 Hi guys, I'm Sarah, not Sherah. That's okay. That's okay. I bet. No worries. Yeah, so I'm working out against gravity and we are based in Seattle. We are a VR game studio and We make the game rec room. It's a social VR game. So before I get into that This is a graph of the social VR apps on Steam So does anybody want to make a guess which line represents which VR app? Anybody I Have free shirts to give away rec room swag. So if you answer Okay, I see people at the back. So do you want to just shout out what you think it is? Yep, and any other guesses what do the rest up? Okay, that's a good answer I'm slightly better than that. Okay. So let me show you guys remember to come down and get a shirt from me later So Yes, you're right red room is the blue one and if you look at the start Red room started exactly a year ago and now we are the biggest social VR app out there So how exactly did we get to that point? This is what I'm going to share with you about So firstly, what is red room? So a lot of people they've seen this icon They are press releases, but they've never actually tried red room. So red room in short to describe it It's kind of like we spots but for VR So we have lots of mini games inside for people to play and the reason why we do this is because we are a still a relatively young Community people are not used to interacting in VR So it can get a bit awkward and you can look at some of the other social VR apps. I won't name them, but What we do in rec room is that we provide games for people to interact and born over So people come back to rec room because of the community the games are fun But community is the reason they come back because people we are the most interesting things and that is exactly what we're Giving out to them in VR So some of the games that we have are paintball, which is by far our most popular activity Quest which is kind of like a dungeon crawler. We have two versions of it. This is called the rise of jumbotron, which is Quite difficult to play. I'll admit the bad guy shoot lasers at you, which is really fast We also have 3d charades. So imagine charades, but you have a 3d gun. You can draw in 3d and guess the words We have this golf, which is sort of like a mix between frisbee and golf and this is a real spot in real I didn't know that I thought it was a VR only spot, but apparently not and dodgeball and a lot of other activities too many to fit here So for our company against gravity, we have three main values Which we follow a lot when we are which helps us to make our decisions and prioritize what we want to do next So if you look at the first one, it's really fire aim So we fire first before we aim and what exactly does that mean? This means that going fast is a lot more valuable than polish because at this state of the VR industry people value Experiments nobody really knows what's right and what's wrong and even if you think what is right now It might be proven wrong in future. For example, like common VR knowledge says don't accelerate the user But if you look at games like ego flight, they have actually done it really successfully And I myself suffer from VR sickness, but when I play ego flight, I'm fine surprisingly So for this we ship and iterate constantly and so here are a few examples So for this, this is the handshake gesture in VR in red room So how we came up with this was because we were thinking like I want to make friends with people I want to add them to my friends list But I don't really want to have to dig through a menu because in VR it doesn't feel good to have like so much 2D UI It's as if it's the real world. You want to have like 3D gestures 3D actions So what we did was hey, why don't we try a handshake? We tried it out. We hacked together a prototype This was done like I think in an afternoon and it worked amazingly Everybody liked it. So we decided to push it and the community also really liked it and And the next one is a keyboard. So we actually have a virtual keyboard and I'll wait for it to come up Yeah, and you see how you type on it. You use your fingers So when we were first experimenting with this, there was already some research some of the apps out there Which did something similar, but they had sort of like a drumstick method So you're holding a drumstick in your hands and you're like typing on a keyboard like this Which was kind of strange But because people said it works. So that was the first thing we tried But instead of a drumstick, we had like mini trump hands So that was really funny and we realized like it did work But it could have been better and one of our designers was like hey Why don't we try like using hands instead and since in rec room like your hands are the block hands like this Somebody say why don't we get a finger a pointer and then we tried that and it actually feels really good So I've tried the drumstick method and personally I don't like it This one feels so much better and I'm sure most people can remember like when you first learn how to type a lot of people did this, right? Please say I'm not the only one Okay, good to know your friend would like this way of typing then Yeah, so this is one example of just trying stuff out figuring out what works what doesn't work And we are more interested in just trying new stuff seeing what works and pushing it out to people because the best Feedback you can get is from the community And the next value is when in doubt build it so this means we are biased towards action So this is sort of similar to the previous point But also like if you're not sure of anything you want to prototype it as fast as you can and test it out in VR Because as I'm sure like some of you know what you see on the 2d screen on your monitor feels very different in VR That's a lot. That's a mistake which a lot of beginners make. They don't realize how different it is So one example is this Can you guys see this? So our art director Sorry feet that our art director So art director Saw this gif on Reddit about a year ago Less than a year ago, and he was like this is super cute Can you imagine if we have this kind of expressions on our rec room ever tasks and at first people are like Are you sure? It's not gonna look good. It's gonna be weird. You cannot control it, but Why not just try it out? So we have to get a prototype This is how the prototype looks like and it was actually pretty cute. So we added it to our ever tasks and now All rec room ever tasks have this So this has not just like gotten into rec room. It has become like a distinct feature of rec room So yeah ever tasks like They always have weird expressions all the time usually smiley faces because what you see on people's faces It you might not know but it affects you subconsciously and it affects your behavior This is one of the reasons why red room in general we have pretty good community behavior for a multiplayer game Yep in Well, it's not for kids, but we have a lot of interest from the younger people Okay, in the last honest, it's a small world. So what this means is what goes around comes around we respect our customers We don't do anything to exploit them because we value all of them And this can be seen like how we treat how we interact with our community We are very active on Reddit on discord on the steam forums and our community respects that they enjoy Interacting with us and you can see the way they interact with us shows like how much they value this So for example recently I think last month we released a new paintball map called spillway And then like within the next few days, I think in fact within the next few hours We had so many comments thanking us about it And if you look at some of these comments like people are like, please add a donate option I want to give you guys money How often do you get a product which people say that for by the way rec room is free? It's on steam and Oculus home So we are not monetizing it right now, but people are asking us can we donate we love the game so much We want to support it and it's not just about how good the game is because of the community That is what brings people back again and again So what does the future of the VR industry look like? Anybody want to make a guess? You guys just want more shirts, right? Okay, never mind. So We believe that it's going to be a race to the middle in terms of hit sets So right now you can see like the high-end ones like Vive and Oculus Rift and then the lower-end ones like Daydream and Samsung Gear VR So what we believe will be the future the one which will go into the mass market is something like this The sixth of six degrees of freedom for your head and your hands, which means you can move around You can rotate everything is tracked properly There'll be inside out tracking so you won't need external sensors The price range will be around 200 to 300 and there'll be no wires, which are the most annoying thing right now So when will this happen within the next few years, we believe and if you look at this graph Okay, you guys are supposed to guess again what the graph means and don't say rec room because this is nothing to do with rec room Anybody want to guess? Smartphones no not smartphones Not price Yes, so That is air as we are We believe air is going to be the future Via is going to be popular, but it's nowhere near as popular as air So why are we focusing on via right now because the lessons you learn in via a lot of them can be translated to air We want to get a foothold in the VR market first because it's going to mature away before the air market So once we have that advantage when air boom comes Red room hopefully will be positioned at the best part to take advantage of it And where we are right now is somewhere over here So we haven't actually hit the part where VR goes crazy the inflection point What we predict will be sometime at the end of next year or after that But before that not so much and if you look at it like the previous while saying the VR headsets This kind of VR headsets with all these features are not features with all these points If you look at the VR headsets which Google Microsoft are announcing now They're getting closer and closer to it Microsoft's headset is I think it's $400 which includes their two-hand Controllers and it's inside outtracking. So the same as for Google's one Yep, so if you look at this we are getting closer and closer to it, which is why Nick's Christmas Something big will happen But if it doesn't happen, then it'll be the Christmas after that. Don't quote me on this Yeah, so that's a good time to buy VR headsets during the Christmas season and finally We really hope that red room will be positioned to take advantage of that We have a lot of learnings from VR and we really want to translate that into air because we believe that's the future And yeah, this is just a painting one of our concept artists did it's in VR in the lounge in red room And it was so nice you decided to we decided to make a real one and put it in our office as well So this is there as well in VR and in real life And yeah, that's it. So do I have any questions? You get free shirts Okay. Yeah. Hi. So because I was wondering actually how you how do you all handle about the Personal space issue because I actually saw one video on YouTube about something like Handiboard or something like that. Yeah, so Yeah, I saw that video and it was like I feel like oh, if I'm that guy is going to be like super super awkward because like The guy he was like being not so nice to His fellow players So the thing about this guy is that he didn't really know how to control the game that well and then Because his character is fixed in place the other characters actually started moving towards him and like touching him and like Yeah, he couldn't do anything about it. And yeah Yeah, it's yeah So yes, not so nice is a very nice way to put it We consider that social harassment and we take that really really seriously So that happened in December last year that I think towards the end of December and since then we have implemented a lot more features To combat social harassment and I cannot show you as a female. I get a lot of that when I step into VR So one thing which we have implemented is an ignore bubble. So by default, it's on I think set at small So if somebody approaches me they get ghosted out. They turn invisible So that means that if I want to try if somebody wants to try and harass me They want to come towards me if they put their hands toward me their hands go stop. I don't see it. They still see it, but I Don't see it. So I'm not really affected by it And so you can change the size of that bubble you can turn it off If like, I don't know your close friends with that person and you don't want to ignore bubble But by default it's set at small you can set it to medium You can set it at large and then you can also ignore people So we have implemented this thing called the stop gesture if somebody's being annoying to me I can just hold out my hand at them and they disappear They get ghosted. Well, okay, they don't disappear. They disappear from my side But other people can still see them. So I don't see them and the best part is I don't hear them as well So if they want to continue spotting rubbish, I don't care because I cannot see them So that are just some of the things that we have done and we have also streamlined our reporting because we really take this Seriously, and each time something like this happens. We reach out to the user and we ask how can we help you? Yep, so I hope that answers your question Or you can get a shirt too, but you need to come forward later Yeah, so thanks for the time. I'm just curious because you mentioned how you guys are gonna Transition to AR so I'm just wondering know what's Do you have any vision for video for AR and what do you plan to stay in gaming or brunch out? And like right now what lessons you think from working via will be translatable to AR? So a lot of the design principles in VR can be moved to air and fun fact about our company about half Actually, I think more than half now of our company came from the Microsoft HoloLens team So we really do believe air is going to be big It's just that right now the market is a bit too small. It's too immature for air So we believe VR is going to mature first. That's why we're doing it now And what we hope red room will be in the future. It's not just gonna be games But a place for people to meet up which we are starting to see so there is a lounge in red room Which we have seen people Go there and carry out meetings there because we have a whiteboard in VR Which is the coolest thing ever because you can take a virtual marker draw on a virtual whiteboard and everything works So that's pretty cool. And not just that like community driven events We want red room and not just red room whatever we do in the future We wanted to be a place where people can meet up. We wanted to be the default meeting place So like for example, if I have a friend if I'm in America and I want to meet up with like say my family I can say hey meet me in a red room and then we can just go to our own private room We can have a chat we can play games together stuff like that So we wanted to be a default meeting place sort of like how Facebook now is a bit like the default social media channel So we are hoping that red room be something like that in the future Hello, thank you for sharing. Could you share more about the addressable market in For like these type of apps and how is it like compared between Asia in the rest of the world? So for the addressable market right now, it's limited by the number of hitsets. We are only available on Vive and Oculus Rift at this moment. We have plans to expand of course, but not right now So if you look at the total number of hitsets Which can play red room? Oh, and you need controllers hand controllers for red room So in terms of the Oculus Rift market only those people with touch So right now there are only about half a million hitsets which can which red room can run on So it's still pretty small and we are limited by that but it's growing fast and we are working with a lot of the companies which are producing the VR headsets like Microsoft in order to help push our game to their headsets when it comes out Does that sort of answer the question? Oh? Yes, sorry, I forgot about that part So the interesting thing about Asia and America and Europe in fact is that Asia seems to be going the route of the VR Arcade in America it seems like more people are interested in like Games in their own personal headset, but in Asia maybe because of like, I don't know lack of space But that's true for Singapore People seem to be going the eight of the arcade route and it's pretty interesting to watch because in America most people think Okay, it's it's not gonna be successful, but in Asia you see them popping up everywhere Yep Hi as a company for against gravity what there are some of the challenges or I guess thought processes you guys have gone through Relating to when to start to monetize and to keep doing what you guys do for free That's a really good that's a really good question which a lot of people haven't asking us So we don't have any plans to monetize this year, but definitely in future, which I cannot talk about now unfortunately So we want to keep the game free to play all the time because we believe that such a platform shouldn't be monetized Oh, well, it should be monetized, but not there shouldn't be like a barrier to entry So something like Facebook we might not go the ads route It's still a bit foggy right now But definitely monetization in the future and the thing is once you have all the market share It's gonna be much easier. I would say we have enough players That financially we are not in any trouble. We have a significant amount of money When you're the biggest social VR app money tends to not be a problem Kind of Yeah, if you're more if you're interested in that I can talk to you more about it offline Okay, maybe you take one last question Hi, Sarah, I think you should agree as a studio We are kind of at mercy of the platform. So be it Oculus be in a HTC or Microsoft as Some we use fortune enough to be able to walk multiple platforms including windows mixed reality Just like to get your sensing on how things might change In maybe come Christmas or maybe in the next year do foresee with the changes in With Oculus and Vive and also the windows mixed reality touch controllers Would you see any changes in the market or possibly one platform overtaking another? So right now The HTC Vive is the most popular headset even though like I kind of think Oculus is better That's not an endorsement from me But yeah, so if you look at the VR headsets that that are coming out There are so many different types some of them are slightly better and each of them have their own pros and cons So in terms of that we just want to target as many people as we can and move to as Be available on as many platforms as you can in terms of which platform we think will win out right now We are not really sure and one really nice thing about red room and being the most popular social VR app again Is that people want you on your platform? It's not a hey, can I be on your platform? Can you help me with this? It's more like companies come and hey, we really want you to be in our platform We believe that your game will help us drive sales up. So can you help us? So it's just an advantage which comes with being popular. So I guess That sounded a bit wrong, but you get what I mean Okay. Thank you so much Sarah for the great talk