The idea behind Arcade Mania — why we built a VR arcade instead of just another VR game

Wanted to share some context on where Arcade Mania actually came from, since a few of you have asked.

It didn't start as "let's build a VR game" — it started as missing the specific feeling of a real arcade: standing in front of a cabinet, other people nearby, the game as a physical object rather than a menu. That's a feeling flat-screen games can't reproduce, and we weren't convinced VR could either until we tested it directly.

The first build was intentionally small: one machine, one room, no art, built purely to test whether "standing in front of it" felt physical and present rather than like navigating a UI. Once that held up, we started building out the rest of the game around that core feeling.

Open question for the community: is there anything about a real, physical arcade that you feel like we (or VR games in general) still haven't captured? That's genuinely useful for us to hear.