Guest Post: How CM Games Built Engagement For Into The Radius

The market for media content creation covers all types of games, but each segment – PC, consoles, mobile and VR – has its own quirks. This is how our team at CM Games worked with VR creators and influencers to build engagement for Into the Radius after it left early access on Steam and during its launch on Quest 2.

The following piece is an unpaid guest post written by Konstantin Kruglov, Senior Community and Support Specialist at CM Games and edited by UploadVR, with edits approved by CM Games ahead of publication.

The VR market is very compact, featuring a few prominent players: Meta (with its family of Quest headsets), Valve Index, HTC Vive, Pico (popular in China) and PlayStationVR (quite challenging to get access to). Relative to PC or consoles, big releases aren’t as frequent on VR platforms. The Meta Quest Store, for example, only has around 500 titles available, four years after its inception in 2019.

There aren't many VR content creators, either. Some play all VR games, some focus on specific games like Beat Saber, and others play both VR and non-VR games. Creators and influencers are willing to collaborate, but everyone's terms are different.

Contacting Creators & Influencers

Our way of reaching out to creators has evolved. When we started, Into the Radius had been out of Early Access on Steam for months. We'd seen a few people making videos about the game, but they weren’t frequent. We maintained open communication with the community, responding to feedback on Steam, checking Discord and forums, and often leaving replies in threads or DMing players to clarify details. In the beginning, we did this because the team was small and our ranking on Steam after we left Early Access was in a sorry state, so we were relying a lot on feedback from community enthusiasts. Still, it later became a habit and a strategy that was well-received by players.

When exploring paid promotion options, we’ve previously been quoted rates of around $20,000 when inquiring with VR/tech influencers (with subscriber counts of over 300,000) on YouTube. Instead, we decided to work with smaller influencers offering paid reviews for less than $1000, which yielded modest results.

So we changed our strategy and began to:

  • Contact the creators who had already played our game, thank them, send them the keys, and help with information and sources whenever possible.
  • Connect with the creators who make videos about similar VR games and/or stream them — introduce them to our game, offer to try it, send them the keys, release/demo information.
  • Notify those we are already communicating with about our VR title updates and demo releases.
  • Ask for contacts from other VR creators if they know someone they think will like our game and expand our contact list.
  • Get creators' opinions on updates and potential features. We try to be honest in this matter and never promise something we think is impossible or will take a long time. If we ask players for their opinion, it is crucial to be able to explain our decisions regarding game design and content. And, of course, it's essential to let the person feel that what they share won't go unheeded.

And that's the loop we've been following ever since.

We are always in touch with the creators, which helps us expand the audience and get more feedback. Here are our recommendations when getting in touch:

  • VR creators are often willing to give you feedback on a project during the very early stages of development. If you only have an idea for 10 minutes of gameplay, give it your best effort, and you'll find a dozen people willing to try it out. Don't hesitate to ask; the worst thing you'll get is a refusal. There's always a chance that someone who isn't interested in racing games might know someone who is, and they'll be happy to give you that early feedback.
  • Reach out to people personally; mass mailings only work if your announcement is already big news (for example, when it comes to releasing an already well-known game on a new platform/headset).

Organic Marketing & Paid Campaigns

When we launched Into the Radius on Meta Quest 2, we explored both paid and free marketing options.

Originally, we planned to strike deals with Twitch streamers who were already familiar with VR. We were asking them to play Into The Radius for about two hours, keeping in mind that longer gaming sessions in VR remain difficult for some due to motion sickness.

We chose who to work with based on Twitch concurrent viewers (CCV) and a list of games the users had streamed in the last 90–180 days. The campaign started after the release on Quest 2, so we could provide the streamers with a revised, post-launch version of the game.

We ended up making an agreement with eight streamers. In some cases, the streamers knew what they were doing, had played the game before the stream, and had a helping hand from co-hosts. In other cases, the experience became a way for us to see the game from a different perspective – all the unpolished parts of the opening hour made themselves clear when a player’s only context was a few sentences from the game’s description.

Initially, we wanted the streamers to play the Quest 2 version of Into the Radius specifically. It was a requirement that everyone agreed to, but it wasn’t tested live until a few days before the campaign and it didn’t end up working for most of them. Streaming from Quest 2 is a challenge and most streamers are set up for PC VR, not Quest. As a workaround, we allowed everyone to stream the PC VR version of the game and asked them to emphasize that the game was just released and available on Quest 2 instead.

A list of the top 10 Twitch streamers of Into the Radius over September 2022 to December 2022, with indication of which streamers were partnered. Graph created by CM Games with data taken from Sullygnome.com.

Those Twitch streams became part of a larger two-week marketing campaign, during which we attracted the attention of various other creators and players. hanks to the eight paid Twitch streams, we were able to attract tens of thousands of concurrent viewers in English and Spanish during the short post-release window, which subsequently had an impact on sales (though it's hard to measure the exact effect).

Measurable Impact

In addition to paid marketing, we also owe a prominent part of our success to creators who made videos about our game (and continue to do so) independently, without us asking. Looking at our statistics, we can see a correlation between an increase in sales/wishlists and relevant YouTube videos with over 100k views. We found those videos had a similar impact as a small 2-3 day Steam sale.

TikTok remains uncharted territory for us, but we're currently following a similar pattern to connect with creators using the platform. We've noticed that our TikTok account has 90% more views than YouTube Shorts. However, TikTok doesn't allow links in the description, so if people ask for the game's name in the comments under the video, that's a good sign. Judging by comments on other creators' videos, most of the VR audience on TikTok are Quest 2 owners.

With Twitch, there are definitely users watching and streaming VR games, but we haven't seen any knock-on impact on wishlists or sales. Streams disappear in the days after broadcast and lack tangible results, hence no effect on future sales. Moreover, a game like Into The Radius can’t be streamed indefinitely in the same way that a live operations game can, so it’s been more profitable for us to focus on producing videos over live streams.

Conclusion

To sum up: support the creators already enjoying your game with whatever you have — keys, attention, early access, money – and take interest in their opinions. These creators are passionate about VR and can give you honest feedback. Word of mouth will eventually take effect, and that’s where we found the most success when marketing Into the Radius.




Pico Really Announced A New VR Headset Without Positional Tracking

Pico Really Announced A New VR Headset Without Positional Tracking

Last week Pico announced G3, a new €400 standalone VR headset for businesses.

Pico G3 has a 3664×2160 LCD panel for roughly 2K per eye resolution and features the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chipset as Pico 4, Meta Quest 2, and Vive XR Elite. But unlike those devices and almost every other current VR headset, Pico G3 lacks any form of positional tracking.

Your head's rotation is tracked so you can look left, right, up, down, or tilt your head. But if you actually move your head positionally, the entire virtual world will appear to move with your head, rather than your head moving through it.

Pico Really Announced A New VR Headset Without Positional Tracking

G3 is the successor to 2019's G2 4K, which also lacked positional tracking. It was powered by the three year older Snapdragon 835 processor the original Oculus Quest used.

Facebook retired its rotation-only headset Oculus Go in 2020 after just two years on the market, and vowed to never ship another headset without positional tracking again.

You may be wondering why any company would buy Pico G3, given that Pico 4 retails for €430. But that's only the price of the consumer version. Pico 4 Enterprise, which includes eye tracking, face tracking, and business-focused system software, sells for €900. Meta hasn't yet announced the business price for Quest 2 under its new Quest for Business program.

Further, rotation-only headsets like G2 4K and Go are often used in seated bulk VR demo experiences such as at museums or trade shows, where they operate in "kiosk mode", usually looping a 360 degree video or passive VR experience with no interaction needed. For these use cases, saving the €470 could be worth the loss of positional tracking.

Pico G3 Quest 2 for Business Pico 4 Enterprise
Release May 2023 October 2020 October 2022
Positional Tracking
Lens Type Fresnel Fresnel Pancake
Field of View 98° Up to 96° 105°×105°
Lens Separation 58/63.5/69 mm 58/63/68 mm 62–72 mm
Pixels Per Eye <1832x2160 <1832×1920 2160×2160
Max Refresh Rate 90Hz 120Hz 90Hz
Passthrough Low Res Grayscale Higher Res Color
RAM 6GB 6GB 8GB
Face & Eye Tracking
Battery Location Back Padding Visor Back Padding
Price €430 TBD €900

Pico said G3 will start shipping in May. Like Pico 4 Enterprise, it's only available to registered business, not individuals, and includes Pico's business-focused system software rather than the consumer storefront.

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Venture capitalist Matthew Ball’s new book explores the three-dimensional virtual world that is set to supersede the net. What might this alternative digital reality have in store for users?

Venture capitalist Matthew Ball first wrote about the metaverse in 2018 and his essays have become essential reading for entrepreneurs and tech watchers who are attempting to understand or profit from the network Mark Zuckerberg and many others are anticipating will supersede the internet. Ball is former head of strategy at Amazon Studios and his first book, The Metaverse: How It Will Revolutionize Everything, is published later in July.

What is the metaverse?
It is a persistent network of 3D spaces. Almost everything online today – all applications, digital operating systems, webpages – works on common protocols and technology that connects them. The metaverse is a 3D elevation of the online world, which spans augmented reality – unseen virtual simulations in the world around us – as well as much of consumer leisure and socialising.

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The UK video games market hit a new record of £7.16bn last year as the pandemic continued to fuel an unprecedented boom in home entertainment, with gamers rushing to stock up on new consoles and virtual reality kit even as overall sales of games fell.

Lockdown conditions have made gaming one of the biggest pandemic winners with the value of the UK market now a third higher than in 2019 before the coronavirus crisis hit and worth more than the music and video streaming markets combined.

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Unusual self-care offerings are part of retailer’s attempt to get customers back into the habit of visiting stores

Selfridges is to offer sex therapy and drug-free “psychedelic trips” in the luxury department store’s latest gambit to tempt shoppers back into stores.

From 28 February, the retailer, which has outlets in Manchester, Birmingham and London, will offer the headline-grabbing services as part of its Superself event, which it claims “takes visitors on a journey of uplifting self-discovery and nurturing self-care”.

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Why the Facebook owner’s shares are in freefall

Analysis: shares in Meta fell by 25% after latest results revealed first-ever decline in daily users

Facebook’s first ever drop in daily users prompts Meta shares to tumble

Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire felt the full force of investors’ concerns about its growth prospects on Thursday, as the revelation of Facebook’s first-ever drop in daily users helped trigger a selloff, with shares down by a quarter.

Here are some key points to help explain the selloff, which has wiped about $220bn (£162bn) off Meta’s market value.

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Microsoft’s Activision merger faces real-world barriers to metaverse mission

Suspicious US regulators and a problematic culture at the video game firm need to be overcome to realise AR vision

If the world of Call of Duty seems fraught enough when you are playing it, try being in it. That could be the consequence of Microsoft’s proposed $68.7bn (£50.4bn) acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the video games maker behind the shoot ’em up franchise. Announcing the deal, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said that gaming would “play a key role in the development of metaverse platforms”.

The metaverse is a catch-all term for an immersive experience that blends the physical and digital worlds through a mixture of virtual and augmented reality. This concept is years away from being fully realised, but it is envisaged that participants – using digital representations of themselves, or avatars – will access it through a virtual reality headset, or augmented reality (AR) glasses that put a digital layer over what they see in the real world. In the metaverse they can socialise with friends, carry out their job – or take part in a video game.

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No more fomo: top firms turn to VR to liven up meetings

Companies splash out on new tech and office design to cut commuting and usher in the new dawn of post-lockdown hybrid working

Staff at accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers have been holding meetings in odd places: the top of skyscrapers, inside swanky penthouse apartments and even luxury ski chalets. All without leaving the comfort of their own homes.

That is the new normal for a growing number of workers at PwC, which is buying thousands of virtual reality headsets to help battle Zoom fatigue and level the playing field for employees barred from entering the same room during the Covid outbreak.

Working from home is like beer or wine – it is great in moderation but is not so great in excess. One to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot. A few firms are planning five days a week post-pandemic but I think that is risky and problematic. It is hard to innovate remotely, it is hard to maintain company culture and it can make employees feel lonely and isolated.”

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No more fomo: top firms turn to VR to liven up meetings

Companies splash out on new tech and office design to cut commuting and usher in the new dawn of post-lockdown hybrid working

Staff at accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers have been holding meetings in odd places: the top of skyscrapers, inside swanky penthouse apartments and even luxury ski chalets. All without leaving the comfort of their own homes.

That is the new normal for a growing number of workers at PwC, which is buying thousands of virtual reality headsets to help battle Zoom fatigue and level the playing field for employees barred from entering the same room during the Covid outbreak.

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