I, and I assume others, became aware of Beat Saber through TikTok and Instagram advertisements. I’d be scrolling on TikTok, and up would pop some Beat Saber player absolutely nailing every single block with the swords. It is the depiction of the players success that specifically intrigues me about Beat Saber–other games advertised on social media usually have the player mess-up in a very simple way, making the viewer think “oh my god, I need to download this game so that I can play it right.”
Beat Saber, however, shows you some of the top players at the game, banking off the allure of VR games and the simple concept to have viewers think “wow, I want to play that.” And I fell into that trap as well.
I knew I would be bad at the game, but seeing just how bad I was at my first try made me flash to the smooth movements of the advertisements I had seen–I had to try again, because I knew that there was someone out there who made the game look so easy. There is something to be said about changing up the pace of videogame advertisement on social media, and I think Beat Saber does a great job of it: the allure is the simplicity of the game, and players stay because of the surprising difficulty.
I agree, so many games are advertised with simplistic features and often catch a user off-guard when they actually interact with the game and find it differs completely. I actually think of the inverse too, those iOS games that advertise a really complicated game with a developed story, but it ends up being a candy crush clone. I also think the emergence of VR is crucial to the how video games can break into new genres, as the immersion of all your physical senses unlocks new possibilities for the world of gaming.
I actually had the opposite experience with a different rhythm vr game. I saw someone playing Pistol Whip, which is a shooting/western/rhythm game and they were absolutely killing it and dancing with the beat, shooting every enemy in rhythm. When I got the game I was excited to replicate that but ran into trouble when my expectations weren’t met. Perhaps this is a testament to myself, but this may apply to other players as well, but I was disappointed and discouraged by the difficulty as I was looking for a less complicated/stressful rhythm game and had wanted to play it like I saw in the advertisement.