Injured shoulders & broken monitors: This VR game pushed developers to their limits
The VR boxing game Creed: Rise to Glory left its mark on the studio that created it — both on the hardware and the people.
Before Survios launched the well-received Alien: Rogue Incursion late last year, the VR studio was already known for bringing blockbuster movie franchises into virtual reality. Their first big swing? Creed: Rise to Glory, an adaptation of the Rocky spinoff that ended up being a staple of VR fitness.
Originally released in 2018, Creed: Rise to Glory quickly secured its place among the top VR fitness titles for Meta Quest, recently ranking 12th on the list of the platform’s 50 best-selling games. Players step into the shoes of Adonis Creed, facing off against a roster of boxers — many of whom will be instantly recognizable to Rocky fans. The 2019 Rocky Legends update added even more familiar faces: Clubber Lang, Apollo Creed, Ivan Drago, and, of course, Rocky Balboa himself.
But the process of developing Creed was anything but smooth. As Survios’ lead engineer Eugene Elkin explained on the VideoGamer podcast, the team ran into some uniquely physical challenges while building out the game’s core mechanic — boxing. They started keeping a running tally of injuries, and even had what they called a “monitor graveyard” in the office.
Sore Muscles, Dislocated Shoulders, and a Mountain of Broken Screens
“When we were making Creed, we had a running count of how many people got punched in the face,” Elkin told VideoGamer. “It’s been so many. We’ve had like a graveyard of monitors that people just punched. I cracked my monitor three times while I was working on it.”
The injury counter didn’t stop once the game launched, either. Every time a new video popped up online showing someone accidentally landing a punch on a bystander while wearing a VR headset, the Survios team would add another tally mark.
But it wasn’t just monitors and egos taking the hits. The physically demanding nature of VR boxing led to some real injuries among the testers. “When we were making Creed, we were making CREO, that QA team had to throw punches every day for like eight hours,” Elkin explained. For most, that meant sore muscles by the end of a shift. But one unlucky team member had it worse: “One guy, I think he had to go on work comp because he threw out his shoulder.”
Motion Sickness: The Unseen Nemesis of VR Development
Injuries aren’t the only hazard in VR development. Motion sickness is a constant problem until a game’s performance and frame rates are dialed in. Senior game designer Alissa Smith recalls that Alien: Rogue Incursion, in particular, had a steep learning curve for stomachs.
As Smith put it in the interview, “Oh, it sucks at first, not going to lie, but the more you’re in it and the more you kind of, you learn how to move, how to move yourself through the world in a way that’s not nauseating, it gets easier,” she explained. “Sometimes it still gets you when you’re in there for too long, but it’s about taking the proper breaks and learning what your body can handle and kind of building up your tolerance to the sort of sickness.”
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