Robin Hunicke interview — Why developers should collaborate with VR platform makers

Virtual reality is still a fledgling industry, and it’s hard to make money on the relatively small installed base of VR headsets. But that doesn’t bother Robin Hunicke, the CEO and cofounder of San Francisco-based indie game studio Funomena.Hunicke, who is also director of the Art, Games, & Playable Media BA program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, gets excited about making games for emerging platforms. Her team has made experimental games such as Luna (a VR title for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Windows Mixed Reality), Woorld (an augmented reality title for Google’s Tango technology, and Wattam, a zany game designed by Funomena’s Keita Takahashi for the game consoles.It’s risky to go out so far on the leading edge, but Hunicke believes that it’s essential to creativity. And she believes that platform owners such as Oculus believe enough in creativity and diverse content, making it so that Funomena doesn’t take risks all on its own.