Author: Sonya Haskins
Sonya Haskins
Sonya Haskins is Head of Programming for AWE (Augmented World Expo) and encourages development of positive, inclusive environments. In 2017, she became the first female player and oldest player to qualify for the North American Regional Championships of the Oculus-sponsored VR League. Sonya has traveled the world to promote immersive reality in various roles including advisor, journalist, and events coordinator. Sonya has also supported many of the most popular games in the VR industry through articles, community management, assistance to developers, playtesting, and promotion. She has valuable and unique insight related to immersive gaming.
Over the past eight years, I’ve tried playing horror games a few times, but I typically end up pulling off my headset within the first moments. It’s not generally a genre that appeals to me because I don’t enjoy being frightened, but when I was challenged to check out Resident Evil 4 VR, I promised I’d make a legitimate attempt. From the perspective of someone who has never played flat games and who knew nothing about the long history of the Resident Evil franchise, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the first Resident Evil game, known as Biohazard in…
ASICS, a global pioneer in sports innovation, is an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, a Latin phrase that means “A sound mind in a sound body.” The company was founded in Kobe, Japan, in 1949 by Kihachiro Onitsuka, who aimed to make athletic shoes to nurture healthy lives in young people through sports. Last year, I was invited to work on a VR project featuring a collaboration between ASICS Ventures, Meta, and game studio m ss ng p eces. They wanted to create a new sport, rather than adapting a traditional sport into the virtual world, which greatly…
Mannequin, an asymmetrical VR multiplayer game from Fast Travel Games, is a breath of fresh air in the immersive gaming space. Enemies essentially hide in plain sight, the game is challenging whether you have 1v2 players or a full round of 2v3, and it’s one of the best examples of collaborative play that I’ve seen in VR. The sci-fi storyline behind Mannequin is just enough to be fascinating and set the stage for the game, yet knowledge of the story isn’t essential to your survival. Basically, aliens are behind anomalies that have frozen specific sites in time, turning the humans…