playful
Latest
Oculus picks up Jason Holtman, a 'driving force' behind Steam
The Valve employees go marching one-by-one, hurrah, hurrah. Oculus has tapped another ex-Valve employee to help develop their virtual reality technology; this time, it's Jason Holtman, who previously served as Valve's chief of business development. Oculus credits Holtman as a "driving force" behind the creation of Steam. "Jason will be spearheading the business development and partnership side of the Oculus platform working closely with Marshall, head of platform engineering, and David, head of worldwide publishing, with a focus on building the world's best developer and player VR ecosystem," Oculus said. "We're thrilled to welcome him to the team." Oculus isn't done yet, though. The company is still hiring, with more than a dozen open positions. Think you're qualified? Who knows, the next name we write about could be yours. [Image: Oculus]
The man behind Words with Friends is creating a VR game, partnering with Oculus
It looks like dogfighting in spaceships isn't the only virtual reality experience being co-published by Oculus VR. The creative lead behind mobile hit Words with Friends, Paul Bettner, has a new studio, and that studio is creating a "made-only-for-VR game" named Lucky's Tale. No, not "Luckey's Tale," like the last name of Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, but some other Lucky. Besides, Palmer's already living his tale, right? Very little info about the game exists thus far; it's a third-person platforming game, apparently, which the PR (adorably) describes as, "unconventional for a VR title." Fact! We're gonna check it out next week at E3 in person, but there isn't even a single screenshot to share of the game in action.
X3F TV -- XBLA in Brief: Happy Tree Friends and Ticket to Ride
This week, XBLA in Brief takes on Happy Tree Friends and Ticket to Ride. One of them is a pretty good board game about building railroads. The other one is a weird game that doesn't really seem to take advantage of the cartoon upon which it's based. We'll let you figure out which one is which. [iTunes] Subscribe to X3F TV directly in iTunes. [Zune] Subscribe to the X3F TV directly (Zune Marketplace link coming soon). [RSS] Add the X3F TV feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [M4V] Download the M4V directly.
