Third-person camera makes this Vive game a giddy experience Last week, following a GDC demo for The Gallery, I wrote about the weirdness of vertigo in Virtual Reality. A few days later, I experienced an even more intense sensation of height-fright while playing Marble Mountain.
Like most early VR experiences, The Gallery is a first-person game, Marble Mountain makes use of a third-person camera. It’s a Marble Madness-style platform game in which the player rolls a ball across landscapes and through obstacles, taking care not to lose control and plunge over cliff faces.
I played it on Vive with a regular controller. Against the advice of the developers, I played standing up. The giddy sensation I had felt with The Gallery was even more pronounced during Marble Mountain. The camera swings through space in arcs that are predetermined, and which follow the Marble’s moves from a variety of directions. It’s these arcs of movement that really unsettle the player’s sense of balance.
I was swaying like a drunk, especially during sequences when the camera is behind the Marble, careening down a steep slope. It was clear from my conversations with the developers that this is a perfectly normal reaction. You can avoid it by sitting. And yet, I didn’t want to sit. The physical sense of place is a big part of what makes VR so fun.
You can get some small sense of how this works from the trailer (above) which features a few shots which take the player high above the action. If anything, the lack of detail on some of the lower parts of the crevice structures diminish the effect of vertigo. Developer Shannon Pickles said that he had cut out some details for that exact reason, smoothing the lower reaches of the world to a fog.
Marble Mountain is a launch title for Vive on April 5, and will also be available Oculus Rift as well as non-VR platforms Linux, Mac and Windows PC via Steam.

It’s a setback for EA, and for anybody hoping for this legal issue to be settled The U.S. Supreme Court won’t consider a lawsuit regarding Electronic Arts’ use of the likenesses of retired NFL players in its Madden NFL series, the court announced today.
EA had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, Electronic Arts v. Davis, after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the publisher’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds in January 2015. The Supreme Court’s denial leaves that 9th Circuit ruling in place, meaning that the retired players’ case will continue in the federal appeals court.
Thousands of retired NFL athletes originally filed suit against EA in 2010, alleging that the publisher violated their state-law right to publicity by using their likenesses on historic teams in Madden titles from 2001-2009. Like the collegiate athletes who received $60 million in the settlement of a similar case, the NFL players in question did not appear in the Madden games under their real names. However, all other identifying traits — height, weight, ethnicity and the like — were true to life, and the virtual athletes were rated to perform like their real-world counterparts.

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Retired NFL players’ lawsuit against EA’s Madden series can go forward, court says (update)

EA did not compensate these players for the use of their likenesses. Since 1994, the publisher has paid licensing fees to the NFL Players Association for the rights to use active NFL athletes’ names and likenesses. Retired players currently appear in Madden’s Ultimate Team mode, and are paid for it.
In the Davis lawsuit, EA argued that the use of the retired athletes’ likenesses was covered under the First Amendment as “incidental" to the creation of the Madden games in question. The 9th Circuit disagreed, ruling last January that "EA’s use of the former players’ likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA’s main commercial purpose — to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams."
By deciding not to hear EA v. Davis, the Supreme Court is leaving unanswered an important legal question about how to weigh the First Amendment against claims like trademark infringement and the right to publicity, said J. Michael Keyes, an intellectual property partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney.
"The lower courts still have little guidance as to what the proper standard is on how the First Amendment interacts with state law claims," said Keyes. He added that the Davis case "would have been a perfect vehicle for the Court to provide much needed guidance" in this area, because right now "there are multiple different tests used by lower federal courts."
A representative for EA declined comment to Polygon on the Supreme Court’s decision. We’ve asked the attorneys for Davis for comment, and will update this article with any information we receive.

Series debut introduces the primate scientist Blizzard debuted a new animated short film based on the world of Overwatch, its upcoming character-based shooter, exclusively through the Xbox YouTube channel. “Recall" is the first in a new series of CGI videos produced by the company that will air ahead of the game’s launch.
Overwatch will hit stores May 24 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One. Blizzard first announced the game with an animated teaser featuring a similar, Pixar-esque style to the video above. While that short gave players a glimpse at Overwatch’s cast of character, this new series of films will go in-depth with heroes like Winston, the genetically engineered gorilla who stars in "Recall."
Overwatch is currently in closed beta, with an open test period running May 5-9. Xbox One players can access the multiplayer game early; the open beta will be available May 3.