In 2016, during his final year at the New York Film Academy, director Tom Edwards created his 15-minute thesis film, Money Shot. The movie’s premise is simple: a virtual reality (VR) pool game addict (Liam) must exit the digital world and enter the real world to compete in a pool tournament to save the life of his brother (Nigel), who is indebted to a local drug lord.
The all-or-nothing, do-or-die, billiards tournament is a familiar trope in billiards movies. From The Baron and the Kid to Stickmen, from Kiss Shot to Up Against the 8 Ball, down-and-out players have bet it all on the baize, hoping to avert bankruptcy, family dissolution, death, and all of the above.
Money Shot opens with Liam, who is frustrated that his Pure Pool VR gaming system no longer works since his roommate brother hasn’t paid the internet bill. Forced to emerge from his alt-reality, Liam can barely hold a conversation with his brother’s Tinder girlfriend, and he quickly retreats into blackness by re-donning his virtual headset. But, when Liam learns that Nigel owes $3000 to a murderous kingpin, he throws away the VR goggles, picks up his cue stick, and heads to the local 8-ball tournament, with its $5000 grand prize, to hopefully pay off his brother’s bounty.
While the film’s camera work, editing, pacing, and use of music (“Uprising” by Muse) are quite effective, especially for a college senior, the overly convenient tournament, coupled with an uninspiring pool-playing montage (that focuses more on handshakes with fallen opponents than the strokes it took to beat them), should make Money Shot more of a table scratch in my billiards annals.
Yet, for all its overused elements, the film does pose a fascinating question that I have never encountered in almost ten years of reviewing billiards movies: does playing virtual pool make one a better real-life pool player?
Within online pool forums, the topic of virtual pool increasingly arises, starting with the verisimilitude of the leading games, such as Virtual Pool 4 (created by Celeris) or Shooterspool (created by EVEHO Ingeniería). Players share and debate the graphics, physics, and accuracy.
SportsBar VR
Less popular, but more germane to the game Liam is playing in Money Shot, are the virtual reality pool games, such as Maxi Pool Masters VR, Black Hole Pool, SportsBar VR, or the genre’s OG, PoolNation VR. All of these games require hand controls and VR headsets (e.g., HTC Vive, Oculus Rift). As the user has no ability to physically lean on the table and line up shots, ambidextrous coordination is required to manipulate separate controls, a trigger button, and sometimes a “ghost reticle.” It’s hard to imagine mastering virtual reality pool, let alone the experience translating to the billiards hall.
Many billiards pundits and amateur players scoff at the question. They cite some plausible benefits (e.g., better understanding of angles, ball position, strategy), but otherwise deem the game largely untransferable since cue control and technique cannot be replicated. Yet, a recent study by two professors from San José State University suggests otherwise. Using the Pool Hall Pro video game, a Wii game console and a Wii game controller attached to a physical cue stick, participants were able to improve their performance on a variety of shots. The researchers concluded, “the video game system [with the haptic technology] improved people’s real-life pool performance.”1
Regardless of the validity of the research, for the almost 400,000 of us who have watched snooker world champion Ronnie O’Sullivan try to use PoolNation VR back in 2016, the answer is likely to produce skepticism and guffaws. (Sorry Ronnie, that looked like it hurt.) If Ronnie is falling over, what chance do the rest of us have?
Money Shot is available to watch on director Tom Edwards’ Vimeo site.
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- “How Haptic Feedback in a Mixed Reality Pool Game Affects Real-Life Pool Performance,” Elaine Thai and Anil R. Kumar, published in the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2019 Annual Meeting.
