OVERVIEW, The Wizards, Gravity Sketch VR and More Nominated for the Viveport Developer Awards

Last month submissions opened for the 2nd annual Vive Developer Awards (VDA), seeking the best virtual reality (VR) experiences available on the platform. Now the ten nominees have been announced for the five different categories covering the breadth of VR entertainment.

vda trophy image

The five categories are: Entertainment, Education, Arts & Culture, Enterprise and Arcade, with any app considered so long as it was available on Viveport.

The successful nominees are:

Entertainment

Education

Arts & Culture

  • Galactic Gallery
  • The Kremer Collection VR Museum

Enterprise

  • Gravity Sketch VR
  • Primitive

Arcade

OVERVIEW screenshot3

The nominees are now inline for some significant prizes, with the first prize winner taking home $50,000 USD. They’ll also be featured in a studio profile video produced by HTC Vive, get priority access to new developer hardware and of course, a shiny trophy. For those that don’t snag first place, coming in second will still get them $20,000 to spend.

Winners will be announced at a special event on 19th March coinciding with the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2018.

Last years VDA saw Fantastic Contraption, by Northway Games secure the top spot in the Create category, Apollo 11 VR, by Immersive VR Education Ltd win the Explore category, Cloudlands: VR Minigolf by Futuretown won Connect, while Penrose Studios’ short animation Allumette secured the Experience category.

It’s been a busy year for HTC and HTC Vive, with the company launching its first standalone headset, the Vive Focus in China. While a western release date has yet to be confirmed, 2018 is shaping up to be the year of standalone head-mounted displays (HMDs), with Oculus Go and Lenovo Mirage Solo due out, and the Pico Goblin already available. In China the Vive Focus will have to compete with a new version of the Pico Neo which uses the HTC’s Vive Wave platform, and  Xiaomi/Oculus collaboration Mi VR Standalone.

As for Viveport, the platform recently announced new membership benefits in addition to increasing the monthly subscription price from $6.99 USD to $8.99. When the winning nominees are announced, VRFocus will bring you all the latest details.

HTC Announces 2018 Viveport Developer Awards Nominees, $50K First Prize up for Grabs

Last year marked HTC’s very first Vive Developer Awards (VDAs), which saw tens of thousands of dollars go to VR app developers across a number of categories. Now, HTC has announced the nominees for this year’s VDAs who will be in competition to win $50,000 in first place prize money.

HTC has established 5 categories for this year’s VDAs including entertainment, education, arts & culture, enterprise and arcade. A total of 10 nominees came out of the initial evaluations, a review process held by a panel of HTC employees that looked at the games’ overall virtual reality experience and engagement metrics  such as total downloads, total user sessions and overall time played.

Without further ado, here’s this year’s VDA nominees:

image courtesy HTC

Entertainment

Education

Arts & Culture

Enterprise

Arcade

Winners will be announced at a special event on March 19th coinciding with the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

First place for each category will receive $50k, which includes a studio profile video produced by the Vive team, “priority access” to new developer hardware, and a shiny trophy. Second place gets a financial award of $20,000, and all of the above (besides the $50K of course).

Last year’s first-prize winners included Apollo 11 VR (2016), Fantastic Contraption (2016), Cloudlands: VR Minigolf (2016), and Allumette (2016).

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