Playing and celebrating Brighton-made VR
GOVR could’ve never gotten off the ground had it not been for the support we received early on from Brighton’s creative, digital and information technology, particularly from local developers who shared our enthusiasm for virtual reality. Nearly one year on, we put on a second instalment of GOVR’s VR Show and Tell event to showcase and celebrate the hard work of Brighton’s local VR developers.
Like last summer’s VR Show and Tell event, we teamed up with the Brighton Game Collective and invited local creators and developers from across Brighton to show off their VR games and experiences at our event at the Hare and Hound alongside the Brighton’s Game Collective’s monthly Industry Drinks.
The event was free for developers to participate in and free to the public to play at. Like usual, GOVR provided all the VR and computer equipment and handled the setup for the event. Our aim is to make VR affordable and accessible to more and more people. We believe putting on free events like this supports local developers to get player feedback and visibility while giving people the opportunity to play high quality VR for free.
We got a fantastic selection of titles participating in the event. Curiscope’s mesmerising underwater explorer Operation Apex gave event attendees an opportunity to swim with tiger sharks from the comfort of the pub. NearLight brought down their fast-paced shooter Shooty Fruity, published by nDreams, which gave us all a thrilling sugar rush. PixelBrain Studio’s 3D Mahjong Worlds provided a refreshingly relaxing mahjong gaming experience set in a serene landscape. MakeReal’s Loco Dojo, which fans of GOVR will be well familiar with, brought out the event attendee’s competitive and silly side, showing off the best of VR multiplayer.
This summer’s VR Show and Tell was made even more exciting by having Latest TV Brighton and The Case Farm involved. Latest TV Brighton were very excited about our invitation to see Brighton’s growing VR sector in action and to hear directly from local developers. Following up on a pre-event interview with GOVR co-founder Mark Bou Mansour, Latest TV Brighton dropped by the event to film and interview the people behind the games being showcased.
To celebrate the developers showcasing games at the event, The Case Farm kindly provided us with two brand new VR cases to gift at the night’s raffle draw. The cases, one for the HTC Vive and one for the Oculus Rift, were from The Case Farm’s recently introduced line of high quality protective and practical cases for VR headsets – which GOVR was kindly invited to feedback on during the early design stages.
Tom Pickard from the Brighton Game Collective led the raffle draw. Our winners were Ed Barton from Curiscope and Sam Watts from MakeReal! There’s still some good news if you didn’t win though. You can use the discount code ‘GOVRBRIGHTON’ at checkout to get 10% off The Case Farm’s new VR cases.
Going forward, GOVR will be putting another instalment of VR Show and Tell in early autumn. We’re hoping to get more and more local creators, developers, artists and researchers involved. If you’re interested in showcasing your work, drop us an email at info@govrbrighton.com
We had a fantastic time at this event and were delighted by the enthusiasm we got from local developers and from the public for Brighton-made VR. Thank you all for joining us and hope to see at the next one!
Check out more clips from the event below! (You might want to reduce your speaker volume, these clips are loud)