Plants vs. Zombies 2 Producer Joins Oculus VR

Virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR has hired Plants vs. Zombies 2: It’s About Time producer Bernard Yee.

Yee, who was Senior Producer at the Electronic Arts-owned Plants vs. Zombies 2 developer PopCap Games, previously worked on Destiny’s companion app at Bungie, Harmonix, Atari, and Sony Online Entertainment’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game EverQuest.

Yee told GamesBeat in an interview that he decided to join Oculus after he saw a demo of Valve’s impressive VR room demo that Steam Dev Days attendees got a chance to try out in January.

“I was really blown away by the level of emotional reaction I had to the demo,” he said. “The virtual reality technology was immersive and made you feel present in a way that games have never done.”

Valve previously said that it’s not likely to release its VR room demo and virtual reality headset, but instead help drive PC VR forward by helping Oculus. Michael Abrash, who helped develop the VR room demo, has since joined Oculus, as did Aaron Nicholls and Atman Binstock, both of whom researched VR at Valve.

Oculus’ high profile hiring spree this year also includes Google Glass engineer Adrian Wong, Bastion programmer Chris Jurney, Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin, and others.