We are truly standing on the precipice of a cyberpunk future, and I, for one, welcome our new technocratic overlords who are promising to bring us augmented- and virtual-reality vision.

Technical Illusions is a new company founded by former Valve Software employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. They are working on a device called CastAR that is capable of augmenting reality and immersing a player in virtual reality.

Valve cut Ellsworth’s and Johnson’s positions in February, but the pair continued their work on the CastAR that they began while working for Valve head honcho Gabe Newell. Now, they are attempting to raise $400,000 through a crowdfunding project on Kickstarter to turn their concept into a consumer product.

A few hours into the campaign, backers already contributed more than $80,000.

Augmented reality is the concept of layering game and video data and images over the real world. Certain smartphone apps and games use AR to make it look like enemies are zooming around the player’s environment.

CastAR is essentially a pair of glasses bundled with a variety of sensors and a pair of tiny projectors (one above each eye). This combination of technologies is capable of a few eye-shattering feats:

Those face-mounted projectors can display an interactive play field onto a surface. The glasses use existing 3D technology — the same kind used on some 3D televisions —  to give the image depth. Simultaneously, sensors can track head motion so that the projection changes the perspective of the image. This means that CastAR can create interactive Dugneons & Dragons maps where each player sitting around a tablet can see a unique angle of the environment.

That covers the AR capabilities, but CastAR is also a VR solution. Technical Illusions accomplishes this by attaching a clip-on peripheral to the glasses that directs the images of the projectors over a player’s eyes.

The company explains how it all works in its Kickstarter pitch video below:

[kickstarter url=http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system width=558]

To get all of the AR and VR functionality, backers need to contribute at the $285 level. This creates a little bit of competition for Oculus VR’s Rift headset.

Oculus Rift is a face-mounted display that also uses head-tracking sensors to create a 3D virtual-reality experience for gamers. Unlike CastAR, Oculus puts the screen directly in front of the eyes rather than directing projects that sit above them. This means Oculus doesn’t have any AR features.

CastAR is playing in different markets than Oculus. Technical Illusions is focusing on the augmented-reality capabilities, which the Oculus isn’t built for, but that doesn’t mean CastAR cannot jump out in front of the VR market and potentially steal Oculus Rift’s momentum.

With Oculus VR and Technical Illusions, virtual reality seems like it is on the verge of breaking out into a major consumer-electronics category. The two startups are establishing that the technology is at a point where players can feel totally enveloped by a game world, now they just need to prove they can make money doing it.

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Above: Rick Johnson and Jeri Ellsworth of Technical Illusions, creator of CastAR

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

WOODINVILLE, Wash. — Inside a big home in the forested suburbs of Seattle, augmented reality glasses aren’t just an illusion. They’re about to become real products, dubbed CastAR, that can deliver games and other visual apps with cool 3D effects.

Inside the house jammed with pinball machines and prototypes, a team of former Valve employees — led by chip engineering wizard Jeri Ellsworth and game progammer Rick Johnson — have created the startup Technical Illusions. They’re designing inexpensive augmented reality glasses that they believe will create a new level of excitement for the category.

While game publisher and Steam game distributor Valve chose not to pursue augmented reality, Technical Illusions spun out and then received huge validation for its efforts when it raised $1 million in funding on Kickstarter in November.

The CastAR glasses will be able to project 3D holographic images in front of your eyes so that you can either feel like you’re seeing a virtual layer on top of the real world, or you can feel like you’re immersed inside a game world. It works with glasses and a reflect sheet-like material called “retro-reflective.” Technical Illusions plans on delivering products to its Kickstarter supporters this year.

We caught up with Ellsworth and Johnson at their (temporary) headquarters on our recent trip to Seattle. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: Tell us how the CastAR augmented reality system is going to work.

Rick Johnson: On the glasses, there are two micro-projectors. The final version will be 1,280 by 720 per eye. They shine out to the surface. Just as you watch a movie on a movie screen, same concept here. The surface is a special material called retro-reflective. It’s designed to bounce almost 100 percent of the light back to the source. If you look at the material under a microscope, it’s made of these tiny microspheres. Light enters each sphere and comes right back.

This allows for several advantages. Your eyes are focused naturally, so you don’t have any eye strain or near-eye optics. It allows for multiple people to use the surface simultaneously. If I’m shining out and you’re next to my shoulder, you’re not going to see what I’m seeing. You can play a different game, or the same game, or the same game from a different perspective. It’s a collaborative multi-user environment.

On the glasses is a cell-phone-style camera. It’s tracking infrared LED points in the physical world. The camera has special hardware that Jeri developed that breaks down the image sensor, so it comes down with point data. It becomes very efficient to transfer a small amount of data to the PC to do the final world-solver.

The overall system – the projectors, the tracking – is very low-wattage. You can run it in a mobile environment, just have it tethered to your phone and walk around using it that way. In addition, we have two input devices, what we call the magic wands. That’s a three-dimensional input into the world. It also has joystick buttons.

There’s a radio frequency identification (RFID) rig that sits underneath the surface. Anything with an RFID tag can be tracked across that surface with centimeter-level accuracy and uniquely identified. You can put down Magic: The Gathering cards to spawn land or a creature. You can place Dungeons & Dragons figures and augment them with your stats. You could play Warhammer – since we know all the distances, you could have the computer calculate fog of war, firing ranges. You just worry about strategy at that point.

The final thing is the AR/VR clip-ons. Those fit on top of the glasses. Through a series of optical expansions, they turn it into a full VR device, as well as an AR device, both of which don’t require the surface.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth is a self-taught chip designer at Technical Illusions.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: Can you talk about how you got started, how you began this research? Was it something you pitched to Valve to get it going?

Jeri Ellsworth: The backstory is that I was hired by Valve to help them create their hardware R&D department, around 2011. We were exploring all different types of gaming experiences, input and output devices, and we were very interested in virtual reality and augmented reality. We quickly tested a bunch of AR and virtual reality (VR) rigs. We identified issues with headaches and motion sickness.

I was working on trying to solve the headache issues that people get with near-to-eye displays. I had a workbench set up with projectors and reflectors and lenses and stuff. I accidentally put a reflector in this test rig backwards, and I was trying to look into it. Instead of projecting it into my eye, it was projecting it into the room. We had a piece of this reflective material in the room for a different experiment, and I saw this beautiful image show up in the reflector. I’m like, “Wow, that’s interesting.” I grabbed the material and started looking at it, and I realized, “Wow, this solves a lot of issues with eyestrain. You can still see through the glasses and the material isn’t expensive.” So it was a happy accident that we ran into this property.

GamesBeat: Why did you even think about VR, given that it had been so discredited in the ‘90s? The conventional wisdom was that it was never going to be ready.

Ellsworth: There are points where technology converges and things become more practical. Because of cell phones and the miniaturization of cameras and displays, it started to get more interesting. Our objective was just to see if we could heighten gameplay and make it better, at that point in this project. We were exploring everything, both input and output devices. Then Rick came on board to help with the project, because I was doing the hardware, but we didn’t have any game support.

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Smart glasses are expected to gain a lot of momentum as “wearable computing” takes root in the consumer market. A lot of the details, like how to protect privacy in a world full of smart glasses, still have to be worked out.

Sales of the devices could grow from 87,000 in 2013 to more than 10 million a year by 2018, according Juniper Research.

As you can see from the shipping dates, many of these devices aren’t ready yet. It may pay to wait, as prices come down and more models become available. Samsung is rumored to be moving into the market, but details aren’t available now.

We’ve round up the details on 16 of the announced models so far. Take a look and vote for your favorite.

Connect with leaders from the companies in this story, in real life: Come to the fourth annual VentureBeat Mobile Summit April 14-15 in Sausalito, Calif. Request an invitation.

Google
Product: Google Glass
Price: $1,500
Timing: Available now
Features: High-resolution display equivalent to a 25-inch HD screen from eight feet away. Camera that can take 5 megapixel photos and 720p videos. It has a bone conduction transducer for audio. It has 802.11b/g WiFi and Bluetooth. Glass has 12GB of usable memory. The battery lasts for a day under typical use. It has a micro USB cable and charger.

Above: Atheer One

Atheer Labs
Product: Atheer One
Price: $500
Timing: December 2014
Features: It has dual 8-megapixel cameras. Sports a 65 degree field of view. Operates on 5 milliseconds of latency. Expected weight is 75 grams. It will have a touchscreen and an ARM processor. It has a depth sensor, phone connection, and interchangeable lens.

Above: EmoPulse nanoGlass-4

EmoPulse
Product: nanoGlass-4
Price: TBA
Timing: $25
Features: The display resolution is 320 x 240, and, as such, it is an inexpensive foray into smart glasses. It has Bluetooth 4.0 and a lithium battery that allows for two days of intensive use or seven days in power-saving mode. The user interface makes use of seven colors. Blue colors light when you receive a text message. It connects to the phone via wireless Bluetooth 4.0.

Above: Eric Mizofuka demonstrates Epson Moverio

Image Credit: J. O'Dell / VentureBeat

Epson
Product: Moverio BT-200 smart glasses
Price: $700
Timing: March or April
Features: The Moverio has a dual screen for a 3D, transparent display (with a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels); a front-facing camera which can capture video or detect markers for augmented reality apps; head-motion tracking sensors; a gyroscope; accelerometer (for measuring motion); magnetic compass sensors; and a separate, smartphone-sized touch-sensitive control unit with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and Android 4.0. It has native support for MP4, AAC encoding, and H.264 video playback. It has a MicroSDHC card slot that supports up to 32GB of external memory.

Above: EyeTap

Image Credit: EyeTap

University of Toronto
Product: EyeTap
Price: N/A
Timing: N/A
Features: EyeTap uses your eye as both a display and a camera. It shows computer information to the user and allows them to view a “computer-mediated reality,” or augmented reality.

Above: GlassUp

Image Credit: GlassUp

GlassUP
Product: GlassUp
Price: $299 to $499
Timing: TBA
Features: Weighs 20 grams. It works via a Bluetooth LE connection with your phone and supports Android and iOS. Battery is expected to last for a day and recharges via micro-USB. Its sensors include an accelerometer, compass, and ambient light sensor. It has a touchpad for controls. Basic version has no camera or prescription lenses, while prescription lenses and a camera will cost $499.

Above: iOptik

Image Credit: Innovega

Innovega
Product: iOptik
Price: TBA
Timing: TBA
Features: iOptik is a contact lens that can display images to your eye with a wide field of view. It is good for watching immersive, wide field of view movies or playing 360-degree video games. Innovega licenses the technology to other manufacturers who will ship consumer products. You can see the outside world through the lens for augmented reality applications, or the lens can block light as needed.

Above: K-Glass

Image Credit: KAIST

KAIST University
Product: K-Glass
Price: TBA
Timing: TBA
Features: The head-mounted display device can recognize objects and tell you what you’re looking at. It is a wearable, hands-free display created by students at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. It delivers an augmented-reality experience, like show you how many tables are open a a restaurant and images of the kinds of dishes served. The device runs at 250 megahertz and uses a 1.2 volt battery. It uses a real-time augmented reality processor, it has a touchpad interface, a five-megapixel camera, and an 800 x 600 micro display.

Above: Icis

Image Credit: LaForge Optical

LaForge Optical
Product: Acis
Price: $820 for beta version; $200 for final.
Timing: Mid-2004
Features: Six-hour battery life. Designed to look like a normal pair of glasses. It has prescription eyewear that displays notifications from your phone. It has a camera, microphone, and speaker. It will come in a variety of glasses styles. You control it with a touchpad on the side.
News: Laforge was in the midst of a successful crowdfunding on Indiegogo but decided to end the campaign thanks to interest from investors.

Above: Lumus

Image Credit: Lumus

Lumus
Product: DK-40
Price: TBA
Timing: TBA
Features: Lumus uses Light-guide Optical Element technology, which can display a high-quality image using a transparent lens. It uses a mini projector to display high-definition 720p images in front of your eyes, creating the effect of watching a large virtual image on a transparent screen. It has a 5-megapixel camera. The display has a 25-degree field of view, an onboard OMAP processor running Android, an embedded depth-of-field motion sensor.

Above: Meta Pro

Image Credit: Meta

Meta 
Product: Meta Pro
Price: $3,650
Timing: September 2014
Features: It has a 40-degree field of view with a screen area that is 15 times the screen area of Google Glass. It lets you view a giant, 3D holographic HD screen, which can display 1280 x 720 pixel images for each eye. It has twin RGB cameras, stereoscopic 3D, 3D surround sound, 3D time of flight sensors, and a 9-axis integrated motion unit with accelerometer, gyroscope and compass.

Above: Pivothead Smart

Image Credit: Pivothead

Pivothead
Product: Pivothead Smart
Price:
Timing: May 2014
Features: It has a centered camera that can take 8-megapixel images or record 1080p high-definition video. The camera has autofocus and you can save data on 16GB of internal memory. It can connect via Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, or WiFi. It sends notifications to your display. It has a an ARM processor that runs Android apps, 4GB of random access memory, and a slot of Micro SD storage. It has a connector for micro USB, it has an audio out jack, and a microphone. It has mods that can add new capabilities such as global positioning system navigation. The battery can last for 180 minutes while recording video.

Above: Recon Jet

Image Credit: Recon

Recon Instruments
Product: Recon Jet
Price: $499
Timing: available
Features: Recon Jet has a consumer heads-up display for sports. Its sensors include 3D magnetometer, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer. It has a pressure sensor, ambient temperature sensor, and an optical touch sensor. The touchscreen works even if you have gloves on. It has a gigahertz ARM Cortex-A9
News: Recon Jet is like Google Glass for athletes.

Above: SixthSense

Image Credit: MIT

MIT Fluid Interfaces Group
Product: SixthSense
Price: estimated $350 or more.
Timing: TBA
Features: It includes a pocket projector, a mirror, and a camera. The device is mounted on top of the wearer’s head. The camera recognizes and tracks users’ gestures. It will connect to a user’s mobile device. It has an optional microphone.

Above: CastAR concept glasses with wand

Image Credit: Technical Illusions

Technical Illusions
Product: CastAR
Price: $100 or so
Timing:
Features: CastAR lets you see projected augmented reality, which is like seeing 3D holographic projects as if they were in front of you. The glasses have two micro-projectors that send a stereoscopic image to a retro-reflective surface. It has a 3D display that can deliver 1280 x 720 resolution per eye at 120 hertz. It has a 65-degree field of view, 8.3 milliseconds response time, six degrees of freedom for tracking, and weighs less than 100 grams. It fits over most prescription glasses. And it connects to a PC via an HDMI or USB cable. A camera tracks infrared light-emitting diodes.

Above: Vuzix says it has superior optics for augmented-reality glasses. The M2000AR is for industrial markets.

Image Credit: Vuzix

Vuzix
Product name: M2000AR head-mounted display
Price: $6,000
Timing: Shipping now.
Features: It’s a smart monocle. It has a 720p display and a 1080p camera. It has an HDMI interface, electronic sunglass tint, a 30-degree field of view, integrated head-tracking, an integrated compass, anodized aluminum alloy enclosure, rechargeable lithium ion battery. It is built with Vuzix’s Waveguide optics for smaller electronics.
News: Vuzix said it will make smart glasses for the U.S. Navy under a research grant.

Above: WeOn Glasses

Image Credit: WeOn

WeOn Glasses (formerly ION)
Product name: WeOn Glasses
Price: $99
Timing: 2014
Features: It operates on Bluetooth Smart 4.0. It has a battery that can last seven to 10 days, depending on usage. You can recharge it via a micro-USB. It has a multicolor 256-color display, a buzzer, and two buttons for remote control. WeOn Glasses send you notifications by lighting different colors in the sunglasses display. You can use it to control mobile devices. You can press a button to skip a song or turn up the volume. It has a camera, video recorder, and voice recorder. It connects with an Android or iOS app that you can use to set the controls.

Vergeance Labs
Product name: Epiphany Eyewear
Price: $299 fro 8GB; $399 for 16GB; and $499 for 32GB
Timing: TBA
Features: Smart glasses with a high-definition video camera with plastic titanium frame. You can share videos to the company’s own social-sharing website, YouGen.Tv. Vergence is also announcing today its own application programming interface for writing apps for its glasses. The computer can project an image onto the corner of the lens. The lenses are high-quality, with layers that protect the user from ultraviolet rays. They block dangerous polarized reflections, and they have antireflective coating and a special conductive layer that allows for electrically activated sunglasses. By pushing a button, you can instantly toggle the sunglass lens darkness on and off. The features include two mobile apps that connect, stream, view, and share point-of-view video from the glasses. The product uses a scalable video architecture that lets wearers share the videos to social networks or the video servers at YouGen.Tv. You can connect the glasses to any connected device, such as a smartphone or tablet, to upload video or images to the website. The optics support prescription lenses. The device can record video, transcode it, store it, and stream it.

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EXCLUSIVE:

Technical Illusions is getting quite serious about augmented reality. The company, founded by former Valve tech wizards Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, is making the CastAR augmented-reality glasses

The company showed off its latest early developer prototype at the SEA VR virtual reality event in Seattle. The prototype had come a long way since I visited the company back in February. Back then, the startup was housed inside a big home in Woodinville, Wash., in the forested suburbs of Seattle.

CastAR was born as a research project at game publisher and Steam game distributor Valve. But the company chose not to pursue augmented reality, and Technical Illusions spun out and then received huge validation for its efforts when it raised $1 million in funding on Kickstarter in November 2013.

Now the company has hired a new chief executive, David Henkel-Wallace, and chief financial officer Paul Denton. It has also moved its headquarters to the Silicon Valley town of Mountain View, Calif., the same place where Google (maker of the Google Glass augmented reality glasses) is based.

The CastAR glasses can project 3D holographic images in front of your eyes so that you can either feel like you’re seeing a virtual layer on top of the real world, or you can feel like you’re immersed inside a game world. It works with glasses and a reflective sheet-like material called “retro-reflective.” At the Seattle event, Technical Illusions showed off the prototype that it will be able to ship to early Kickstarter supporters this year. I played a demo on the CastAR, and it worked beautifully. In a demo inspired by the old Marble Madness game, I was able to move around a marble through a landscape by tilting my head. I found it very easy to control things in the virtual world, but I could also see everything happening around me the because the glasses don’t obstruct your view of the real world.

I caught up with Ellsworth for an update at SEA VR. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Above: The CastAR from Technical Illusions

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: Is this the system you’re going to ship?

Jeri Ellsworth: These are what we’re calling the early developer units. A hundred or so go to the Kickstarter folks. A lot of developers want units, and some of them have already purchased them. We’re building a few hundred units at a time. Those are going out over the next month or two.

GamesBeat: This set is far different from what I saw several months ago. It was still pretty heavy and bulky. You’ve lightened it a lot.

Ellsworth: These glasses are about 140 grams. We’re shooting to get it down to 80 grams over the coming year, as we ship more. We want to cut it about in half. It’s an interesting story. We didn’t know the size of the camera or projector or circuit boards as we were trying to develop the plastics. So we made things bigger to be sure we could fit them in. It turns out that all the projectors and cameras ended up being much smaller, so it’ll be an easy task to shrink everything in the next revision of the plastics. That’ll cut the weight a lot. We’re going to make better nose pads and replace some other stuff as well.

GamesBeat: But the fundamentals are the same? Did you change any parts of the system?

Ellsworth: Compared to last year it’s almost a complete rebuild, architecturally. We have two cameras now, running at 120Hz. We have some infrared LEDs out in the environment as our markers. You can put as many of those in the environment as you want and the glasses can track those to give you head position, so the game engine gives you the right graphics. Our tracking camera is 135 degrees, compared to 100 before. That’s a huge bump in tracking. We added a 1,000Hz gyro. We’ll be sending out Sensor Fusion updates that integrate that.

The wand is getting redone, and the RFID grid. The wand uses the same tracking system, but with a different lens on it. That allows you to move through 3D space and select your virtual characters and move them around. It has the same precision as the head tracking, with sub-millimeter accuracy when you draw or manipulate things.

GamesBeat: Does this app have a name?

Ellsworth: We call it “mARbles.” It’s a very simplistic Marble Madness kind of game. The way we designed it was to be approachable by anyone. It allows any number of players to join, so you have multiple marbles running around in there and you can push each other around. This is a sample game that developers will receive with the SDK. They can use it to develop tabletop games. We’re also going to provide a dungeon builder and a first-person shooter example, as well as a third-person example.

Above: mARbles augmented reality app

Image Credit: Technical Illusions

GamesBeat: The graphics look better as well. Has that changed a lot?

Ellsworth: Oh, yes. Our optics partner is based in Japan. They came through the show today and walked by and got to see the results of their work. The funny story is, when we showed them the initial prototypes, it was projectors I built. I’m not an optics engineer, so I bought surplus lenses and stuck them on to build my own projector, essentially. The resolution was so low that even though we were using 720p panels for each eye, every 16 pixels it was kind of blurred together.

When they took all the prescriptions to the lenses and simulated it, they came back and said, “This can’t be right. It’s so bad that we can’t even imagine we were getting that good an experience out of it.” I said, “Um, that’s exactly the prescriptions I was putting into the projector.” So they said, “Well, we can do much better than that.” They were able to make the projectors such that every pixel is addressable and can be resolved between half a meter and two meters, somewhere in there. You can always see the pixels and it stays in focus.

GamesBeat: Is what people see comparable to 1080p? How would you describe it?

Ellsworth: The actual resolution is 2,560-by-720.

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In 1972, Nolan Bushnell co-founded Atari with Ted Dabney. The company went on to launch seminal video games such as Pong and Breakout that defined a generation of gamers. Almost 43 years later, he’s still the spokesman and showman of video games.

Bushnell still has a lot of fun as the public voice of gaming. He has an educational games startup, BrainRush, and he’s an advisor to many game startups. He wrote the book, “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” where he talked about how he could have owned a third of Apple for $50,000. He’s also writing a new book, “The Unemployment Myth,” about how tech can both destroy and create jobs.

I interviewed Bushnell on stage at the opening of our GamesBeat Summit, our executive event last week at the Cavallo Point resort in Sausalito, Calif. Bushnell was the opening talk. Just before it, he asked me how irreverent he should be. “Just be yourself,” I told him. And he was. He wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, and had us laughing from the start.

Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation. You’ll see why he was the most popular speaker at our event.

Above: GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi and Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: You’re working on something called BrainRush. Can you tell us about that? Why is this a bold idea?

Nolan Bushnell: I’ve always felt that education and games were linked in some very interesting ways. As you get older you start thinking — I have eight kids. I saw them learning through games and learning through school. Games were better. I thought it would be fun to work on some software and push it forward. We’re having modest success. It’s a tough market. Selling to government institutions — one should never do it. But it’s going to be fun.

GamesBeat: You say that games make us smarter.

Bushnell: Absolutely.

GamesBeat: Here’s the second part of the question. How does that explain Gamergate, then?

Bushnell: Well…

GamesBeat: That’s a gotcha question.

Bushnell: The reality is that our brains are constantly creating new dendrites, new axons. Unfortunately, about half the population are dead from the neck up. I’ve found that one of the things that makes a successful company is only hiring alive people. If you continue with that, you can have a pretty good company.

It’s the whole idea that you want to surround yourself with people with enthusiasm and passion and curiosity. So much of what our educational constructs do is fight that. They actually train out creativity and enthusiasm. They pound in boring 45-minute lectures. You have to deal with growing up without having all the spark snuffed out of your life. Unfortunately that’s the reality of today’s school system.

GamesBeat: You wrote a book about finding the next Steve Jobs. You confessed very self-effacingly there that you had a chance to get a third of Apple for $50,000.

Bushnell: That’s true, and I regret not doing it.

GamesBeat: What was the point of writing that book?

Bushnell: If you look at Back to the Future, there’s a lot of different threads. The fact that I introduced Steve to Don Valentine, who introduced Mike Markkula to Jobs — I think Markkula was as important to the formation and early days of Apple as anyone. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that if I had made the investment, I would have been the CEO or president that Markkula was. The whole outcome may have been different.

At 21, Jobs was a very unfinished product. He didn’t smell well. There were a lot of things — my litmus test for a good CEO, it’s not Steve Jobs. But he grew into it. So who knew?

Above: Nolan Bushnell, speaking at length about the future of video games, with GamesBeat Summit moderator Dean Takahashi

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell / VentureBeat

GamesBeat: You have a new book in the works as well. Tell us more about that one.

Bushnell: It’s called The Unemployment Myth. Technology in the next 20 years will destroy, in the United States alone, about 50 million jobs. It’s going to be the major war and political issue of the next 20 years.

Ned Ludd, 1779, was a weaver. He was a good weaver. He had a wife and three children. He went to work one day and he got fired. He realized he got fired, amongst a bunch of his buddies, because an automatic loom was installed. He decided, this cannot stand, so he got a bunch of pickaxes and hatchets and went in and destroyed the looms that night. That became the start of Luddism as an anti-technology movement.

Think about what the self-driving car is going to mean to the Teamsters. You can see, all of a sudden, that’s going to be a massive war. Those jobs are going to go away.

GamesBeat: Did you know that you just described the theme for the next Call of Duty game?

Bushnell: I did not. But it should be. Anyway, what the book is going to do is talk about all the jobs that are created because of technology and the life that we can live. It’s hopefully going to be aspirational and enthusiastic. I want you to all buy several copies, because they’re actually good for breakfast.

GamesBeat: A lot of people approach you with ideas. How do you filter them? That’s the kind of job that a lot of people in this room probably have to do as well.

Bushnell: I’m always looking for disruptive innovation, not evolutionary innovation. Most of the stuff I see is evolutionary — pedestrian, sophomoric. I tend to not like that. I like to get involved with things that are truly revolutionary, that look like they’re going to be important.

Games, more than almost any other thing — games have a slightly longer life, in most cases, than movies. The half-life of a typical game, a really good game, is six months to a year. Exceptions are World of Warcraft and a few things like that. So what you want to do is find threads that have sustainability.

The mobile space right now, to me, is very noisy. I’m always looking for the mass reset. There’s a reset coming around every four to five years. The next reset is clearly AR or VR. I have a little wager on each one. My gut actually says that AR is going to be more important. VR has some wonderful spaces in the public space world. AR is going to take over the game world.

Above: Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, at GamesBeat Summit.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: I believe your family helps you with scouting this out.

Bushnell: As I say, I have eight children. They have six companies. They’re so good at what they do. They’re very dismissive of me. Which is good. Then I come up with some new stuff, and the minute I show them something that’s cool, they immediately think it was their idea. It’s just not fair.

GamesBeat: You get out a lot, though. You go to a lot of meetups.

Bushnell: Yeah. Right now, a college degree is very imprecise. I find that hiring strictly for passion and enthusiasm almost trumps formal education. I’m looking for people who are self-taught. I’m a massively passionate person about Unity. It’s such a great tool for us in so many ways. Today you can find some of the best talent in the meetups, among the people who are spending nights and weekends on their passion for games while they’re flipping hamburgers at McDonald’s.

Augmented reality gaming glasses startup CastAR has raised $15 million in funding from Android creator Andy Rubin.

The money from Rubin’s Playground Global investment firm brings a variety of benefits, including office space and technical know-how, said David Henkel-Wallace, the chief executive of Mountain View, Calif.-based CastAR, in an interview with GamesBeat.

CastAR has a lot of competition, from Google (which might one day create a new version of its Google Glass project) to Magic Leap, an augmented reality company in Florida with a lot of funding from Google. It will also likely compete with virtual reality companies (which provide goggles that are more immersive because they put you inside virtual worlds) like Facebook’s Oculus VR. But Rubin’s investment brings a very important ally into CastAR’s camp, as Rubin has a lot of money as well as a ton of connections in the tech world.

“One thing you look for investors is what kind of network they have,” Henkel-Wallace said. “It’s really a different kind of firm. They’re very focused on hardware businesses, and they have a model where they’re kind of an incubator. We just closed this deal and we’re already finding them useful.”

Above: CastAR wand

Image Credit: CastAR

CastAR was born as Technical Illusions in the greater Seattle area. It was started as a research project by Valve technologists Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson to build augmented-reality glasses, or ones that can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world. Valve decided not to pursue the project, so Ellsworth and Johnson spun out as Technical Illusions. They raised $1 million in funding on Kickstarter in November 2013. Now they’ve moved to Silicon Valley and renamed the company as CastAR.

The CastAR glasses can project 3D holographic images in front of your eyes so that you can either feel like you’re seeing a virtual layer on top of the real world, or you can feel like you’re immersed inside a game world. It works with glasses and a reflective sheet-like material called “retro-reflective.” While you could theoretically use the reflective sheets to animate an entire room, CastAR has decided to focus on using smaller sheets for tabletop gaming.

This week, I talked with Henkel-Wallace in San Francisco and got a fresh demo with a prototype of the glasses. In a demo inspired by the old Marble Madness game, I was once again able to move around a marble through a landscape by tilting my head. I found it very easy to control things in the virtual world, but I could also see everything happening around me the because the glasses don’t obstruct your view of the real world. The imagery was quite sharp.

I also used a “wand” with the glasses to play a Jenga game. I used the wand to slice the bricks.

“We thought Jenga would be more fun with a lightsaber,” Henkel-Wallace said. “This is what we mean by fun. We forget the pleasure of frivolity. My girlfriend’s kids stand on the table when they play. We want to go back to fun.”

I also was able to look at a chess game that resembled the battle chess game in the original Star Wars movie. I could touch creatures with the wand and knock them off the table into a lava pool below. The graphics were crisp, and the field of view had no limitations, in contrast to Microsoft’s HoloLens holographic glasses, which have a more limited 20-degree field of view.

The new round of funding will be used to drive forward business and continue product development efforts as the company looks to drive adoption among tabletop and interactive game developers. Henkel-Wallace said you can imagine a tabletop battle where part of the battlefield is occluded by “fog of war” because your troops haven’t discovered an area yet. CastAR is also focusing its attention on attracting engineering, business, and design talent as it works towards a 2016 commercial launch.

“Among all the confusion about what separates AR from VR, what’s lost is fun,” said Henkel-Wallace. “People want a simple, accessible, fun solution that they can just pick up and play with their friends, without dealing with a bulky, uncomfortable headset, much less being tethered to a big computer. Our goal is to see CastAR on store shelves across North America, aligned with some recognizable brands in tabletop and interactive gaming. Playground’s support will help us get there.”

The company has just 11 people, but it plans to hire more now that it has funding.

“I was really intrigued by David, Jeri, and Rick’s approach to tackling the problem of how to drive mainstream adoption of AR,” said Rubin, the former Google executive and now managing director at Playground Global, in a statement. “They’re the only company I found to be simplifying the utility and application of augmented and virtual reality technology into a fun, accessible, and portable system that will wow kids and adults alike.”

Henkel-Wallace said that the pricing isn’t available yet, but it will be targeted at consumers.

“A $1,000 gaming PC to go with your lenses isn’t a consumer product,” Henkel-Wallace said.

Above: CastAR demo, visualized to show what you see with the augmented reality glasses.

Image Credit: CastAR

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CastAR is postponing the launch of its augmented reality glasses, but it is also doing something unusual. The startup is returning all of the $1 million in pledged money from its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to its supporters.

The company says it’s the right thing to do, even though it isn’t obligated to return the money. But CastAR still wants the goodwill of its early supporters, and it can do this because it recently raised $15 million in venture money from Playground Global, an investment fund run by Android creator Andy Rubin. CastAR still has ambitions to make a big splash in augmented reality, which tech advisor Digi-Capital forecasts will be a $120 billion market by 2020.

David Henkel-Wallace, the chief executive of Mountain View, Calif.-based CastAR, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the company decided to postpone shipments of a prototype product for the development community, which also included many non-developer consumers. Those Kickstarter supporters will get their money back and also receive a free pair of CastAR glasses when the full product is ready, sometime in 2017. All told, the supporters number about 3,000.

“We will give back exactly what our backers gave us and free glasses as well,” Henkel-Wallace said. “And we will thank them for their support. We don’t want people to feel ill-used. We are super-grateful. They committed their funds. We could have stuck to the letter of the law. We want their support.”

Some Kickstarter campaigns have gone sour.

CastAR has a lot of competition, such as Google (which might one day create a new version of its Google Glass project) or Magic Leap, an augmented reality company in Florida with a lot of funding from Google. It will also likely compete with virtual reality companies (which provide goggles that are more immersive because they put you inside virtual worlds) like Facebook’s Oculus VR. But Rubin’s investment gave the company a lot of options, Henkel-Wallace said.

Above: CastAR wand

Image Credit: CastAR

CastAR was born as Technical Illusions in the greater Seattle area. It was started as a research project by Valve technologists Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson to build augmented-reality glasses, or ones that can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world. Valve decided not to pursue the project, so Ellsworth and Johnson spun out as Technical Illusions. They raised $1 million in funding on Kickstarter in November 2013. Now they’ve moved to Silicon Valley and renamed the company as CastAR.

The CastAR glasses can project 3D holographic images in front of your eyes so that you can either feel like you’re seeing a virtual layer on top of the real world or feel like you’re immersed inside a game world. It works with glasses and a reflective sheet-like material called “retro-reflective.” While you could theoretically use the reflective sheets to animate an entire room, CastAR has decided to focus on using smaller sheets for tabletop gaming.

CastAR has shown off games where you can roll a virtual marble over an aninmated tabletop, play a game of battle chess that resembles a scene from Star Wars, and use a wand to play virtual Jenga.

“We are shifting out of Kickstarter mode into a more professional mode,” Henkel-Wallace said. “Not everyone manages that properly. We are doing this out of a position of strength. We still plan to ship a consumer product in 2017. That’s different from the original Kickstarter timeline.”

In a message to supporters, Johnson wrote, “Kickstarting CastAR provided us with the foundation that Jeri and I used to begin building both a company and the CastAR product. During the last two years we’ve learned a lot about the market we are in, how to put a business together, and the expectations set forth by you, our backers.”

Johnson said the team debated what to do. On the one hand, many backers want a product with a full set of software. That won’t be ready for some time in the future, as it has a “much more complex development cycle.”

On the other hand, the Kickstarter campaign was aimed at creating hardware suited for developers, so they could start working on software. To resolve the debate, the team decided to gve everyone who was expecting CastAR hardware a free pair of consumer glasses at the future launch, and it will reimburse people for their Kickstarter pledges.

“To further express our appreciation, we’d also like to send you a couple small thank you gifts designed just for you, our backers,” Johnson wrote. “We wear our Kickstarter success as a badge of honor, and we hope you will too….Jeri and I want to sincerely thank you for embarking on this journey with us. The entire process has been very humbling and we have especially enjoyed interacting with all of you. At the start of any journey it is not always exactly clear where you might end up.”

Henkel-Wallace said that the 2017 final product will benefit from miniaturization and cost reductions, thanks to the benefit of Moore’s Law. Thanks to its recent funding, CastAR has grown from 11 employees to 20.

Above: CastAR demo, visualized to show what you see with the augmented reality glasses.

Image Credit: CastAR

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We’re happy to announce that Jeri Ellsworth, cofounder of augmented reality glasses maker CastAR, will be one of our speakers for the second annual GamesBeat Summit 2016, an event that’s set for May 3 and May 4 at the scenic Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, California.

Ellsworth is the cofounder of CastAR, a company that is creating a new kind of gaming experience with augmented reality glasses. The CastAR glasses can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world.

It’s a very creative product from a very interesting hardware tinkerer. Ellsworth taught herself how to design chips and became known in 2004 for creating a Commodore 64 system on a chip with a joystick. She went on to become a hardware hacker and was part of a team of researchers at Valve, the maker of the Half-Life games and the new SteamVR virtual reality technology.

Ellsworth left Valve in 2013 to cofound Technical Illusions with fellow Valve technologist Rick Johnson to create the CastAR system. They raised money on Kickstarter and eventually moved from Seattle to Mountain View, Calif., in 2014 with their team. CastAR raised $15 million last August, and it is preparing to ship its first generation product. We are delighted to have Ellsworth on our speaking roster.

Our theme this year is David and Goliath: How underdogs are transforming gaming — from VR and AR to mobile and esports.

This event is about the global business of gaming, which is growing in so many ways and becoming a bigger part of the entertainment and technology industries. We’ve designed this year’s summit to be a more intimate experience for the leaders of the gaming world.

Our goal is to make GamesBeat Summit the best event of its kind. It brings together 180 gaming executives from all segments of the gaming ecosystem to develop a blueprint for the industry’s expansion in 2016 and beyond. New markets, new game genres, and new platforms are opening up for game companies. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and esports are re-energizing developers. Our speakers shed light on the landscape and help you make the right decisions so your company can grow. We’re vetting the speaker candidates for good narratives, such as David and Goliath stories, that hold lessons for us all.

If you want to apply for an invitation, please click here.

Our previously announced speakers include:

Above: Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, at the GamesBeat Summit.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

Mike Gallagher, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association. Gallagher is returning to speak as the chief lobbyist for the game industry. We caught him recently at the DICE Summit in Las Vegas, where he aggressively defended and praised the game industry for its fast growth and expansion to new platforms. Gallagher is the chief spokesman for an industry that has reached $90 billion in sales around the world, according to tech adviser Digi-Capital.

Gallagher noted that just two decades ago, video games were a niche. Now games are an economic driver, he said, with $23.5 billion in the U.S. in 2015 sales across physical and digital segments. And they remain an innovative force in technology, too — just look at how games could be the killer app for virtual reality. The U.S. has 1,800 video game facilities (companies and offices), with more than 1,600 publishers and developers. And 406 universities have degrees or curricula in video games.

Above: Marvel’s Peter Phillips goes over the ins-and-outs of being a brand steward.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

Peter Phillips, executive vice president and general manager of interactive and digital distribution for Disney’s Marvel Entertainment. He oversees Marvel’s New York digital media division, which creates and manages web, app, and social media experiences. He also runs the Los Angeles video games unit, which oversees the development of multiplatform games, and the L.A. digital film and video distribution group.

Basically, he licenses game publishers and developers to make games based on Marvel properties, and that responsibility is a serious one. When he spoke at our event last year, he viewed the role as a “brand steward,” or being a caretaker who was very careful about what he allowed others to do with Marvel brands. We’re delighted to have him back for a fireside chat at a time just before the May 6 debut of Captain America: Civil War in theaters.

Riccardo Zacconi, CEO of King. Zacconi has been the CEO of King Digital Entertainment and its predecessor, Midasplayer.com, since 2003. He helped fuel the growth of King on the Web and on Facebook. His company’s fortunes took off in 2012 with the launch of Candy Crush Saga on mobile devices. For the past couple of years, Candy Crush Saga has been among the top-three grossing mobile games in the world. In November, Zacconi sold King to Activision Blizzard for $5.9 billion as part of an effort to create a global gaming powerhouse across all major platforms. The deal was one of the biggest in the history of the game industry, and it showed how much value King had created with its mobile-based casual gaming business. After the acquisition, Zacconi told us that he is looking forward to taking advantage of Activision Blizzard’s massive network of users and franchises for new mobile game properties.

Robbie Bach, former chief Xbox officer. Microsoft lost $5 billion to $7 billion on the original Xbox, launched in 2001. And it made billions of dollars on the Xbox 360. Depending on the time frame in which you look at it, this was either an insane waste of money or the finest strategic decision that Microsoft ever made. Robbie Bach had to make the call to do it or not. He was the chief Xbox officer from 2000 to 2010. After two console cycles, Bach decided to do work as a “civic engineer” to help fix both charities and governments. We look forward to a discussion of what Bach learned from his efforts and how they are relevant today to companies that are trying to establish new platforms. Bach recently wrote a memoir book, Xbox Revisited, about his time at Microsoft and his own efforts to fix our country’s civic problems.

Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer. Ismail is one of the most visible independent game developers in the world. The cofounder of the Netherlands-based Vlambeer is trying to use that fame to give back to the indie community and do good. The studio’s has a signature style, and fans have supported it all the way. Five years ago, Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman started the company. Their hits include Super Crate Box (2010), Serious Sam: The Random Encounter (2011), Gun Godz (2012), Ridiculous Fishing (2013), Luftrausers (2014), and Nuclear Throne (2014). Ismail has also been active supporting indies with the Indie Press Kit, DoDistribute, DoToolKit, andGameDev.world. Ismail is outspoken on social issues, and he has taken gamers to task for online harassment. And he remains a big advocate for the global gaming business.

Noah Falstein, chief game designer at Google. Falstein has had a long history of making video games. But at Google, which doesn’t make traditional video games, you would think that he doesn’t have much to do. But he does. Falstein noted in a panel that I moderated last year that Google supports games across the whole spectrum, perhaps more so than any other company. Much of its focus is in getting the next billion people to play games, on such platforms as Android devices and virtual reality.

At last year’s Game Developers Conference, Falstein talked about doing games using Google’s Project Tango, the augmented reality technology that can map the 3D space around you and, using a tablet screen or future augmented reality glasses, project an interactive experience into that space. You can conceivably play a 3D horror game inside your own house where you hide behind your own furniture to escape a beast. Falstein has also talked about creating games such as the massively multiplayer online mobile game, Ingress, which was recently spun out of Google as Niantic. Falstein has served in game design roles at the Inspiracy, Suddenly Social, NF Interactive, LucasArts, Dreamworks, and 3DO.

Neil Young, CEO of N3twork. Young and Bob Stevenson launched N3twork as a social network based on interests groups in 2013. It didn’t take off as expected, so they pivoted last fall into mobile gaming. That was an unusual move, but it showed how flexible Young was in adapting to the fast-changing market. And, if anything, gaming has been changing fast in the past few years. It won’t be an easy path, as big companies are starting to dominate the top-grossing games in mobile. But Young has done pulled off some interesting feats in the past. In 2008, he started Ngmoco with Stevenson at the dawn of the iPhone era. Japan’s DeNA, a mobile and social gaming company, acquired Ngmoco for $400 million in 2010. Before that, Young spent years working on triple-A games such as The Lord of the Rings, The Sims, and the experimental Majestic game at Electronic Arts. He built his first game when he was 14.

Some of our topics include:

Platforms: Where to place your bets? VR, AR, and more

The opportunities in the $90 billion game industry have never been bigger.  Platforms such as smartphones, tablets, and mobile messaging services have created new ways to reach more gamers than ever before. But a single game company can’t do everything. As virtual reality and augmented reality arrive, resource allocation becomes a real challenge. Where should you place your bets? How do you reach the most people? How do you reach the most engaged consumers who are perfect for your games? Our session will help you sort that out.

Monetization: How to acquire and retain your user base

The best tricks for monetizing games keep changing. We highlight them every year, but nobody ever talks about the same topic twice. We’re gathering some experts who can break down the state of the art in monetization. Can we find lessons for the rest of the industry. Does free-to-play work on the consoles? Can you create microtransactions that boost a paid game’s results without alienating players?

Deals: Follow the money

The conventional wisdom says that it’s smarter to invest in the emerging markets of augmented reality and virtual reality than in mobile games. But FunPlus recently announced a $50 million fund to invest primarily in mobile games. The overall surge of investment dollars into private gaming companies has been followed by a slowdown in recent months. Will this snail’s pace continue, or will we see certain segments start the upward cycle again?

Brands & Franchises

The rising cost of user acquisition has driven game developers into the arms of brands and franchise licensors. This strategy has been in effect for at least a couple of years in mobile. Has it worked? How can it be done better, particularly across regional borders? We’ll line up some experts to talk about the latest ways that brands are tapping the huge well of mobile users — without resorting to brand slapping.

Esports and community

After years in the wilderness, esports has become a big business. Competitive gaming events draw global audiences, and they’re spawning new kinds of careers for professional athletes and others in the spectator ecosystem. The global esports market is expected to grow 43 percent from $325 million in 2015 to $463 million in 2016, according to a new report by market researcher Newzoo. By 2019, esports are expected to grow to $1.1 billion. ESPN’s and Yahoo’s new esports efforts, EA’s decision to appoint its chief operating officer as head of a new esports division, and Activision Blizzard’s acquisition of event organizer Major League Gaming show just how important esports is becoming to some of the biggest media companies in the world. The rise of esports goes hand-in-hand with understand the communities that gamers are creating. We’ll help you navigate this emerging market.

Embracing diversity and creativity

Diversity and creativity go hand-in-hand. If you improve one within your organization, chances are good that the other will benefit. We’re talking with experts on how to inspire your teams to move to greater heights when it comes to both diversity and creativity. We’re then looking at the results that develop from the finished games.

Our event advisory board includes:

• Sinjin Bain, CEO of MaxPlay
• Gordon Bellamy, visiting scholar at USC
• Seamus Blackley, Xbox cofounder and consultant
• Michael Chang, senior vice president of corporate development at NCSoft
• Daniel Cho, chairman at Innospark
• Kate Edwards, executive director at the International Game Developers Association
• Jay Eum, managing director of TransLink Capital
• Chris Fralic, partner at First Round Capital
• Bill Grosso, CEO of Scientific Revenue
• Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners
• Tim Merel, founder and CEO of Eyetouch Reality and managing director at Digi-Capital
• Phil Sanderson, managing director at IDG Ventures
• Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors

Call for speakers

If you’d like speak or recommend a speaker, you can apply here by 11:59 p.m. Pacific on Friday, February 5.

Call for sponsors

If you’d like to sponsor, please send a message to sponsors@venturebeat.com.

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Augmented reality gaming glasses startup CastAR recently sent out a taste of what the future of tabletop games will be like. Using its special AR glasses, CastAR can overlay animations on top of the real world, creating a “mixed reality” environment that makes you feel like you’re immersed inside a tabletop game experience.

The company has raised $15 million in funding from Android creator Andy Rubin. The creators are among the optimists who believe that augmented reality can become a $90 billion market by 2020 (according to tech adviser Digi-Capital). Jeri Ellsworth, cofounder of CastAR, will be one of our speakers at the second annual GamesBeat Summit 2016, an event that’s set for May 3 and May 4 at the scenic Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito, California.

CastAR isn’t launching until 2017, but it has a very different and creative product compared to other virtual reality headsets on the market. And it comes from a very interesting set of hardware tinkerers and software designers. Ellsworth taught herself how to design chips and became known in 2004 for creating a Commodore 64 system on a chip with a joystick. She went on to become a hardware hacker and was part of a team of researchers at Valve, the maker of the Half-Life games and the new SteamVR virtual reality technology.

Ellsworth left Valve in 2013 to cofound Technical Illusions with fellow Valve technologist Rick Johnson to create the CastAR system. They raised money on Kickstarter and eventually moved from Seattle to Palo Alto, Calif., in 2014 with their team. The company renamed itself as CastAR, after its product name, and it is preparing to ship its first generation product for its Kickstarter backers later this year. The company how has about 30 employees.

Johnson, the chief software engineer, showed me a prototype of the working AR glasses with several different types of games.

“Board games are very applicable to this type of space,” Johnson said. “We also think it’s good for role-playing games, real-time strategy games, racing games, and others. There’s a lot of experiences that translate well, as well as titles we are developing internally that will be great. We are focused on an entertainment product.”

The CastAR glasses can project 3D holographic images in front of your eyes so that you can either feel like you’re seeing a virtual layer on top of the real world, or you can feel like you’re immersed inside a game world. It works with glasses and a reflective sheet-like material called “retro-reflective.” While you could theoretically use the reflective sheets to animate an entire room, CastAR has decided to focus on using smaller sheets for tabletop gaming. You’ll need a Android-based “mini console” to operate it, along with the glasses and a wand. You can put the sheets on anything, including walls, tables, or the floor.

The newest demos

Above: CastAR wants you to play tabletop games in mixed reality.

Image Credit: CastAR

The first demo put me in control of a toy soldier, running around on top of a battlefield in a city. It was sitting atop a table, and my toy soldier roamed around the buildings in search of enemies. Johnson also controlled a toy soldier, and we wandered around. I fired my gun at the enemies and took some of them down. It was hard to target, but I could move around the table and see something from a different point of view. The game supports 5-versus-5 multiplayer.

CastAR also created a demo of the classic Battleship board game, sitting on top of a table. The ships fired at each other, with salvos flying in arcs. When you look at your opponent across the table, you can see the person’s reactions. That’s what makes it fun.

“We see a shared environment,” Johnson said. “We can’t see each other’s ships. We can see a harbor together and point to the scoreboard. You can take this concept to Dungeons & Dragons, where each person can see the perspective of their game, unique to the character. A human might see something different from what a dwarf sees. The Dungeon Master can see the entire view of the game and know where the monsters will come from next.”

Johnson also showed me a nonplayable demo of World of Tanks. It was a playback of a match between real players. You can see the battlefield of hills, trees, rocks, and grass. The tanks roll across the countryside, and you can see an overhead view of the environment. When the enemy tank comes into your field of view, you can see it. If it’s not within your field of view, it remains hidden. Likewise, your opponent in a multiplayer game wouldn’t be able to see you until your tank comes into the open.

The tanks discovered each other and started trading fire. World of Tanks publisher Wargaming gave CastAR permission to make the demo, but it isn’t a definite project yet. This took about a couple of weeks to get up and running. Johnson said it is easy to port existing games to run on the tech.

“We’re trying to make developers aware of our system and get them to start thinking about content and new types of gameplay,” Johnson said. “That’s the critical aspect. We don’t want to see just new versions of games you have played before. We want to extend video gaming into the realm of mixed reality.”

In the past, I saw demos like a marble-pushing game inspired by the old Marble Madness, I was once again able to move around a marble through a landscape by tilting my head. I found it very easy to control things in the virtual world, but I could also see everything happening around me the because the glasses don’t obstruct your view of the real world. The imagery was quite sharp.

Will it fly?

Above: CastAR wand demo

Image Credit: CastAR

I also used a wand with the glasses to play a Jenga game. I used the wand to slice the bricks. I also was able to look at a chess game that resembled the battle chess game in the original Star Wars movie. I could touch creatures with the wand and knock them off the table into a lava pool below. The graphics were crisp, and the field of view had no limitations, in contrast to Microsoft’s HoloLens holographic glasses, which have a more limited 20-degree field of view. The CastAR glasses have a 70-degree field of view. But VR imagery looks much sharper than anything I’ve seen yet with CastAR.

CastAR estimates that the whole system will cost about as much as a game console. Johnson said that the graphics will get better, as well as the precision of the wand.

“Playground has hardware experts who are giving us access to their studio,” Johnson said. “They have experts in optical, manufacturing, sources, industrial design, and user experience. We get to utilize that as part of our company. We are embedded there and see them every day.

“At the end of the day, it has to be fun. We’re engineering it to be manufacturable and at a price point consumers can afford. Our core decisions revolve around making it fun. We also want it to be comfortable on your head so you can play it for a long time.”

In 2016, the company is hoping to gather more developer support. And in 2017, it is targeting a commercial launch. CastAR has a Wii-like feel to it. The promise is in physical, social fun. But it’s going to have a tough battle standing out from the VR headsets that are backed by major companies this year. Facebook’s Oculus, HTC, and Sony are all launching high-fidelity VR headsets that will immerse you in virtual worlds. The question is whether CastAR, which puts you halfway into a virtual world, will be able to compete. So far, it does tabletop better. But that may not be enough.

Above: You play CastAR with a wand-like controller.

Image Credit: CastAR

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Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson have been toiling away at augmented reality for years at their startup, CastAR. Their ambition to make a fun AR product has been cooking for a while, and they’re taking a very different approach to the next-generation gaming platform.

And given Ellsworth’s background as an underdog, it’s no surprise she’s trying to think different. Ellsworth taught herself how to design chips and became known in 2004 for creating a Commodore 64 system on a chip with a joystick. She went on to become a hardware hacker and was part of a team of researchers at Valve, the maker of the Half-Life games and the new SteamVR virtual reality technology.

Ellsworth left Valve in 2013 to cofound Technical Illusions with fellow Valve technologist Rick Johnson to create the CastAR system. They raised money on Kickstarter and eventually moved from Seattle to Mountain View, Calif., in 2014 with their team. CastAR raised $15 million last August, and it is preparing to ship its first generation product.

Ellsworth wants to create a new kind of gaming experience with augmented reality glasses. The CastAR glasses can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world. And for Ellsworth, the focus is on fun for the mass market, not making a really expensive toy that you never play with. She spoke at our GamesBeat Summit 2016 event with Will Mason, cofounder and editor-in-chief of UploadVR.

Here’s an edited transcript of their conversation.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth of CastAR and Will Mason of UploadVR.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: Today, I want to dive in a bit on mixed reality’s role in the big future we keep hearing about. It seems today you can’t throw a stone in Silicon Valley without hitting someone who wants to talk about AR and VR. Jeri, before we get into the story of CastAR, can you talk about how you got into mixed reality in general? You were working at Valve on VR in 2012, right?

Jeri Ellsworth: I have an interesting background. I’ve been fearless as far as getting into areas I don’t know about. I dropped out of high school and started building and racing quarter-mile dirt track cars with everyone telling me I couldn’t do it.

In the ‘90s, the computer store business was booming. [In 1995] I opened a computer store. I was so poor at the time that I lived out of the back of the store, but I grew it into more and more locations. Eventually, I had five. Then, that market fell apart. In 2000, I thought I’d always enjoyed electronics, so I taught myself chip design. I bought a bunch of books, found some mentors, and started learning about [very-large-scale integration] design.

I came down to Silicon Valley. That was my first introduction to the culture here, which was eye-opening coming from rural Oregon. It was important to get to events like this and start networking if I was going to be discovered as a self-taught chip designer, and so I’d go to events and shake everyone’s hand and show them some circuit boards with [field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)] on them. “Look at this video controller I built. Here’s a sound controller. This one takes joystick input.” From there, I slowly launched my career in the early 2000s.

What got me into games and got me closer to working at Valve was, I had done some blog posts about reverse-engineering old 8-bit computers and putting them in these FPGAs. I’d reverse-engineered the old Commodore 64 and stuck it into a chip and blogged about it. A toy company contacted me and said, “We want to make a toy where we have 30 retro video games built into it.” At this point, I’d only done very small designs on bigger teams. They asked me if I could do the whole thing. I took a deep breath and said I could. I’d never manufactured anything before, never done a full chip before. But it turned out well. It was a huge viral hit, and it put me on the map.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth recently spoke at GamesBeat Summit 2016.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

From there, I did a bunch of other toys and got really immersed in low-cost product design. My career afterward centered on customer-facing entertainment devices, hardware that kids could afford and adults could easily purchase. Some years went by until Valve was interested in expanding beyond the PC platform. They were concerned about the Windows platform remaining viable. They hired me as their first hardware person to put together a team and research other ways to get them off the PC platform and into the living room.

This was a dream job. It was magical. They gave me an unlimited budget. I could hire anyone I wanted. I split the research into three pieces. First, I’d get pure researchers. We’d get some maker types, people who are into building things. And then, we got some product people, which I fell into. We were given free rein to research whatever we wanted.

We went down some crazy paths. We had electrodes hooked to people’s heads trying to read their brain waves. We had galvanic skin response to read people’s emotions while they played games, and we fed that back into the games. We even ran electricity through people’s inner ears. We did this thing we called “the remote-controlled human,” where we’d push buttons and make people steer. But our main objective was, “How can we bring new gamers into the living room and attach them to the Steam platform?”

We splintered into some different areas of research. Some folks worked on the Steam Box. Some folks worked on the game controller. And then some of us worked on AR and VR. That’s where I got interested in mixed reality. We were doing a lot of AR experiments, and they were difficult. It was difficult at the time to put photons in the world and wrap them around plastic toys. But we were getting some of the early prototypes going.

It was quite different from the VR effort because this actually ties back to what the executives at the toy companies were always beating into my head. When it’s fun, it’s fun. Stop when it’s fun, and make sure it’s affordable. Looking at what we could do with AR, it hit a broad demographic. It was inclusive. Someone like my father could play a mixed-reality game with his grandkids. Whereas when I was looking at some of the VR stuff and hardcore gaming like the Steam Box, I could never see new game players coming in to that platform unless it’s something more approachable, more direct.

That was a long story, but that’s how I got to Valve. Valve didn’t want to proceed with their AR efforts, with the CastAR prototype, so Rick Johnson and I spun the company out of Valve, and here we are today.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth is a self-taught hardware designer and cofounder of CastAR.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: You guys emerged out of a Kickstarter, similar to how Oculus came to market. Oculus now has the resources of Facebook. HTC and Valve are established and so is Sony. As you’re trying to bring CastAR and mixed reality to the market, what are some of the strategies that you’re going to use as an underdog in this market?

Ellsworth: We’re trying to keep things simple. It goes back to the toy guys. Put the bare minimum in to make a fun experience. We see a lot of the other guys trying to go huge and grand, creating these huge walk-around, room-scale experiences. That’s not going to be very tractable in the living room with families. That’s one of our strategies. The core of our system is this game board, which is about three quarters of a meter on a side. We’re trying to pack as much experience as we can into this space and make it social and fun.

Always fun, always cost-effective, zero friction. Friction is another thing we’re focused on. Christmas day, when people get this for the holidays, we want them to unfold their game board, hit the power button, and be playing within minutes. We surveyed Xbox, Nintendo, all these game consoles. How long does it take to get to your first game? Some of them are terrible. It’s almost an hour for some of the game consoles. Even the handhelds, it’s as much as 15 minutes. We want to get a lot of traction in the marketplace by having a zero-friction experience. Hit the power button, slip the glasses on, and start playing.

Keep it social, too. Your friends come over, and you’re looking into the same space. You’re looking at each other. You can see each other. You don’t have to clear out your furniture and make a dedicated VR room. It’s right there.

GamesBeat: There’s been a lot of talk about the gap of disappointment that John Riccitiello mentioned. Things might not be adopted as quickly as some people might think. What are some of the ways you guys are looking to sustain success through that period?

Ellsworth: We’re constantly thinking about what other people have done, other companies, in the past. We look back at Nintendo a lot. They often don’t have the most cutting-edge technology, but they keep it fun and keep it simple. They focus on what counts. The black and white Game Boy went up against the color Atari Lynx. For a tech nerd like me, the Lynx was amazing. But the Game Boy was so much fun. It had Tetris. It had Mario. It ran for a really long time, even with its limitations.

We’re not trying to make a new tech gadget. We’re trying to make something that my dad can use, that a kid can use. That’s a natural type of experience. I’m a bit concerned that there’s this arms race in VR right now. Who has the most pixels? Who has the most expensive tower sitting next to their VR chair? You’re not going to reach hundreds of millions of users when you have to make that kind of investment. That’s why our price point is so critical and narrowing down to the game experience.

GamesBeat: From a macro perspective, there’s a bit of an issue of rhetoric within the industry. I’d love to get your opinion. How do you define the differences between AR, VR, and mixed reality? Do you think that, in the next five years or so, we’ll still be using those different terms?

Ellsworth: In the next three or four years, we’ll start to see a lot of merging of technologies. VR is the tip of the iceberg. There will be new display technology that will do AR and VR seamlessly, switching between them. Looking out a bit further, there are holographic displays in the prototype stage that don’t require eyewear. If you start projecting out five years, six years down the road, all the lines will be blurred. People will interact in these natural holographic experiences.

Whether it’s some kind of display that’s on a table and projecting holographic images or if it’s eyewear that I put on to add annotations to the world, it’s all going to blend together. This will come in time. Who knows what we’ll call it eventually?

Above: CastAR wants you to play tabletop games in mixed reality.

Image Credit: CastAR

GamesBeat: The word I keep hearing you say is “fun.” A lot of people talk about VR and AR in these platform-shift terms — “this is going to change everything.” Why is your focus on fun rather this whole world-changing dynamic everyone else talks about?

Ellsworth: When I take a look at VR experiences — what we were researching at Valve, what we see out there now — the first thing you see is, “Oh my God, I had this amazing experience riding a roller coaster; it’s great!” That’s what I look for. I’m a thrill seeker. I have that experience, and it’s fun in that instant. But then I put my VR headset away for months until something new comes along.

What we’re focusing on is how do we find sustained fun? How do we have an experience that you want to revisit every single day? You want to grab your CastAR system and check in on what your friends are doing or invite people over and have this prolonged game experience. That’s a more subtle experience. It’s not as intense.

That’s one of the things we discovered at Valve. When we were doing these experiments with gameplay, we were feeding people’s emotional states back into the game. If you give them super high intensity for prolonged period of times, it’s not as fun as something more mild. But if you survey folks as they leave the different game experiences, if you throw 5000 zombies at them and they die instantly, they have fun in that instant. If you give them a more subtle experience that goes through peaks and valleys, they engage longer and come back to it. That’s what we’re looking for. What are experiences that are natural and get people to come back?

Some of our core values — we look at everything. Do we want to have this type of tracking system in here? Is it going to work 100 percent of the time? Can my father pick up our wand controller and know how to poke at the game character and move him around? Could a five-year-old do that? Could anyone else do that? We want to make sure everything we put into it works seamlessly and isn’t confusing to the end user, especially when it comes to input.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth of CastAR on stage at GamesBeat Summit 2016.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

GamesBeat: When you’re building a system like that — obviously, it’s a brand new platform. When you have a new platform, you have to have content to keep people coming back to it. Whose responsibility is it to help in the creation of that content?

Ellsworth: Some of that, going forward, is going to have to be stimulated by us. We’re going to have to go out and commission some content. We have some internal research going on, which is going to feed into our developer network. We’re already working with developers bringing their content over.

We had a game team with a little green army men game that they wanted to port to our platform. It took them a day or so to port it over, build some UI around it, and get it working on the table. It was just amazing to watch this small game development team port their game, an Xbox or Steam type of game, to the platform. New game mechanics that they didn’t expect just emerged out of the blue.

When they first ported it over and you could play solo, it was about the same as playing it on an Xbox or whatever. You could look around these little buildings as your character ran around. But adding more players — two, four, five — the gameplay totally changed. It was hard to pry the headset off of folks. If you’re sitting over there and I know my character is short enough that you can’t see him, but I can peer over that building and see your character, I can run around and snipe him. The alliances that form around the table are social and fun. A lot of content may be familiar but unique.

GamesBeat: Do you think the advantage of mixed reality, especially in terms of games, is the ability to have that kind of transformative social experience in a way that you might not necessarily have with a VR headset?

Ellsworth: Right. In the first generations, we want to touch hundreds of millions of users. We want to be that approachable. I don’t think it’s practical for most people to clear out their furniture and set up a VR room. Although personally, I would.

Above: CastAR also involves a wand-like controller.

Image Credit: CastAR

More information:

I’m delighted to announce our newest panel for AR/VR Day at GamesBeat 2016. We have an eclectic collection of speaker who can talk about how to make augmented reality games. While Pokémon Go has captured our imaginations for the moment, the future of augmented reality games looks very bright and varied. We’ll explore all the possibilities.

Above: Margaret Wallace, CEO of Playmatics

Image Credit: Playmatics

You can register for the event here. Check out the new agenda here.

Margaret Wallace, the chief executive of Playmatics, will moderate the session. Wallace is a veteran of many GamesBeat events, and she is one of the award-winning creators of digital and real-world gaming and interactive experiences. She was named one of Forbes “12 Women in Gaming to Watch,” and in 2014, she was highlighted by Fortune as one of “10 Powerful Women in Video Games.“ An entrepreneur with a strong focus on innovation, brands, and original intellectual property, she has built and expanded Playmatics across multiple sectors to combine games with film, digital media, and television.

Above: Nick Beliaeff, vice president of production at Spin Master.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

All of our panelists are in very different spaces, but each is trying to make an AR hit. Panelists include Rick Johnson, a cofounder at CastAR, which is making AR glasses for tabletop games and other entertaining applications. He started the company as Technical Illusions along with Jeri Ellsworth. Both Johnson and Ellsworth worked at Valve Software. Johnson also worked in software at Gearbox Software, Activision, and Raven Software.

Above: Pramod Sharma, CEO of Osmo.

Image Credit: Osmo

Also speaking is Nick Beliaeff, the vice president of production at Spin Master. His company is making a game, Air Hogs Connect, that integrates a smartphone with an AR drone that flies over a digital battlefield. He aims to bridge the gap from physical play to digital play. He was previously principal at Game Concordium, the senior vice president of development at Trion Worlds, and studio manager at Sony Online Entertainment.

And our last panelist is Pramod Sharma, the CEO of Osmo, a maker of the toy-game hybrids that take advantage of the iPad and its camera. Osmo has grown to 40 people on the strength of multiple titles that reinvent the way children learn by using the iPad camera to recognize physical objects placed before it. The company’s most recent game is Osmo Coding, which teaches young kids the principles of computer programming. Sharma previously worked at Google, where he held a variety of roles from engineer to senior product manager.

Our theme is “The platform awakens: A new hope for the game industry.”

Our previously announced speakers include:

Chris Fralic, partner at First Round Capital. Based in New York, Fralic joined the firm in 2006 and he has a number of investments in gaming, including Roblox and Mobcrush. He has over 25 years of industry experience.

Above: Clinton Foy, managing director at CrossCut Ventures.

Image Credit: CrossCut Ventures

Clinton Foy, managing director and general partner at CrossCut Ventures. He has been a partner at Crosscut since 2013, and he focuses on early stage venture capital investments in mobile, social, cloud, consumer, new platforms, games, augmented reality, and virtual reality. He was previously chief operating officer of Square Enix, and he has led investments into Super Evil Megacorp, Vulcun, and Mobcrush. He also cofounded and is chairman of the esports team The Immortals.

Above: Martin Rae of AIAS

Image Credit: AIAS

Dan Fiden, chief strategy officer at Funplus. He helps run a $50 million fund to invest in games and VR startups, such as Sirvo Studios. He was previously a founder and partner at Signia Venture Partners, and he was CEO of Wild Needle.

Martin Rae, president of The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Rae runs the professional academy of game industry peers that stages the annual DICE Summit and the DICE Awards in Las Vegas each year. He has been the head of the nonprofit since 2010 and is a champion of the game industry. Rae has traditionally hosted our panel on venture capital investments in games.

Niccolo Maisto cofounded FaceIt in 2011, and the company is now overseeing the Esports Championship Series league for the military shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. He drives the company’s vision, strategy, and growth.

Under his leadership, the team at FaceIt comes together to server over 4 million users. The company now works in 6 different games and has provided the underlying tech for more than 12 million competitive-gaming sessions.

Above: Todd Krieger is the guy responsible for keeping an eye on what’s new at Deep Focus.

Image Credit: Todd Krieger

Todd Krieger, Deep Focus emerging technology director, spends his days identifying opportunities for consumers and brands in the growing fields of esports and virtual reality. He caught the esports bug covering the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland and is excited to help grow pro gaming domestically. Todd has led multi-disciplinary teams spanning product, sales, business development and marketing. Some of his career highlights include creating the world’s leading celebrity destination OMG for Yahoo, developing award-winning interactive TV programming for Microsoft, and serving as the Futurist in Residence at the New York Times.

Above: Twitch esports boss Andy Swanson.

Image Credit: Twitch

Andy Swanson, vice president for esports at Twitch, is a 17-year veteran of the video game industry. His career began in 1998 in advertising sales at Future US where he eventually became the publisher of PC Gamer, OXM, and PSM in Future’s Games Group. In 2007, he joined Ubisoft before moving on to GameFly. In 2013, Andy joined Twitch, with his current focus on planning, evangelizing, and executing the strategy around brand sponsorships and integrations within Twitch’s esports ecosystem.

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs, the creator of the mobile gaming sensation Pokémon Go. That augmented reality game is so hot that it has broken records, shooting to No. 1 in the top downloads and top-grossing mobile games charts in just seven days.

Above: John Hanke

Image Credit: LinkedIn

Hanke started Niantic with Google in 2010 to pioneer a new kind of location-based game. He wanted to promote exercise and an appreciation of public art. The company launched Ingress in 2012 as an invite-only Android app. It grew to millions of players, and it attracted the attention of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company Group. Now Pokémon Go is a huge hit.

Above: Julie Uhrman, head of platform business development at Jaunt.

Image Credit: Jaunt

Michael Metzger, a veteran speaker at GamesBeat events and a senior vice president at Houlihan Lokey. He provides M&A and financing advisory services to media, Internet, and technology companies.

Wanda Meloni, executive director of the Open Gaming Alliance. She will moderate a panel on monetizing VR. She is also CEO and senior analyst at M2 Advisory Group and editor-in-chief of the Gaming Business Review.

Julie Uhrman, head of platform business development for Jaunt, a leader in cinematic virtual reality. Prior to Jaunt, she made a big splash as the CEO and Founder of Ouya, an innovative Android game console that enabled any developer to publish a game to the TV.

Above: Christina Heller, cofounder and CEO of VR Playhouse.

Image Credit: VR Playhouse

Christina Heller, CEO of VR Playhouse, a Los Angeles production services company for the VR entertainment industry. She will speak on a panel on AR/VR beyond games.

Stewart Rogers, the director of marketing technology at VentureBeat’s VB Insight. Rogers is crafting a new report based on his latest VR marketplace research, and he’ll be talking about that in his session.

James Iliff, the creative director at Survios, the maker of the upcoming Raw Data game for the HTC Vive. I named that VR shooter game one of my top favorites at the recent E3 show in Los Angeles.

Tom Sanocki, the CEO of Limitless, a new VR startup that enables content developers to create interactive VR characters that respond to voice, gestures, gaze, and more.  Limitless is targeting the technology to film and game developers initially, as well as other vertical markets including education, advertising, and travel. Previously, Sanocki spent 11 years as a character lead at Pixar, where he built characters and technology on films from Finding Nemo through The Good Dinosaur, filed five patents, and won a VES award for Mater in Cars.

Above: Adam Orth, creator of Adr1ft.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Adam Orth, the creative director at Three One Zero, the maker of Adr1ft, a pioneering VR game about a survivor of a wreck in space. Orth is a creative director, writer, and entrepreneur passionate about crafting immersive, interactive digital experiences.

A veteran of the video game industry, he has held high-level creative positions at Microsoft, LucasArts, Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment, and PopCap Games. He has directly collaborated with George Lucas and Frank Miller and has created digital entertainment for Lucasfilm, NASA, Nike, and National Geographic.

Jules Urbach, the CEO of Otoy. He’s a pioneer in computer graphics, streaming, and 3D rendering with over 25 years of industry experience. He made his first game, Hell Cab (Time Warner Interactive), at age 18, which was one of the first CD-ROM games ever created.

Six years after Hell Cab, Urbach founded Groove Alliance. Groove created the first 3D game ever available on Shockwave.com (Real Pool). Currently, Urbach is busy working on his two latest ventures, Otoy and LightStage, which aim to revolutionize 3D content capture, creation, and delivery.

Above: Sylvio Drouin, vice president of Unity Labs

Image Credit: Unity Technologies

Sylvio Drouin, the vice president of Unity Labs at game engine maker Unity Technologies. Drouin is leading Unity Technologies’ advanced research efforts, looking three to 10 years down the road. Unity Labs is a multinational team whose work has already resulted in cutting-edge graphics and VR technologies that are demonstrating what developers and consumers will be doing in the near future.

Above: Clifton Dawson, CEO of Greenlight VR.

Image Credit: Greenlight VR

A self-taught college dropout, he wrote his first applications at age 10 and worked as an OS engineer at 16. His early ventures include work on large-scale projects at companies that include Philips Advanced Research Labs, Eicon Technology, France Telecom, Toyota, Fujitsu, Matsushita, and Epson, as well as a variety of startups. He’s been specifically responsible for driving innovations, product vision, and core technologies.

Clifton Dawson, the chief executive of Greenlight VR, which just published a report on virtual reality. Greenlight VR is a market research firm for the global virtual reality industry. Greenlight benchmarks thousands of companies and provides insights about consumer attitudes and behaviors. Greenlight also publishes the annual Virtual Reality Industry Report. Prior to founding Greenlight VR, Dawson was a growth and revenue analyst at Snapchat, the popular image messaging and multimedia app.

Above: Michael Condrey, cofounder of Sledgehammer Games.

Image Credit: Sledgehammer Games

Michael Condrey, the cofounder and studio head of Sledgehammer Games, the developers of 2014’s Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and 2011’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. He was previously the chief operating officer and head of development at Visceral Games on 2008’s Dead Space. Other noteworthy credits from his nearly 20-year development tenure include EA’s James Bond, Need for Speed, and FIFA series, among many other titles. His studio has several hundred people.

Megan Gaiser, the principal of Contagious Creativity, a creative consultancy and co-CEO of Spiral Media Ltd. She specializes in creative leadership, strategy, and diversity. She is the former chief creative strategy officer and former CEO and president of Her Interactive, the maker of the Nancy Drew series of games that has inspired millions of girls and women. Gaiser is a veteran of our GamesBeat talks on creativity and diversity from previous events.

Ru Weerasuriya, the chief creative officer and CEO of Ready at Dawn Studios. His company recently announced the zany De-formers arena-combat game. It previously created high-profile games such as The Order: 1886, Daxter, and God of War: Chains of Olympus. He cofounded Ready At Dawn Studios in 2003, and he has more than 100 employees.

Above: Peter Moore of EA

Peter Moore, the chief competition officer of Electronic Arts. Moore will speak about where esports is heading. Moore is a former pro soccer player, and so he understands the emotion and passion around sports. He believes that esports can be every bit as exciting as televised physical sports. He was previously chief operating officer of EA, and he also served in executive roles at Microsoft’s Xbox division and Sega of America.

David Baszucki, the founder, co-creator, and CEO of Roblox

Roblox is like a virtual world made from Lego-like blocks where players can build anything and even create their own games. A pioneer in pushing the boundaries of the imagination, Baszucki has helped champion millions of young and up-and-coming developers in the video game industry via the Roblox platform. He’ll be part of a panel on our AR/VR day on August 1, focusing on the topic of user-generated VR.

Clinton Foy, managing director and general partner at CrossCut Ventures

Above: Mike Sepso of Activision Blizzard

Image Credit: Activision Blizzard

Foy is managing director of an early-stage venture capital firm in Los Angeles. Foy is also the chairman and co-owner of the pro esports team The Immortals, which just bought a Brazilian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team. Foy has deep experience in running game and tech companies, including gaming giant Square Enix (where he was chief operating officer and general counsel) and Super Evil Megacorp. Foy has led investments in Mobcrush, Vulcun, Little Labs, and Instant Esports. In seven years at Square Enix, Foy oversaw more than 100 product launches across a dozen platforms.

Mike Sepso, senior vice president for Activision Blizzard

Sepso was the cofounder of MLG, which Activision Blizzard acquired last year. Now he focuses on esports and runs Media Networks, a division devoted to creating the best esports experiences for fans across games, platforms, and geographies at one of the world’s largest video game companies.

Above: Richard Marks, senior research engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment

Image Credit: Sony

Sepso played a key role at MLG, focusing on strategy, key partnerships, corporate development, and product and technology development.

Richard Marks, a senior research engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment

He’ll be one of the speakers at our AR/VR day, which will focus on strategy for the augmented reality and virtual reality markets. Marks’ topic for his fireside chat is “What works in VR and what doesn’t.” He should know, as he is one of VR’s pioneers, recently running the Sony PlayStation Magic Lab that came up with the PlayStation VR technology. Sony is making a major investment in PlayStation VR and plans to launch it in October.

Above: David Haddad is president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Image Credit: Warner Bros.

David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Haddad spoke last year at our inaugural GamesBeat Summit event, and we’re happy to have him back. Haddad was appointed to his current post in October 2015. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of WBIE’s overall operations, including publishing, operations, sales, marketing, digital/mobile games, business development, and game production.

Under Haddad’s oversight, WBIE creates games across all platforms utilizing its wholly owned, award-winning development studios: TT Games, Rocksteady Studios, NetherRealm Studios, Monolith Productions, Turbine, WB Games Montreal, and WB Games San Francisco. Last year, Warner Bros. had its most successful year ever with a number of hit games, including Mortal Kombat X on console and mobile and Batman: Arkham Knight, Lego Jurassic World, and Lego Dimensions.

Above: Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam

Image Credit: Kabam

Lego Marvel’s Avengers launched in January 2016, and the highly anticipated Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens launched on June 28, 2016. As the head of WBIE, Haddad also serves on the board of the Entertainment Software Association. Haddad joined Warner Bros. in 2013 as head of digital publishing.

Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam

Chou runs Kabam, a maker of free-to-play mobile games such as Marvel: Contest of Champions. He cofounded a company in 2006 that morphed into Kabam in 2009. And since that time, he has navigated the difficult currents of the ultra-competitive game industry. By 2014, Kabam had grown to hundreds of employees and more than $400 million in revenue, with a valuation in excess of $1 billion. More recently, Chou has tried to take the lead in disruption, and he has focused Kabam around fewer, bigger games. He has secured licenses with Hollywood studios such as Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers for games based on some of the world’s most beloved movie franchises.

Above: Roy Taylor, corporate vice president of alliances at AMD

Image Credit: AMD

Last year, Chou launched a multipartner effort to take Marvel: Contest of Champions into the Chinese market. And most recently, Marvel: Contest of Champions hit the No. 1 game in downloads in China.

Roy Taylor, corporate vice president of alliances at AMD

Above: Jason Rubin, head of studios at Oculus

Image Credit: Oculus

Taylor is a seasoned veteran of the video game and semiconductor industries. He is currently an expert in AMD’s relations with major retailers and specialty retailers, and he’s an advocate for gaming content and VR that runs on AMD platforms. He previously held senior positions at Rightware, MasterIMage 3D, and Nvidia.

Jason Rubin, head of Oculus Studios

Rubin runs the team at Facebook’s Oculus division that creates, funds, and works with developers to build first-party games and experiences for the Oculus Rift VR headset and the Samsung Gear VR. Rubin’s job is to create exciting entertainment that will draw consumers to the new platforms.

A 30-year veteran of game development, Rubin was the cofounder of Naughty Dog, where he created the hit games Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter. He also cofounded the media mashup tool Fleeter, which he sold to Fox Interactive, and he was president of THQ. He spoke at GamesBeat 2015 about how VR is the toughest learning curve in games.

Above: Peter Levin of Lionsgate

Peter Levin, president of Lionsgate Interactive Ventures & Games

Levin joined Lionsgate as president of interactive ventures and games in 2014. He is responsible for expanding Lionsgate’s content creation into video games and other interactive ventures, including incubation of new properties, investment in existing games and digital media vehicles, and leveraging Lionsgate’s franchises and other branded properties into the gaming space.

It’s no accident that Lionsgate has announced a bunch of game-related deals, such as planting the seeds for an esports TV show and backing Hong Kong game studio Fifth Journey. He has been a frequent speaker at our GamesBeat events.

Our confirmed moderators include Geoff Keighley, game broadcaster and host of the Game Awards

Keighley is a seasoned game broadcaster and host of The Game Awards. The event last December drew 2.3 million viewers for a two-hour awards show. Keighley came to our event a year ago and interviewed Jason Rubin of Oculus Studios. He has been writing about games since he was 13.

Who should attend?

This event is specifically designed for gaming executives, investors, developers, and entrepreneurs. Here’s our link to stories from last year’s event. 2015 was all about the Game of Thrones, or the battle among game companies for supremacy. At our recent GamesBeat Summit, we focused on the underdogs of gaming. This summer, we have a bit of a fixation on Star Wars. Our theme is a nod to that and to the fact that gaming has a lot of new platforms arising.

Mobile has become ascendant as the largest game platform, with more than a billion users. But there are new platforms coming in the console market (hi, Nintendo) as well as virtual reality and augmented reality. The mobile, console, and PC platforms will see new innovations in game technology this year, and we’ll be talking about all of them. Register today.

Our advisory board for this event includes: 

• Michael Chang, senior vice president of corporate development at NCSoft West
• Greg Essig, head of business development at Mobcrush
• Megan Gaiser, senior creative leader and strategist; principal at Contagious Creativity
• Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners
• Ophir Lupu, head of games at United Talent Agency
• Wanda Meloni, executive director at the Open Gaming Alliance
• Ali Moiz, CEO at Vulcun
• Maarten Noyons, CEO of the International Mobile Gaming Awards
• Ian Sharpe, CEO of Azubu
• Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors
• Sunny Dhillon, partner at Signia Venture Partners
• Alejandro Manchado, strategic partner development lead at Google
• Daniel Cho, chairman of Innospark
• Mike Capps, former president of Epic Games

For general event information, please contact events@venturebeat.com and reference “GamesBeat”

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CastAR is a high-profile augmented reality startup, and now it’s kicking into high gear. The maker of the upcoming CastAR AR glasses has recruited former LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez as its chief executive. It has also appointed former Disney executive Steve Parkis as its president and chief operating officer.

Above: Darrell Rodriguez, CEO of CastAR.

Image Credit: CastAR

In doing so, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is strengthening its management team, which still includes cofounders Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. CastAR refers to its new leaders as “world-class executives” who will help guide it to the future of “mixed reality entertainment.” CastAR’s glasses let you see imagery overlaid on the real world, and it’s ideal for a new kind of tabletop gaming.

“Darrell and Steve not only share our passion for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in mixed reality gaming and entertainment, they are the one-two punch we have been looking for to drive CastAR into our consumer launch and beyond,” said Ellsworth, in a statement. “Together with our great partners at Playground Global, we’re poised to deliver a groundbreaking player experience.”

In over two decades as an interactive and entertainment media executive, Rodriguez has run some very big creative enterprises. He was president and chief operating officer of LucasArts, the former game company created by Star Wars creator George Lucas. Rodriguez also served in roles at Trendy Entertainment and International Game Technology.

Parkis has led teams at The Walt Disney Company, Zynga, and Storm8, producing globally recognized, award-winning and commercially significant products based on franchises like Toy Story, The Incredibles, Cars, Pirates of the Caribbean, CityVille, and FarmVille. He has been creating tech, entertainment, and interactive stories for 15 years. Parks will focus on further building out the team, platform, product execution and marketing strategy to bring CastAR to consumers.

“CastAR is primed to make mixed reality the place where the next breakthrough in entertainment will happen.” said Rodriguez, in a statement. “Steve and my experiences in digital entertainment, combined with the vision of Jeri and Rick, leave us both incredibly excited to drive the future of gaming through our first to market technology.”

CastAR was born as Technical Illusions in the greater Seattle area. It was started as a research project by Valve technologists Ellsworth and Johnson to build augmented reality glasses, which can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world. CastAR’s previous CEO was David Henkel-Wallace. A year ago, CastAR raised $15 million in a round of funding led by Android creator Andy Rubin’s Playground Global investment firm.

Augmented reality startup CastAR is opening a new mixed reality studio in Salt Lake City today, with talent recruited from the former developers of Disney’s Infinity toy-game franchise.

Disney closed its Avalanche Studios division in Salt Lake City in May after it decided to end its Disney Infinity toys-to-life products because of slumping sales. But Palo Alto, Calif.-based CastAR saw that as an opportunity and it has hired a number of the developers who previously worked on Infinity.

That will more than double the size of the CastAR development team, but it’s not clear yet exactly how many people CastAR is hiring. That’s the first big move since CastAR recruited former LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez as CEO and former Disney executive Steve Parkis as president and chief operating officer last month.

Overall, CastAR now employs more than 70 people. At its peak, Avalanche Software was about 240 people under Disney. So that leaves a lot of talented people still on the market in Salt Lake City.

CastAR was born as Technical Illusions in the greater Seattle area. It was started as a research project by Valve technologists Ellsworth and Johnson to build augmented reality glasses, which can overlay animations and other imagery on top of the real world.

“Our new CastAR SLC team has creatively-inspired talent that has delivered at the highest levels of quality. We’re excited to have them join us in creating a new generation of gaming through mixed reality experiences,” said Parkis, in a statement. “With their experience in bringing massive franchises to life through breakthrough interactive design, the addition of this team is our next bold step in launching a dynamic platform that will bring awe-inspiring mixed reality to households.”

Disney’s former Avalanche team specialized in merging the physical world with the digital. And that’s what CastAR wants to do with its augmented reality product, which will have tabletop games and other kinds of mixed reality entertainment.

Mixed-reality startup CastAR continues to beef up its management team with the addition of Peter Dille, the former head of marketing for the Sony PlayStation business in the U.S., as its chief marketing officer.

Above: Peter Dille is the new CMO of CastAR.

Image Credit: CastAR

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is making an augmented reality entertainment system with glasses that allow you to see animated images on top of the real world. CastAR is specializing in such apps as table-top AR games, and it recently hired former LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez as CEO.

In addition to Dille, the company also hired Mel Heydari as head of talent and Arnie Sen as vice president of engineering.

CastAR plans to launch its mixed reality gaming and entertainment platform in 2017.

“We continue to build out our executive ranks with industry all-stars,” said Rodriguez, in a statement. “We’re building something truly special at CastAR, and Peter, Mel and Arnie are the type of executives that will take our vision of a mixed reality platform in every household and make it a reality.”

Dille comes to CastAR with over 20 years of experience leading marketing strategy for interactive entertainment companies. He was most recently CMO of mobile advertising technology company Tapjoy. And he was senior vice president at Sony Computer Entertainment America, where he was instrumental in the launch of both the original PlayStation and the PlayStation 3. Peter was also a leader in the business and operations side of the PlayStation Network.

Heydari was recently the head of talent at TiVo, where he helped develop key protocols and talent acquisition programs. Sen joins the team from Immersion, where he served as vice president of engineering operations.

When CastAR’s head-mounted display launches, it’s going to need content. And the company is taking steps to ensure that happens.

CastAR revealed today that it has hired former Eat Sleep Play developers to work at its first-party studio in Salt Lake City, Utah. Eat Sleep Play was responsible for the PlayStation 3 Twisted Metal in 2012 as well as recent mobile games like Running With Friends and Ice Age: Arctic Blast. Industry veteran Scott Campbell, who founded Eat Sleep Play, is bringing an undisclosed number of his team members with him to take on the challenge of AR game development.

CastAR is a pair of glasses that is capable of projecting digital images onto the real world. It is similar to systems like Microsoft’s HoloLens and the Magic Leap. CastAR launches in 2017.

“Eat Sleep Play had a 20-year track record of pleasing gamers by contributing to countless top rated console and mobile franchises, from Twisted Metal to Warhawk and more and we are thrilled to have their experienced developers join the CastAR Salt Lake City team,” CastAR president and chief operating officer Steve Parkis said in a statement. “The continued expansion of our development staff brings together an all-star content creation team focused on developing augmented reality experiences and increases our momentum towards launching the first mass-market augmented reality gaming platform.”

This is the latest move from CastAR. The company previously hired former Disney Infinity developers from Avalanche after The Walt Disney Company shut that game down. CastAR also brought in former PlayStation marketing boss Peter Dille as its chief marketing officer and ex-LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez as its CEO.

CastAR has a lot to prove, but with all these pieces falling into place, CastAR is positioning itself for a major launch in 2017.

CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas last week, was loaded with augmented reality smartglasses, which layer digital animations and information on top of the real world. They promise us wonderful connections between the digital and physical worlds, and games where we can chase cartoon characters through our own furniture.

Mainstream venture capitalists pumped up startups in virtual and augmented reality in the third quarter, with a record $2.3 billion invested in the last 12 months, according to tech advisor Digi-Capital. And the company predicts that AR will be a $90 billion market by 2020.

I talked about this great promise of AR on a panel at CES with Jeri Ellsworth, cofounder of CastAR, and Nick Beliaeff, vice president of production at Spin Master Studios, a toy company that recently launched its Air Hogs Connect: Mission Drone game.

Here’s an edited transcript of our panel.

Nick Beliaeff: I’m the VP of production at Spin Master Studios. That’s a division of Spin Master, which is a 20-plus-year-old toy company. My job is to bridge the gap between physical play patterns and digital play patterns as connected devices become more accessible to the kids of today. They’ve stopped playing with toys, because it’s such a compelling medium. It’s my job to re-engage them and go from there.

One thing we love about AR is how it’s such a natural pair with physical play. We’ve been investing in it since 2014. We released our first product late last year, called Mission Drone, where you transform your room into an AR sci-fi universe and fly a real physical drone while you fly rescue missions and battle aliens. Our next one, which we’re showing over at Luxor, is Nitro Boost, with multiplayer RC car racing on different circuits. What’s cool about AR and connected toys is we can do stuff with a physical RC car crashing into an AR virtual car and spinning out. There’s a certain magic to the experiential nature of AR. We’re huge fans.

Above: Air Hogs Connect: Mission Drone

Image Credit: Spin Master

Jeri Ellsworth: I’m an inventor. I’ve been an inventor my entire life, and also an entrepreneur. I got my start building and driving race cars in my first career. I opened up retail computer stores after that, at the height of the internet boom in 1995. Eventually I moved into electrical engineering and product design, and toy design as well, which is a very fun field.

I ended up at Valve Software running their hardware department, putting the team together that created the HTC Vive. We were tasked with exploring how to bring new gamers into the Steam platform. Just recently, in the last few years, I founded a company called CastAR, where we’re making AR glasses that allow you to blend virtual graphics with real-world objects on your table.

GB: There are predictions from Digi-Capital, a tech advisor, that AR is going to be a $90 billion market by 2020. Three times the size of virtual reality, goes their prediction. They’re very bullish on AR. I wonder what, as far as the backdrop goes, or how far back the thinking around AR goes in history — what sort of science fiction dreams inspired you to think about AR and get into AR?

Beliaeff: The one that spurred us at the toy company came from the head of our Air Hogs division, the RC division. He’s also a very big Star Trek fan. He wanted a holodeck experience with his toys. That’s where Mission Drone came from.

Ellsworth: I’m another huge Star Trek nerd, and Star Wars of course. When I saw holo-chess as a kid, I didn’t know what the gameplay was, but I wanted to experience that someday. All the sci-fi didn’t necessarily push me directly to AR, though. It was all the combined inputs and outputs and the blending of your digital experience. That excites me. Where are we going in the next 10 years? It’s going to be a blend of all our digital content into the real world in a seamless way. Science fiction predicts that for us.

Above: CastAR wants you to play tabletop games in mixed reality.

Image Credit: CastAR

GB: We have that very bullish forecast right now, but that wasn’t always the case. Where do you think we got this turn for optimism about AR?

Beliaeff: There are a few different touch points. Some things you don’t necessarily think of as AR that are technically AR, like the weather person doing the weather in front of a green screen. It’s been fairly pervasive, but it just hasn’t been labeled. There’s a bit more awareness there.

Meanwhile, the technology you guys all have in your pockets or in your laps — your smartphones and tablets and even PCs — have gotten powerful enough that there’s enough horsepower to run this technology. The software has also advanced a lot as well. SLAM, simultaneous localization and mapping, is getting more accessible. As hardware and software mature, awareness is driven by wonderful things like Pokemon Go. That’s not the perfect implementation of AR, but it drove awareness like nothing else.

CastAR was one of the most ambitious augmented reality game companies in the business. But it looks like it has shut down amid one of the most obvious problems in the fledgling industry: It was too early, and the challenges it faced were incredible.

CastAR failed to raise a new round of funding and shut down this week, according to a report from game news site Polygon. That spelled the end to a years-long project by former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson to create a unique AR tabletop gaming platform, one that wanted to deliver the next step in a magical kind of play.

You could say it was a victim of the warned “gap of disappointment” that AR and its cousin, virtual reality, are facing as reality sets in. CastAR, which raised $1 million in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in 2013, is only one player in what is expected to be a vast market with many different companies, but its failure to raise a new round in time shows how difficult navigating the gap will be.

Above: Rick Johnson and Jeri Ellsworth of Technical Illusions, creator of CastAR

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The company was born in 2013 the Woodinville, Washington, home of Johnson. He was a former software engineer at Valve. Ellsworth was a hardware designer who was looking for a new way to play games by projecting animated images into a realistic backdrop. They had tried to make their tech work at Valve, but that company decided to focus on virtual reality instead. Still, the optimists were abundant. Tech adviser Digi-Capital estimated early on that AR could be a $120 billion market by 2020.

CastAR proposed creating a headset that could overlay animated images in front of your eyes as you looked at a tabletop with a special reflective material. It was restricted in terms of what it could show you in a given space, but Johnson and Ellsworth believed it would work great for tabletop games.

CastAR raced ahead of others, raising $15 million from Android creator Andy Rubin’s Playground Global hardware accelerator. The company moved from Washington to Silicon Valley and recruited new executives such as former LucasArts chief Darrell Rodriguez, former Disney executive Steve Parkis, and ex-PlayStation marketer Peter Dille. The company also hired a team of software developers from Avalanche Software in Utah to develop AR games.

Above: Jeri Ellsworth of CastAR onstage at GamesBeat Summit 2016.

Image Credit: Michael O'Donnell/VentureBeat

It’s still not clear exactly what happened, as Ellsworth hasn’t made any public comments. But it was clear that CastAR had a technology issue and a cost problem. On the cost side, it might have been able to create a $250 solution for tabletop AR gaming, but it was replacing tabletop card and board games that might have cost $25. It’s like the internet of things pet feeders, which cost $250 and try to replace, unsuccessfully, the $2.50 pet bowl.

Polygon reported CastAR shut down and laid off 70 employees because the company couldn’t find a new investor. Based on what we know, CastAR’s fate isn’t cast in stone just yet. One of the outcomes could be that someone could buy the assets. At least one developer, who preferred to remain anonymous, was told that the company is trying to sell its technology.

Ellsworth and Johnson spun out of Valve and they raised $1 million in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in November 2013. I visited them early on, when the AR headset they were envisioning was a bulky prototype. Johnson’s home was impressive, filled to the brim with pinball machines and hardware prototypes that used a wand to make things happen in AR.

The aspirations of that time showed how far the tech had to go. It would be several generations of hardware before the company had something that it could place on the heads of consumers that was comfortable, lightweight, and dazzling when it came to animated graphics quality.

“They were making progress on launch titles,” said Kevin Krewell, analyst at Tirias Research. “The experience, even using a reflective mat was very good. The hardware was going to be much cheaper than most AR. I also saw one demo where a guy covered an entire inflatable dome with the reflective material and it worked well.”

Above: Early prototypes of CastAR wands

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The obstacles didn’t deter Ellsworth or Johnson, who were staunch fans of science fiction and wanted to believe that serving early adopters would help them reach their eventual goal. The growth of events such as Augmented World Expo, which drew 4,700 people this month in Santa Clara, California, showed that a big industry with hundreds of companies believed the same things as Ellsworth and Johnson did.

“You can take a physical, tangible object, like a figurine, and put it down on the table,” Ellsworth said in a panel that I moderated at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. “Then the essence of the character jumps out to battle and level up. What’s interesting is that when you start having those types of experiences, this little plastic toy suddenly becomes mine. It has all these markers of the experiences I’ve had. I’m more connected to this physical thing than if it were just a digital object on a screen. The whole toys-to-life phenomenon is going to be taken to another level. Each of your little gadgets or toys will be unique to you, because it’ll be persistent.”

But AR experts such as Jesse Schell, head of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, recently warned that AR would have big problems to overcome as far out as 2025. As he noted about Google’s original Google Glass project, AR glasses “look stupid,” and few people would willingly wear them on their heads. To do so, they would have to completely ignore the fashion sense people normally have about things like sunglasses.

On top of that — though it was less a problem with CastAR’s focus on tabletop games — AR makes people uncomfortable because it means you’ll be under surveillance by people wearing the headsets with cameras. And to Schell, that means there will be social obstacles on top of technological obstacles that hold the market back.

Above: Rick Johnson, cofounder and chief software engineer of CastAR.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

In the meantime, it was clear that it was going to take a while just to get the technology right. The bulky headsets are the norm for now, and some companies such as Vuforia and Microsoft believe that AR will work best in enterprise markets, where the customers can afford to pay thousands of dollars for a solution. CastAR was simply early in choosing to focus on the consumer market, and it didn’t really have a way to survive the lean years, as some companies like Playful have proposed in terms of surviving the lean years of the cousin market, VR.

Schell also pointed out that AR needed more killer applications. Niantic’s Pokémon Go  took off in 2016 as the first major AR mobile game, earning $1 billion within a year. But veteran game investor Mitch Lasky warned a while ago that the success of Niantic’s game was likely not reproducible, and that it was due to pent-up demand for Pokémon mobile games.

As long as CastAR hit its milestones and convinced investors it was on the right track, it should have been able to raise money. After all, investors poured $2.3 billion into AR investments in 2016, according to Digi-Capital. But somewhere along the way, the investors must have gotten cold feet, and others failed to step in to keep it all going. And other AR rivals such as Magic Leap and VR companies may have snared those investors instead with even more grandiose visions.

It’s not the end of AR games, but the tale of CastAR is certainly a cautionary tale.

Above: CastAR demo, visualized to show what you see with the augmented reality glasses.

Image Credit: CastAR

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