Sony’s The London Heist is one of the best fusions of narrative VR storytelling with interactive game components. It’s structured as a flashback sequence starting with you being confronted within an interrogation room, and there are branching narratives that flavor the timing of the plot points and can be triggered by whether or not you’re paying attention to the main character. The flashback action sequences serve to transport you into having an embodied presence, and it’s the closest experience I’ve felt to suddenly living within an action film.
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I had a chance to talk to George Andreas, the Creative Director of Sony’s PlayStation VR Worlds, at GDC 2016 where we talked about the narrative experiments, lessons learned, as well as the four other bespoke experiences ranging from an underwater experience, a space adventure, street luge racing game, and the futuristic competitive sporting game of Danger Ball.
All of these experiences will be exclusively shipping with the PlayStation VR, and so in my podcast wrap-up, I make some comments and reflections about the ongoing debate about the exclusive vs. cross-platform & closed vs. open content ecosystems.
Here’s the Announcement Trailer for PlayStation VR Worlds that premiered at GDC 2016:
For more context about exclusive content trends on streaming video, then be sure to check out Mark Suster’s Snapstorm presentation on Online Video part 2.
For more context about how open standards usually thrive off of proprietary competition, then be sure to listen to my 2015 interview with Khronos Group’s Neil Trevett.
Every open standard has a proprietary competitor, and competition is healthy according to the Khronos Group pic.twitter.com/H5zq4XRJyv
— KentBye Voices of VR (@kentbye) March 4, 2015
And the other interview that I mentioned is with ESA’s Mike Gallagher on how video games are protected by the First Amendment.
Bruce Wright kickstarted a lively debate about VR and PTSD with this provocative Tweet. For highlights of this long thread, then check out Dora Cheng’s Storyify on VR and PTSD.
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
