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Facebook has removed a virtual reality shoot-em-up experience from a tech demo at a top American conservative conference after recieving criticism for being "tone deaf" following last week's deadly school shooting in Florida. The social network has a presence at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in Maryland, this week, including a booth running a demo of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. This demo included a first-person shooting game.
People on Twitter have criticised Facebook for running this demo so soon after the deadly shooting attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead.
The game, Bullet Train, was just one of a number of standard Oculus games/demos that Facebook has included at public events. In fact, Bullet Train has been around since 2015, and the team that made it released a full game called Robo Recall, funded by Oculus:
The game will be an Oculus exclusive — that company is funding its development — and the five-to-ten-person team that created Bullet Train has ballooned into a full 15 person team at Epic in order to turn this into a real game with a release date in "early 2017." It will include a number of graphical jumps from Bullet Train, and this benefits Epic in other ways as well.
Yet, Facebook still tried to distance itself from the original demo:
The demo for the game, called "Bullet Train," is being developed by a third-party game-maker, not Oculus, the company said.
Why is Facebook at CPAC? Probably as part of an ongoing effort to placate conservatives angry at the platform.
This comes a few months after the Puerto Rico hurricane VR debacle.
Also at The Guardian and The Hill.
(Score: 3, Touché) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:34AM (9 children)
Folks, the explanation is very simple. They couldn't have the shooting game because they weren't allowed to have their guns. That's right, #CPAC2018 [twitter.com] was a GUN-FREE ZONE. Sad! But I gave a tremendous, tremendous speech there. youtu.be/ixS9QoPs35M [youtu.be]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:36AM
It's virtual. But it's also reality.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by Captival on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:42AM (3 children)
Obviously any gathering of conservatives must be gun free. We all know what crazed nutjobs like you vile scum Liberals will try, given half a chance. Just ask Steve Scalise.
(Score: 4, Touché) by takyon on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:57AM (1 child)
But the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Or a crowd of good guys with guns if one [nbcnews.com] or more [cnn.com] have to run away. 🔫💥🇺🇸
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:12AM
Bah, stopping bad guys with guns is easy. But how do you stop a bad guy with a video game if all you have is a gun!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday February 25 2018, @08:31AM
Steve Scalise, braver than all of us. He had a more rough year -- last year -- than most of us. That is one way to lose weight. Not a good way. Not good at all.
Never Trump, I'm sure you remember the Never Trump folks. And maybe, probably, you are one. Let me tell you, there's not many left. So many came around. Even Lyin' Ted Cruz endorsed me. But 2016, it was bad. Very rough. I was invited to CPAC that year. But my campaign guys told me, don't go. Because they thought we'd run into so many protesters. From the Never Trump folks and from the alt-left. And if I'd gone, let me tell you, I could have stood in the middle of CPAC and shot someone, and I wouldn't have lost any votes -- not one. But I couldn't do that. Because it was a gun-free zone in 2016 too. So I stayed away.
But people were talking about me. Because a couple of alt-left guys were there, badly damaging my trademark. They were passing out Russian flags with my name -- TRUMP -- in Fake Gold. The Russian flag, as everyone knows, is red, blue and white. 🇷🇺 Same colors as my campaign uses. And everyone knows I love gold -- who doesn't love gold? Maybe there's somebody. Trust me, there's nobody. You see TRUMP in gold, you know it's me. And these alt-left guys must have thought, conservatives are DUMB. And can't tell gold from Fake Gold. They weren't dumb, they could tell. Some people got fooled, not everybody. And those Fake Flags got rounded up. I wasn't there but I'm very proud of that. Although it got the so-called Russia investigation started.
I've spoken so many times at CPAC, the friends and the memories are VERY SPECIAL. And it was beautiful this year, I think we had 4 protesters. There was one guy, he booed me. So they took him out, very quickly. They were very nice to him, believe me.
And I said to the folks at CPAC, remember when I started running? Because I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But I started running and people would say, “Are you sure he’s a conservative?” And I said to CPAC, I think now we've proved that I’m a conservative. And there was a HUGE round of applause. So, Never Trump? That's very 2016 of you. But you be you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:49AM
A true visionary [youtube.com] saw you coming long ago, Donny Hairboy.
I think you'll find the themes quite familiar.
(Score: 4, Informative) by stretch611 on Sunday February 25 2018, @06:35AM (2 children)
You are correct.
It was so bad, that the NRA gave a presentation of an award to Ajit Pai... Yet, couldn't give him the actual award because it was a handmade long gun. (Story: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/nra-gives-ajit-pai-courage-award-and-gun-for-saving-the-internet/ [arstechnica.com] )
Pretty hypocritical... Being the stewards of no gun control, but refusing to let guns at their conference... Also with their attitude towards the video game.
However, it might just be trying to discredit their scapegoat du jour... after all, it wasn't access to guns that caused the Florida school shooting, it was Video Games [kotaku.com]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @12:49PM (1 child)
The problem is never the availability of an object that can be abused, it's always the abject moral failure of the person misusing the object.
Clearly, video games, dancing, mental illness, foreigners, and city folks are all instruments of the devil that won't want Trump to lay the foundation for the golden path to allow Pence to be president. But once he is, the holy war will need all of the righteous to be well armed, you know. Ajit is just a tool at this point because he happens to be americanized and in a position of power. once his work is done he'll be comfortably discarded and he can do what he likes as long as he isn't in the way.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 25 2018, @05:36PM
I do wonder if such crazies as you pretend to be really exist. Maybe that's why they don't want better gun licensing, they know 90% of themselves or their friends will be denied, and probably 25% thrown right into Looney bins for being radicalized domestic terrorists. That's right, you crazy fucks are two steps away from being hillbilly Isis, and you getting thrown into a deep hole might be worth the police state fuckery we'll have to fight our way out of.