A visit to the Abaton - more than just VR Cinema - Part 2

Last week I reported on how the visit to the VR Cinema area of the Abaton cinema complex went. Today you can find out how the Gaming Zone was received.

After the VR Cinema had moderately convinced us as critical visitors, the Game Zone came next. First we were allowed to test the normal Vive Station. To do this, we each went into one of the two black boxes.

No own productions planned

According to Swisscom, they have commercial licences for all games, which they obtain via the Steam platform. They do not offer their own productions and are not currently planning any. Since the operators are connected to Steam, they can adapt the offer at any time.

We were offered a wide range of games to choose from - quasi for big and small (from 14 years) for everyone:

• The LAB - 8 different mini games
• Job Simulator - Slip into different roles and get up to all the nonsense you want.
• Tilt Brush - Painting in 3D
• Fruit Ninja VR - Choose your tool and cut yourself a fruit salad
• Elven Assasin - Defend your castle against the monsters with your arrow bow.
• Serious Sam: The Last Hope - Take on the role of the greatest action hero of all time
• Raw Data: Pure science fiction atmosphere
• Space Pirate Trainer - Defend yourself against your opponents and shoot them down

Although some games were multiplayer-capable, there were only single-player variants. That would have been even more fun, but it happened the same way: I was completely immersed in gaming! An hour was over in no time. And I was even praised for my good archery skills.

The crowd puller

At first I didn't see that there was a big screen outside broadcasting the games. When I saw them, I realised why other visitors kept asking so many questions about the games I had chosen. The screen is really an important tool in VR to attract attention. As soon as someone waves the headset around wildly or takes up funny positions and viewers can see what's going on in the virtual world at the same time, they stop curiously.

According to Fabian Häfliger, project manager at Swisscom, the number of visitors has been manageable so far: "As expected, the zone was not very busy in the first few weeks. However, this suited us because it allowed the employees to get used to their new task and processes to be consolidated. Of course, we would now like to continuously increase the utilisation in the coming weeks."

VR Supervisors in the shot

Either way, the two supervisors had their hands full: On the one hand, this meant explaining to the other visitors how the whole thing works, and on the other hand, they were constantly on hand to give us advice, untangle the cable that had become twisted over time and was hanging from the ceiling, or change the game for us. A good service that guarantees fun.

My colleague was also completely convinced at the end: "That's just much more cool and the graphics are also much better with the games. Of course, we were both extremely excited about the Virtuix Omni stations, which were even more eye-catching. You'll find out more about that next week.