E McNeill released the first full VR game for Gear VR headsets back in 2014 drawing from big screen depictions of cyberspace.
Featuring hackers taking on the "Darknet" to acquire virtual bitcoin, his strategy game sees you hack computing nodes to purchase stronger electronic weapons.
At the time of Darknet's original development in 2013 and 2014, a single actual bitcoin could be sold for about $1,000 in the real world. At the time of our talk on January 31, 2025, more than a decade after McNeill originally made the game, a single bitcoin could be sold for more than $100,000.
This means if McNeill had acquired, say, five bitcoin at a cost of $5,000 at the time he added the concept to Darknet, the cryptocurrency would be worth $500,000 today.
McNeill says he acquired no bitcoin.
Instead, he spent the last 12 years as an indie game developer making the first full VR game for Gear VR followed by a series of VR titles for most modern consumer VR headsets.
"There was maybe a brief moment in time when I felt like I was doing super awesome and had struck it rich, and that moment has passed. Maybe if I had bought bitcoin like we talked about at the beginning of this interview then all would be different," McNeill said of his journey in indie game development. "The fact that I've been able to keep it going already for 12 years is miraculous to me, and I think if I went back and talked to my younger self and said 'if you set out on this you'll be able to make this work for at least 12 years', I would consider that a dream come true."
Before McNeill heads off on leave, Don Hopper booted up Darknet: Remastered on Quest alongside McNeill's most recent action games Ironstrike and Ironlights. I interviewed the developer for more than an hour with Don playing each of the games in the background.
Eventually, McNeill met up with Don and taught us how to cast spells and succeed in combat. The dev gave Don a crash course tutorial in both Ironstrike and Ironlights, and McNeill showed us why he made such specific choices when it comes to weapon handling in his VR games. Our thanks to YouTube member Arlen for joining us with some questions during the show, and you can check out the full timestamped hour-long conversation with McNeill below.
Last week, we heard from the developer of Airspace Defender and Tablecraft in the same deep dive format and, in the weeks ahead, we're starting to line up a schedule for developer interviews that should include us looking at brand new or upcoming releases.
We only played three of McNeill's games during the stream, jumping from Darknet: Remastered to Ironstrike and finally ending in Ironlights, but you can learn more about all of his titles on his website.
We'll be sure to follow up with McNeill in the months ahead.
