Everything was worth it. So, I tweeted and then John Carmack tweeted back. This started a process which has easily become one of the coolest events in my life. Basically John Carmack played my game! And then he gave me feedback on what to change / fix to make it awesome. He provided a few compliments, and definitely had a few criticisms. This is so cool!
I love Oculus!
(just not some of their developer feedback team policies)
So, I reached out to one of the higher ups at Oculus, and asked them if there was anything else that I could do to get feedback. They told me that their content review team would be getting back to me shortly.
A little while later, I got an e-mail from them saying that my application for Hardware hadn’t been prioritized, and that I’d be contacted when they have more developer hardware available.
Still no word from their content review team though. Hopefully I’m not supposed to read into the hardware request rejection as their feedback on my app… But since that’s the only feedback I got… maybe that is what they meant? I’m honestly not entirely sure.
I finally got feedback from Oculus.
Update: No response after the 10th day. Considering starting a log here. Yes I’m following up different ways each day. But I’ll probably give up on the log here before Oculus actually responds…
Day 9: Debated the nutritional value of the soles of my shoes. Wishing I had a dragon to fly off of this barren island.
Day 10: Today I found a bottle, with a message saying rescue planes would arrive ‘soon’. Drank all the rum, and now I’m sobering, and wondering where the rescue planes are. Should have stuck to the rum ration schedule.
So, I’ve gone back and forth with Oculus for nearly a month now. They re-affirm that I am approved for keys only. To me, this means that I have the ability to give my game away for free by publishing these early access keys. So I’ve tweeted out keys, and I’ve put them on forums, and other websites, and put them out on Facebook, and I’m not sure how many I have to give out, or if there is an amount after which they would start to reconsider me. My latest interaction with them outlined all of my changes to the latest version, and they approved it after playing 1 level for two and a half minutes. They didn’t even try the Multiplayer functionality (which is rough… but it was listed as a change). So they aren’t communicating with me, and I’ve received no feedback.
Meanwhile, I submitted to Google, and asked for their Daydream team to review it. Within an hour and a half, they e-mailed me back with feedback that was actually extremely helpful and relevant. They suggested that the blue dragon to the left of the area of focus in my 360 store screen shot looked a little blurry, and needed to be cleaned up. Super helpful. They also provided feedback, saying that if you remove the phone from the device, and click in the top left corner, the app crashes. So, I’m not sure if I had an exceptionally awesome reviewer, but I had 6 e-mails back and forth in the course of a friday evening, and I received an e-mail the following Monday morning indicating that I was approved for the Daydream Badge, and that it would show up in my game shortly.
Meanwhile. 26 days later. Oculus still hasn’t provided any feedback on what I can do to be publicly listed.
From a developers perspective, Google Daydream has been way more pleasant of an experience. I love their code samples, and their framework. I just wish they had more users.
Anyway, check it out. I’m on Google Play.