I don't think Keith will ever move to VR, and he should be good to go to work on AI War 2 for an indefinite period I'd imagine (assuming things go well and support stays up past 1.0, etc). So presumably there will always be that arm at the very least, which is focus on strategy in a non-VR environment.
I know that a number of the guys working on the Starward Rogue updates at the moment, and soon an expansion pack for that, also have an aversion to VR (physical limitations against it, in some cases). So that will probably continue, because they're doing the expansion in off-hours of their normal life jobs for royalties on it, versus being an expense I have to pay for up-front, so there's no real burden there on Arcen.
But one other thing that I've been really thinking a lot about in the last few days in particular -- and I almost hesitate to say this, because this is one of those ideas I don't want people to steal, which is pretty rare -- is a hybrid approach where there's an ultracheap non-VR game that you can buy, and it plays completely differently from a VR experience that it is tied to. Like a couple of bucks for the non-VR versions, or even free, I don't know.
The realization hit me when I was thinking about how when I'm wanting to do VR stuff with my wife or son, and we're all in the same room, only one person can be doing the VR at a time, which is frustrating. But we have multiple laptops, and if there was a companion game that networked with the VR experience... well, that could be very interesting. It could range from being kind of a dungeon master against them, to some highly-asymmetrical gameplay (competitive or co-op), to just being able to "insert yourself" into someone's VR game (with their permission) and grief them and see them jump, etc. Since you'd be able to see their floating head and hands orientation at bare minimum, they'd have a lot of expressiveness to you that could be really amusing.
I want to do multiplayer VR in general between VR headsets, and I've got a pair of Vives and a pair of Rift Touches, but I don't have any single room that's big enough for that in my house. My office is just barely big enough now that I've rearranged all my furniture, and then my family room is large enough also. But those are pretty distant in the house (upstairs downstairs), so it's kind of hard to feel like you're playing "local LAN co-op" when the person is a couple of rooms away. I still think it will be fun and I want to do that, but the idea of making companion experiences that go with the main VR game interests me quite a lot.
Of course, then you're into the whole problem of "you're literally making two games, no questions about it," and that's correct. So I'm not sure how feasible that is for the very start of things, but perhaps I can toe into that water with something that is very simple on the companion game side. I got the idea partly from things like One Night Werewolf and Codemasters, which use optional companion phone apps (free) to go with your boardgames.
