11/13/2023 0 Comments Online on rails shooter![]() ![]() "I was requested to stop development, but that was something that was very much against who I was." He adds, "Everything's good now, but it was definitely a scary time." "I continued on my own time, but I couldn't be public about it," he says. But Moravetz quietly kept working on it, completing core development in January 2014. To both Sony and the outside world, Proton Pulse was dead. "I wish deeply that I could give you more than simply returning your money," he wrote. He thanked backers for their support and issued refunds, but otherwise explained little about why this promising VR project was suddenly cancelled. However, because Sony hadn't yet announced Morpheus, Moravetz had to issue a vague public statement that left more questions than it answered. The legal team advised him to refund money to Proton Pulse backers, two months after the campaign ended. "They wanted to make sure that any potential conflict that would come up would just go away." "Their job is to protect Sony, and they will overreact to make sure things got done nice and clean," says Moravetz. More pressingly, he says Sony’s legal department was concerned about the connection between the Oculus Rift and the still-early-in-development Morpheus. Moravetz says Sony had frowned upon employees developing games in their spare time to pitch to the company as indie projects, as it had caused sore feelings in the past. He says the director showed interest in bringing the game to Morpheus, but he felt that actually accomplishing that while still an employee was unlikely. "There was an instant conflict of interest," he admits, noting his non-compete clause in place as a Sony employee. Just days after the crowdfunding campaign closed in September 2013, Moravetz walked into the office of a co-worker and saw Project Morpheus. He was chasing his dream, but that dream was nearly dashed. "I saw an article that said, ‘VR is coming.’ It really stuck with me." "In the early '90s I had this spark," he says. Sony was starting to share its Project Morpheus VR headset internally ahead of an eventual public reveal at GDC 2014, which made Proton Pulse - a 3D Breakout-style game with hands-free controls and neon graphics - a game developed for a potential competitor’s device.īut virtual reality was near and dear to Moravetz: a new frontier that honored a long-delayed promise from his youth. Moravetz worked at Sony's Bend Studio in Oregon, and had developed particle effects, technical animation, and cinematic production for games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. However, his day job suddenly turned into an unexpected conflict of interest. Raising more than $7,000 from 519 backers in September 2013, Justin Moravetz had a demo and was all set to convert his Oculus Rift VR pet project into a full-fledged game for the headset.
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