A new direction for Art Plunge!
What went well
It has been about 2 years since we released Art Plunge for Gear VR. Since then, we have released it for a bunch of other mobile platforms. Last fall, we released it for Steam VR and Oculus Rift. To do this we first had to improve the VR scenes to allow for greater positional movement.
Response from our users has been great and across platforms we have a user rating between 4.6 and 4.9!
We’ve also shown Art Plunge in Japan, France, Casablanca, Sweden (our home country), and Greece (with kind help from Aliki Tsakoumi).
What didn’t go well
Sadly, we have failed to deliver more of what people love about Art Plunge - our VR interpretations!
Our initial plan was to fund Art Plunge using Kickstarter. When that failed, we turned to the paid-app model instead. But the VR market is small, and our VR experience is short. We focused on expanding our reach trying to support as many VR platforms as possible. This was a mistake as most of them are just too small. At the same time, Oculus rejected our request to release Art Plunge for the Quest, one of the most important platforms. This project is still mostly running on spare time. But, crucially:
- Even if funding would be solved, and we both could work full time, the pace would still be too slow!
Time to scale up?
The expectation of a start-up company like ours is that we would persuade investors to give us money, hire a bunch of professionals, and start selling content inside our app. Pretty straight forward.
There are multiple reasons why we feel this is not the right path for us. First, to be honest, we don’t really know if our VR niche is large enough to for such an approach to be sustainable. Another reason is that we are primarily here to make VR stuff, we are not inclined to be riled up by hiring or monetization strategies. There must be a better way to scale up that is less risky and keeps focus on creation.
The Future of Art Plunge
We have noticed there are a lot of people interested in creating this kind of experience, so improving and sharing the process in the right way could be a great accelerator. Both for our own workflow, and as an enabler of collaboration.
Ambitions for 2020:
- Make our process simpler, more fun and less technical
- Invite other artists to collaborate
- Communicate our values
- Release our tools as open source as they mature
- Create and release more VR interpretations!
We want this to be a project that:
- Celebrates timeless works of art
- Celebrates artistic craftsmanship and high standards
- Celebrates the potential of VR as an artistic medium
- Is open to collaborators
We want to avoid turning the project into:
- Something that never evolves
- A situation where investors or clients dictate what is worth doing
- An exclusive experience that is artificially scarce (such as limited to physical exhibitions or a high price)
- An experience that is heavily monetized with ads or frequent in-app purchases
Collaborate!
Are you interested in collaborating around how art can be reinterpreted in VR? Let us know! Tell us a bit about you and your experience!
You can also connect on facebook/artplunge
Yours,
Martin Eklund and Martin Christensen