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theBlu: Season One

theBlu: Season One is an underwater simulation that looks to leverage the unique strengths of roomscale-VR to create an unforgettable experience. 

The title had its genesis as a demo for Valve's then-unnamed HMD. WEVR was chosen as one of a dozen developers to create content for their 2015 GDC Press Reveal. For that event we created The Encounter, which would go on to be one of the three 'episodes' in Season One. 

theBlu: Season One was a day-one launch title for the VIVE and for the Oculus Touch.

Project Timeline
In early 2015, we began work on The Encounter, which wrapped up in early March. In July 2015  I returned to the project as Lead Technical Designer.  We shipped on April 5th, 2016 and continued the porting and support process into early 2017.

Project Responsibilities
Game Designer (January 2015 - July 2015)
Technical Design Lead (July 2015 - July 2016)
Project Lead (July 2016 - May 2017)


On The Encounter, my title was Game Designer, a kind of catch-call on a small team. In practice this meant that my duties largely revolved around integrating assets into Unity, working with non-technical staff (Audio etc.) to develop tools to meet their needs and actually laying out and managing the event and interactions in the actual experience. 

For Season One I began as the Technical Design Lead working alongside the Art Lead (Gee Yeong) to assemble and hire the team, concept and pitch new content and then lead execution of that content. In practice this meant retaining my hands-on duties from The Encounter, but also learning how to manage and delegate task work as well and working alongside our Lead Producer (Max Geiger) to develop and maintain the product vision.

After Season One shipped I became Project Lead, maintaining the project and focusing on ports and builds for new revenue streams (LBE, new platforms etc.). This continued into mid-2017 with the development of a new team focused on new product prototypes and features. 

Where to buy it:
Steam
Oculus
Viveport


TEAM


Director Jake Rowell
Senior Producer Max Geiger
Animation Director Andrew R. Jones
Art Director Gee Yeung
Tech/Design Lead Scott Stephan
Senior Artist Nghia Lam
Senior Artist Gennady Babichenko
Visual Engineer / Animator Julian Kantor
Visual Engineer Eyal Erez
Design Engineer Ben Vance
Senior Engineer Scott Reeser
Senior Animator John Kim
Animator Daniel Fiske
Technical Artist Abril Martinez
Sound Designer Kevin Brough
Music Joel Corelitz
Teaser Music Dante De Silva
Additional Art Pod 8 Studios
Executive Producer Neville Spiteri
​
Special Thanks to:
Wevr cofounders Neville Spiteri, Scott Yara, Anthony Batt

Additional Thanks:
Doug Church

MEDIA


PRESS / AWARDS

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