Shangai Tang VR Experience
A simple VR game for the 2017 Christmas Collection.
Roots and tradition meet edge technology.
Drawing from the brand's deep connections to Chinese culture and heritage, a VR experience was developed for Shanghai Tang's Winter events, showcasing the primary inspiration behind its Christmas 2017 collection: the Ginkgo Leaf.
Creating VR worlds.
Situated within a traditional Chinese Garden adorned with a Golden Ginkgo tree,
the 3D team meticulously crafted a distinctive setting for the Shanghai Tang VR experience.
My role as Lead Designer and Art Director involved shaping the game concept and game design, UI & UX, and developing specific graphical assets for 3D implementation. We used Unity and 3D Max to build the entire game.
The Shanghai Tang VR experience was a marketing play, designed to be the focal point of a celebration event and primarily aimed at creating brand awareness.
Given the potential for a large turnout at the event, and with the exact number of attendees unknown, we opted for short play sessions. Additionally, the availability of alcohol at the venue prompted us to avoid setting excessively high skill requirements for playing the game.
Back in 2017, VR was still considered quite exotic. It was curious to witness the long queues of people eager to play.
Despite the simplicity of the game, it was amazing to observe how such experiences turned everyone into children, running and sweating, asking for "just one more round". It was incredibly fulfilling to witness firsthand how people appreciated our efforts.
Thoughts on Shangai Tang VR Experience.
Although it was a small project featuring a simple game, it brought immense satisfaction. Spatial experiences present numerous new challenges, with few established best practices, prompting our team to continuously test and experiment with new approaches.
While this wasn't my first VR project, it was my first VR Game, which was thrilling. By that time, I held the expectation that by 2024, VR would have reached mass adoption.
Although that didn't materialize, I still believe in the power of VR immersive experiences and the beauty of telling interactive stories through VR.
To this day, I try to keep up with everything VR, exploring new games and experiences while closely observing how UI and UX is adapting to such different interactive medium.
Shanghai Tang is a Hong Kong luxury fashion house founded in 1994.
The brand is known for its luxury homeware collection and fine bone china, with multiple locations in Hong Kong as well in Shanghai, Beijing, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and other Asian cities.
