Reality Bytes

CCP Newcastle’s Andrew Willans on the challenges of 18 months as a VR pioneer

- EVE Valkyrie

You’ll struggle to find a more passionate advocate for VR than Andrew Willans. Eve Valkyrie’s lead designer left Ubisoft Reflections after seven years, having worked on the likes of The Crew, The Division and Watch Dogs, as well as leading a small team on the delightful Grow Home. He moved to CCP Newcastle after being dazzled by an early Valkyrie demo, and is still working on the game, some 18 months on from its initial launch. Ahead of his keynote at this year’s Develop: VR conference at Olympia London on November 9, Willans spoke to us about his experiences working on one of VR’s biggest games.

What’s the biggest draw to working in VR? 

I think I speak for everyone at the studio that when VR came about it really blew our socks off. We’re making games in VR because we genuinely believe that this is a large part of the future of games. For us there’s still that sense of wonder and excitement. So that’s in the DNA of the studio: we’re all wowed by the technology, and we just want to make great games for it. Yeah, we’d be a lot happier if it picked up sooner than it did, but we’re here for the long haul. As the technology improves, as the prices come down and it becomes more widely available to more players, then that’s only going to be happy days for us.