Ryan Payton: I was a journalist way back in the day. One of the folks I used to work with was Bryan Intihar, one of my best friends. Eventually, he became creative director on Spider-Man. Around the time they announced at E3 2016, he introduced me to Jay Ong, the head of Marvel Games, in the Marriott lobby, where all biz dev happens at E3. From there it was a snowball effect. I knew I'd love to work with Marvel and it seemed like they wanted to work with us on a VR game.
One thing led to another, and next thing I knew we were working with Marvel on Iron Man VR. We eventually created a partnership with Sony, and they've been extremely supportive. They've always been about wanting to enable developers like Camouflaj to make not just an experimental game, but a full-fledged real game for PlayStation VR. That's what we've been doing for the past two-and-a-half years.
GamesBeat: What had you done before that? Have you done anything else in VR?
Payton: Our first foray into VR was actually doing a VR port for our first game a company, which was called Republique. We did a game called Republique VR, which was a launch title for Oculus Go. We were working on that with a small team while the majority of the team — it's a 50-plus person team up in Seattle — was working on Iron Man VR. If you include contract help at the moment, we're well over 60 people on the game right now.
GamesBeat: What sort of story did you come up with? Is it related to the movies?
Payton: Iron Man VR is a completely original story, built from the ground up. We obviously take some inspiration from the comics of the films, but it's an original story. That's one of the things we first started off with, working with Bill Roseman, the creative director of Marvel Games. How can we create an authentic Iron Man story that leverages the strengths of VR? The immersiveness and the first-person nature.
GamesBeat: I wondered how you did that, because the sensors don't usually allow that.
Payton: We have some absolute wizards working at Camouflaj and our development partners at Dark Wind in New York. They weren't intimidated by the challenge of having only the single PlayStation VR camera. We designed the game so players can move around 360, uninhibited, and not have to worry about where they're looking and whether they're facing the camera. There's a bunch of tricks underneath the hood, a dozen or so unique things we're doing that are predictive, that use the gyroscope in the Move controllers.
GamesBeat: In the opening scene there, have we seen just a very small part of the game?
Payton:
https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/02/how-the-flying-fantasy-of-iron-man-vr-came-to-be-on-psvr/What you played today was just a taste of what the full campaign is going to be. There's a lot more than 80 left of the game that you haven't seen. From the very beginning we pitched it as a full game, not an experimental demo. We don't know exactly how many hours the campaign will be because we're still building it, but our goal here is to create a Marvel-feeling, authentic Iron Man experience that PlayStation VR users can really sink their teeth into. It's not a linear campaign. It also has areas with optional missions, deep customization, and other things we'll be able to talk about soon.
