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VR Awards Take Place Next Week

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

vrawards-5-year-logo@2x.png

I guess you're participating as an official VR judge @kevinw729 ? 

 

More info about the VR Awards here:

 

https://www.vrfocus.com/2021/11/vr-awards-take-place-next-week-tickets-and-event-info-inside/

 

- and the titles I find most interesting 😊

 

VR Game of the Year

  • Archiact – DOOM 3: VR Edition
  • Electronic Arts Inc. – Star Wars: Squadrons
  • ILMxLAB – Star Wars/ Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge
  • Joy Way – STRIDE
  • MyDearest Inc. – ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos
  • MWM Interactive – Maskmaker
  • PotamWorks – Smash Drums
  • Resolution Games – Demeo
  • VR Factory Games Sp. z o.o. – Horror Bar VR
  • Wanadev – Ragnaröck
  • Wevr – Gnomes & Goblins
  • XR Games – Zombieland VR: Headshot Fever

 

Somehow Gnomes & Goblins really deserves to win, but Squadrons of course has the (much) bigger budget and is real Star Wars. Maskmaker may still be the most original game - and is very impressive. Not sure all the other games deserve to be on that list, lol.  

 

 

 

 

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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

20 REPLIES 20

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Yep - its a star studded event again - but in a virtual setting this year.

Some really great nominees this year, and have had a lot of fun looking over the entrants and getting to grips.

There will be some surprises, and even surprise appearance from previous winners.

If anyone wants to attend can see if we have some remaining guest passes.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

To be honest, I prefer Community Awards above all else. VR Applications are meant for a target audience, and it should be the target audience who decides "the best of the best," so to speak. Similar to the Valve Steam Awards.

 

Entities like the VR Awards are far more self-serving, and are more about putting a spotlight on the Judging Organization instead of the Products and their Audience. Likewise with the participating judges, who tend to put more of a spotlight on themselves as a judge instead of acting more as a community servant.

 

Much like the Academy Awards here in the U.S., which is a judging organization that is notorious for its inherent bias. Simply Google the phrase "Academy Awards bias" and a plethora of articles on the matter than spans many years will show the well documented problem. Organizations like this VR Awards face the same challenges.


This is why I like the Valve Steam Awards - which does include a VR Category - so much, because it allows users of Products across the full product spectrum to participate and have their voice heard. I often participate in the Steam Awards selection process. But how many of us here have participated in the voting for these "VR Awards" ??

 

It's hard to eliminate bias from a judging panel. For example, what is the manner in which the judges panel is selected? How does this organization ensure that the judges do not have strong biases for or against certain VR Studios that are being judged?

 

I've checked their site, and it is very closed off about how it chooses their judges. Isn't that just another walled garden?

 

https://vrawards.aixr.org/judges/

Over 70 Expert Judges
Our judging panel is made up of industry-leading creatives in virtual reality. We have gathered experts in various sectors of VR, from academics, journalists, and creative directors to founders and C-Suite executives. We tailor and match our judges’ specific areas of expertise to our award categories in order to ensure that our judging is of the highest-possible quality.

 

This is inherently flawed:

  • First off, it focuses only on self-proclaimed "expertise" with no standard for measuring the level and quality of expertise.
  • Secondly, they clearly do not focus on balancing "expertise" vs "bias." 
  • Lastly, they are judging "experiences" and "expressions of art," which nobody can be an expert on when discussing how these products impacted the hundreds or thousands of people who actually experienced it.

 

Take my case as an example. I have been a software engineer for over 20 years. I've made Games and Mods from scratch; including entire game worlds. I've made VR Experiences in both the Unreal Engine and WebVR. So... does that mean I should judge the best VR Flight Sim? It's software. It's in VR. It's a game. So I'm the perfect expert to judge it, right? Heck naw! I hate Flight Sims lol

 

But you know who can properly judge Flight Sims in VR? Techy, Daft, and dburne.

 

Community driven awards are the only types of awards that truly reflect upon the impact of a product. Anything else risks being purely self-serving.

 

But yeah, anyway... can't wait to see who the winners are. 😋

Thanks for the kind offer, but even if it could be interesting I will not have time to attend that day/evening.

 

Can see there are some VR movies I have not seen yet, time to see how many I can hunt down! 🙂

 

Just wondering, how does it work with voting, can all with a ticket participate or maybe even more users if they are in some way connected to the event?

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

Thanks for the question - and yes there is a mountain of great movies to catch.


The voting is an important part of the VR Awards, as it has to offer the best way for judges with different discipline to factor in their experience.  As one of the senior judges, we bring a long multi-discipline experience for the last five years.

The process is evaluation of the experience, review of the source material, and also evaluation against similar products in that category. 

There are some new additions to the structure to be revealed next year, with some major sponsors adding their name to the list. Its going to be a really interesting process watching this grow.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959


@kevinw729 wrote:

As one of the senior judges, we bring a long multi-discipline experience for the last five years.


 

But how does the organization validate the claims of experience and discipline? I have interviewed dozens of people over the last 2 decades, and it's kind of a running joke that most resumes are exaggerated. Anyone can claim mastery/discipline/expertise of just about anything after spending some time on a Google Search and watching a few YouTube videos.

 

I would be more interested if this organization actually "linked" to the works performed by these judges. So that we can see if these judges have actually demonstrated expertise and discipline, as opposed to merely "claiming" it.

 

And again, as far as I can tell, this VR Awards organization doesn't seem interested in managing bias amongst the judging panel. 

Well done Kev on being a judge on this, much deserved, and i would love to watch this live on my new Index, but alas work is getting back to normal, but will catch up on it later at some point. 😉

CV1/Vive-knuckles)/Dell Vr Visor/Go/Quest II/ PSVR.

Thank you very much for the kind words - always a pleasure to speak to the real VR community.

We will have more opportunities to catch up in person. One of the high points of the mixer and award ceremony part of the VR Awards, sadly because of the current situation that has had to be postponed and moved to virtual - but it will return. 

Also there will be some great news at the virtual event regarding the new sponsors of the awards, and a new feature of the next event that will be the next step in growing the VR community.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959


@kevinw729 wrote:

 always a pleasure to speak to the real VR community.


Everyone in this community is a real member of the real VR community. 😊

 

Yeah it looks you will be having a lot of fun there. 😉

CV1/Vive-knuckles)/Dell Vr Visor/Go/Quest II/ PSVR.