theBlu: Season One
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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 |
TEAMDirector 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 |
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