Playful’s Paul Bettner on Defining the VR Platformer with Lucky’s Tale

Paul Bettner is anxiously waiting for the Oculus Rift to launch so that he can finally see how real people react to what he’s been pouring his heart into over the past three years. Playful Corp’s Lucky’s Tale is going to be bundled with every Oculus Rift, and he’s biting his nails waiting to see how it will be received. The early indications are that it’s going to be a beloved platformer game that people associate as one of their earliest VR gaming experiences, which is why a lot of people have been saying that it’s the The Super Mario Brothers of VR. It’s a surprisingly immersive, incredibly compelling, and just a super fun game to play, and helps to define the genre of a VR platformer, which is why Oculus wanted to bundle it for free to everyone who buys a Rift.

I had the chance to catch up with Paul during the Sundance Film Festival to talk about the finishing polish on Lucky’s Tale & tuning the sweet spot of VR, what they’re working on next with the $25 million dollars they’ve raised, reflections on this moment leading up to the launch of the Rift, how far they’ve come over the past 3.5 years, and how this journey of the VR revolution all started for him.

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This is the episode 300th of the Voices of VR podcast!

Over the past two years, I’ve published a total of 90 hours & 28 minutes of content, which would take 3.8 days straight to listen to it all. The average length of a podcast is 18 minutes and 6 seconds, and I’ve covered the following 11 different professional VR conferences from around the world:

• 2014: Inaugural Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference, Immersion 2014, & Oculus Connect 1
• 2015: Game Developers Conference, IEEE VR, Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference, Oculus Connect 2, Seattle VR Expo, & VRX VR Intelligence
• 2016: Sundance, & Unity AR/VR Vision Summit

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