Article content continued

“When the Oculus Rift and the Morpheus came around, we saw that technology was powerful and we bought a couple of Oculus Rift kits and experimented with them. We found out that the technology is actually capable of creating some of the ideas we had in the back of our heads for awhile.”

With past releases Minority Media experimented with different kinds of storytelling and feels VR is the next avenue for advancing video game narratives, although Rommel emphasized Time Machine isn’t an “empathy game” in the traditional sense.

“Although we think VR is the ultimate empathy platform in many ways, because instead of you playing a character you see on the screen and feeling what you think the character might feel, you become the character in the story and there’s no more pretending there. It’s really you becoming the main driver of the events of the story,” said Rommel.

Rommel also explained the fan response to Time Machine has been considerably different from Minority Media’s past titles – the game was shown off for the first time at GDC and then PAX East – and that he expects the title will attract hardcore gamers as well as the casual gaming crowd.

“PAX is very hardcore gamer focused and contrary to what we’ve had with our previous games (the reception with gamers [when it comes to our past titles] has been luke warm with our games), with Time Machine, the minute players got into the whole idea of time travel, dinosaurs and virtual reality, there was a big flame that just switched on. The reaction was a lot of enthusiasm. The cool part was we also had some video game fans who weren’t that hardcore who enjoyed the game as well,” said Rommel.

Time Machine doesn’t have a solid release date yet and Minority Media hasn’t honed in on a specific VR platform yet, but hopes to release the game at the same time as when the first VR headsets hit store shelves late this year or early next.