designing for vr
Post on 14-Jul-2015
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Topics • Why VR? • Welcoming our players • The elephant in the room • Best practices • What this means for game design • Rethinking the world • Rethinking pace and flow • Production and budget • The future!
Why VR? • We are on the edge of a huge leap forward in VR
• Hardware is taking huge steps forward, and will keep improving
• In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus for $2 Billion • Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4 and future phones will support
Gear VR. 10 million VR-capable phones in 2015. • Google and other companies invested over $500 million
in Magic Leap, a VR/AR company
• As game designers, working in VR tests our ability to create truly immersive experiences
• Because, seriously, VR is awesome
Welcoming our players • As VR pioneers, one of our first goals is to help
people transition into this new medium
• Remember that as developers, we will quickly get used to VR, and forget how shocking the transition can be
• We have to introduce players to VR gently, even at the expense of gameplay
The elephant in the room
• Oculus is working hard to prevent motion sickness • As developers, we have an interest in this as
well
• At its core, motion sickness happens because of a mis-match between our senses.
• What our eyes see doesn’t match what our body feels, creating confusion
Best practices • Never ever take control of the player’s head
• This includes head bobbing, camera shakes, and zooming • Fixed position in games is the most comfortable, and there’s a
lot of possibilities to explore • Ideally, let the player control their own movement and set
their own pace • If you must move the player:
• Move at a constant speed in one direction, don’t change direction or axis suddenly
• Help them understand where they’re going by using lighting and architecture
• Avoid gameplay that requires looking away from direction of travel
• Read the Best Practices document!
Rethinking the world • HUD must be part of the world, it can’t be glued on
screen
• Don’t strive for too much realism
• Scale is an easy and extremely powerful tool – feeling bigger or smaller is fun!
• Let players get up close and personal with stuff
• No more cheating – you can’t introduce objects into the game from “off-screen”
Rethinking pace and flow • Add a lot of breaks in the action
• Let players explore, remember that just being in
the world is magical • Think of ways to encourage and reward
exploration
• Don’t forget that it’s a game. Have clear objectives and sense of progress.
Production and budget • Be nice to your 3D guys, you’re going to need them!
• The whole world is 3D • 3D budget on Romans VR was 100% more than we anticipated
- and that included tons of assets from the mobile game • 3D artists have to be much more hands-on, and work closely
with both dev and 2D to integrate things into the world
• Leave a lot of overhead for experimenting • This is always true, but especially in new mediums
• Playtest a lot, but trust the research and community
• You won’t be able to test every kind of player, and your testing tools are limited
VR is the future • Like it or not, VR is going to grow in the coming years
• Not just through games, but through cinema, professional and medical apps
• Is it going to be a gimmick or a lasting new medium?
That depends on us, and the experiences we create.
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