AWE USA 2024

Garett Cook
President & CEO
Red Team Interactive

After reading Ready Player One in 2018 Garett began researching the state of VR technology. This research introduced Garett to a Mixed Reality research lab at his University where he applied to become a research assistant. After getting the job Garett quickly learned how to use the Unity game engine to prototype virtual and augmented reality applications. Using this new knowledge Garett began working on his dream VR game in his spare time. The game idea was simple: an open world VR pirate game where people can be a pirate in VR. The name of the game was Sail.

After building a quick prototype of Sail Garett published it on the newly created indie VR site SideQuest and quickly gained a following around the game. The following became so substantial that Garett decided that after graduating college he would pursue the development full time and ended up turning down a Master’s Degree and full time unity developer position making VR training applications for the United States military.

A single player version of Sail released in 2022 and Garett used the funds from the release to expand his small team and get investors involved with his new startup game studio known as Red Team Interactive. In December of 2023 Sail was updated to become a free-to-play multiplayer experience and quickly grew to have a player base of over 250k players. Garett is currently leading the team as Chief Executive Officer while also taking on all the responsibilities of the marketing surrounding Sail. Garett currently lives in Utah with his wife and 2 kids.