The story of how VAL came to work with creators, form VAL Uprising, and how game developers and VR creators can work together.

When I started VAL thought it would only be about esports. I had thought I was founding a VR league. There was a moment that changed the company forever.?

This moment and many moments to come were about VR creators.?

In 2018 I was working on the first business outlines of a worldwide VR league. I had started an arcade, so the business model I was working on was based on physical locations.

Around that time we ran a Blasters of the Universe and Sprint Vector tournament across a few arcades. I was working one morning when a video popped up. - I saw the first viral beat saber video from Swan (who I was grateful to connect with later) using the new LIV mixed reality technology.

There had been lots of bigger VR videos at the time - funny job simulator videos, early viral hits on treadmills. In general though it was hard to show what the experience was like for VR on a platform like YouTube.?

I was dumbfounded. Swan dodged and slashed the beats to EDM style music. It looked like she was in the video game. I think it was the first time I was like “yeah this is what it looks like to play VR to an outsider”.?

Beat Saber itself looked incredible as a game. I had seen a few small viral posts on reddit of a first person view, and it looked interesting but it didn’t look anything at all like how this new view looked!?

This video was different, it was overwhelmingly cool, it was powerful, it was intense. It was a new immersive flow state. LIV showcased it the best.

As the song Escape played through I had an overwhelming feeling that this video was going to change things for me, my company and people I didn’t even know. What I didn’t know was how or why it would change things, just that it would.??

I have told this story many times and usually the thread line is about esports, not creators. However, that first Beat Saber event was really the first time we worked with creators.

The following week I went to GDC. At the time, the Beat Saber team either could not afford or didn’t plan for an expensive booth at GDC so they were giving demos at an off-site night club a few blocks from GDC. This felt very futuristic, but also like a bunch of nerds in a nightclub basement (basements are important haha). It was legit awful though that night. The air conditioning had broken so everyone was extremely sweaty.?

The headsets people were using to demo were being passed around. And with no fewer than 30 people in line to try Beat Saber due to the recent viral video, their headset was getting the hardest workout.?

I didn't want to miss out on the experience, but I also? didn’t want to wait in line and then put on a sweaty headset that 100 other people had soaked -so I skipped trying it. I walked up to Andrew on the LIV team and Jan (one of Beat Saber’s co-founders).?

Jan was demoing personally and I asked them if they were open to us running a tournament for them. I thought a tournament could have a lot of potential.

Well it did. We put out a press release and we hoped for 50 VR arcades to sign up. It went everywhere though and we ended up with 168 arcades in 24 countries. Usually I tell what happens next - how that led to Facebook handing us an esports contract, how we founded the Summer and Winter Games, how it led to the first season of our arcade league.

Another life altering change happened though at the same time. What really changed is around that first Beat Saber event we started working with creators.?

At the time there were not many VR specific creators, and even fewer full time ones. Some were building the earliest of audiences on Twitch with the LIV streaming tool. We invited a handful of them to go to different VR arcades around the country and coordinated with them on making content from the event. It was a totally new approach, but as the videos rolled in, it was cool to see. That was the first time I had ever talked to anyone creating videos in VR.

When the world shut down in March 2020, that was an insanely difficult moment. In terrible months the arcade in Salt Lake city would do $8,000 a month, in an average month it would do $10,000, in a great month $12,000.?

It had largely been that way for 4.5 years. I had so many memories in the arcade -? of birthday and corporate parties, overwhelming joy and even sometimes tears as people tried VR for the first time. Even with all that I decided to shut down the arcade in April 2020. I did not know what was next.?

I was talking to our friends at Schell Games about how 20% of their users were fitness users for the sword game Until you Fall. They referred us to the Synth Riders team who also had a lot of fitness users. The next week when we were talking to the Schell Games team we brainstormed together “what if we put together a VR inspired olympic type event?”?

So we took some ideas from that and launched a "VR fitness summit". We had over 40 studios participate. What was different though was that we paid creators for the first time. Originally it was a smaller amount - devs had an option to pay a creator $250 to make a post about their tournament in the VR fitness summit on YouTube or TikTok. We paid some creators for the first time then.?

Around that time I made a trip back to Boost VC and I was talking to Adam Draper who heads up Boost VC.?Boost VC is our original investors and they have their accelerator located in the basement in the bay area. They are fantastic investors, but there were a few quirks.?

The basement is not a glorious one either unless you really love to work grind. It has a golden cockroach (to inspire startups to keep on going of course), but fluorescent lights abound in the basement.

I said “hey Adam, VR creators are really blowing up on TikTok and there are huge numbers of growth.” I confessed, “I don’t really know what I am doing here” and Adam said “well neither does anyone else!”?

Adam has a straightforward way of saying things, but he said that if there was an analogy, this was like our golden thread and to keep on chasing it.?

So we did. We ran games like Sam and Max for marketing campaigns. We really started branching out beyond just esports and fitness games. Sam and Max was a comedy and that was really the first time we had worked with creators for viral content that just went everywhere. Content really started to impact game sales and case studies rolled in showing direct sales spikes when creators posted content, both sponsored and not.?

?We were definitely the first to specialize as an agency working with creators in this space. Starting with a small team of 7, we’ve taken on more and bigger campaigns, and the VAL team has now grown to 20 people.

One thing that has made me really happy has been hearing from creators that through working with VAL they have been able to go full time as creators.?

As we have worked together, they have been able to quit day jobs to become full time creators about something they are passionate about. VR creators especially have been amazing to work with. It's something about this niche that produces kind, passionate, funny people who do a great job evangelizing something they personally enjoy to millions of people who watch their videos.?

One especially big moment for us was when we formed VAL Uprising. VAL Uprising is a content creator team, styled after some of the biggest creator teams in the broader gaming world. VAL Uprising is invite only and exclusive to creators that are the most dedicated and have had the most success in VR and want to keep that upward trajectory.?

Joining VAL Uprising though is less about VAL and much more about creators themselves - their journey, how they have connected and brought joy to their communities.

It's also true that at this point, VAL has worked with more creators in VR than anyone. We have worked with 300+ creators officially and have the widest network across YouTube and TikTok. It's been amazing to see the different niches of creators.?

There are of course Beat Saber creators, many of whom have transitioned into variety or tech creators now. We were there nearly at the start of working with Gorilla Tag creators. Although it's a smaller niche, I especially like content for VR fitness creators as I am super passionate about that space myself.?

I have played shooters for forever both in VR and flatscreen games, and it's awesome working with creators on projects like X8 and Breachers. Although I spend less time in VRchat myself, I have really come to care about creators personally in this space. Tech and hardware creators are of course always top notch, and in VR which is driven so much by technology and important and incredibly visible voices that have huge influence.

One thing that really changed for me too is how much I have come to care about working with creators personally. It was not that I didn’t before - but like everyone else I mostly was just a passive consumer of content. As we have held in person events, done best practice sharing sessions and talked about so many projects I have come to see how cool a creator career can be but also the struggles.?

It can be hard to spend many hours editing a project - to put your best into it and the view count is low. On the other hand a video may get picked up by the algorithm and just take off, which can be both rewarding and maddening. Creators deal with a lot of uncertainty, especially at the start - it can be scary to leave a stable paying career with benefits and be reliant on variable creator income. It's hard to pick and know which games will do best, and difficult to keep long term health of channels in mind and growth consistent when platforms are ever changing.?

There is a dark side too - the internet can be a not so friendly place, platforms can be indifferent and creating content occasionally scary. The logistics of it all can be intense - the massive attention and emails, but also yes just spam! There is so much background work that people sometimes don’t see that goes into creating a video. Sometimes I wish I had more time to make videos myself, but when I see creators do all that they do, I know it can be so underappreciated.?

One thing I have so valued is an emotionally supportive team. I think that VAL can be there with creators through the tough points and help them get to new heights and celebrate their wins.

VAL Uprising long term is about nurturing the careers of creators who are part of it. VAL Uprising is a core group of creators that we work with on a near daily basis. I am so excited for 4 Uprising announcement videos from incoming VR creators!

Beyond that, working with VAL is for all creators. We are starting to roll out our own creator program even if creators are not part of VAL Uprising. This includes early and in some cases exclusive access to games, paid opportunities, collaborations and more.

What’s been really great to see is how symbiotic game developers and creators can be. While there are at times complaints on both sides, in reality game developers and creators are just two sides of a different coin. VR developers craft their games for years sometimes with a lot of fame and visibility, but often not.?

When a game blows up and sells a lot of copies, there is almost always a huge correlation with creators. Sometimes a game gets a ton of traction from players and creators respond with new content. Sometimes it is the other way around - a game that is especially funny like Job Simulator makes for great videos. Creators make videos about the games they enjoy, more people find out about it, and creators respond by? making even more videos.?

Because creators have been around so long, they are also now among the very best sources of expertise in the VR space. A group of experts can often be one of the best predictive factors of success and sources of feedback. If creators can get their hands on a VR game in advance of a release (pre-alpha and alpha stages) it's a huge opportunity to provide expert feedback and creator opinion can be a promising sign of success for game developers. Although this post is not primarily about beta testing, creators and VR game devs can work together even at the earliest stages to design and make games together.?

This approach is perhaps radical and different - the usual is to get keys or access to creators a few weeks prior to launch, but in reality getting someone to see a game in progress, with enough developer runway to make changes can change the trajectory drastically for a game in its eventual success.?

This is new - the old model of game development was in a lot of cases for a brilliant designer to sketch out and make a game on paper and then reveal their secrets like a master.

Now though, building games with the community is quickly becoming the new norm. As creators are the biggest voices in a community, building games with creators in a back and forth process can be a significant step in the game development process.

We have a discord server for all creators that want to work with VAL and also beta test games as experts. This includes early and in some cases exclusive access to games, paid opportunities, collaborations and more.?

Looking forward to the future of VR creators working together with game developers to keep this technology space we are all so passionate about moving forward.?