Transference is VR’s ‘Being John Malkovich’ from Ubisoft

Ubisoft is getting weird with its virtual reality games, but what else do you expect from a game studio called The Funhouse?

Ubisoft Montreal’s The Funhouse studio announced a game called Transference today. You enter someone else’s preserved digital mind and explore it in the hopes of helping them solve a problem. The company made the announcement at its press event ahead of the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the big game trade show in Los Angeles this week.

A company called Spectrevision is working on the VR title with Ubisoft to help create the back story and other weirdness associated with being inside someone else’s head.

Spectrevision team

The game invites you to “enter the home of a mind” in spring 2018.

It sounds a little like the theme of the comedy series Psychonauts, but this looks like a psychological thriller.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. 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.