Good VR Podcast

Rec Room's End 'Surreal' To Shawn Whiting After 8 Years Building Community

From June 1, 2026 a place that’s been the foundation of VR for many ceases to be. The end of Rec Room is still “surreal” for one of VR’s “OG” supporters and a core member of the team building the project for more than eight years. “There can’t be a world without Rec Room,” Shawn Whiting said on the Good VR Podcast. “It doesn’t seem real.” From his memories playing Dreadhalls to co-founding Convrge to the spike in Rec Room players seen through the COVID pandemic, Whiting talks through a journey more than a decade in the making. “The mood in the community is super somber, it’s sad,” Whiting said. “You can go to rec.net and export all your photos and, of course, you start looking through all of them and you’re like, ‘man this photo was taken in 2016 or 17’ and you’re looking at all the early games in the first rooms people were creating and it gets very nostalgic. It’s definitely an emotional time and people are starting up archiving projects so people are going in and taking a bunch of video and downloading the rooms and scanning the rooms and turning them into gaussian splat things that can be revisited.” The conversation between Whiting and I is one of the deepest I’ve been able to bring to the Good VR Podcast as he’s able to speak about his time at the company in a way founders and CEOs can’t. As an early member of the team managing the space between founders and a growing team of engineers and designers, his role saw him attempting to navigate decisions made at a level above his pay grade. Meaning that of all people I could speak with about the closure of Rec Room, Whiting worked there long enough and at a high enough level to both understand the community dynamics and forces affecting its failure, while also not operating in a position where he’d need to deflect or defend any of the chosen paths. Put another way, the discussion is about as candid as can possibly be. “Imagine you’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year off Rec Room, like some people were, and then you get the news that the thing’s shutting down,” Whiting said. “That’s like world shattering for you, right? You’re like, ‘f**k, I have to pack all my rooms up and now bring them over to VRChat or some other platform and try to establish myself there.’ It’s never going to be the same.” We spoke for 1 hour and 22 minutes on the podcasting platform Riverside and I edited the discussion down to 1 hour and 10 minutes. Good Virtual Reality is a 100 percent independent, community-supported journalism effort made exclusively by people for people. Access podcast episodes first as a paid subscriber at goodvirtualreality.com [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com] or donate [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] to support our reporting. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Sock Puppet Superstar Developer 'Just Following The Fun'

After his passion project unexpectedly went viral, developer Brandon Montell rushed to put together wishlist pages for Sock Puppet Superstar. You can wishlist the game now on Steam [https://store.steampowered.com/app/4454510/Sock_Puppet_Superstar/] and the Quest store [https://www.meta.com/experiences/sock-puppet-superstar/26292615863707429/]. “Anytime I do something that makes myself chuckle a little bit, I am just like, "Okay, that has to go in the game,” Montell says on the Good VR Podcast. “It was not a business market-driven decision to start working on it, and if it had been, I probably wouldn't have started working on it. But it was just starting as this passion project. I just felt really passionate about learning to make music in different ways in 3D space. So I was following the fun, and I feel like even though there might be some market headwind, I feel like it's no less fun to do stuff in VR and to tinker with it.” Montell’s episode of the podcast lasts around 26 minutes edited with Riverside and he shows through his replies exactly how Good VR is discovered. Someone with a bit of passion for an idea follows the fun and then shares it with the world. “This project is the fusion of three of my interests, because I've always loved coding, and that's why I majored in computer science. I also love graphics and animation, And I also have at times been a hobbyist animator. I collected instruments and would try to learn new instruments,” Montell said. “So in a lot of ways, a VR animated music game is the fusion of those three things, of being able to code it, do the art and animation, and figure out the music side of things. I think all of those things are definitely coalescing in this project…I'm having fun making it, so hopefully other people will have fun playing it.” Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Building VR & AR Games From Iran To Finland

How would development studio Not Suspicious fulfill agreements to put mixed reality games Airspace Defender and Banners & Bastions on Pico headsets with developers in Iran during an Internet blackout and a war with the United States? The answer is that they wouldn’t. Iranian husand-and-wife developers Sahand Malaei and Pardis Mohtadi just arrived in Finland to continue that work after departing Iran, where they had watched strikes out their window and felt them shake the foundations of the building where they worked on mixed reality games. The Good VR Podcast hosted Not Suspicious founder Rafael Brochado and Malaei for discussions about everything from their favorite experiences in VR headsets to the reality of attempting to work during a war. You can find Airspace Defender [https://www.meta.com/experiences/airspace-defender/7523170214434197/?srsltid=AfmBOoooWJb_50a8H7BYg43D3XP3diA3GpMpx8BzdxujVSG8zG-rW_ZV] and Banners & Bastions [https://www.meta.com/experiences/banners-bastions/8387152738076399/?srsltid=AfmBOopNwtdKp0LV2c1ZNTZDD2fOTxz2G0VqygvC77yK-xOUMGulw8w8] on the Quest store now. Banners & Bastions arrives on the Pico Store May 21. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

H3VR2 Revealed By RUST LTD. For Quest And Steam, With Anton Hand

Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades development studio RUST LTD. revealed a sequel during the Creature Feature. I’ve told people I’m not really into VR shooters, but the more nuanced truth is that nothing in the category interests me the way Pistol Whip grabbed me with its rhythm focus in about 30 seconds and then kept me playing there for years. Now, I’m anticipating Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades 2 in a way I haven’t any other VR game. H3VR2 has been in development for some time and it is funded in part by Meta, with the reveal made during Doug North Cook [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/p/the-most-important-vr-developer-in]’s latest VR gaming showcase. Some of the most accomplished VR developers in the world have joined RUST LTD. to devote their time to the project including SUPERHOT VR for Quest developer Mark Schramm [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/p/mark-schramm-from-superhot-vr-to] and Vertigo 1 & 2 creator Zach Tsiakalis-Brown. “I see these people around me, many of whom are like my dear friends, who are capable of building some of the most incredible experiences that I think anyone has ever made,” North Cook said in February on the first episode of the Good VR Podcast. “And I am just desperate to ensure that they keep being able to build those things.” In case you are unfamiliar with H3VR, the work from Anton Hand and his colleagues at RUST LTD. exists in a category by itself on Steam. The VR sandbox game has been in development for a full decade of early access accruing more than 20,000 reviews over that time and an overwhelmingly positive rating. Never put on sale below its $20 starting price, its 1.0 version is still in ongoing testing to support the robust modding community after more than 150 updates across the decade adding new game modes, features, and guns focused around shooting targets or human-sized hot dogs. “One of the big differences that we’re doing now compared to the original game is that there is a very managed onboarding experience in the game,” Hand says on the Good VR Podcast. “It’s both narratively letting you know about the context that you’re in with it, but is actually ensuring do you want to set your locomotion options before you move anywhere? Here are your hands, here is what is going on.” The action-adventure game aims to reach new players as well as existing enthusiasts alike built in the “spirit of a sim.” There’s a “Certification Range” and voiced tutorials to introduce players to the virtual firearms and their handling. “While you’re practicing,” Hand explains as an example, the tutorial shares “a couple fun facts about this type of firearm that you might not have heard of.” Hand is famously critical of Facebook and Meta while being a staunch supporter of PC VR efforts over the years. Shock that he would take Meta’s funding, and that a sequel is deep into development, is likely to reverberate through the VR community and beyond. Even more than Half-Life, a series adapted to headsets rather than born in them, H3VR2 could inject tremendous enthusiasm into the narrative around VR and standalone headsets in particular. You can listen now to a one-hour Good VR Podcast episode with Hand breaking down his path into VR, 10 years of H3VR, how Meta came to help fund the sequel, and his answer to the question “did you sell out?” You can also wait for the full two-hour video version premiering tomorrow with a much deeper dive into the artist’s perspective and journey, charting Hand’s path from the first piece of digital art he made in 1993 to his favorite Star Trek captain and top moment of presence in VR. H3VR2 wishlist pages are available for Steam [https://store.steampowered.com/app/4632350] and Quest [https://www.meta.com/experiences/hot-dogs-horseshoes-hand-grenades-2/26291709480509388/]. Good Virtual Reality is an independent community-supported you can donate [https://buy.stripe.com/7sY8wPeTAcnG3eD1vZao800] to support or subscribe below. Good Virtual Reality is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Hasko7 From Oculus Rift Echo Arena To Augmented World Expo

Sonya Haskins was Hasko7 to the Echo Arena community, a supportive figure who would help people however she could. These days she’s Head of Programming for the Augmented World Expo [https://www.awexr.com/usa-2026/], helping organize its latest conference June 15-18 in Long Beach, California. She recently moved to the city after spending much of her life in the southern United States. From purchasing an Oculus Rift in 2017 after a demo at Best Buy to now, she’s transformed almost everything about her life. She sat for just over an hour for the Good VR Podcast with me using the Riverside podcasting platform. I edited down our talk to just around 52 minutes covering her journey over this time. When Meta killed Echo Arena in 2023, its closure struck a blow to her identity, with her name attached to a place that formed the foundation of a new persona she found in virtual reality. “When the game started to shut down,” Haskins says on the Good VR Podcast. “I actually was thinking wow, now who am I? Because nobody ever calls me Sonya. I’m divorced now. All my friends are gamers who call me Hasko7.” In her family it is tradition to purchase one’s own headstone so that loved ones aren’t burdened with the task. She shares over our conversation that she recently bought hers and, when people pass by her stone in the ground one day, they’ll see her name, the dates marking her lifetime, as well as the disk of Echo Arena. “Echo Arena was a life-changing experience for me,” she says. “I began to meet people outside of my traditional social circle and society that I was used to and met people from around the world, became friends with them, talked with them. It became a community where you would put a headset on and suddenly you’re in this immersive world with a bunch of other robots and you could play these games and be competitive, but it was so much more than that and, to me, Echo Arena is a great example of the beauty of immersive reality, which is you can be somewhere else and do something else and try on different personalities or different looks and different attitudes and see what you want to be in life or what you want to explore, and so that’s what that game was to me - it really gave me the freedom and the permission and the opportunity to be able to say you know is it okay to do something or be something other than a stay-at-home mom.” The transcript for this podcast is auto-generated. Get full access to Good Virtual Reality at www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe [https://www.goodvirtualreality.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]