People leave notes about their feeling after playing virtual reality games at The Choice's VR experience center at U-Town shopping mall in Beijing. (Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily)
"I see it as the future of games. It will totally change the way people feel," says Tan, who used to design games on smartphones before he founded the company with some angel investment in April.
"I'm so excited to step into the VR gaming industry when it's still in the cradle."
In China, 2016 is regarded as the beginning year of virtual reality by industry insiders. The technology, which creates a lifelike environment to immerse users in virtual worlds, ripened as big companies released various consumer-level VR products in the same year.
To name some of the most popular ones - HTC Vive from a Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer, Oculus Rift from Oculus VR (acquired by Facebook), and PlayStation VR from Sony.
In a report published in early 2016, Goldman Sachs predicts that the total addressable market for virtual reality and augmented reality (which overlay digital information onto the physical world) will be $80 billion in 2025, with $11.6 billion and more than 200 million users in the segment of games alone.
Tons of venture capital has poured in, and numerous startups like Tan's company mushroomed in the first half of last year.
"A majority of VR games are first-person shooters," says Tan. "But we think VR is not just about killing, it's to create different worlds."
Just as its name hints, Tan says The 18th Floor is an ongoing project and will immerse player in 18 different scenes, each having its unique features.
"We started with something people are familiar with, like the workshop you were in, then to something one could only imagine in their childhood dreams - the train running on the sea was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's animation Spirited Away - and now we realize them through virtual reality."
This is a game that Zhang Wen would be interested in.
