Game publisher Gamblit Gaming has struck a deal to bring the Brookhaven Experiment virtual reality first-person shooter game to casino floors.
On Tuesday, the California-based Gamblit announced that it had struck a deal with Chicago-based developer Phosphor Games to create a gamblified version of the Brookhaven Experiment, the horror-based VR game that debuted this spring on HTC Vibe to great acclaim (neophytes check out the video below).
Gamblit will demo its version of the game at next week’s Global Gaming Expo (G2E) in Las Vegas. The game will run on Gamblit’s new Virtual Reality Cube (VRC) gaming platform, which will also be making its public debut at G2E.
Gamblit CMO Darion Lowenstein told Games Industry Biz that the plan is to allow players to wager on how well they’ll perform in Brookhaven’s monster-filled environment, with wagers as low as $15 or as high as $50.
The VRC (pictured) includes external monitors to allow other patrons to watch the action and place their own wagers via tablets, creating what Gamblit calls “a social group experience.”
Lowenstein said betting will revolve around players meeting certain specified challenges, like surviving various rounds, while observers can bet on anything from whether a player achieves a certain rate of shooting accuracy to whether a player’s ‘health’ level will dip below a specified percentage.
Lowenstein said Gamblit has addressed the potential for groups of friends to collude on wagers by tying spectators’ bets to those of the player. “Spectators are betting on how well the player does with specific goals – the same ones the player has, not things like dying or losing… Everyone benefits if the player does well, not if they lose.”
Phosphor Games CEO Justin Corcoran said his company always tries to be at the forefront of gaming technology and the entry into real-money gambling with Gamblit was “another frontier we’re very excited about.” However, dealing with gambling regulators is presenting all sorts of new challenges. “Holy crap, there’s a lot of rules. There’s a lot of legality. So I was probably a bit naïve coming into it.”
The VRC launch is the latest effort at wooing some of the slots-phobic millennials who routinely pack dance floors in Las Vegas but rarely go near a casino floor. Gamblit has been leading the charge to bring skill-based games to casino floors, having just announced a deal with Caesars Entertainment to bring Gamblit’s Model G and Tristation positions to casinos in California, Nevada and other markets.
