Ryan Burningham

VAL Statement:

@Clara_Gold I appreciate the honesty in this post! Some truth to it. Generally though the worst reactions to being rejected I have all seen from men with fragile egos. Also door to door sales did it for me on rejection training lol. After that most everything else was easier 😅

I realized fundraising was the first time in my life I got rejected at scale. And honestly, as a woman, I was not emotionally trained for it. Before the feminists come for me, let me make my point. I think the first real arena where most people experience power, desire, status, and rejection is dating. And dating trains men brutally. A lot of men learn very early that if they want someone, they have to walk across the room, risk looking stupid, get rejected, survive it, and do it again. They learn that rejection is volume, timing, targeting. It’s a numbers game. A lot of women are trained very differently. Especially if you’re a pretty girl, you don’t usually walk into a bar looking at a guy thinking: “Can I have him?” You only think: “Do I want him?”. You don’t build your identity around shooting your shot 100 times and surviving 99 no’s. You don’t get trained to ask directly, get rejected publicly, and act normal 5 minutes later. You get trained to be “chosen”. To be impressive enough that the opportunity comes to you. And then you start building a company. And the whole paradigm changes. Suddenly, everyone can say no to you. Investors say no. Candidates say no. Customers say no. And when your rejection muscle is weak, your brain does the dumbest thing possible: it makes the “no” mean something about you. That you’re not smart enough. Not compelling enough. I think this is one of the most underrated gender differences in fundraising. Not that men are inherently better at it. But a lot of them have built thicker rejection scar tissue earlier. They know how to hear no and keep moving. They know how to make it less personal. They know how to treat it like volume, timing, targeting, iteration. I didn’t. I’ve raised 3 rounds. On the surface, the story looks great: I raised with Sequoia, OpenAI, Khosla. Woohoo. The real story is less sexy: every round wrecked me. I lost 5kg each time. I probably donated a few years of life expectancy to the cap table. Because every round, I only got 1 term sheet. One. EVERYONE else said no. And when almost everyone says no, your body does not care about the intellectually correct explanation. It only hears: Maybe they’re right. Maybe you’re not that compelling. Maybe you’re not the founder you thought you were. For a long time, I thought confidence meant learning not to take the no personally. I don’t believe that anymore. Maybe some people are built like that. I’m not. 30 years of being trained to be chosen does not turn into resilience because someone in a Patagonia vest says fundraising is a numbers game. So now I think confidence is something less glamorous. Confidence is taking the no very personally. Letting it ruin your day, losing your appetite, spiraling for hours… And still taking the next meeting. Confidence is just being bothered as f*** and not letting it make you smaller. I still don’t fully believe my own BS as I’m writing this, but I guess that’s the point. Can’t wait for the next round to find out.

@AtomBombBody Oh no on inverse! That one is a favorite. Where did that get announced?

This isn't Unity killing *all* multiplayer btw - it's one specific hosting service ending March 31st. But smaller VR studios might choose "shut it down" over migration costs. Zombie Army VR and INVERSE are both ending servers same day. Who's next?

Breaking News: TikTok’s parent company said it sold a majority stake in the app’s U.S. operations to avoid a ban in the United States. nyti.ms/4jRmgcW

@aidanshandle I thought the same but my kids have favored the Meta Quest over the Asus ROG handhelds this holiday season in a big way

Video game music continues to be one of my absolute favorite parts of working in gaming Devs deserve more recognition than they get rn. It's pure talent. Send me moar. 🙏 What VR or otherwise gaming soundtracks are you into Moss from @PolyarcGames was my number 1 this year!

@benz145 A lot of puzzles and tabletop ones I am bearish on (outside of demeo) I really do not like a few. There are some that are close to killer but not quite there. Still astoundingly good though - Shattered, Pillow, Guardians of Realm, Cabin, Beatable all very excellent standouts

It's been two years since Quest 3's release and there's still nothing I can clearly point to as a 'killer game' for mixed reality. There's lots of 'neat' stuff, but no game I've seen yet that clearly justifies the feature. There's no doubt that MR is useful for when you want to stay in your own space, but that seems almost exclusively useful when you're doing non-game things like using flat apps or transitioning between immersive apps. Meta spent a long time pushing game developers to take risks on MR before the company itself had demonstrated it as truly compelling (reminds me a lot of the Quest Pro launch which was even further back). Star Wars: Beyond Victory is up there with the most highly produced attempts at an MR game yet, and the end result seems like the fully immersive VR portions of the game are the most compelling, while the MR portions feel like they should have just been in VR in the first place. A real shame because ILM has made some of the best VR apps to date, and this could have been another one if it hadn't been pushed to put technology before experience.

this is like... mostly true. Some of the biggest errors have been when VR devs make games that are hardcore (like shooters) and then try to appeal to 2d audiences and violate mechanics that VR audiences have liked. VR shooters are not new. Hardcore audiences play those. Kids in general (not all) are way less prone to motion sickness for example and most devs have adapted. However, the opposite is true for a category of apps. Apps like walkabout mini golf or other general appeals ones do need to make their apps very new to VR friendly.

The core demographic of VR is tech obsessed early adopters and kids. Don't worry about design familliarity when making games and UI. Innovate and build whatever mechanics and systems you feel like, the people will adapt.

Super interesting! Probably works way better for some games than others no?

Reviews for keys (while not exactly that) are playing a large part in some paid new game launches and it's making the data real messy lately. It can be brutal and hard for a dev to launch a game so I get the impulse. But still no way to disclose. The beta work being done though is great. Mixed on incentives tbh. Some are really dope cosmetics. It does help the platform and vr overall probably.

@ryanburning @samcole @JPMinetos It’s not an arms race. Giving keys for reviews is sleazy IMO, but incentivizing is totally fair if you value reviews. Incentives work. Devs can decide what a review is worth and act accordingly. Reviews benefit everyone involved. The devs, other players, and the platform.

Trends of the current Top 50 apps on quest: - The top 50 is split down the middle on free/paid titles - 5+ developers have 2+ titles in the top 50: - Ug launched week and climbed to #6 on lifetime store ratings. Rating count benchmarks: Top 100: 5,600 Top 50: 11,700 Top 25: 24,900 Top 10: 52,000 Top 5: 77,900 #1: 163,000

no yeah totally in agreement. Reviews are valuable and those are all good points. Devs should make all reasonable efforts for reviews. There is no way and this is mostly a meta problem to disclose reviews from free keys, unless the reviewer literally writes it themselves, which is unreliable. Beta programs are very valuable, but steam has a way to disclose and meta doesn't. Then essentially everyone if they don't offer incentivized reviews there is essentially they fall behind, so its an arms race to offer the best rewards. Steam bans both practices in their storefront, meta does not.

@ryanburning @samcole @JPMinetos Getting a player to take an action as heavy as leaving a review takes serious work, and it increases the player's retention, engagement, and willingness to tell friends. Every dev should prioritize reviews, and learn from bad reviews.

@samcole @JPMinetos Ita interesting though, because review incentives for f2p games are now so common, devs that don't participate are left behind

This is a significant distortion by the way now in the market. In the last year or so reviews have gotten really distorted from multiple causes. I think it's gotten to an unhealthy place. I think the solution is that meta needs to do more of the protections that steam store has, like disclosing if people got the key for free.

Apologies to the guy I was chatting with in line. I said that I heard that Ayahuasca could one shot your brain and turn you into a circus stripper. - at which point he said under his breath that he has done that 8 times and he hadn't turned into a stripper.

credit to @willyayy for the epic close up pic or REK 0 since I couldn't get close enough haha. @cixliv predicting the future yet again, ahead of trends. Bullish on robots.

Peak SF experience in 2025 is a robot fight at a nightclub. I have never seen temple so packed, was wild to see the energy.

@martyrdison Did that just today across golden gate. Sf good vibes day. Bonus night across the bay pic.

dawned on me today just how much i love my life. driving back over the Golden Gate, sun in my eyes, good music playing. thinking of good friends and of how fulfilling my work is. what i though might be a crappy day has turned into one of the best. always be thankful, anon.

We have now gotten to the business state of esports being so bad, that even “the industry blew up and collapsed” articles are further apart. Straight up newzoo just stopped publishing their esports reporting. This is a pretty epic fail for VC’s funds invested into esports - which topped out at 6 billion in 2018. However in your edition of “niche VR esports news” there are some very interesting things happening. Sometimes the most interesting things happen while the hype is low. First - there might actually be VR esports at the esports Olympics! The selection of games for the 2027 Games is still being finalized. The best contender is Virtual Taekwondo, which looks rad. There are some back and forth allegations on conflicts of interest which could derail this. This is mostly happening in Asia, with recent finals happening in Singapore and with pico very visible + full body tracking. @VRMasterLeague is keeping the flame alive for PCVR and other core titles with much passion and heart and did an excellent event earlier this year onsite for VRMLcon. There was a $20,000 cash prize pool and five VR titles -  Orion Drift, Pavlov Shack, VAIL, Breachers, and Onward. World Tennis Esports Championship just happened. Road to VR and some of the other press releases report that the total prize pool was $100,000. Again, what’s interesting to me about hype in this space, is that things happen organically for a long time and then it becomes mainstream again and no one has paid any attention. The Gorilla Tag esports scene is definitely this way - its now the largest and most organic growth of VR esports ever; they have 230,000 people in their discord and 12,000 teams. That’s an insane number! VR soccer in general is popping off. @VRFS_GG has an official partnership with Puma, and they are consistently in the top 20 of all best selling titles on the quest. Very few of this is driven by content creators in a reverse trend - this is mostly organic word of mouth. Most of the social media videos on this are about how to play the game. VRFS the VR soccer game has a community made up nearly entirely of only community moderators. These are high schoolers mostly! This F2P model has really worked for soccer in VR. Just in July Rezzil went free to play and just today so did We are Soccer. These games are a blast. I haven’t tried Rezzil yet, but We are Soccer is has a very quick time to fun and shows a lot of promise with the younger F2P VR crowd.

It's been a joy and an honor to work with Khang and his team @PlBattlegrounds along the journey to their growing success with Plastic Battlegrounds. meta.com/experiences/pl…

@jasteinerman @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt Thank you Jake! Excellent morning chat! ☀️

@ryanburning @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt Happy birthday!🎊

It was my birthday AND meta connect. Had such a good time! Thanks @JoyReignVr @Addison122 @jdunrrp @pekayatt