HOW WE WANT TO WORK

We started Raikiri because we couldn’t find a place where we could truly push the boundaries of videogames (that’s techbro speak for “nobody would hire us”).

Now, boundary-pushing sounds sexy, but it really just means:

  • Taking risks that make us look stupid, like making wild proclamations about one day creating a VRMMO

  • Spending an ungodly amount of time on problems nobody knows or cares about

  • And still probably failing

So our endeavour is definitely not for everyone. It’s just what we want to do at this stage in our lives.

OUR PILLARS

SOLVE. THE. PROBLEM.

No fancy offices. No crazy parties. No media spotlights. No prestigious awards. No big paydays. We just solve dumb problems in videogames. 

PUSH THE BOUNDARIES

VR games are still very, very far from something that would feel like a true VRMMO. That means we can never be satisfied with just making a good VR game by today’s standards. We have to keep pushing the boundaries to have any hope of achieving our mission in the next decade or two.

THE TRUTH IS NOT SCARY

Our enemy AI is garbage. Erik is bad at project management. We will most likely fail. But…we can make the AI better, hire a project manager, and who cares if we fail? We want to trust each other enough that telling the truth is easy.

THE BORING DETAILS ARE EVERYTHING

A 2-frame delay on a slice visual effect will kill the game. A 4-FPS drop will make it unplayable. The enemy attacking 0.3 seconds too late will obliterate flow. Every half-assed decision is punished four times as hard in VR. We must whole-ass.

TEST. TEST. TEST.

There is no way to make good VR games without testing the crap out of them. That means every idea is just a flimsy hypothesis. And no flimsy hypothesis should go untested for more than a day or two. 

HOW FAST IS THE KID GOING?

How fast is that one kid biking home to play our game after a tough day at school? Because that kid will ultimately determine our fate. Everything else is secondary.

A STRONG FANTASY

There are all sorts of cool games out there, but we will only make games that create strong positive emotions and let players escape from their everyday lives. We don’t care about artistic impact or engaging the widest possible audience. 

BUT ALSO A STEP TOWARDS A TRUE VRMMO

While we’ll make things people want, we won’t do so unless it solves at least one major problem in the way of a VRMMO. That inevitably means foregoing the obvious, low-risk path to profitability.