SGC Speaker: Colin Rose of Objective Reality Games
Colin Rose is one of the featured speakers at the upcoming 2023 Shawnee Game Conference, held March 10th and 11th. Colin and his wife Sara own Objective Reality Games and Objective Reality Studios based in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Objective Reality Games, a brick and mortar VR arcade, was opened in 2019 just months before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We were so busy out of the gate,” said Colin. “It went so well. And then here comes 2020 and the shutdowns. Unfortunately, because we were such a new company, we didn’t qualify for COVID relief funds.”
So Colin pivoted. He began to develop his own VR game called Deed of Deception.
Colin and Sara began Objective Reality Games in October 2019. Since then, they have released the VR game ‘Deed of Deception’ and began a cloud VR software startup company.
“It had always been a passion of mine to get into game design. It’s the coolest form of art. I’ve been a gamer all my life - but I knew nothing about game design. So, I reached out to some universities that focused on it as a major such as OSU and SSU and got some interns that were both passionate and needed something to do over the pandemic.”
“It took a lot of work. We didn’t have a lot of outside help. But we managed to come up with the finished product and put it on Steam.”
Deed of Deception sparked a turning point for Colin and his business.
“Deed of Deception was a PC VR game. We made it to high standards. And when we put it on Steam, we realized that there wasn’t much of a market for that anymore. Everyone had moved on to Meta Quest VR. This sparked a new project.”
During the COVID pandemic, Colin utilized software to allow users to rent his VR arcade games on their own personal VR headsets. After initial success, he created software that would allow VR streaming on the cloud and allow users access to high end VR games on simple devices like Meta Quest or Oculus - while also allowing them to connect to them from anywhere in the world.
“We want to create a space for game developers to create high dollar VR experiences, triple-a experiences, that can be played by the mass user base at home.”
“We were thinking outside the box during COVID. We needed to make money, but we couldn’t let people into our store. So, we found some software that allowed users within a 50 mile radius to play our games on their VR headsets. It got dicey outside of that bubble because of latency issues. For a while, it went well. And as restrictions lifted, we got the storefront back in order. We started to phase out at-home membership, but we were getting push back. Many customers wanted to stay home and play. So, we kept it going.”
One of those customers was an IT specialist with a background in cloud computing. He suggested Colin bring his service into the cloud so that he could make his games available all over the world.
“We reached out to Amazon Web Services and asked a bunch of questions,” explained Colin. “The response I got back was overwhelmingly positive. They said it was a really cool use case they hadn’t seen. So, they really rolled out the red carpet for us and gave us many connections, including Rev1 Ventures.”
Rev1 Ventures provides seed funding to startups in order to help them scale up, similar to the goal of the Kricker Innovation Hub.
“It’s been a whirlwind,” admitted Colin. “We want to create a space for game developers to create high dollar VR experiences, triple-a experiences, that can be played by the mass user base without any additional home setup… This could change the entire landscape of VR gaming.”
Colin will be speaking on his experience, as well as how to get projects crowd funded at the Shawnee Game Conference next month.
“Objective Reality has been successful in that regard in a way not a lot of other studios have been.”
“Crowdfunding is a great way to get revenue going that you need to start in the design space,” said Colin. “But it’s tricky. You have to build your audience and get excitement going in your community before you begin. Objective Reality has been successful in that regard in a way not a lot of other studios have been. I’ll also walk through the pitfalls we went through in game design and speak about honing ideas and executing the ultimate vision.”
Passes for the 2023 Shawnee Game Conference are now available. Early bird pricing is available until February 10th. Current High School and Shawnee State Students are eligible for compensated passes.