VR - All You Need to Know

I just recently covered "all you need to know" in the semi-immersive world of augmented & mixed reality (AR/MR). 

Now, let's get fully immersive with "all you need to know" about virtual reality (VR). 

INTRODUCTION

A Hollywood meeting doesn’t seem to go by without some discussion of VR and its possibilities, and VR headsets now litter entertainment company conference rooms across Burbank. That’s smart (so long as those headsets really are used and aren’t seen as being mere novelties … because they aren’t). But virtually all with whom I discuss VR still think too small, move too slowly, and treat VR like it is merely a separate and distinct product category or just another distribution platform. 

Only that isn’t the reality.  In the minds of many, like Paramount’s Futurist Ted Schilowitz who previously future-ized at Fox, VR is nothing less than game-changing.  Geek standout publication WIRED effusively agrees, pronouncing VR as “creating the next evolution of the Internet -- an Internet of experiences.”  Chew on that for a bit, and understand that you likely can’t even comprehend how impactful VR can be until you have had your first premium VR experience -- because, yes, it’s true, you never forget your first time.

Samsung, HTC, Oculus and a host of others sold millions of premium consumer headsets in 2017.  Millions more Google Cardboard and other more rudimentary smart phone-based VR headsets served as “gateway drugs” to those higher quality (and significantly more expensive) experiences, giving consumers a taste of VR so that they crave more.   

VR’s most obvious “here and now” promise is in the world of games, a market that few doubt will be massive.  But VR-targeted animation and live action entertainment are expected to follow in short order.  And smart, forward-thinking media and entertainment companies already are actively experimenting and placing their bets.

Fox has been amongst the most aggressive to date.  After its well-received VR foray The Martian VR Experience in 2016, Fox immersed itself completely in 2017 by launching an entirely new VR unit called FoxNet and partnering with the likes of VR innovator Chris Milk and his company Within (discussed below) to produce Planet of the Apes experiences, among others.  Sony also has been relatively aggressive in VR.  Late 2016, Sony Pictures announced a partnership with Nokia “to explore the creative potential” of VR production and distribution.  And, in June 2017, Sony announced a new Breaking Bad VR project with that iconic show’s creator, Vince Gilligan.  Imagine what it will feel like to “break bad” spherically?  Who needs Breaking Bad’s drugs when you are fully immersed in 360 degrees?  That actually may freak you out more than the drugs!  

And then there’s Sky in the UK.  After opening its own VR production studio in 2016, this U.K. media force announced plans for twelve new VR film projects in 2017.  Meanwhile, Verizon’s AOL (via its RYOT subsidiary) created a new team focused on VR and AR to bring immersive stories to life for major legacy brands that include Sports Illustrated.

Even the venerable Gray Lady, The New York Times -- amongst the oldest of old media -- got fired up about the possibilities (cue the “Applause” sign).  Beginning in late 2015, she distributed over one million Google Cardboards to her subscribers, seeing VR as being a critical new way to expand journalistic impact and extend her overall life expectancy amidst digital’s relentless attack on print.  The Lady extended those initial experiments this year when she developed a “VR companion piece” to George Saunder’s novel, Lincoln in the Bravo.  Marketers also jumped on board, spending real ad dollars and developing innovative brand-centered immersive experiences.  In one notable example, outdoor apparel company Merrell used VR to launch a new hiking book, creating the buzz-worthy VR experience Trailscape that guided customers on a dangerous mountain hike.  

So, now it’s content’s turn.  If Media 2.0 builds it, more and more consumers most certainly will come.  VR represents a once-in-a-generation rare opportunity to build an entirely new transformative media and entertainment kingdom.  But how?  How do creators solve VR’s trickiest dilemma of transforming headset-laden solitary experiences into more social shared experiences?  Even more fundamentally, how do creators even develop and produce live action VR stories?  Imagine trying to direct a fully-immersive live action VR experience, choreographing all actions at once in a 360 degree spherical setting.  How do you even begin to direct your talent, or focus an audience on one particular element in those spherical conditions?  That’s what VR innovator Chris Milk and others are trying to invent.  

Storytellers must first develop an entirely new language of “experience,” a new lexicon for VR, if you will, to address these foundational mind-bending challenges.  Consider these to be VR entertainment’s early days, much like the early days of cinema a century before.  Just as today’s movies evolved from those early rudimentary experiments, today’s actions by bold Media 2.0 players ultimately will lead us to a new immersive promised land.  We just don’t know what those experiences will look … er … feel like.  And that’s part of the fun – simply imagining the possibilities.

Immersed in this background, here are some key players in the burgeoning Media 2.0 world of live action VR.  I intentionally exclude leading headset-focused consumer electronics companies like HTC, Samsung, and Facebook-owned Oculus from this discussion, because those are more obvious.

MEDIA 2.0’s KEY LIVE ACTION VR PLAYERS

JAUNT

Blue chip investors like Google Ventures flocked to immerse their cash into this Bay Area-based company when it launched in 2013 to develop and commercialize its own 360 degree live action VR camera.  Jaunt later changed course to focus on VR content, and set up its own LA-based VR production studio in 2015 to pursue those media aspirations.  That’s when Disney, Sky and other major media companies invested a healthy $65 million more to bring Jaunt’s total haul to over $100 million.  Cash alone doesn’t solve all, of course, and live action VR storytelling at mass commercial scale is challenging to say the least.  Jaunt isn’t quite there yet, as its experiences likely have yet to significantly monetize.  But, that shouldn’t be all that surprising, given how nascent the VR space is. 

Relatively new CEO George Kliavkoff hopes to change that with his new Media 1.0 buddies and Jaunt’s new international joint venture, Jaunt China.  Jaunt’s powerful media and entertainment allies include Disney, perhaps the greatest storyteller of them all.  That creative SoCal Hollywood DNA certainly may hasten closure of the VR language gap for Silicon Valley tech-born Jaunt.  As examples, Jaunt released several high-end VR experiences in 2017, including a Fifty Shades of Grey immersive experience (I know, I know, say no more …) and Invisible, a supernatural series directed by Bourne Identity director Doug Liman.  Jaunt also announced a new VR series based on the cult action horror movie Lawnmower Man at Sundance in 2017, and later struck five more key content deals via the likes of mega-talent agencies CAA and WME. 

Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Jaunt’s largely SoCal-based Media 1.0 money will be as patient as NorCal VCs that are accustomed to longer-term technology development and market evolution.  

And, the long-term live action VR market opportunity demands nothing if not patience.

NEXTVR

NextVR is another live action-focused VR market leader, and it too has attracted significant investment from traditional media ($120 million), including the venture arms of Comcast and Time Warner (which ultimately, stealthily means AT&T – yes, there it is again!).  NextVR’s focus is to bring live events and sports to life, and its client list is impressive, including Fox Sports, NBC Sports, and Live Nation, with which it will stream hundreds of concerts in virtual reality.  It plans to use its cash hoard to deliver more subscription content and unveil more paid events.  

HERE BE DRAGONS/WITHIN

From the innovative and iconoclastic mind of Chris Milk, one of the immersive space’s most respected creative visionaries, we have two related companies – Here Be Dragons (formerly VRSE) and Within.  Here Be Dragons is a VR-driven content studio through and through – no hardware in sight.  Discovery Communications fueled it with a $10 million cash injection in August 2017.  

Meanwhile, Within is both a distributor of Here Be Dragons content and a content/experience creator itself.  The company has raised $56.6 million to date, including a massive $40 million cash infusion in 2017 from the likes of diverse A-players Fox, WPP, WME, Raine Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to fuel what it calls “spherical filmmaking.”  

Expect these related companies to help write the live action VR script. 

WEVR

WEVR is another SoCal-based VR startup.  Its goal is to become the community and YouTube-like home for VR (although YouTube itself hopes to be the YouTube of VR).  WEVR also has immersed itself in cash, raising $38.25 million to date, including $10 million from VR headset leader HTC.  In addition to serving as a distribution platform for its VR creators, WEVR produces its own live action VR experiences and counts Lionsgate, among others, as major Hollywood partners.  

Are you getting the sense that this VR space is also becoming crowded?   That’s what I thought.

EMBLEMATIC

Emblematic is yet another SoCal-based immersive company you should know (See the pattern here? Much of this innovation now comes from LA). I hear good things about Emblematic and its quest for VR, AR and MR domination (the company focuses on all forms of immersive). It has a long history of innovation and claims to have developed the first VR documentary, Hunger, which premiered at Sundance in 2012 – downright ages ago in the world of Media 2.0. Emblematic’s self-proclaimed mission is to be the home of the world’s foremost visionaries to create “fully immersive environments that place the user inside the scene, allowing them to move through, interact, and play with the story.”   In other words, to fully develop, flesh out and realize VR’s live action entertainment possibilities.

THE VOID

And then there’s The Void, based in Salt Lake City -- a completely different kind of VR animal than all others on this list (even its name stands out).  The Void plays in the out-of-home, location-based entertainment (“LBE”) market.  Think of The Void as being a VR-driven theme park that takes traditional Disney and Universal Studios experiences to an entirely new, fully-immersive level – way beyond the physical.  

The company hopes to capture significant share of the $40 billion plus global theme park market and even broader LBE market.  After all, once The Void develops VR experiences, it can easily replicate them on the cheap on small land footprints in shopping malls or any other high traffic zones.  Imagine your very own theme-park-in-a-box, because that’s precisely what “it” is.  And, these VR black boxes already fill high traffic areas throughout China, a country that is well ahead of the curve in the LBE-focused VR space. 

The Void has cleverly “solved” two of VR’s greatest challenges – movement and shared, social experiences.  The Void participants walk freely, untethered, in its open spaces, wearing vests that carry batteries and processing power, and sensors that deliver 4D vibrations timed in synch with the action to deepen trickery to the mind.  And, experiencers actually can “see” and engage with each other via avatars as they participate, making that experience social.  Impressive.  

You can bet that Disney’s Imagineers have been watching, and you’d be right.  That’s precisely why the Disney Accelerator (an organization where I served as a mentor) graciously opened its arms to welcome The Void into its 4th class.  Who do you think benefits more from that arrangement?  That Disney – smart, smart, smart.  As an example, Disney and The Void now work together in developing a new Star Wars experience near its theme parks in Anaheim and Orlando.  

And, here’s the thing.  The Void has what neither Disney nor other behemoths have -- a seemingly endless supply of cash-rich potential global Media 2.0 mega-partners who themselves are motivated to trap significant share in the global LBE world (and the Mouse in the process).  So, don’t be too surprised if Disney takes its current relationship with The Void even further into full-fledged acquisition – both as an offensive and defensive maneuver. 

INTERNATIONAL

As in any nascent market, the list of live action-focused VR players goes on and on and, of course, includes major international players.  Usual suspects include China’s BAT companies Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, each of which is already all-in amidst a Chinese consumer market that buys 40% of the world’s VR headsets.  Baidu, via its iQIYI streaming video service, announced in 2017 that it intends to build the world’s largest Chinese language VR service.  The company is investing massively to produce compelling VR content to fuel that consumption.  Tencent is also investing “big-ly” in live action VR content, including fully-immersive VR movies and music concert experiences.  Meanwhile Alibaba, not surprisingly, focuses first on delivering VR shopping experiences to its hundreds of millions of customers.  It fueled adoption of its new form of immersive commerce by giving away Google Cardboard VR glasses, making it easy (maybe too easy!) for VR-laden shoppers to pay for goods with a simple nod of their heads. 

Calling all parents, monitor your kids’ VR headset use closely (and your credit card bills even more closely)!

Stakes are high.  Very.  But the VR market opportunity is even higher.  You just gotta fearlessly jump into this immersive game. 

[For a deeper dive into the immersive worlds of VR, AR, and Mixed Reality -- as well as OTT video, streaming music, eSports and blockchain -- check out my new book "Media 2.0 (18): An Insider's Guide to Today's Digital Media World & Where It's Going" that is available now on Amazon in both print and Kindle editions.]