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Why the Game Awards are a poor representation of VR gaming
The Immersive Wire - 11 December 2023 (Monday Briefing)
Tom Ffiske
December 11, 2023
Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Headline: The Game Awards gave Resident Evil Village the crown for best VR / AR (analysis below).
Conversation-starter: A Squid Game VR experience earned $4.56m.
Other stories: UploadVR Showcase showed a lot of new VR game updates, from Vertigo 2 to FINAL FURY, and Virtuleap received $2.5m in funding (more below).
I am attending a Musical-themed party on Sunday. I wasn’t going to throw away my shot (at attending).
Analysis
The Game Awards gave Resident Evil Village the crown for best VR / AR.
On the one hand, the game deserved it. Capcom has been excellent at bringing its horror franchise to VR, and its consistency is commended.
On the other, I do not like the dominance of PS5 across its categories. It’s like celebrating a wedding with only one side of the family. All of the other titles are playable from the console, with none from Meta, Pico or HTC in display. This is a shame as there are other great games which can be shown.
How did it happen? The Game Awards works with 120 game outlets to select the titles for nomination. It is not done by a smaller executive group. As these outlets are predominantly focused on PlayStation’s offering — with perhaps Valve behind that — it caused a lean in the nominations.
What I propose is that, along with the 120 game outlets, it also includes VR-dedicated titles like UploadVR to assist with the nomination process. It may then help balance the scales to be better representative of the VR industry.
Other notable stories
Got any stories? Let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
Inlusio Interactive released The Sensations of Spatial Storytelling in VR, a guide exploring sensations unique to spatial storytelling in Virtual Reality and includes insightful reference cases from industry pioneers.
Towers & Powers, a VR tower defense game, will launch on 15 December.
Looking Glass announced a pre-order for its upcoming handheld holographic display.
Transfr worked with several companies involved with justice-involved youth, to give them access to career training and exploration simulations.
UploadVR Showcase showed a lot of new VR game updates, from Vertigo 2 to FINAL FURY.
Virtuleap received $2.5m in funding.
Help corner
If you have a problem that you think could be solved by another reader of The Immersive Wire and would like to be connected, let me know at tom (at) immersivewire (dot) com.
A few colleagues are also looking for new roles. They include:
Everett Wallace has extensive experience in XR, building strategy and driving new business in consumer-facing industries, with a speciality in entertainment/media.
Tyler Gillespie is a design expert who is looking to build products internally.
Volodymyr Kurov is a full-stack developer looking to help with web development and coding.
Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works within Accenture’s metaverse group. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.