What happens in a Vegas virtual reality cube, stays in a Vegas virtual reality cube.
Casinos are about to take a huge leap into the future next year thanks to the team over at Gamblit Gaming. The innovative casino-gaming company has officially debuted its own customized virtual reality ‘cube’ (aka VRC) designed to bring a whole new breed of competition and betting to show floors everywhere. It’s new, it’s innovative and it might just be the best way to blow real amounts of money, real fast.
The unique spectacle features a spacious elevated platform and runs using an HTC Vive that dangles from the center of the ceiling allowing tangle-free gameplay. The cube features several control panels that allows players and watchers to make bets on their performance, as well as a handful of over-head monitors that give spectators a view into the player’s virtual world.
The device’s enclosed platform features an atmosphere-enhancing fog machine as well as a massive thumping subwoofer in the floor designed to provide an audio/tactile element. As for games, Gamblit teamed up with celebrated VR developers Posphore Games to bring an altered version of their hit zombie-horror title The Brookhaven Experiment to the VRC. This custom edition increases the pace of the game to give it more of an arcade-style, which better complements their built-in betting system.
Justin Corcoran, CEO of Phosphor Games Studio, stated “The experience is essentially the same as the Challenge mode in the current game, which offers a single setting in a fixed position where the player can move around in the cube space and have waves of monsters coming at them. In addition to the monsters coming at you, which can be eight to 12 feet in size, we have secondary targets in the background that we’ve designed exclusively for this version.”
Before entering the cube players are given the option to bet $15, $20 or $25 on their performance, which centers around completing 3 random challenges of increasing difficulty. This could include anything from completing the 5 minute experience using only your melee weapon, to surviving a full round with severely depleted health. Spectators can also bet on whether or not the player will complete all objectives, which creators warn is EXTREMELY difficult.
With the right luck and skill however, players can not only win back their initial fees, but triple them in some cases. All challenges, weapons and enemy-layouts are completely randomized to ensure unbiased difficulty every time. The VRC will make its first public appearance September 27th at the influential Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. According to Chief Marketing Officer of Gamblit Gaming, Darion Lowenstein, you can expect to play it in U.S. casinos during the second half of 2017.
The excitement around this unique hybrid of VR and gambling is pretty apparent. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy watching their buddies fight off a zombie hoard in the hopes of winning serious cash in front of a huge crowd? More importantly the ability to potentially earn money by excelling in virtual reality opens up a whole world of possibilities.
As more and more virtual reality games with betting features begin to pop-up, so will more competitors looking to earn big bucks in an attempt to avoid any semblance of a real job. I know I would be! We’ve seen this exact trend before in the beginning stages of e-sports with games like Quake or Halo 2. Just imagine a future where the heavily-marketed, big-ticket Vegas event isn’t a run-of-the-mill boxing match that almost always ends in dissatisfaction, but an epic duel between two high-stakes VR gamblers set in a virtual world with infinite challenges and objectives. Can you see it? I sure as hell can…
