Kevin Joyce is the editor-in-chief at VRFocus, and he talks about how they’re covering everything to do with virtual reality gaming and entertainment at VRFocus. He talks about how it was founded and funded by nDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh, who is working on a number of VR experiences and noticed that there wasn’t a site in the UK covering VR in a comprehensive way.

At the moment VRFocus is just Kevin and Jamie Feltham, who has been tracking a lot of the online communities and breaking news in the VR space. VRFocus does a lot of excerpting from other articles to pull out the newsworthy bits of information, as well as a lot of original reporting, live blogs at conferences, and video interviews.

He talks about some of the things that need to happen for VR to go mainstream, and how VRFocus is trying to help communicate what’s happening in this space beyond to the wider video gaming community. He says that VR needs to make incremental steps towards going mainstream, and sees that one day VR experiences will be prolific and the standard norm for people. There’s so many things that VR can do and that we’re just only starting to scratch the surface.

TOPICS

0:00 – Intro. Worked in video games journalism, and VRFocus funded by nDreams’ Patrick O’Luanaigh. No VR website in UK, and started a site where he has full editorial control. Launched in February 2014. Focusing on VR as entertainment

1:00 – VRFocus as the beat reporter of the VR space. Aim to cover video gaming and entertainment and how VR is changing VR gaming

1:39 – SVVRCon coverage. Did liveblog coverage about VR gaming. Conducted 28 video interviews and released over time.

2:27 – What got you excited about VR? Only touched on briefly on VR before getting the job at VRFocus. Independent game developers are driving a lot of VR innovation and showing what the power of VR is

3:10 – VRFocus’ Jamie Feltham tracks a lot of the online communities and breaking new stories.

3:58 – Just Kevin and Jamie putting out 12-14 articles a day

4:15 – Pulling out news bits from existing content. Aimed at non-VR audience and push beyond your normal audience and share what’s going on in a way that’s consumable.

5:30 – Measuring the response. Doing a lot better within the VR community than the larger video gaming community. Trying to let people know about what VR is

6:04 – Reaching out to new audiences. Finding the middle ground, and the big projects excite a lot of people. Cover Sony because it’s closer to the larger audience

6:50 – Events to cover for VR. Meet-ups and conferences like SVVRCon, GDC, & E3.

7:44 – What types of games he’s personally experienced. VirtualReality.IO isn’t a game, but was a compelling experience to show the seamless interface to be able to go from game to game without leaving VR. VR needs something like this to go mainstream.

8:38 – People projecting what they’d expect would be a great VR experience, but they find out it’s not as great as they expect. VR needs to be incremental to minimize simulator sickness.

9:48 – Most surprising is to see the general public’s reaction to VR without ever hearing or knowing anything about it.

10:24 – There will be a time where VR is the norm, and it’ll be standard. So many things VR can do, and we’re just only starting to scratch the surface.

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio