord. If you top the weekly leaderboard, you can earn rings. Players who have won a ring or three wear them and don’t bend as subtly. As a very competitive person, I always try to get to the top of the rankings. I still have no success. I’m a good poker player, but I’m undisciplined, which doesn’t work in my favor. The ranking list is reset every Sunday evening. I tell myself this is the week that I’ll be playing my best poker. The vow is almost as compelling as virtual reality.
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