Valve Business Director Hired by Oculus VR

Jason Holtman, former Business Director at Valve (until February 2013) has been hired by Oculus VR.

Here is what Holtman had to say,

“When I was a kid, I loved arcades. I converted most of my allowance into quarters and couldn’t wait to get to the mall on Saturday. For me, it was all about Battlezone — Simple, bright line geometry, enemy tanks, and mountains off in the distance. That feeling when you grabbed the dual joysticks and pressed your face to the viewfinder was transformative. It was unlike anything else you could play.
Battlezone, although simply rendered, made you believe that you were in that world and that there had to be something beyond those mountains.

Battlezone is widely regarded as one of the first VR games, and looking back, those mountains still excite me. I want to fly, walk across alien landscapes, and nose around the Great Pyramids. And that’s the most telling thing about VR: the possibilities are obvious, immediate, and endless.

So, I’m humbled to become a part of this team. I’m not one of the pioneering scientists or engineers in virtual reality, but I am one of the people that can’t stop grinning every time I see something new inside the headset, and I’m looking forward to helping shape the transformative experiences that inspire the next generation of developers.”

Jason will be spearheading the business development and partnership side of the Oculus platform working closely with Marshall, head of platform engineering, and David, head of worldwide publishing, with a focus on building the world’s best developer and player VR ecosystem. We’re thrilled to welcome him to the team.

The Oculus VR Dream Team

The Oculus VR Dream Team consists of people who have joined the team since March:

Neil Konzen, former engineer at Valve and one of the original Microsoft employees
Brian Hook, former engineer at RAD (Telemetry) and the original author of 3Dfx Glide
Adrian Wong, former lead systems engineer at Google[x] (Glass)
Ian Field, former engineer at ARM and co-inventor of Cortex-M
Raul Corella, former head of supply chain at JawBone, Monster, and Leap Motion
Laura Fryer, former GM of Epic Seattle and WB Seattle
Paul Pedriana, former lead engineer at EA
David Moore, former engineer at RAD (Granny)
Kenneth Scott, former art director at 343 Studios (Halo 4)
Seneca Menard, former technical artist at id Software
Paul Pepera, former environment artist at Valve and 343 Studios
Brian Sharp, former engineer at Bungie
Aaron Nicholls, former engineer at Valve, 343 Studios, and Microsoft
Matt Alderman, former engineer at Valve and ArenaNet
Cass Everitt, former GPU architect and engineer at Nvidia
Ross O’Dwyer, former at head of development support at Havok
Douglas Lanman, former research scientist at Nvidia Research and MIT Media Lab
…and many, many more: Scott Boyce, Gayan Ediriweera, Michael Berger, Khoi Nguyen, Aaron Toney, Bruce Cleary, Anusha Balan, Sagy Wiessbrod, Christopher Taylor, Soh Tanaka, Matt Mojica, Hyo Jin Kim, Steve Arnold, Dan Moskowitz

In addition, Oculus will be at E3 next week where it will be showing off the second development kit (DK2) running some of the team’s favorite “games and experiences.”

Source: OculusVR

Nathan Stevens

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I have always enjoyed playing video games and am a programming team lead for a video game company. I co-founded Gaming Cypher because I enjoy the gaming community and would like to provide the best news service around. Feel free to ask me any questions and I will make sure to get back to you quickly.