As SBCNews continues its series of interviews from the recent EiG Start-Up Launch Pad, one of the most intriguing presentations was offered by Virtual Reality provider Lucky VR.
With video gaming and e-sports commanding tens of millions of users, could a virtual reality casino be the next seismic leap in i-gaming? SBC Business Correspondent Mark McGuinness spoke with Lucky VR’s CEO Jeff Lande to ask those questions.
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MM: Jeff nice to meet you. Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Jeff: Sure, I’m a Toronto Canada based entrepreneur who’s been around the i-gaming sector for the past 10 years in many different capacities as a player, affiliate and operator. My most recent venture was as a founder of one of the first daily fantasy sports websites BuzzDraft.com which was acquired last year.
MM: You recently attended the EiG Start-Up Launch Pad as a finalist in the contest. Why did you decide to create Lucky VR and enter the Start-Up Launch Pad?
Jeff: When I saw the potential of the Oculus Rift and virtual reality I knew that it would have an immense impact on many different industries including casino gaming. I created Lucky VR to become the leading software VR development studio for VR casino content. VR software development is extremely specialized compared to developing for other platforms like web or Android/iOS and there are so many more factors that go into creating great VR games/apps that you really need to have VR experts on board. As the VR platform takes off current operators will need someone to help them transition to it and Lucky VR has a specialized VR development team in place to make that transition seamless.
The Start-Up Launch Pad was a great way to get our name out there and interact with the i-gaming community. Explaining virtual reality to someone who hasn’t tried it is just not very effective and having a demo booth in the start-up village at EIG allowed us to put people into our virtual casino and have them experience it first-hand. The experience and feedback we received were invaluable.
MM: Innovation is the watchword in the i-Gaming industry at the moment. Do you think the i-Gaming sector is ready for virtual reality gaming products?
Jeff: I think the i-Gaming sector and virtual reality will be an amazing match and it will really become the dominant platform for people to play games on for both social and real money players. Virtual reality provides more entertainment value, more social interaction and more realism than any other platform and will just be a matter of time before the hardware is accessible and affordable enough so that a mass market of players adopt it. Virtual reality has the backing of Facebook and Samsung who are keen to create a mass market of users and the headsets will also be compatible with your mobile device so it will get there sooner than you think.
MM: What was the main feedback or takeways from attending the EiG Show and what’s next for LuckVR?
Jeff: Getting feedback from operators and investors at the show has allowed us to start making adjustments to our product offering to best suit our customers’ needs and start planning for the future. We received a lot of interest for a live dealer VR product which is something we are prototyping now and think it has great potential.
Next for Lucky VR is fundraising our seed round investment while continuing to develop great casino VR applications that will be ready for the Oculus Rift’s launch next year.
MM: Finally anything else you wish to let our readers know about?
Jeff: Please check out our website GetLuckyVR.com and get in touch if you have any questions [email protected]
Lucky VR Youtube Demo Video
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Jeff Lande – Lucky VR Founder