Paul Bettner, CEO of Playful, and creator of Lucky's Tale, at GamesBeat Summit.
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Playful’s Paul Bettner: VR is just getting its start, like Disney in the 1920s

Paul Bettner has been waiting for virtual reality for decades. That’s one reason why his VR gaming studio, Playful, created Lucky’s Tale as a launch game for the Oculus Rift VR headset.

It launched as part of a bundle with the Rift on March 28, and it has drawn praise as a platformer that was designed for the ground up for VR. It’s sort of like a cross between Mario and Crash Bandicoot. But it’s also not likely to sell many copies, as the number of Oculus Rift headsets that have shipped so far is fairly small. But the company is also planning to ship games on other VR devices over time.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.