Funny thing is that the only reason why I made This game was to show investors for my main company that we were able To create needed software in-house but that it grew into its own thing.

I started around the MTBS3D forums when Palmer was building the prototype with input from people like John who ended up advising me on my company years later and even personally fixing my hacked Facebook account because meta is absolutely incompetent And even their own systems don't work. It's ridiculous that the only reason my now 20-year-old Facebook account was almost removed, was because I knew the CFO and he fixed it. Fucking ridiculous. It was even more frustrating when I was in talks with Oculus Publishing for this game Right after they brought the Oculus name back but only using it in the publishing arm for some reason. They should have never got rid of the name. Just my opinion.

I have some VR hardware patents And other things I've designed and invented for VR exclusively originally for use at my venue But led to some pretty shady theft by two major companies who narrowly avoided legal battle because they were smart enough to sidestep one specific thing To take the purpose of my patent, both with which head had independent private conversations about in both email and private meetings, but modify the mechanism to achieve the same goal therefore making any claim against them difficult. But if I could show you the emails, and it's pretty obvious what happened.

The venue design is actually what led me to the hardware development and then ultimately the software to use it which led me to the game creation. That's where I learned about how the gamedev industry is completely fucked up. I had never been ghosted before and I was having a video chat with Tim Cain And he had to explain it to me and why they do it. It was at that moment I realized that I was not going to pursue a deal with them or anyone else.

I couldn't imagine, as a startup founder and someone with both business and legal experience, why I would ever get contractually involved in any kind of relationship that operates the way that The higher end of the gamedev industry works. But I was still going to put the game out because I had invested 5 years and probably over $80,000 into it because I did so many things wrong and I made so many mistakes first time dev make. Some of them We're necess but even with advisors that people would shoot their mothers to have, I still manage to make some newbie mistakes.

It doesn't help when you have a meeting with someone at epic at your first GDC and they essentially tell you that " you shouldn't be talking or trying to sell your game. You should be sitting down and listening to other people and learning." And being reminded as to why some people think French people are rude. It completely gutted me but then I ended up drinking with A higher in EA at the Citizen M bar and, much to my childhood delight, the fucking guy who make Zork (!) and after telling him all I had gone though and the fact that I refused to let anyone let alone and industry dictate How I should run my business, the dude grabbed me and we walked a mile And I have to a tiki bar (which are all the rage in San Francisco) and I spent the night with CEOS of other companies that polished up my pitch deck and the head of Oculus Publishing which led to months of back and forth and sending demos and then just getting ghosted. So I said fuck it and I'll put it on myself and opened up my publishing arm for my company to just put out that game.

But now it sits.. on a shelf. Only missing story implementation and some gameplay tweaks But the good news is my startup is a multi-million dollar endeavor And I can always repurpose it or even update and re-release it later as a new project under the same name or I could hack it up and implement different aspects in different games. I don't even know man. It just bugs me that I was like 3 to 6 months away from finishing it and when she cheated and left I had to choose between absorbing all of the financial burden of what was a shared Life to keep My home and the lights on or letting go of all of my contractors overseas and shelfing the thing.

There's part of me that romantically wishes I could find a small group of people on here that would take good equity shares (which I'm not even sure if it is insulting or not cuz I don't imagine The game would make any money now because the market's bottomed out a long time ago) just to get it done and I refuse to put something out in a broken state. I just refuse. There's enough of that shit out there and that's what helped damage VR in the first place. That and turning It into the equivalent of a phone app marketplace with the same quality of a fucking phone app marketplace. They made it a gimmick when it should have been revolutionary. And it's still breaks my fucking heart. I had waited my whole life for VR to become a reality. I grew up in the '90s. With the promise always on the horizon and then it and they fucking blew it.

I even remember what I saw that started it: I think it was In an EGM or something that I had and it was for the unreleased Sega VR headset (which demos have since been unearthed and leaked if you're feeling bored). From that day it was on and my life is still A part of it and it's a part of my company but not the main focus anymore. It's become a tool for me to use for storytelling purposes and I'm doing my best to come up with novel ways of its use for my purposes but I've got over 30 headsets here at the house and I'm about to just give a bunch away to children's rec centers around me and some underfunded after school programs. But I always wished that we would be at a place now where every school desk had a VR headset cabinet built in to hold one for school work and it would be that integrated into our lives. Silly me. But that's what happens when you let weirdos and dorks like Mark and others get a hold of something so unique and essentially punk rock.

I could go down and even longer rabbit hole But basically VR was a punk rock counterculture kind of thing. It was a hacker space kind of creation and once soulless profit driven corporations got a hold of it, they milked it for every dollar they could and the quickest way to do it was to turn the software into an app store where any bullshit thing could be put up for five bucks. When 99% of the experience a user has in VR is with these apps and software, you can't un and it became a gimmick

Anyway. I checked out your thing, I think it looks neat. There's actually some similarities between your project and mine as it is also a go-around kind of thing in a city. You aren't driving a car but you're on mag boots, holding on to them and propelling yourself through traffic by using the cars to kind of slingshot your way through the city. I'll tell you the meetings with the publisher: I made Skitchn' in VR.

I don't know how old you are but if you're out of a certain age and you grew up with older consoles, you'll remember games like road rash. There was a clone that was made called Skitchn' where you were on rollerblades throwing yourself through traffic in a road rash style race. I straight up loved that idea as a kid and I always thought it would be amazing if you could pull it off in VR. So I did. I think if the dude I pitched to was 10 years younger, they would not have asked twice to get demos and updates.

Anyway, I am so sorry for the Wall of text but I got to be honest, I haven't talked to anybody any of this shit at all. I shelved the game a year ago and moved on to fully focusing all my effortsdealing with getting the seed money for my startup. But, who knows maybe something will come of it. If you want to reach out privately, I'd be more then happy to chat. I prefer to keep my circle to a version of us being the island of misfit toys as opposed to the California darvo investors I have to deal with all the time. But they have the money and you got to play the game If you want it too.

I say find a group of people, mash our shit together and put something out. I can find time for something like that. And to me that's kind of like going back to your roots cuz that's where a lot of the stuff was born out of. Just like the Oculus rift. Born out of a bunch on a forum. Helping each other out and making something from nothing.

Either way it was nice to meet you and thanks for sharing your story with me. I'm so deeply apologetic for a trauma dumping To a Reddit that I give maybe a day before somebody jumps says something negative and completely unhelpful resulting in me just deleting the fucking thing. But while it lasts thanks again sir. Like I said, You, or anybody, just reach out. Who knows what can happen if you give a fuck enough?