Reality Check: Where We’re Headed in 2022
Industry musings to mark our 7th anniversary
January 2022 marks the seventh anniversary of Resolution Games. When we first opened the studio, the modern market for VR had barely taken its first steps. Google Cardboard had launched a few months before, Oculus had just released their second development kit (DK2), and all we had to keep us going was a wealth of games industry experience and our unbridled optimism about what the future of VR could be.
Our first release, Solitaire Jester, was available exclusively on mobile VR devices like Samsung’s Gear VR. We’ve come a long way since then — both as a company and as an industry. Resolution Games was among the first companies to support the Magic Leap. We were one of the first companies to reach one million players for a single title. And just last month, we became one of the first developer to support passthrough in a full release on the Oculus Store. Today, we have more VR games available on Oculus than any other third-party publisher — and we’re just getting started.
At the time of this writing, the industry has just come out of an incredible holiday season. With VR devices dominating Amazon sales charts — and their related apps skyrocketing to #1 on the App Store and Google Play on Christmas Day — it seems like there was a headset under every tree. Our own sales figures during this period certainly reflect a major uptick in new users, with December 2021 being our single biggest month ever for downloads
What We’re Anticipating from the Industry
2022 is poised to be bigger still. While it will ultimately depend on the actual number of new headsets sold rather than our own speculation, it’s possible that the install base is finally nearing the tipping point where word of mouth will become powerful enough to create FOMO — the fear of missing out. And if that happens, our little virtual world is about to become a lot more populated.
This year is also going to be an interesting one as more competition looks to enter the space. On the hardware front there have been announcements and rumors coming from just about every company you can imagine — including some big announcements at CES that we’re continuing to watch with great interest. On the software side, we wouldn’t be surprised if more big players tried to establish themselves a little more firmly as well.
Up until now, VR and AR experiments from traditional AAA publishers have primarily been limited to promotional content or the addition of limited VR modes to games that weren’t necessarily purpose-built to support them. But with the exponential growth of the market, AAA studios will want to make sure they have a piece of the pie — and perhaps more quickly than they could accomplish on their own.
In the same way that the world’s biggest games publishers will spend billions to acquire mobile games companies, don’t be surprised if you see a few big games studio acquisitions in the VR space before the end of the year.
And then there’s the metaverse.
Rightly or wrongly, much of 2021’s conversation about VR was dominated by the metaverse. This dialogue will continue well into 2022 (and beyond), but what’s really at the root of this is something that’s far more important than the way we choose to package it: the desire for human connection. This is something that’s been central to our design philosophy at Resolution Games over the years, and to date, all of the best experiences in VR have embraced it. Given the broader conversation about virtual social spaces, don’t be surprised if we see plenty more games that chase the feeling of connectedness in the coming year.
What You Can Anticipate from Resolution Games
New users who entered VR during the Holiday 2021 gift boom have plenty of great games to experience for the first time, including hits like Blaston, Demeo, Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale and Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! from us — but those same users are also going to be keen to see what else is in store for 2022.
While we still have more than a few surprises up our sleeve, our team has already revealed some of what we’re working on for the coming year:
In November, we gave the world a first look at Ultimechs, an all new experience that blends the thrill of professional athletics with the precision of purpose-built machines.
We have also revealed a number of new additions that will be coming to Blaston, including weapon modifications and an all new weapon type that will debut as our first-ever collaboration with a fellow Swedish game studio, bringing a weapon from their hit franchise into Blaston for the first time.
And if you thought Demeo’s first year was impressive, just wait for its second where we’ll be adding two new adventures, a player hangout, and — my personal favorite — an incredible new player-vs-player mode that turns friends into enemies.
But our ambitions for 2022 don’t end with VR.
On April 7, we’ll be taking our first steps into the world of desktop gaming with the early access release of Demeo: PC Edition. Rethought from the ground-up for play outside of headsets, Demeo: PC Edition will bring all the fun and content of our award-winning VR game to players who haven’t yet made the jump into another reality. And with the ability to join multiplayer sessions across devices, there will never be a shortage of adventures to join.
As an industry, we’re also standing on the precipice of the next great generation of augmented reality devices. Rumors about new glasses from nearly every major player continue to surface with greater frequency — and with Meta’s release of passthrough play on the Quest 2 (which Blaston was one of the first games to support), mixed reality experiences are something that every developer now has the ability to experiment with.
Other major industry players are looking to support the growth of AR content too, with Qualcomm recently announcing the Snapdragon Spaces XR Development Platform to help creators bring mixed reality experiences to market faster than ever before. I’m pleased to say that we are an early partner with Qualcomm on this initiative, and are already experimenting with the platform in preview to see what new experiences we can bring to players .
In 2021, we established a dedicated AR division within Resolution Games to begin preparing for the inevitable next wave of devices, making us uniquely positioned to support early adopters wherever they may choose to play. While we’re not quite ready to make an announcement, we expect to be talking about some of the projects that will be coming out of our AR team later this year.
Join Us!
We have so many exciting things planned for 2022 — I wish I could tell you them all today! But really, it’s an exciting time for the whole industry. If you’re keen to take your game dev experiences into a new reality, be sure to keep an eye on our job openings.
With so much growth in VR and AR, it’s easily the most exciting slice of the games industry to get involved in right now. We’ve been excited to watch things change and grow over the last seven years, and we can’t wait to see where alternate reality gaming will be in seven more!