Ryan Burningham

Says hey/nyob zoo. CEO of the Virtual Athletics League @valvr_esports | Organizer of the VR Fitness and VR esports summit.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@Clara_Gold I appreciate the honesty in this post! Some truth to it.

Generally though the worst reactions to being rejected I have all seen from men with fragile egos.

Also door to door sales did it for me on rejection training lol. After that most everything else was easier 😅

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@AtomBombBody Oh no on inverse! That one is a favorite. Where did that get announced?

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: TikTok’s parent company said it sold a majority stake in the app’s U.S. operations to avoid a ban in the United States. https://t.co/6wqNqC9bGr

[britton winterrose @Winterrose]

@aidanshandle I thought the same but my kids have favored the Meta Quest over the Asus ROG handhelds this holiday season in a big way

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Video game music continues to be one of my absolute favorite parts of working in gaming

Devs deserve more recognition than they get rn. It's pure talent.

Send me moar. 🙏

What VR or otherwise gaming soundtracks are you into

Moss from @PolyarcGames was my number 1 this year!

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@benz145 A lot of puzzles and tabletop ones I am bearish on (outside of demeo) I really do not like a few.

There are some that are close to killer but not quite there.

Still astoundingly good though -

Shattered, Pillow, Guardians of Realm, Cabin, Beatable all very excellent standouts

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

this is like... mostly true.

Some of the biggest errors have been when VR devs make games that are hardcore (like shooters) and then try to appeal to 2d audiences and violate mechanics that VR audiences have liked. VR shooters are not new. Hardcore audiences play those.

Kids in general (not all) are way less prone to motion sickness for example and most devs have adapted.

However, the opposite is true for a category of apps. Apps like walkabout mini golf or other general appeals ones do need to make their apps very new to VR friendly.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Super interesting! Probably works way better for some games than others no?

[gfodor.id @gfodor]

Finally, I can blow up the long-held belief that VR requires a headset.

PortalVR, launching today, upgrades Android tablets and phones into fully capable VR devices. They can now deliver full VR experiences *without* a headset.

Today marks the dawn of Handheld XR. 👇

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Reviews for keys (while not exactly that) are playing a large part in some paid new game launches and it's making the data real messy lately. It can be brutal and hard for a dev to launch a game so I get the impulse. But still no way to disclose.

The beta work being done though is great.

Mixed on incentives tbh. Some are really dope cosmetics. It does help the platform and vr overall probably.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

no yeah totally in agreement. Reviews are valuable and those are all good points. Devs should make all reasonable efforts for reviews.

There is no way and this is mostly a meta problem to disclose reviews from free keys, unless the reviewer literally writes it themselves, which is unreliable.

Beta programs are very valuable, but steam has a way to disclose and meta doesn't.

Then essentially everyone if they don't offer incentivized reviews there is essentially they fall behind, so its an arms race to offer the best rewards.

Steam bans both practices in their storefront, meta does not.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@samcole @JPMinetos Ita interesting though, because review incentives for f2p games are now so common, devs that don't participate are left behind

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

This is a significant distortion by the way now in the market.

In the last year or so reviews have gotten really distorted from multiple causes. I think it's gotten to an unhealthy place.

I think the solution is that meta needs to do more of the protections that steam store has, like disclosing if people got the key for free.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Apologies to the guy I was chatting with in line.

I said that I heard that Ayahuasca could one shot your brain and turn you into a circus stripper.

- at which point he said under his breath that he has done that 8 times and he hadn't turned into a stripper.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Peak SF experience in 2025 is a robot fight at a nightclub.

I have never seen temple so packed, was wild to see the energy.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

credit to @willyayy for the epic close up pic or REK 0 since I couldn't get close enough haha.

@cixliv predicting the future yet again, ahead of trends. Bullish on robots.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

Peak SF experience in 2025 is a robot fight at a nightclub.

I have never seen temple so packed, was wild to see the energy.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@martyrdison Did that just today across golden gate. Sf good vibes day. Bonus night across the bay pic.

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

We have now gotten to the business state of esports being so bad, that even “the industry blew up and collapsed” articles are further apart.

Straight up newzoo just stopped publishing their esports reporting. This is a pretty epic fail for VC’s funds invested into esports - which topped out at 6 billion in 2018.

However in your edition of “niche VR esports news” there are some very interesting things happening. Sometimes the most interesting things happen while the hype is low.

First - there might actually be VR esports at the esports Olympics! The selection of games for the 2027 Games is still being finalized. The best contender is Virtual Taekwondo, which looks rad. There are some back and forth allegations on conflicts of interest which could derail this. This is mostly happening in Asia, with recent finals happening in Singapore and with pico very visible + full body tracking.

@VRMasterLeague is keeping the flame alive for PCVR and other core titles with much passion and heart and did an excellent event earlier this year onsite for VRMLcon.

There was a $20,000 cash prize pool and five VR titles -  Orion Drift, Pavlov Shack, VAIL, Breachers, and Onward.

World Tennis Esports Championship just happened. Road to VR and some of the other press releases report that the total prize pool was $100,000.

Again, what’s interesting to me about hype in this space, is that things happen organically for a long time and then it becomes mainstream again and no one has paid any attention.

The Gorilla Tag esports scene is definitely this way - its now the largest and most organic growth of VR esports ever; they have 230,000 people in their discord and 12,000 teams. That’s an insane number!

VR soccer in general is popping off. @VRFS_GG has an official partnership with Puma, and they are consistently in the top 20 of all best selling titles on the quest.

Very few of this is driven by content creators in a reverse trend - this is mostly organic word of mouth. Most of the social media videos on this are about how to play the game.

VRFS the VR soccer game has a community made up nearly entirely of only community moderators. These are high schoolers mostly! This F2P model has really worked for soccer in VR.

Just in July Rezzil went free to play and just today so did We are Soccer. These games are a blast. I haven’t tried Rezzil yet, but We are Soccer is has a very quick time to fun and shows a lot of promise with the younger F2P VR crowd.

[rita turkowski @rturkowski]

It's been a joy and an honor to work with Khang and his team @PlBattlegrounds along the journey to their growing success with Plastic Battlegrounds. https://t.co/aohpL0U7cK

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@jasteinerman @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt Thank you Jake! Excellent morning chat! ☀️

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

It was my birthday AND meta connect. Had such a good time!

Thanks @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt

[Ryan Burningham @ryanburning]

@MetaQuestVR @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt Best times!