Cause + Christi: Immersive XR Design

05/23/2026

WE MADE IT! Our game Ship Happens has been added to the Meta Browser's new tab page as the 42nd entry in their list of Immersive Experiences.

THIS IS AMAZING! We are overjoyed that so many people will have such easy access to the game! Just open the Meta Browser and scroll down a tiny bit. Voila!

The game is also playable for free on Desktop and Mobile by visiting the URL https://ShipHappens.World

Huge thank you to Michael Morran and Viverse for allowing us full creative control. It seems to have worked out 😄

Also thank you to the team at Meta Quest for reviewing and approving our submission. We're honored to be listed!

Now go enjoy the game ❤️

05/12/2026

Charlotte NC VR lovers, lend me your audio listeners!

🎉 On Thursday May 28th from 6pm to 8pm we will be hosting our next local networking meetup at the illustrious Blume Studios' Stage 1 and we invite anyone in the area that is interested in in any way to attend because this one's going to be a real doozy!

👨‍💼 Our guest speaker will be Jules Rimbaud, business development manager for Excurio, a very interesting physical location based VR experience company. Their title "Horizon of Khufu" just so happens to be the exhibition currently on display at Stage 1 where we are meeting.

💬 Jules will give us a short talk and presentation about the company and their titles and we're told we will have access to up to 6 demo headsets, each loaded with a 2 minute preview of what you can expect from the full 40 minute run through. Thank you to Blume Studios for providing those!

🎟️ We will be raffling off a whole bunch of free tickets to the full experience (to be redeemed at a later date). We will also try to have some light snacks available (sandwiches, pizza, charcuterie, etc).

🍸 Blume has graciously agreed to open their bar and serve their Horizon of Khufu signature cocktails for our meeting (which are delicious). Very important note: it is a 💵 CASH BAR 💵 though so if you would like to drink remember to bring some actual CASH! There will be water and soda freely available however.

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DETAILS AT A GLANCE:
📅 Thursday, May 28, 2026
🕕 6:00 – 8:00 PM ET
📍 Stage 1 @ Blume Studios (904 Post St, Charlotte, NC)
🎟️ All guests entered into raffle for free tickets
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🔎 About Excurio:
Excurio creates large-scale immersive VR experiences that blend history, culture, and storytelling. Their work focuses on transporting people into fully interactive worlds — often in collaboration with museums and cultural institutions.
👉 https://www.excurio.com/en/

🔎 About “Horizon of Khufu: Journey in Ancient Egypt”:
This is a location-based VR experience that takes you inside Ancient Egypt during the time of the pyramids. You explore the Great Pyramid, walk through detailed historical environments, and experience a guided narrative that mixes education with cinematic immersion.
👉 https://www.blumenthalarts.org/events-tickets/events-1/horizonofkhufu

🔎 Join our NCXR Meetup group:
👉 https://www.meetup.com/awe-nite-nc-triangle/

04/29/2026

Hey friends! More awesome news... and a teensy request of 60 seconds of your time 😅

🏅 Our escape room game "Ship Happens VR" has been nominated for an this year but we need all of you to vote and help us become finalists!

🏆 After taking home Entertainment Experience of the Year at , we are still flying high and doing our best to ride this wave as far as we can! This time we would be competing for "Best Game or Toy" at the Auggies. We're up against some fierce competition right away so we could really use all the help we can get from our friends and network. The final decisions are made by in house judges but you can most certainly help us get in front of said judges by voting for us now!

👍 So take 60 seconds to pop over to our page on the Auggie Awards website and press that beautiful little VOTE button! You can log in with your Google, Facebook, or even LinkedIn. No need to make a whole new account, easy peasy!

😱 LAST MINUTE UPDATE! We just found out we are ALSO nominated in the "Best Content Creators" category. What an honor to be even name dropped among so many amazing other content creators. We'd love your support there as well!

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VOTE FOR THE GAME HERE ➡️ https://auggies.awexr.com/entry/vote/oRdwWxXW/yEBaORkn

VOTE FOR US AS CREATORS HERE ➡️ https://auggies.awexr.com/entry/vote/oRdwWxXW/BJYNQbjW

PLAY THE GAME FREE ➡️ https://shiphappens.world

(Desktop, Mobile, VR)

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💚💜 Thank you all so much we really do appreciate the support and we are looking forward to seeing some of you out at AWE this year!

04/01/2026

🏆🏆🏆 FANTASTIC NEWS! 🏆🏆🏆

We are honored that our WebXR game, Ship Happens, has won the 2025 Poly Award for "Entertainment Experience of the Year!"

Competition was fierce. We inched out incredible apps like Wall Town Wonders by Cyborn & BurnerSphere by Big Rock Creative plus two other VIVERSE experiences: "In Tirol" by James C. Kane & "A Number From The Ghost" by Peter Adams. Much respect to our fellow nominees, please go check out their amazing work!

(This is Cause btw...)
I would like to elaborate on my words from the stage now that I'm not so frazzled in the moment.

Thank you to Ben Erwin and the Academy of Immersive Arts and Sciences for hosting The Polys - Immersive Awards. Without you so many XR voices might go unheard.

This game was a collaboration between myself, Christi, and her brother Cody. Without their efforts it would not have become the hilarious adventure that it turned out to be. We all sat around a table together with a whiteboard sketching out layouts while plotting narratives and puzzles for each room.

My infinite thanks to both Christi and Cody who were even both live on video to accept the award with me but due to a technical glitch were unable to beam in during the moment.

Also thanks to Cody for the overall humor and music choices as well as much of the ship's decor. We originally pitched something darker and eerier but he came with that fresh retro future fallout in space vibe which changed our whole direction, for the better!

Thank you Michael Morran from VIVERSE who greenlit the project as one of the first creator contracts. We really appreciate you allowing us to creatively steer the ship (ha haaaa). We're also happy that our weirdness was what you were seeking.

The game was released last year on VIVERSE but I have been working on the code for months to sharpen the experience across all devices but mainly to optimize the VR experience! That's right, PEAK performance (mostly)... in standalone VR... delivered over the WEB... Yyyyep! BIG thanks to Noeri Huisman for helping me profile things on a level I wasn't even aware of.

And finally thank you to everyone who plays and enjoys the game and especially those of you who voted for it! It really means a lot that our work resonates with so many people. We put intense dedication, sleepless nights, and so so many tears and replacement keyboards toward our work so having validation like this really keeps our spirits soaring high. Seriously, thank you all!

I encourage everyone to try it in VR if possible. A simple point-click interface, objects spawn randomly so every playthrough is different, and it should only take 10 or 20 minutes to complete a round depending on how much detail you decide to look at. I've played it 100's of times by now and it's still fun. It's also 100% free & requires no download, install, or account.

So go play! ➡️ https://shiphappens.world

💚 PLEASE HELP US BY SHARING THE LINK 💜

12/16/2025

ATTENTION! For all our Charlotte (and surrounding areas) peeps in the VR industry we are hosting a small local networking event at Studio 1212 tomorrow early evening.

It'll be a super chill gathering, no speakers or panels this time just a casual hangout and chat with your fellows to wrap up the year. We will be bringing some of our own experiences to demo but if any of you have VR or game projects you've been working on we'd love for you to bring it and show off too!

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/awe-nite-nc.../events/312309240/

We look forward to meeting the local Charlotte XR community :)

11/12/2025

NC XR friends! Our next .xr Nite event is TONIGHT Wednesday, November 12 @ 6pm— and we're speaking! 🎉

Join us for an evening of innovation, creativity, and connection featuring:
✨ Cause + Christi – award-winning XR creators and immersive design studio
🤖 deepak nair (Meta for Developers ) – Developer Advocate showcasing how VR, AI, and Horizon Worlds are shaping the future of social XR
🌐 Networking with the NCXR community, demos, plus food, drinks, and plenty of creative energy
📍 Location: The Bullpen @ American Underground, Durham
🕖 Date: Wednesday, November 12, 6-8pm
🎟️ Free event – RSVP now (space is limited):
https://www.meetup.com/awe-nite-nc-triangle/events/311787750

If you plan to demo your project during networking part of the event, please consider coming at 5:30pm to set up your demo before event starts.

For everyone else, we start at 6pm sharp. Hope to see many of you there!

Learn more:
🌐 Cause + Christi: https://causechristi.com/
▶️ Deepak’s “Pixel Pushers” YouTube Channel:
https://youtube.com/
Let’s make this another unforgettable night for the NCXR community!

11/12/2025

🎉 Friends, Family, Avatars!! Tomorrow morning @ 11am EST join us in the metaverse along with , , Stephanie Bagehorn, and Andrea Luck (head of marketing at Rowohlt Publishing House) in for our panel at where we will be discussing one of our latest immersive world builds and, in fact, our second collaboration with the amazing , an awesome XR design agency out of Germany.

✨ They also happen to be the illustrious hosts of the IMMERSIVE X Festival and have been working very hard around the clock to make this one of the most inclusive, widespread, and entertaining weeks in XR you will have. Tons of panels and talks and demos of all kinds throughout the week! We already attended some this morning ourselves.

🤑 Best of all IT'S 100% FREE! So no excuses! Come hang out, learn something, see something, say something, and do something immersive with us! Click below to register for our session and be sure to check out the rest:

👉 https://immersive-x.de/session/castle-of-kyss-creating-a-safe-space-for-romance-fans

See you there! Come chat with us afterwards and maybe even help find the secret room! Sneak a peek of the Castle in these pictures 😉

10/03/2025

Vivaldi won 3x at the Polys Immersive Awards
🏆Education Experience of the Year!
🏆Entertainment Experience of the Year!
🏆and Experience of the Year?! Wow!

We're pretty proud of this one!
We’ve been in nonstop work mode, realized we didn’t post to insta🙂

💚 We were so honored by the recognition for Vivaldi 3.0: The Immersive Universe of the Four Seasons app at The Polys Immersive Awards 5th annual ceremony this year! It came as a huge shock to sweep all 3 categories like that, we are truly humbled. There were so many other worthy contenders, we'd like to first give a big shout out to all of the other creators who were nominated & put out such great work!
💜 Heart and soul was poured into building this experience to bring ’s to life in glorious , working with visionaries director Carlos J. Ochoa Fernandez & art director Andy Fidel (this year's Community Honor recipient), & the entire international team who facilitated and recorded the musical performances of master Ara Malikian and the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in glorious #360 as well as the introductions from captured by ARfuture!
✈️ Austin Dalí Caine (Cause) traveled to the to represent the team & join the other nominees + live studio audience for this year's Polys. Meanwhile Christi Fenison Carlos & Andy joined the show virtually, beaming onto the LED stage wall as Cause hopped up to accept each enshrined trophy in style including pulling off a cartwheel for Experience of the Year (promised sarcastically to Yunji Johanning after already winning 2 - no promises broken! see vid>)🤸
🏆 Thank you from the bottom of our hearts to the Polys team, we certainly know a ton of your own heart and soul also goes into creating this production each year; you all are the best! Ben Erwin, Helen Lundström Erwin , Julie Smithson Sophia Moshasha , Karen, Evo Heyning , Robin Moulder , Paige Dansinger , , Beth, Elena Maria Piëch Ariane Nicole , Rolando SafetyFirst Masís !
Thank you panel of judges for seeing the magic & to our 3 category presenters: , Cindy Mallory & Alvin Wang Graylin

05/03/2023

Please vote for Helen Lundström Erwin's Foremothers Café, nominated for Best Societal Impact for the 2023 Auggie Awards at ! Voting closes soon- May 4!

https://bit.ly/ForemothersAuggie

The Foremothers Café is a safe space for women and allies and it is where Helen cultivates her regular and important discussion series. The Foremothers Café also has its own special back story inspired by the café featured in Helen's historical novel "Sour Milk in Sheep's Wool," taking place during the women's suffrage movement in early 1900's Sweden. The café was opened and operated by one of the novel's two female lead characters, Hanna, who welcomed allies into the café to discuss and plan how they could implement change. This included securing votes for women during a time in which women still did not have representation in government or the rights to vote.

Fun fact: the novel even features the story of one of Helen's own ancestors!

We worked closely with Helen to design and build an explorable 3D model of her Foremothers Café, based on both descriptions in the novel and direct guidance from Helen herself. She was extremely helpful to us in getting each and every detail just right - narratively, historically and regionally!

Currently hosted on Spatial, she now uses the Foremothers Café regularly to honor the feats of all of our foremothers, and to continue the discussions that move us all forward. The café was even featured in Briar Prestidge's recent 48 Hours in the Metaverse documentary.

It will mean so much to her and to us if you could please take a moment and vote for it! You can easily register for a free account to vote either by email or with LinkedIn. Once logged in, simply click this link to go directly to the Foremothers Café to add your vote!

https://bit.ly/ForemothersAuggie

Thank you!!
XR Women

03/17/2023

We caught the final moment of AltspaceVR as it shut down permanently with us all inside. A somber moment of a frozen crowd, silently blinking and staring at one another while we all enjoyed a final moment of free moment. And then blackness... and then the reconnect screen... interrupted by a farewell message from the official team. And now it's gone 💔

We attended and recorded video the final moments in AltspaceVR as the servers shut down for the last time. Farewell to our favorite platform!