Vertigo is making a AAA VR game from a hit franchise. Is this a sign that VR is getting more popular?

Like it or not, entertainment — and primarily gaming — is the bread and butter of the consumer XR industry right now. Be it hit PC VR games, games with VR support or just awesome standalone games: a lot of them are worth your time and money.

And while it’s really great that we’ve got creative and unique titles available on some of the best VR headsets, something different becomes really obvious if you squint a bit. Have you seen it yet? Yep, we almost no big-brand VR games exist out there.

Sure, we’ve got things like Skyrim VR and short adventures like Batman Arkham VR — and even Half-Life made the transition nicely! But what about other major franchises that have numerous fans all around the world and could provide fun gameplay in VR?

Well, Vertigo Games is up to something on that front. But what does it mean?



Just in case you need a reminder: Vertigo is one of the biggest studios, dedicated to VR games. Among its published titles are Arizona Sunshine, After the Fall and recently: the 7th Guest. So you could say that this team has quite a lot of experience in the VR space.

So where does this idea come from then? Well, Vertigo is looking for a lead level designer for an upcoming game and the job listing has this specific wording in its contents:



And, not just because it’s my job or anything, but I was brimming with questions after reading that and I’m sure that you are too. So let’s dissect the statement!

First off: what could multi-platform mean in this context? At a glance, this isn’t indicative of anything, but I beg to differ. First off, if this means that we’re getting a huge VR game with support for multiple headset models: that’s awesome, as it feels like the next proper step in the XR market’s aim to become more user-friendly.

But on the other hand, it may just mean that it’s a multi-platform — as in, consoles and PC — game, which will feature a VR mode on some platforms that support the tech. And if that’s the case, this isn’t anything new, as we’ve already seen AAA games with partial or full VR modes.

Only one of those two last ones is a win, though, but I’m confident that you can figure out which.

Then we’ve got the big question: what could this huge franchise be? There are so many series out there that could totally take advantage of VR in cool and unique ways. Well, luckily, the job listing gives us some more clues to attempt and figure that out.

You see, the candidate that Vertigo is looking for must:

• Have knowledge of Epic’s Unreal Engine
• Be familiar with the dev cycle of action-adventure games

And wouldn’t you know it, those two describe about half of the modern games in existence. Tons of games are being made with Unreal, due to its ease of use and… Well, anything could be action-adventure if you insist hard enough. Zelda? Sure. Diablo? Yeah! Uncharted? For sure.

And hey: I get it! But if we get technical: you can’t deny any of those statements.

So, basically, we can theorize all day long, but we likely won’t figure it out. Still though: it’s exciting to know that a blockbuster VR game is brewing! High-budget projects typically come with huge marketing plans, so we’re sure that we’ll hear more about this title soon enough.