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For Schell Games, VR is the technology of the present (possibly the future, too)
17.04.2024 - 15:15 / gamesindustry.biz
Looking at Schell Games' recent output, it's pretty easy to spot a common thread. There's the VR puzzle franchise I Expect You To Die, the VR adaptation of social deduction game Among Us, the VR jumpscare horror game Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire…
When we speak with Schell Games CEO Jesse Schell at the Game Developers Conference, we ask if the studio has indeed pivoted fully to VR and committed itself to that market going forward.
"No, we never do that," he quickly says, "Because that's how you sink a studio. You say, 'We're about this one thing' and then the world moves on. Then you sink, right? We've been at it for 20-plus years, so you've got to change with what's going on, but we are doing a lot of that work right now."
So while the company has certainly invested time and effort in VR, Schell doesn't see the studio as placing any exceedingly large bets on it.
"We're always very focused on stability," he says. "There are lots of companies that say, 'We're going to bet everybody's job on this.' And we just don't do that. We'll bet cash on things, but we're not going to bet jobs on things. That's just not how we do it, which is why in 22 years, we've never had a layoff. It's not an accident; it's a choice.
"We make strategic bets, but we don't bet the whole company. It's a thing you could do, but the thing we believe is that teams grow stronger over time. And if you're in a situation where every three years you layoff 30% of the company – and a lot of places do that – you're losing that teamwork. So we tend to be very focused on stability in the long term view."
He describes it as a serious of "slow, strategic bets" in the VR space, testing out specific aspects like mixed reality or the educational content, seeing what works and making controlled, gradual follow-up investments.
"It's been working pretty well," he says, adding, "It's not like we're absolutely crushing it financially, but we're OK."
That approach has been validated somewhat by the wave of layoffs and closures across the industry over the past year and change.
Schell says, "A friend of mine used to say 'Save up for a rainy day because sometimes it rains.' And it's raining, so I was glad we saved up a bit."
As for the VR market itself, Schell is fairly upbeat about it.
"We know the number of Quest headsets is somewhere between 20 and 30 million, which is pretty good," he says. "It would seem there are more Quest headsets than there are Xboxes right now, which seems pretty good. And there are a lot of people who play these games and love them.
"We've seen a lot of continued growth, and the biggest growth area we're seeing, now that the prices are coming down, is younger teenagers really getting into it. You'll see the No. 1 most played game in
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