Theresa Duringer is a developer on the VR jam game entry called Bazaar, which is a silver game winner in the Oculus mobile VR Jam. She talks about getting into VR development with some of her co-workers and experimenting with different
They noticed that a lot of people tend to look up while playing VR games, but yet there’s usually not a lot of things happening in the sky. They decided to use constellations as part of their puzzle gameplay mechanic.
Another interesting insight that Theresa shared is that it’s difficult for her to judge the merits of the actual gameplay of her VR experience because VR is still so new. With her other console games, it’s a lot easier to know the impact of their game but with VR it can sometimes be difficult to know whether people are responding to experiencing VR technology for the first time or they’re really enjoying the actual game.
When asked about doing future VR development, Theresa said that it in the short-term it really depends on whether or not they win a prize in the jam because there’s not a clear way to make money yet as a VR developer. It can still feel fairly like a high-risk venture for developers to invest time into a VR project when it’s still unproven whether or not it’ll be a viable ecosystem for developers.
For more information on Bazaar, then check out their game jam page here.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.098] Theresa Duringer: I'm Teresa Derringer and I'm working on a game called Bazaar for the Oculus VR Jam that's happening right now. This is my first VR game but I've been doing video game development for almost a decade. I'm having a lot of fun working in the VR space and especially getting to know the community. People are really creative and I'm finding a diverse set of people that are representing perspectives outside of just the video game industry, which is what I'm used to.
[00:00:38.778] Kent Bye: So how did you first go from doing traditional game development and first get into VR development?
[00:00:44.822] Theresa Duringer: Well, I released my first indie game back in September, and I've sort of just been trying to figure out what I'm going to be doing with my life next and sort of just roaming a little bit mentally and project-wise. I started working on a little sushi-themed game. And then some of my friends saw this contest announced on Twitter. And we just thought, you know what? We're working in this shared office. Let's just get together, take a stab at it. They put their game on hold. I put my game on hold. And we just jammed for a while. And it was a pretty intense jam, but super duper fun.
[00:01:19.909] Kent Bye: So yeah, maybe you could tell me a bit about your experience that you created for the VR Jam.
[00:01:23.916] Theresa Duringer: Sure. Bazaar is all inspired by this particular Turkish lantern shop that I visited in Carmel-by-the-Sea when I was on a bike ride with my mom. And I just loved the sort of interesting shapes and colors that I was seeing, and you'll see that if you look at the game. The game is a labyrinth game where you're flying just over this open aqueduct system in this sort of surreal planet, and you're on a flying carpet and trying to collect different interesting trinkets around the world. When you collect those trinkets, you can get rewards, and those rewards are basically your inventory, but there's this kind of fun thing that we came up with, which is your inventory is represented by constellations and the stars. We found this huge real estate of Skye in the VR You know, when you put on a VR headset, a lot of people were just looking up and there was nothing there to look up at. And as a UI person, I thought that was a really, really cool opportunity. The game ended up being a bit of a puzzle game where you're using this inventory of constellations to solve puzzles. There's one thing I think is pretty neat where you build this magic telescope and then you get into this glass district in our world. There's a lot of stained glass that you can't see through, but you can see that there's things you want on the other side. So if you build this magic telescope, you actually have to shut one eye while you're wearing the headset because the visual display shows you black on one side and an image on the other. If you shut one eye, you have this monoscopic view through the telescope, and you can see the items on the other side, which is kind of fun. So we tried to have some fun, tricky little things like that to just play around with what we could do with VR.
[00:02:57.941] Kent Bye: Nice. And yeah, I guess one of the judging criteria for the Game Jam is innovation. So what were some of the innovations that you were trying to make in your experience then?
[00:03:05.514] Theresa Duringer: Well, controls-wise, I think that we kept things really simple. Everything's very gaze-based, which I'm finding a lot of people are coming to that conclusion with the other contestant entries. But one thing I really wanted to do was kind of encourage some immersive behaviors. So as we constructed our tutorial, players can nod their head or shake their head. Nod their head yes or shake their head no to sort of pace themselves through the tutorial. And just, you know, they have to, like, show that they understand just by saying yes physically with their body. And I think that's a neat way to kind of take advantage of that immersive experience visually and bring it into, like, an immersive behavioral experience.
[00:03:48.145] Kent Bye: And so what were some of the things that you learned from doing both your first VR game, but not only that, but doing it on mobile on the Gear VR and the Note 4?
[00:03:56.928] Theresa Duringer: One thing that's tricky is I've been showing the game at Maker Faire and here I am at SVVR and it's really hard to tease apart the joy and magic when people play. Like how much of that is the game and how much of that is just like the virtual reality experience for the first time for many people. I think we kind of figured it was like at Maker Faire like 80% of the people we were demoing to was there for a first VR experience. So just kind of Trying to read feedback accurately and adjust the game based on that without any kind of misgivings about what they're really reacting to has been tricky for me. Because usually I'm coming from developing for console and PC, where people are super used to that experience. So they're really reflecting what they're experiencing with the game rather than the hardware.
[00:04:46.583] Kent Bye: Are there any experiences out there that you kind of went through to get your VR experiences, just to see what other VR experiences are out there and popular in the community?
[00:04:56.383] Theresa Duringer: I'm sharing the headset, so I have a whole ton of games that I'm super duper excited to play, and I haven't got through as many of them as I'd like. So, I think Innovox is another really cool sound experience, and I know that Wendy was a really cool, I really like the, these are all Game Jam entries because that's sort of what I've been focusing on right now for this, but Wendy was a really cool one. just kind of creating this ethereal, interesting little story about this sort of witch. And they did some cool stuff with the music there that I liked. And the Coloss one looks just phenomenal, like elegant, beautiful. The narrative that they created in their trailer was really smartly paced. You know, I tend to try and cram everything in. And so when I see someone who has that finesse, I get kind of jealous and inspired. And your game actually looked really cool. So yeah, I don't know. I'm just really excited to take a day off tomorrow and dive in.
[00:05:53.970] Kent Bye: Awesome. And so, yeah, what do you see as kind of the next steps of kind of dipping your toes into the VR development? And where are you going to go from here?
[00:06:04.012] Theresa Duringer: I think it really depends on how I do in this competition. I'm super honored and thrilled to have become a finalist, but I'm not sure how to make money. So I need to pay my rent and pay my bills and support myself as an indie game developer. So, you know, maybe I'll win a little bit of money and that will be validation that what I worked on was worthwhile and worth continuing development on. If I don't, maybe I need to reevaluate. Is this the right thing to be diving into right now, or is this going to be a hobby project for me? I think I'll have to see how it goes.
[00:06:36.499] Kent Bye: For you, in working with virtual reality for the first time, is there anything that you want to experience in VR?
[00:06:41.730] Theresa Duringer: I think that when the social component really gets fleshed out, that's going to feel really good. I was a super shy kid, and I was always on IRC, and my virtual friends were my friends. When you put on that headset, you're really blocking out so much of the world. and it can be really isolating. Like, when you go to a theme park or have this amazing, ridiculous, awesome experience, you want to look to the person next to you and, like, have that connection and look in their eyes and, you know, just have that shared experience. And VR is one of those weird things where it's so magical and so enveloping, but there's no one to look to to, like, just have a wink at and just have that shared connection that you're experiencing it with someone. So when we get that social component where you can really have other people in the game or in the experience that you're experiencing, I think that will be a really big win.
[00:07:37.382] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential for virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:07:45.714] Theresa Duringer: I think my perspective has changed in the last couple days just getting to know the virtual reality community. I think that people have been a little bit, I don't know, frustrated by some of what the video game industry has brought to the table and I'm hearing perspectives from people in other disciplines like architecture or other kinds of storytelling media. that they really want to see different perspectives and not have this dominated by the same kinds of narratives that you're seeing over and over in video games. And I think that hopefully VR presents a platform that draws in a lot of diverse perspectives from people who haven't had that opportunity to get their viewpoints out there. And I think there's a lot of optimism right now. It's up to us as a community of developers to realize those goals.
[00:08:35.468] Kent Bye: OK, great. Thank you so much.
[00:08:37.068] Theresa Duringer: Thanks a lot.
[00:08:38.348] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening! If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
