How nDreams became one of the biggest VR game developers in the world
nDreams is the world's largest virtual reality game developer outside of Meta and Sony. Here's how the studio has managed to grow in a still-burgeoning market.
2023 marks a major milestone for UK-based developer nDreams, which has been working solely in virtual reality development for a decade. It’s equally an important year for the platform, which has already seen the launch of PlayStation VR2, where the studio has just released its new exclusive title Synapse, while Meta Quest 3 is still to come in the fall.
That decade of VR expertise also puts the developer and publisher in the best position to take advantage of this growing market, having also scaled up its operations to a headcount from 65 to 230 people, while CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh estimates that could reach 300 by the end of the year.
“We are the biggest VR game developer and publisher in the world outside of Meta and Sony,” he says, a modest claim once you consider that the two platform holders are not purely focused on VR.
nDreams' VR bonafides go back to the early days of Oculus
It’s taken a long time to get to where nDreams is now. The studio's journey began back in 2006 when Patrick founded the company with his wife and nDreams’ Chief People Officer (CPO) Tamsin O’Luanaigh, leaving behind their respectively comfortable jobs at Eidos and IBM to set up in a tiny office in Farnborough, just across the road from where nDreams Studio is based today. Work began modestly, although the company was already exploring new types of experiences, beginning with alternate reality games like Xi on PlayStation Home.
As the company slowly grew, it was also in a good position to recruit talent, being located less than 10 miles away from the UK’s prime games industry hub in Guildford. But 2013 proved to be the company’s turning point with the discovery of VR.
“We got a chance to see the very first Oculus, we met Palmer Luckey and saw the very first DK1. Sony also showed us the Morpheus headset which became PSVR, and I basically just fell in love with VR,” Patrick explains. “We felt it wasn't a gimmick, and that this was going to be something really special. If we can get in early we can understand it, we can get to know the platform holders, we can learn what made a good VR game and what didn't. So we decided to go all in.”
And all in nDreams went, as can be seen from the Farnborough office’s front reception decorated with a wall of just about every headset that has been released in the past decade, including the basic Google Cardboard. Even with the early limitations, the company looked at the potential of each to better understand the medium, developing small fun titles that served as learning experiences.