Game Republic, supported by Autodesk, hosted its first ever virtual reality conference on Wednesday 25th January 2017 at Sheffield Hallam University, sponsored by Digital Creativity Labs.
GR/VR attracted more than 50 games developers in the GR network and industry speakers from Atomhawk Design, Sigtrap Games, Dubit Ltd and DC Labs, as well as a VR panel. Dan Gilmore from Atomhawk (pictured below), that has worked on VR titles such as Eve: Valkyrie and RIGS, discussed “UI for VR” and included invaluable advice for VR developers, such as making the UI wrap around the player, so that the visual information is always at the same distance.
Bobby Thandi from Dubit talked about VR being the “final frontier for entertainment”, while Alex Wade from DC Labs/Wadelabs discussed neuroscience research into virtual reality, and the effects of the technology on the brain. Finally, Luke Thompson from Sigtrap Games talked about “Comfortable Movement in VR” and the company’s experience in making the 360-degree shooter Sublevel Zero, with the valuable advice that VR developers should “experiment, prototype, test, tweak and iterate – feel sick so that your players don’t have to!”
GR/VR also featured a showcase of VR titles from Sheffield Hallam University, Barog Game Labs, New Moon Games and Sigtrap Games, as well as an opportunity for attendees to try the new Resident Evil 7 game in VR.
Game Republic also invited BBC Learning to the event, to discuss its Game Play event on 23rd February in Salford, plus developers had the opportunity to meet Nintendo developer relations and find out more about making games for the fantastic new Nintendo Switch, launching on 3rd March 2017.
Huge thanks to Sheffield Hallam University for hosting GR/VR and to DC Labs for sponsoring. Game Republic’s next event “Selling Your Game”, again completely free for members of the network, is on Thursday 16th February at the University of York, and partnered with IGGI (Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence) and the Department for International Trade – and will feature talks from PR/marketing experts and our special guest platform-holder, ID@Xbox.
