While big events like the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) are struggling to find relevance in 2020 due to the coronavirus, others are using the situation to explore steps into the future. The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR) which hosts the annual VR Awards has announced plans to hold a digital ceremony for the first time later this year.
The international VR Awards will be celebrating its fourth year in 2020 and now plans on doing things a little differently, using state of the art technology to offer a fully immersive awards show.
There are many months until the event takes place but the team have already revealed plans to feature a live studio panel, complete with pre-programmed livestreamed content which will supposedly be ‘indistinguishable from a televised physical show.’
“From day one of launching the VR Awards, our goal always was to transition to a virtual space, to allow creators, no matter their location, to join via their browser, phone, VR headset and more. Given world climates, we’ve been handed an opportunity to make this a reality, and it was an offer we couldn’t refuse to innovate on,” said Daniel Colaianni, Chief Executive, AIXR in a statement.
Details on how this will be achieved have yet to be revealed but it does look like AIXR will be employing digital avatars in some respect. HTC will be holding its Vive Ecosystem Conference (HTC 2020 VEC) in VR using VR Education’s ENGAGE platform.
2019’s VR Awards were quite the event with puzzle title A Fisherman’s Tale securing the VR Game of the Year, beating the likes of Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Blood & Truth and Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice VR Edition. Oculus’ John Carmack – who stepped down as CTO to work on artificial general intelligence (AGI) – was given The Accenture VR Lifetime Achievement Award.
Nominations for the 2020 VR Awards begin next week on 26th March. AIXR will be running a series of webinars on 2nd and 23rd April 2020 for those interested in getting the most out of the nomination process, featuring last year’s winners. As further details regarding the new VR Awards format are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.