End Dreams

End Dreams spent its first seven years on alternate reality games, online stories that unfolded across Facebook messages and other channels, and on virtual worlds, where it became one of the biggest global publishers on PlayStation Home. Patrick Alunik said that platform 'wasn't a platform that was going anywhere.' The team then saw the first Oculus headset and Sony's early prototype, and as Alunik put it, 'we just kind of went nuts over it.'

The studio ran a brainstorm-to-green-light process: ideas could come from anyone, were refined in group sessions, and then went through a review that estimated costs and likely sales. Prototyping gameplay came first, even when the visuals were rough, because the team believed fun gameplay was what would work in a new medium. Early experiments included Skydiving, a free demo that drew about two and a half million YouTube views, and Gunner, which launched at the start of Gear VR when few headsets existed.

Perfect Beach came from an experiment: would people pay for a relaxing audio-and-visual escape? Alunik said it was 'a very simple product that was very quick to make,' and it became the studio's biggest revenue generator. It launched on mobile at about $2.99 and on high-end headsets at about $7.99.

End Dreams sold through the digital stores where VR users already bought software: the Oculus Store, Google Play, Steam for Vive, and PlayStation Network. Alunik said the key was 'a relationship with those stores' and the people who run them, which the company spent about three years building. The studio also sold physical cards with download codes in some retail stores.

The company tracked units sold as its main metric, since free-to-play and service models were considered too early for VR. Across its titles it sold just under a quarter of a million units, with Perfect Beach responsible for roughly half. Alunik acknowledged that the market was hard to read because sales data was scarce. Some earlier titles, such as Gunner, performed poorly because the install base was small when they launched.

End Dreams was not yet profitable but expected to be by the end of the year. It projected about $2 million in revenue for its upcoming financial year and roughly $6 to $7 million the year after. The studio planned about six launches between March and December, including The Assembly on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.