Jaroslav Beck recently stepped down as CEO of Beat Saber to focus his time and efforts on the music making for the game. Now he has taken it as a personal responsibility to focus some time and money into the new VR developers. You can check out the tweet with his video below.
As you heard in the video, Beck is greatly concerned with the future of virtual reality. We could not agree more with everything he said, especially that the industry needs new direction. He also speaks about how it is his turn to give back, especially after the immense success that Beat Saber has been having. Beck is doing good with the platform he has created, and the good that will come out of his investments will be vital to the industry going forward.
He wants to target devs that are thinking outside of the box. He also says how desperately virtual reality needs new direction, game mechanics, and an entire overall approach. These are bold statements from somebody with his power and knowledge inside of the industry. Although right now he is basically saying that what developers are doing isn’t good enough, he is happy to help funders while they are creating new ideas or refining old ones. He is concerned with the future. This is his exact quote from the video “it would be great to put a bunch money together and start supporting new developers who are creating games or applications for VR and who are thinking a little bit more out of the box, because I believe that VR desperately needs new directions in game mechanics and overall approach.”
If you are interested in Beck’s help, his direct messages on Twitter are open. As you could imagine, Beck opening his DM’s to anyone, with his 6,800 followers, it is overwhelming. He recently tweeted that he was grateful for all of the messages, and that he would eventually get to them all.
This isn’t the only big player in the industry wanting to give back and help developers though. Unity and Epic are also offering money to those who are looking to create regular 2D games, and even those who are looking to create 3D and virtual reality games. If you are a new development team that is looking for the next round of funding, look no further. With Unity and Beck looking to help, your options are not limited, and what you can do with the funding is limitless.
It is refreshing to see somebody of Beck’s stature to understand that VR needs fixing. Although it is obvious to some, VR is in desperate need of an update. AR is becoming the gold standard of wearable tech, and rightfully so. Augmented reality is going to be widely accepted more quickly, but it is important for virtual reality to make a case for how useful it has the ability to be. VR isn’t going to fixed overnight, but finding the right groups of people is a starting point that everyone can agree on.
Virtual reality is need of a facelift. The games have gotten stale and repetitive, the apps are often just knock-offs of non-VR apps, and the developers are slowing down more than ever. Other than the exclusive games that VR studios are making, it is hard to find a game that is great from top to bottom. Beat Saber comes to mind, but other than that, you are going to have a hard time finding a game worth your time that isn’t an exclusive.
