XRDC (recently known as VRDC) is a little event held every year in a town right outside of San Fransisco. Its where a few dozen executives, luminaries, developers and some press get together to show off demos, attend some talks, and have some networking. Although it mostly is talks, there was less than 10 booths on the “show floor”.
As a result of all of that, the best part of it all was the talk that Beat Games put on discussing Beat Saber. He talked about the projects origins, where the concept came from, what lead to so much success, and lastly, what is next in store for the developers.
Small Starts
Beck started his talk with the origins of the game, and where the idea of Saber all came to life. It all started when the game Chameleon Run got popular on mobile devices. It is a simple game where you control the fast paced reptile as you try to change his color to match his surroundings before you die. Add jumping to platforms to it, and thats really the whole game.
So if you break that idea of it down, which is color switching, it makes sense how we have the game Beat Saber now. Yes Beat Saber is much much cooler and more polished, and just simply better. Beck also mentioned the neon aesthetics come from the ideas in Tron, which shocked no one.
“We worked for the next year and a half just on polishing the last 10% of the game, which made all the difference,” Beck said.
Prior to working on Saber, Beck was contributing heavily to the music inside of games like Overwatch, World of Worldcraft, Star Wars, Call of Duty, Starcraft, and many more.
Saying the music in the game is a big part of it all, would be an understatement.
“We agreed I’d make a soundtrack of 10 songs to be included and customized for the game,” Beck said. $100 Bills is one of the most popular tracks of the game was the first test they used, and they’ve been riding with it since.
Real Viral
According to Beck, they did not spend one penny on marketing for this game, but instead says they got lucky. They thought they don’t need to sell people on Saber, but to just sell people on VR and Beat Saber would do just fine. And they were completely right.
“Suddenly we thought, ‘What are we going to do about this?’” Beck said. “The game isn’t even finished yet! But there is a chance that this could help the industry as a whole become more successful.”
Beck stated that videos of Beat Saber had over 1 Billion views all across the internet… yes you read that right. Billion. With all of that hype surrounding this game, they sold over 100,000 units in just a single month. Most games will never crack that in their entire lifespan.
Beck claimed that their sincerity of making the game and the real passion they put into helped immensely. He believes that everyone can play it, and thus making everyone else want to play it. Beck went on record stating “We didn’t make something for other people,” he said. “We made what we wanted to play and what we were passionate about. As a result, the quality shined through. Focusing most of our time on polishing the final 10% of the game is the best decision we made.”
The Goal To Get The Game Everywhere
Beat Saber has been out for over 6 months now, and it has only had 10 songs on the original release. Since then, Beck has added one more, with plenty more in the making.“I’m still working on the music,” Beck stated. “I don’t have that much time, as I am trying to do all these deals just because we are all sharing roles on the team. I spend my time working on contracts all day long, which is not the best thing, but I still try to find time to do music. But in the future there will definitely be some music from me and the community.”
News including new songs, PSVR will be getting Beat Saber very soon. Beck could not make an official announcement on whether the Quest will feature Saber, but all signs point to it. That headset releases in Spring of 2019.
