Doug North Cook is the CEO and Creative Director for Creature, which is both an immersive game studio and label announced a year ago that's representing 10 different XR studios and 16 projects slated as far out as 2027. Creature had four different projects with announcements as a part of the UploadVR Summers Showcase 2024 on June 26th that included Laser Dance, Thrasher, Maestro as well as the "cozy sci-fi, psychedelic adventure" mixed reality game that they're building called Starship Home.

Each of these games are exploring either innovative hand-tracking or mixed reality mechanics that are exploring new forms of embodied gameplay. He describes the ribbon dance-inspired gamed mechanic of Thrasher as "a form of extended proprioception" where it feels like an extension of your body when playing it. I totally agree with this assessment, and I elaborate more on the magical experience of Thrasher's hand tracking with the creators after having a chance to have an early look at Raindance Immersive where it took home the best game experience. I also caught up with the solo developer of Laser Dance, which picked up one of the Spirit of Raindance 2024 Awards. North Cook said that Laser Dance has become his go-to demo in order to show off the affordances of mixed reality, and both of these games capture the innovative indie spirit that are represented by the game label side of Creature.

I had a chance to catch up with North Cook to unpack the challenges of mixed reality development, a bit of a behind-the-scenes sneak preview on their mixed reality game Starship Home, collaborating with SideQuestVR on a $1M Indie VR Fund, but also how he's found a unique sweet spot between an agency and publisher to create a collaborative brain trust of veteran XR game developers who are helping to solve many of these intractable XR design problems.

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Music: Fatality