Ciara Tamay / Del Grosso Bates

Founder | Director

My first virtual reality experience was a game called Job Simulator on the old HTC Vive. I had a deep emotional response to the cartoonish, playful interactivity that was so believable, it turned into an almost hysterical laughing fit on the ground.

My background was Journalism and languages – but I have been making digital content and games since I was a child. I’ve been deeply creative and technical my whole life, but the interests and skills didn’t link up – I didn’t QUITE want to be a software developer because it sounded too dull to hold my attention, but I identified more with creating things with function – crafts rather than art. I played games all the time, and I even made games sometimes – but this was a hobby.

At some point, XR burst into my life like the central circle in the Venn Diagram. Like a missing piece in a fragmented map, knitting the pieces together in a way that you can’t imagine they were ever disconnected. XR and immersive for me is not a piece of tech or a trend towards more gadgetry or interactivity. They are a meaningful and rich unifying force of all the skills and interests I have and the best of all worlds –

the infinite possibilities of art

the playfulness and exploration of games

the pragmatism and efficiency of software

the accessibility of web and mobile apps.

The Immersive Agency is the crossroads and culmination of everything I know how to do – from the furniture I made for the Sims 1 in the 90s to my first software automation in my call centre job as a teenager – shaving valuable minutes off my daily start to the grind by auto-loading several programs and logging me in – to the very diverse projects I’ve built for clients over the past 6 years.

Pharmaceutical simulation, VR and 3D games, multiplayer games and immersive theatre… Social VR worlds and mobile phone based augmented reality on 3D printed objects, and many, many prototypes and workflows.