[GAMEVU] Smilegate Leading the Future of VR Games with CROSSFIRE: Sierra Squad 2023-05-09

Smilegate Entertainment (hereinafter referred to as ‘Smilegate’) has claimed to lead the future of VR games with its new title, CROSSFIRE: Sierra Squad (hereinafter referred to as ‘Sierra Squad’). Smilegate unveiled the current development status and stories concerning the VR game market with Department Head Sang-gyun Lee, who is developing Sierra Squad, at the newsroom operated by the company.

Sierra Squad is a VR game based on the global mega IP CROSSFIRE, which has been played by over one billion people around the world. The game was unveiled at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) held in San Francisco, USA, back in March, and it left a lasting impression on the users due to its solid storytelling and immersiveness, and the game quickly emerged as an anticipated VR game title.

Department Head Sang-gyun Lee, who is in charge of the game’s development, had aspired to produce a VR game since joining Smilegate back in 2016. He told the CEO of Smilegate at the time, Ina Jang, that he wished to develop a CROSSFIRE VR game, and he was told, “The game may fail but the IP cannot fail.” He was advised to first build up the experience necessary for developing a VR game.

Afterwards, he developed the VR games ROGAN: The Thief in the Castle and FOCUS on YOU and the two games respectively went on to receive the Best Art Prize and Grand Prize at the global VR award ceremony VRCORE Awards. After finally being recognized for his game developing capabilities, Department Head Sang-gyun Lee began his journey to realize his dream of developing a VR game based on CROSSFIRE.

  Source- PlayStation Store

CROSSFIRE features the world of the ‘CROSSFIRE universe,’ which parallels the Marvel universe. There is a separate department in charge of developing this universe and Sierra Squad features a prequel story, which is set in the time before of the original game story. The main story of the IP remains intact and it is more of a spin-off that is related to the main story. Sierra is a strike force, like Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, but the team operates as a rearguard unit responsible for maintaining public order on a daily basis and ends up getting mixed up in a major incident in the storyline.

The development motto for Sierra Squad is ‘a game, not a VR experience.’ Therefore, the game focused on delivering excitement and pleasure to users through things like gunfire and blowing up the bases of your opponents. The game features 17 types of enemies with advanced AI and the game developers focused on developing psychological warfare between the enemies and users.

For example, when you aim at an enemy AI, it will recognize it and hide or employ other strategies to deceive you. There are multiple types and these strategies have been designed to make it difficult to predict the various behaviors of the enemy AI. On the other hand, users can exploit the vulnerabilities of various strategies employed by the enemy AI and enjoy the process of dismantling the enemy. 

  Source- PlayStation Store

Sierra Squad will be released on the PS5 VR2 platform. CROSSFIRE is already a global IP, but its main consumer markets are in China and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the main consumer markets for VR games are mostly western and North American users. Smilegate intends to further develop CROSSFIRE into a true global IP through this release.

VR games require expensive equipment, so the genre does not have a wide userbase. Furthermore, there are still only a very few games being released in the VR game market. But the market surveyor International Data Corporation (IDC) has called the VR game market a blue ocean and projected that it will grow to make up more than 25% of the entire game market. Department Head Sang-gyun Lee agrees with this projection.

Sierra Squad is targeting release this summer and it intends to be something more significant than simply being a new VR game title. It remains to be seen whether it can deliver the powerful influence of a global mega IP across the world and become a pioneer in the newly emerging VR game genre that offers a new type of experience and entertainment via VR technology.