SYNAPTIC LEAP

After a decade in VR, UK studio nDreams is ready for the big time

- ALEX SPENCER

Virtual reality isn’t the easiest place to make a long-term home. The wall of technology that greets us at nDreams’ studio is testament to that. With examples from Nintendo’s Virtual Boy through to modern devices, it serves as a potted VR history – and a reminder of how many shifts and dead ends we’ve seen through the years. Even the decade since Oculus Rift’s debut prompted a VR resurgence has seen major players come and go, hardware advances that render the previous generation obsolete, and a pervasive sense of potential not quite realised. In spite of all this, though, this year the Farnborough-based nDreams marks its tenth anniversary as a developer of VR games exclusively.

“I wish I could tell you, ‘Oh, it’s been an absolute dream – we’ve never had any problems at all’, but that might be a little bit of a white lie,” says Tamsin O’Luanaigh, who co-founded the company with her husband in 2006, before the pivot to VR in 2013. “Running a business is hard, full stop, no matter what industry you’re in. Running a games business is hard. Running a games business in an emerging market, where you don’t have data on what’s coming up, and then you add in funding challenges, pushing for technical innovation – that’s really hard.”