If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Adam Orth takes his VR skills to First Contact

Developer behind Adr1ft has joined the veteran group that made ROM Extraction

In his post-Microsoft days Adam Orth made a name for himself with VR title Adr1ft, a first-person adventure in which players explore a destroyed space station. Now, according to GamesBeat, Orth's startup Three One Zero has "run its course" and Orth has joined VR studio First Contact as creative strategist. Orth expects to work on new IP as well as assist with business development and strategic relationships.

"I love VR," Orth said. "I am super passionate about it still. The experience of making Adr1ft was a real awakening for me on what is possible. For me, creatively, it opens up a lot more opportunity to do new and exciting things. I'm all in on VR."

The Los Angeles-based startup has veteran talent from the likes of Starbreeze, Blizzard, Treyarch and Infinity Ward and landed $5 million in funding last October. First Contact has already released ROM Extraction and is planning downloadable content for the title soon.

First Contact co-founder Hess Barber described the challenges of making AAA content in VR when we spoke with him last August.

"Reaching AAA quality in VR is particularly challenging due to the necessity to maintain high frame rates at all times. Thankfully, this is something our team has a lot of experience in, specifically building custom tools and pipelines. Our experience and techniques help us keep our team small and costs low," he said.

"We feel that AAA companies haven't truly committed to VR yet, and so our experience and talent make us unique. We know that VR's install base is too low currently to see reasonable sales figures, but we've timed our development schedule so that by the time our first games are ready for release, we should see VR HMDs more commonly adopted by households."

Related topics
Author
James Brightman avatar

James Brightman

Contributor

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously EIC and co-founder of IndustryGamers and spent several years leading GameDaily Biz at AOL prior to that.