Tokyo Game Show VR 2023 feels like a magical trip to a fantasy Japanese fair
The Tokyo Game Show, one of the most important gaming events in the world, is happening these days. Like the past 2 years, there is also a digital edition of it that lets you enter into a virtual world dedicated to the event, and that is also accessible in virtual reality. This space was designed and developed by the Japanese company Ambr, which has its own “metaverse platform” called xambr.
I’m a friend of theirs (I’ve also interviewed them some time ago), and we like to help each other, so this year I’ve become one of the few selected Media Partners of the event. So even if I’m crazy busy, I wanted to have a look at the world they created for the Tokyo Game Show and tell you about my experience with the VR version of it!!
(Full disclaimer: I’m a Media Partner of the event, so I’ve been asked to write an article about it, but I had no obligation in this sense. There has also been no monetary exchange in the process, just the will to support each other. So trust me, this article will be the usual honest feedback of mine about the experience and nothing more)
First steps
The worst part of the experience for me was the onboarding. The app for the Tokyo Game Show VR is on Meta App Lab, so to find it, I had to find its direct link on the Tokyo Game Show VR website. Differently from last year, the app was not a custom application for the TGS but was directly the xambr official platform, which at this moment hosted only one possible destination, that is the Tokyo Game Show VR.
Once I opened Xambr, I was requested to create an account, but the UI felt a bit rough as if it was a bit rushed, and its quality and readability were not ideal. I created my account, but then when it came to accepting the terms of licensing, I couldn’t scroll down the TOS, and without arriving at the end of the document, I couldn’t go on with the registration. When I finally managed to do it, the platform asked me to download the content I wanted to access… but weirdly, it kept me showing many popups about the content to download: “Do you want to download 123MB of content?” and I clicked yes. Then soon later “Do you want to download 5MB?” and then “Do you want to download 22MB?”. I really would have loved a button with the label “Download the fuck you want” so that I could have a smoother experience…
After all these downloads, I found myself on a boat, where a strange robot told me that we were going towards a wonderful gaming world. The boat is just a place where you wait while… yeah, you guessed it, you have a new download of more than 1GB of the content of the event! While you are there, your robotic guide tells you something about the event and teaches you the basic interactions like moving, opening the map, triggering the magic, resolving quests, shooting pictures, and so on. While this tutorial is a bit rough around the edges, it is pretty good, because if you are not new to social VR worlds, it gives you enough info to let you start using the platform and learn everything else you need to know by doing. Plus it is smart to have a tutorial while you are wasting your time downloading the content.
When the tutorial and the download ended, I finally landed at the Tokyo Game Show.
Tokyo Game Show VR – Gameplay
Visiting the Tokyo Game Show VR is mostly an exploratory experience. This year, the world of the TGS has been split into a few “islands” and what you do is go around these islands, travel between them using teleporting stations, and visit the virtual booths.
On the islands some characters act as a guide: in the first islands there are robots like in the tutorial boat, while in others there may be animals, rock creatures, etc… These characters speak briefly, while showing a callout, and usually tell you something about the world you are in. They may explain to you something you can do in a booth, they can give you a quest, or they can simply say something stupid to make the experience more fun.
The booths are not booths in the classical sense, but they are a piece of land inside those islands where the companies could build whatever they preferred. Some of them just put a lot of pictures; others put their most famous characters as 3D models with which you can take a picture; others put animated 3D models, like cute anime girls saying something; others built some complex spaces, like a cute house full of details where you can enter. In most of them, there were videos and photos used to promote the company having the booth. Video trailers were everywhere. Like last year, the main focus on the interaction side was watching photos and videos of the companies.
There are some exceptions in this sense: there is an energy drink company that has booths on all the islands, and in these spaces, you can grab their cans, and by activating them, you see a special magical explosion graphical effect happening around you. I’ve found this pretty cool.
Every booth has an associated URL of the company or the product that is being promoted. The interesting thing is that when I clicked on these URLs, my Quest Pro opened a Meta Quest Browser window in front of me, but it didn’t exit the application, just opened the browser window on top of it. This is a feature introduced by Meta a few weeks ago and I found it very handy for cases like this when people just want to open a web link, while still being in the VR experience.
The game has also little quests you can do. Quests are usually simple actions like “play the trailer of this booth” or “find this information for me” and when you complete them, your reward is receiving as a prize a new avatar you can wear. Avatars are very simple and all mostly similar, with the ones you win usually just having fancier hair and maybe the T-shirt with the logo of the company of the booth, so I’ve never been particularly excited about winning a new one.
A funny bit of the “find this information for me” quests is that you have to remember that 95% of the content there is in Japanese. So to complete the quests as a Westerner, you have basically to play a guessing game. I had been tasked to look for when the PS Vita was released, and I just found a picture of the PS Vita with some Japanese text around it. I didn’t know if the text was talking about the date of birth of PS Vita or was offending me and my ancestors, but I just shot a picture of it anyway hoping it was the right piece of info to win the Quest (and it was, by the way).
There are also some social features you can use when you meet other people around: of course, you can speak with the other attendees, but you can also show some emojis, and you can take pictures with other people. There is an integrated virtual camera like in all social VR worlds, and you can also automatically share the pictures on Twitter/X if you want. The camera is a bit clunky to manage, and I suggest ambr people improve it by copying what other companies (like us of VRROOM) have done in this sense. But I loved that for the first time, I saw the photo camera being used as an interaction tool: when there are quests to find information, the way you flag you find the right info is that you shoot a picture of it. This is a pretty cool and original idea, which is also effective in masking the language problem (I didn’t have to report an answer in Japanese, I just shot a picture and completed the quest).
There is also a nice idea about being able to cast some magical spells. Pressing a button of your controllers, you can cast magic, like throwing a flame, or a fireball. The idea is very cool, but I didn’t understand much what it is useful for.
Multimedia elements
The whole experience is in cartoonish style, and I think this does not surprise anyone, considering that we are talking about a gaming fair in Japan. The graphical elements are usually quite well made, apart from some exceptions, like the initial tutorial robot. The worlds are pretty rich, and also quite big, so the result is that the framerate is quite low. I ran my experience on my Quest Pro, and I think I never saw an FPS count above 50… usually, the average was around 40.
Visually the experience is very appealing because the booths are well made and there are many things to see. There are usually in front of you “too many things”, but this is coherent with this world being a gaming fair. Audio is not central to this experience, but the background music contributes to making things more relaxing.
Input
The input controls of this application are similar to all the other social VR worlds: I used the thumbstick of my controllers to move and rotate myself, the grip button to grab, and the trigger to activate. Talking about the A/B X/Y buttons, one of them opens the menu, another one opens the camera, and another one launches the cool-but-useless “magic” action.
Comfort
The experience starts with smooth locomotion which may be uncomfortable for some people, but this setting can be changed in the menu. I’ve found the experience quite comfortable to play if not for one big problem: the framerate. If the application goes at 30-40fps, some people who are more sensitive to simulation sickness are not going to feel well by playing it.
The magic of the place
I’ve explained to you how the TGS VR works, and I also highlighted all its little problems. But at the end of the day, even if some things are not perfect, I loved to stay there. I can’t explain exactly why, but I felt in a very chill state, just enjoying my time in this fantasy world of gaming.
The world is very rich, and there are the booths of the most famous Japanese companies, like Capcom or Square Enix. In these booths, there are usually big replicas of their most famous characters, and it is cool being there close to them in VR. I’m a junkie for Resident Evil, and it was great for me to be there at its booth shooting a picture with a real-size Ada Wong. It’s amazing to be there with all these famous characters we love from the Japanese gaming world.
Then the world islands are all cute. Kudos to ambr for creating the nice islands and also to the companies exhibiting there for doing some nice explorable places. Many things recall the manga/anime world, which we all nerds love. Also, the fact that is all in Japanese, while made me understand absolutely nothing of every trailer I watched, gave it that exotic touch that made me love it even more. Given all the mentions of “magic” in the experience, I would say that it felt a bit magical.
I’ve never been to Japan, but the TGS VR let me go from home to this nice fantasy cartoon place where I could have a taste of the Japanese gaming culture. And the world was quite big… I just speed-run through some parts, but if I wanted to explore it well and watch the various content (pretending to understand Japanese) and do all the quests, I think I would have needed more than one hour to see it all. I’ve found it amazing, and this made me forgive all the little technical quirks I had while in the experience.
The popularity
I joined the TGS VR early in the morning, while many people were still sleeping, so in the European servers, I haven’t found many people to talk with. But I’m sure the TGS VR went quite well because many people in the community contacted me to tell about their visit.
If you’re curious of the reason why people contacted me… well… I had my little booth at the event, with a few pictures of my logo and a video where I introduced myself (in English… I guess I was the only English content there, lol), and the people of the community were very surprised to see me there and send me the pictures of my booth! I was surprised by how many people saw it, so I guess that having a booth at TGS VR was quite good for the companies exhibiting there.
Final thoughts
The Tokyo Game Show VR 2023 is a very enjoyable place. It may not be perfect in all its aspects, but it is so rich, and so cute, that if you like gaming and you also enjoy something about Japanese anime culture, you would love it. It feels a bit like a magical trip. If you have just 30 minutes of free time to spend, I suggest you have a look. You find all the instructions on how to join it on this page
And if you go there… don’t forget to take a selfie with my booth! 😛
(Header image by ambr)
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