Category: Virtual Reality
Half-Life: Alyx delivers the watershed moment VR gaming needs
If you weren’t playing games when Half-Life came out, it’s hard to drive home just how shocking a departure it was from what had come before. Though some familiar mechanics served as a base to build off of, the injection of elaborately scripted sequences that put you into the action,…
Read More
With kids and adults staying at home, are virtual worlds ready for primetime?
We’ve been diligently following the development of virtual worlds, also known as the “metaverse,” on TechCrunch. Hanging out within the virtual worlds of games has become more popular in recent years with the growth of platforms like Roblox and open-world games like Fortnite, but it still isn’t a mainstream way…
Read More
Where top VCs are investing in remote events
The novel coronavirus pandemic has rapidly moved companies into a remote-first world. Nearly all of the world’s largest events have been canceled, put on pause or pivoted to online-only. In the tech world, event cancellations thus far have included SXSW, GDC, Mobile World Congress, Google I/O, Facebook F8, E3 and…
Read More
Los Angeles-based Talespin nabs $15 million for its extended reality-based workforce training tools
It turns out the virtual and augmented reality companies aren’t dead — as long as they focus on the enterprise. That’s what the Los Angeles-based extended reality technology developer Talespin did — and it just raised $15 million to grow its business. Traditional venture capitalists may have made it rain…
Read More
The companies that will shape the upcoming multiverse era of social media
Throughout this series on the rise of multiverse virtual worlds, I have outlined the collision of gaming and social media into a new multiverse era of social media within virtual worlds due to technological and cultural changes. The result will be a healthier ecosystem of social media than what currently…
Read More
Making money from games: the future of virtual economies
In Part 6 of our multiverse series, we discuss the business opportunities and compliance challenges of virtual economies Eric Peckham @epeckham / 11 hours Fictional portrayals of virtual worlds such as “Ready Player One” and “The Matrix” typically portray the physical and virtual worlds as distinct realms siloed from each…
Read More