Text/VR Gyro Linde
In 2021, with the continuous rise of the popularity of the metaverse, after more enterprise layouts enter the metaverse, we see the construction of metaverses related to hardware, software, algorithms, and creative platforms in full bloom. In the past 2021, according to the statistics of the Gyro Research Institute, the number of VR content acquisition cases worldwide reached 76, showing an upward trend. Game companies have become an important target for giants to build a metaversal map, whether it is VR games or traditional games.
Some time ago, Microsoft spent $68.7 billion to acquire "World of Warcraft" developer Activision Blizzard, which is the largest acquisition case in the history of the game field, in addition, many potential, outstanding or well-known IP VR game teams have been "harvested" by various big manufacturers in the past few years, such as Meta's acquisition of "Beat Saber" team Beat Games in 2019 and the acquisition of VR Chicken Eating Games in 2021. Population: One is behind BigBox VR, Google's acquisition of Owlchemy Labs (Work Simulator, etc.).
As the "infrastructure company" of the meta-universe, the game is a particularly important part of the sub-universe ecological construction, and the VR content team is still in the early stage of development, due to the existence of consumption thresholds, and the need to overcome VR motion sickness and other issues, vr game team is facing more development challenges, unlike mobile games, PC games with hundreds of billions of output value can achieve higher revenue, and in terms of talent reserves are also much inferior. However, this does not affect the "harvesting" of the big factories, but has become a good time for the big factories at home and abroad to take advantage of the team's low valuation to buy and buy crazy to build their own meta-universe ecology.
To this day, what other excellent targets in the field of VR games are worth paying attention to, and this series will be revealed one after another.
1、Resolution Games
Image source: Network
Founded in 2015, Swedish VR game independent studio Research Games has representative works such as Demeo (2021) and Blaston (2020), and has a good performance on platforms such as Steam and Quest.
This year, the studio plans to launch a new multiplayer VR game, Ultimechs, a futuristic competitive sports game where players will become mechs and participate in multiplayer duels.
Image source: Resolution Games
After its establishment in 2015, starting from a small and medium-sized multi-platform game, under the leadership of founder Tommy Palm (Tommy Palm's construction in the field of mobile games for two decades, the creator of the game behind "Candy Legend") and the addition of the creators behind Doom and Counter-Strike, Resolution Games has attracted the favor of capital with the success of the work.
Last July, Resolution Games completed its Series C round, bringing the cumulative funding amount to $38.5 million. In addition, Resolution Games acquired Zero Index Studios in November 2021 to focus on expanding the VR game development team. Last year, The partner who started Advertising in VR was Blaston, so there is speculation that Meta is likely to acquire the studio, but there is no news of the acquisition yet.
2、High
Image source: Alta
Australia-based Studio Alta is a small, independent team that has been working on PC for years on its multiplayer co-op VR game A Township Tale. The game landed on quest in July 2021 and achieved "creating a historic engagement metric for the platform" in its debut, ranking first in the Oculus chart for seven weeks.
On Jan. 27, Alta Game Studios announced a $12.4 million seed round of funding, led by early Oculus investor a16z. Alta said that the funds will be used to develop original content and IP, as well as expand the studio, accelerate game development, after the financing, will port the game to more platforms, and then is expected to support more non-VR platforms, open up mobile terminals, PC terminals. Once implemented, the game's user size will grow exponentially, and the game's additional attributes will become more likely.
3、SUPERHOT Team
Founded in 2013, SUPERHOT Team indie Studios is the development team for the game of the same name, SUPERHOT VR. Its masterpiece "SUPERHOT VR" is a shooter game launched in 2019, which has received many praises for its gameplay of "time freezes" and I do not move.
The success of this game is the result of the development team SUPERHOT Team inadvertently planting willows, the original team was just a game developed for entertaining friends, did not expect to receive a lot of praise on the Internet, so the SUPERHOT Team team launched Kickstarter in 2014, and successfully crowdfunded the target amount within 24 hours.
In February 2021, the game sold more than $1 million on Quest and is expected to generate more than $25 million in revenue, according to the data. According to Quest data, 85% of players gave the game a five-star high score.
Image source: Oculus
From 19 years to the present, the game has always been in the VR game hot list, but also received a lot of praise, in addition to grasping the VR game platform, in the VR offline entertainment gradually popular, the team for vr arcade stores released the "SUPERHOT VR: Arcade Edition" version, enough to show that the development team of the market changes are very sensitive, even if there is no other popular works can occupy a place in different forms of VR games.
At present, the team has not been acquired, and the financing information has not been announced. However, the team has said that they will stick to the positioning of independent game developers and not accept investor intervention. Whether this piece of fragrant food will eventually fall into the hands of large factories has also become a concern for everyone.
4、Schell Games
Schell Games, which has a popular VR escape room game "I Expect You Die" and a fighting game "Until You Fall" and other works, was founded in 2002, and it is understood that its founders have followed the development of VR technology since the 90s, until 2012, Schell Games began to try to develop VR applications.
Image source: Steam
Schell Games launched I Expect You Die in 2016 and announced more than $2 million in revenue in 2020. The sequel "I Expect You Die 2," which was released in September 2021, surpassed $1 million in sales within a week of launch. (Currently, there are more than 60 apps in the Oculus Quest store that sell more than $1 million.)
In addition to developing the original IP, Schell Games also partnered with the Holoride platform to develop the car VR game Cloudbreaker, and in January this year also launched the simulation cooking game "Lost Recipe". With ongoing game development capabilities, as well as exploration in different areas (early VR educational games were launched), Schell Games is also one of the still competitive teams.
5、Free Lives
Free Lives Purpose (Source: Free Lives)
Founded in 2012, Free Lives is a highly personalized game team that became famous for the shooter Broforce released in 2014. The team's 2017 VR fighting game GORN reached a sales milestone of 1 million in July 2021 with a strong violent aesthetic style, with an estimated revenue of more than $15 million.
Strong stylistic colors, simple and exciting bloody fighting give VR fighting games a new way to play, you can no longer fight with others to win in the game, but a new idea for the purpose of "venting emotions" is one of the reasons why this game is loved by the public. The success of GORN also illustrates the creativity and future of Free Lives in terms of opening up new ideas and addressing user needs.
6、Polyarc
Polyarc was founded in 2015 after the founding team left Microsoft subsidiary Bungie Games to focus on vr gaming. In 2018, Polyarc released the action puzzle adventure game "Moss", "Moss" was launched on all major platforms and received rave reviews, in July 2021, "Moss" achieved excellent results of more than 1 million "platinum" sales, and is expected to generate more than $22.5 million in revenue.
This spring, Polyarc will launch Moss's sequel, Moss: Book II, and the team says the sequel will have significant improvements in magnitude and quality. In addition to developing the content of the Moss game, Polyarc believes that the world of Moss is very large, has a lot of creative space, the protagonist Quill has a lot of IP value, as a unique character, Quill may appear in cartoons, books or other works in the future. This is the same as last year's hit "League of Legends: Battle of Two Cities" IP creation path, the expansion of popular characters can feed back the game itself.
In addition, Polyarc completed a $9 million funding round in July 2020 and said it would be used for the development of AR games. In the case that the AR glasses and headset market is not yet mature, the main development direction of Polyarc is still based on the original IP "Moss".
7、WarpFrog
WarpFrog Indie Studios is the development team for the VR fighting game Blade & Sorcery. The game was released in December 2018 and won steam's 2018 Best VR Game Silver level less than half a month after its launch, in addition to the platinum level of the 2019 best-selling VR game list.
Featuring realistic physics feedback, rich scenes, and support for homemade mods (Shangqi Ten Ring Weapon as props, Quake's Hammer, etc.), this medieval sandbox fighting game has attracted many players and dominated the list of popular games for many years. KospY, an indie developer with no previous experience in game development, completed the development of the game on his own with his passion for VR, and KsopY said in 2020 that the game will continue to evolve, adding more elements to perfect the game experience.
WarpForg' achievements as an independent studio exceed most of the development teams that entered the field, which shows the potential of WarpForg.
8、Sealost Interactive LLC
Sealost Interactive LLC was founded by indie developer Ian Fitz, whose representative is the VR boxing game The Thrill of the Fight. The game, also written by Ian Fitz alone, was launched on steam in 2016, and was ranked in the bronze list of the 2019 best-selling VR games released by Steam. In 2019, the game launched on the Quest platform and has been on the Quest hot list. In addition, "The Thrill of the Fight 2", which was originally scheduled to be launched in 2021, will have a high probability of being launched this year.
VR games have more advantages than PC games and mobile games in sports competitive games, which is why VR fitness games can conquer discerning players. In the case of the gradual maturity of VR devices and the increasing number of users, such games have a strong competitiveness.
9、Windows VR
Founded in 2015, American indie game studio Women VR debuted as a VR massively multiplayer online game, Zenith: The Last City, which landed on major platforms on January 28 this year, and achieved the top spot on Steam's best-selling list.
In September 2021, Ramen VR had already raised $10 million in Series A funding prior to the game's release. In addition, the game has more than 60,000 users on Discord, with considerable potential. As a team that won the favor of investors before it was launched, Ramen VR proved itself to be a "dark horse" with popularity and strength.
10、For Fun Labs
For Fun Labs is an independent studio whose representative work is the VR table tennis game Eleven Table Tennis. The game went live in February 2020 and received a super 6k hit on Quest, and even in December of the same year, the game's popularity was so high that it crashed due to too many players. In addition, domestic headset manufacturers, such as Pico, have also introduced the game to the domestic market.
It is understood that the size of the team is not large, in the past 2 years, the studio has not released new games, but has been updating "Eleven Table Tennis", including working with Meta to use Meta Avatar as a avatar, adding game modes, etc. Sports games compared to drama games, enough to realistic this condition can seize a large number of users to take this fitness, and the previous article also mentioned that VR fitness has great potential in the future, such games are also expected to become blockbuster games.