Launch Announcement
San Francisco, CA, USA — Beast, Inc. will soon launch an Early Access home version of its flagship product, Beast Pets, a virtual reality sandbox where baby dragon pups live and play. Beast Pets was first launched in out-of-home VR arcades and entertainment centers in mid-2017, and is now available in over 200 locations around the world. After iterating on Beast Pets in location-based VR centers and racking up more than 50,000 sessions, the team feels that the dragons are finally ready to come home.
The dragon pups may be cuddly, but don’t expect them to be obedient. “We call them virtual beasts for a reason,” explains CEO Vivian Tan. “Imagine befriending a young dragonling in the wild. It might follow you home if you have food and a warm bed, but it’s not going to just obey you. You have to earn its trust and build up a two-way relationship.”
The idea of forming meaningful relationships with virtual pets has resonated with the startup’s nascent user community. Eva Hoerth, VR researcher and Women in XR Fund Fellow, describes Beast Pets as “a beautiful example of how VR can connect us intimately with others — in this case, baby dragons. Both kids and adults love Beast Pets because it satisfies our human instinct to nurture, play, and build relationships.”
“Beast Pets is different from other VR experiences because the dragons are like pets. You can pet them, play with them, and feed them,” says VR Kid, a young YouTuber who became smitten with the dragons after her father (also an avid gamer and streamer) signed up for the Beast Pets home beta program. “You don't get that kind of interaction in other games, and I enjoy feeding the dragons a lot.”
The transition from out-of-home VR centers to home VR means more opportunities to explore what it means to have pet dragons become part of your daily life. Today, the baby dragons are about the size of house cats and enjoy chasing after their favorite toys or other dragon playmates. Beast, Inc.’s ambition, however, is to create virtual beasts that can learn and grow with their humans, a process that will involve tapping the team’s inner child and the user community for inspiration.
“It’s our first time raising dragons too,” jokes CTO Mat Tyndall, “so we don’t know yet if they’ll ever become housebroken or if they’ll just break your house. This will be a community effort, and that’s why we’re launching in Early Access first so we can figure it out together.”
Beast Pets (Early Access) will be coming to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in February 2019.
For more information, please visit www.beastpets.com.
About Beast, Inc.
Beast, Inc. is a San Francisco startup that brings virtual pets to life through AI, XR, and a little bit of magic. Our vision is to create magical pets that behave like our real pets — with unique temperaments, social dynamics, the ability to make choices, and the capacity to learn and grow with us. By leveraging artificial intelligence and spatial computing, we can break down barriers between virtual pets and their humans, foster deeper emotional connection, encourage emergent behaviors, and create more opportunities for unpredictable moments of delight to really shine.