‘Raw Data’ Retrospective: Building the VR Dream

Written ByJames Iliff Published
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Last week, Survios marked an immense milestone: Raw Data v1 has officially launched in almost all the major global markets on three VR platforms: HTC Vive, Oculus, and PlayStation VR.

We’re still overwhelmed by the amount of support and appreciation we’ve received from the VR community throughout Raw Data’s development process, from Alpha through Early Access now to v1. When Survios founders Nate, James, and Alex first came together in Project Holodeck, none of them anticipated how their shared philosophy of active, social VR would result in one of the platform’s early defining titles.

The story behind Raw Data is as engaging as the game itself. Rolling Stone’s Glixel gaming section profiled the “three college kids who are absolutely in love with a crazy idea” (plus Design Director Mike McTyre) in a cool feature about the passions that drove them to create Survios and plunge headfirst into VR game development.

Read the entire feature Raw Data: An Oral History on Glixel now!

However, we’ve also been internally documenting the evolution of Raw Data from its original concept to its final form. We’ve compiled that footage and interviews with key players from Raw Data’s development history—artists, engineers, producers, testers, and more—into a three-part mini-documentary, The Making of Raw Data. And we’re excited to share the first episode with you now!

Part 1 is all about the origin story, covering the early days in USC’s Mixed Reality Lab, to Survios’s official founding, to the development of the nascent game demos that would eventually become Raw Data. Did you know that Raw Data started from a film-noir inspired zombie game? Or that it was originally called Bullettime Apex and contained lots of stealth gameplay? (Parts 2 and 3, about the deep-dive development of Raw Data and the impact of the VR community during Early Access, will come out in the coming weeks.)

Watch now to embark on the first leg of this crazy story with us!

For some additional historical fun, check out some art and videos from those pre-VRLA days:

And while it’s tempting to sit back and feel like the dream has been achieved, that’s not how we roll—this is just the beginning of Survios’s VR journey. We have so many projects in the pipeline that we can’t wait to show you, and even those are the tip of a whole iceberg of experiences we want to create in VR. Thank you all so much for your continued support of Survios, and we hope you’re all enjoying the heck out of Raw Data!