For devs: the issue 'went away' when I launched the game with a debugger attached. Without it, the game would crash while loading. With it attached, the game would continue on to the gamma and exposure calibration screens and then into the main menu. With those completed, I could now launch the game normally (I guess some configuration files were created/adjusted during the process). You might want to look into why that is, I have no interest in pursuing it further now.