The Nordic Trolls is a VR development company based in Beijing, China. I had a chance to catch up with the CEO Thorbjørn Olsen (originally from Norway) and co-founder Lin Chen at CES 2017 to talk about the VR ecosystem in China, the different ways in which the youth of China are changing relative to the older generations, and their development process on Karnage Chronicles.
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Support Voices of VR
- Subscribe on iTunes
- Donate to the Voices of VR Podcast Patreon
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Byeand welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in 2017, it's a show that is incredibly huge. It's got like over 100,000 people and it's spread out across all of Las Vegas, across all these different hotels and the convention center. And you see a lot of the hardware at these different convention center spots and these different hotels have these different things that they're focusing in on. And you tend to see a lot of hardware there at the Consumer Electronics Show, but There, a couple of years ago, back in 2017, there was actually a booth of software developers from China, and they were showing these experiences that they were creating for location-based entertainment. And so they had kind of a cluster of Chinese-related software development firms. So I had a chance to talk to one of the founders and one of the leads of development and production there of a place called Nordic Trolls. Talked to Chen Lin and Thorben Olsen. Thorben was somebody who's from Norway, so he's an expat who'd been in China for about eight years, and Chen Lin is somebody who grew up in China as a mother and is also one of the founders of Nordic Trolls, and so they have a lot of really interesting perspectives on what's happening in China. They're developing these experiences for location-based entertainment, but also just working within the ecosystem of China, and a lot of really interesting perspectives as to what is happening in China. Now I did this interview a couple years ago and I just had a chance to actually travel for myself to China to get a sense of what it was like to be there. I was a little hesitant to just kind of report on everybody else's, what they had to say about China without ever having an actual direct experience myself. And so what I found in my trip to Qingdao was that there was also a lot of other expats that were there at the Sandbox Immersive Festival. And I tended to get a lot of really deep insights as to people that were, from another culture and they had decided to move to China and to work there. And you tend to get this interesting perspective because they're coming from an outsider perspective and being able to kind of take all this new information for the first time. So I actually found that, you know, talking to a lot of the expatriates, really insightful to be able to see like why they were there, what was drawing them and what kind of insights they're having about the larger ecosystem of what's happening there in China. So we're going to be covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Chen Lin and Thorben Olsen happened on Friday, January 6th, 2017 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:46.307] Chen Lin: My name is Lin Chen, Chen Lin in Chinese, and I'm one of the founders of Nordic Trolls. And I'm in the company, I'm basically in charge of anything non-related to development. So all the sidekick things, for example, financing, HR and administration, things like a little bit PR, a little bit marketing, so anything non-related to development.
[00:03:10.960] Thorbjorn Olsen: Also business development, don't forget that. So my name is Torbjörn Ossen. I'm originally from Norway. I moved to China about eight years ago. My job is to take care of all the production and basically development. I'm involved in design, project management, etc. And also I'm the CEO of the company and a founder.
[00:03:32.173] Kent Bye: Nice. And so as I was being here at CES and talking to different people, there seems to be a big presence here from China and Chinese companies, a lot of investment, a lot of government support, a lot of hardware that I've seen, but not a lot of software development that I've seen that is at a certain level of quality and fidelity. So maybe you could tell me a little bit about the background of Nordic Trolls and how you came about and making VR content within the Chinese ecosystem.
[00:04:02.260] Thorbjorn Olsen: All right, so Nordic Trolls as a company started in March last year. We had a startup before that as well, working on some mobile games, which we have brought with us into Nordic Trolls. I moved to China eight years ago, as I said initially, and then I worked with Funcom back then. So I was running Funcom Studio in Beijing and Funcom used to do all the games like Age of Conan, The Secret World, Anarchy Online, etc. After I left them, I started my own thing. And since I was in China, I wanted to continue doing it in China, because that's where I had my resources, access to investors, access to talent. And we also brought a lot of talent from abroad that was looking for a chance to finally get back into PC gaming, console gaming, and making AAA titles. in the last few years, it's mostly mobile. You couldn't get anyone to invest in anything but mobile, but VR has changed all of that. Now everyone is just moving back into AAA titles.
[00:05:00.238] Kent Bye: Yeah, and from your perspective, I'm just curious of the ecosystem to be able to raise funds within China and kind of what's happening to the Chinese ecosystem of virtual reality in terms of the adoption as well as excitement and optimism, I guess.
[00:05:16.191] Chen Lin: Yeah, I think the ecosystem, they wanted to build up platforms. This is our kind of business models. Because like in China, they wanted to be big, you know, the enterprises are very ambitious and they are very brave to try a lot of new things. And the capitals are also very brave. They think, because according to the statistics or calculations of those consulting companies, and they think VR is the next can you call it a calculative platform? You know, before it was like a computer, and then there was mobile phone, and they believe in VR is going to be the next big thing. So they all wanted to jump into this huge potential opportunity right now, when it's just sprouting, right? It's just started. They want it to be the next iPhone, you know, with app stores, this kind of opportunities. And then they want to build up an ecosystem, because for virtual realities, it can be used in so many ways. You know, it's not just one thing. It's not just a game, not just education, not just medical care, not just real estate. It is everything. And then if you can build up a platform and you can push out a lot of great content, then you can actually win the market. And also there is a hardware production as well. And you know, China has been the world factory for many decades. And we have a lot of resources down in the south. That's why they can just make a lot of, at the beginning it was just the cardboards. you know, those very simple ones. But now they are moving forward to some really hardcore technologies. For example, some of our all-in-one machines, you know, from China, they provide a pretty good experience already. But of course, the best, I think personally, is still HTC, and that is developed in Taiwan. So it's still Chinese, kind of Chinese. What I say, the Chinese markets are brave and the Chinese people are curious because we have such a big market to back any industry up and we have a lot of offline arcades. We wanted to bring the people from their studies or bedrooms from their computers back into the shopping malls, back into the offline arcades, entertainment centers. So there are a lot of companies that are doing that as well. And for NordicTrolls, we wanted to provide solutions both for online entertainment and offline entertainment. So we are looking forward, actually, for a lot of people to enjoy our game in the arcade halls.
[00:07:55.899] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that I see that because the Valve's lab demo I think has a lot of mechanics. I think they were proven out pretty early in terms of bow and arrow and shooting arrows and I think that I see that in the Carnage Chronicles where you're actually using the bow and arrow and have also close quarter combat with daggers as well as both you have the wizard as well as the archer and so the archer is able to both shoot arrows as well as you know in close quarters use daggers and then the warrior can also use a sword and then use a crossbow where you kind of do a motion where you're kind of reeling a fishing rod sort of motion. But given that I think that it's sort of a satisfying mechanic that I think the thing that is unique and different that I think you're doing is just having a very distinct art style and high production quality such that you really feel transported, and I could see this as one of the games that are in the arcades. I'm just curious to hear more about your design that you're trying to go for of creating this type of experience.
[00:08:56.164] Thorbjorn Olsen: Okay, so what we wanted to go for, okay, first of all, our background is from the gaming industry, the AAA, as I mentioned before, and we wanted to provide a AAA experience in VR. We play a lot of VR games, we test almost everything that comes out, and when we started working on Carnage Chronicles about four or five months ago, we couldn't really find anything. Most of what was out there was demos, or tech demos. There was one game that inspired us, and that was Vanishing Realms. It's like, okay, cool. We have melee combat, we have ranged combat, it all works in VR. Let's go forward and do this. So, we had already developed Carnage as an IP, we have been working on Carnage for a mobile game for a long time, so we have the stories, we have everything set, the world is ready, so we decided to move forward doing that. Make Carnage into a full 3D environment, triple A quality, give people everything they want that we can possibly provide from games like Dungeons and Dragons, or even taking inspiration from World of Warcraft and put it into a VR world. Design it so that you can play it single player, the truth between different classes, archer, warrior, healer, mage, and other classes that will come later, and also then open up, hey guys, we were thinking, we need to have multiplayer. Multiplayer Dungeon Crawl, that's gonna be epic in VR. So we did that as well, we put in the co-op two player right now, and later we're gonna open up for four player before we go live on Steam, Endo Q1, with an early access. So basically everything we do here, we do as gamers, right? We're just putting in what we really want to feel ourselves when we're inside a game. Like, let's do it. It's not there. We're gonna make it. That's our thinking.
[00:10:42.253] Kent Bye: Awesome. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the VR arcade ecosystem that's coming up in China. I've heard a little bit about it from HTC's Alvin Graylin, told me a little bit about the numbers of VR arcades. And there's a lot more in China that I think are already starting and then kind of projecting out to be a lot more VR arcades. And so maybe you could just tell me a bit about why are VR arcades really taking off in China? Like, what's happening?
[00:11:08.252] Chen Lin: Why is it going to take off in China? Yeah, yeah. It's a very interesting question. For our investor slash publisher, Magical World, they are a full ecosystem company. And we learned a lot from our partner. That's how they are laying out their strategy. They cooperate with shopping malls, you know, movie theaters. So we have all these big theater lines, you know, and they've signed a strategic contracts so they probably just offer a piece of space so people before they enjoy the movie because that's the largest flow of youngsters, the curious youngsters, people who like to try the new stuff and the cool stuff and experience things. so they give some space and then they can share revenues and they also have a shopping malls and they also have another kind of even home appliance like Best Buy you know so there are large flow of traffic of customers and also related to you know the headsets you know the hardware so that they can sell over there so they have all kinds of this kind of a strategic partnerships with different entities. So there can be thousands of them. And they also have theme parks in the shopping malls. Because during the past 16 years, the Chinese real estate market just boomed like a rocket. And then a lot of investors invested a lot of shopping mall space, a huge comprehensive office towers, a shopping mall, and they have a lot of empty spaces because it's too expensive. And now with this offline arcade system, they can actually cooperate with these real estate tycoons so they can provide space and we can provide the contents and then we can bring people to their empty space and that's good for them as well and then also because now the young people they were born in the 80s in the 90s soon after the millennium these are new young Chinese people and they have lived a much different life from the people who are before you know the older Chinese people that probably the stereotype of Chinese people because the young Chinese people they like to spend money on entertainment Some of our friends spend tens of thousands RMB just for a mobile phone game. They really do. So we believe a very bright future is because we have a large population. We still have that population. And we have a large population of youngsters who like to try cool things, who like to spend money. So that is why we are very confident for the future, especially for the offline arcades, because we have the traffic, we have the flow.
[00:14:03.204] Thorbjorn Olsen: I can pitch in with a little bit there as well, as seen from my point of view, especially as a westerner. I mean, in the West, arcades have been dying for a long, long time. It's not much arcades left, and there are many reasons for that. But in China, regular arcades, the classic arcades, they still exist, and people also go to internet cafes to play games, so they're used to the whole social thing, playing together, watching other people play and having other people watch them play.
[00:14:29.195] Chen Lin: They stream it online also. So the eSport, even the mobile phone eSport games, they have a lot of stream. The people just watching online and they can be like hundreds of thousands of hits just for one stream of eSport mobile phone game. Yeah, so it's a lot of the entertainment is actually probably the best industry in China right now.
[00:14:52.604] Thorbjorn Olsen: The entertainment industry is great there and you always see couples going together. Couples going together to arcade halls and things like that, that's the thing. They play together, they try everything together and it really helps to drive the traffic. Especially as a guy, you bring your girlfriend and the girlfriend wants to play with you, that's awesome. It just works.
[00:15:10.778] Chen Lin: the hero for her in the game, killing the monsters for her. And also the parents bring their little kids. And Chinese people, we spoil our kids. If we don't buy anything for ourselves, we will save the money for our kids. So if my son says, I want to play this game. Mom, and there's, OK, here's the money. You play the game. And if he comes back, Mom, I want to play again. Will you play with me? OK, I will play with you. So that is something we wanted to work on.
[00:15:38.454] Kent Bye: And for you, moving into China, was that part of that there was money to do the type of game development that you wanted to do to kind of move from mobile into PC gaming again? And maybe you could talk about your motives and incentives to move into China and then work into this ecosystem in that way.
[00:15:57.285] Thorbjorn Olsen: So I basically moved to China because I was curious, adventurous. I wanted to experience something else than Norway and to live in a very, to me, exotic place. And China is definitely an exotic place that I read a lot about, heard a lot about, watched a lot of movies, especially kung fu movies and stuff like that. So it's like, yeah, China is cool. And I happened to just visit China during some business trips on behalf of Funcom. And I completely fell in love with the place. And when there was an opportunity for me to run the Funcom studio in Beijing, I jumped at that. And that was the PC gaming industry. But it went downwards, especially for Funcom, unfortunately. And I found myself something new to do, and I started in mobile gaming. But mobile gaming, for me as a hardcore gamer, is really not the thing. I like and I enjoy playing some mobile games, and I do enjoy developing for them. But my passion is AAA titles for PC and consoles. So when we finally got the opportunity to do so, because investment is easier to get in China for VR, we just went full ahead for that.
[00:17:06.652] Kent Bye: And so how were you able to recruit talent and get people? Did you have a lot of people moving into China for the first time to start working with you then?
[00:17:15.690] Chen Lin: We have, like, nine employees from old Funcom office.
[00:17:20.172] Thorbjorn Olsen: Basically, we find it kind of easy-slash-hard. It's a mix, really. We do find a lot of talent in China, but it was very difficult to recruit for mobile. Also, bringing people from abroad to work on mobile games was really, really hard. It was only when we started doing VR titles for PC that people were like, yeah, we're on board, we're on board. We are moving to Beijing. And now we don't find it hard at all to get people to come.
[00:17:49.425] Kent Bye: And so maybe you could talk a bit about Miwo as a distribution platform and how that kind of fits into the Chinese ecosystem there.
[00:17:55.698] Chen Lin: Yeah, basically we said MiWu was a platform created by Magical World. And Magical World is an ecosystem company in VR industry. They do a lot of things, but I think the most clever thing they have done is to invest in so many talented startup companies. Because the founder of Magical World, Ariel Liu, who is a very dear friend of mine, she has the vision. She has been from the gaming industry. She used to work for Sega, a Japanese company. She has been in the gaming industry for decades. And she believes that without good content, the VR cannot go anywhere, cannot move forward. In this case, very early, like since the year before last year, since the beginning of 2016, she was going wild on the market to find all the great teams. She is flying both sides of the Pacific Ocean to recruit from the US and recruit from China, Japan, South Korea. So any teams with the potential, she would just go and get them and help them with the funds behind her. She had a VR fund and she was just getting all the companies. very quickly, made very quick decisions. When she looked at us, she said, you're not gold, you're diamond. Because, she says, most of the Chinese mobile companies, they cannot deliver a AAA title VR game. but you can because you have the MMORPG, the AAA title, PC game experience. So she believed in us within like four hours, I think four hours we talked and then she gave us the angel investment for our VR company. And they wanted to build up this platform with all these original generated contents on this platform. So they invested not just for games, they also have videos and VR movies, education, and so a lot of stuff that they're doing. And they really hope we can do it together and move it forward together.
[00:20:25.652] Kent Bye: And so I know that HTC has VivePort, as well as Valve has the SteamVR. And is this something where Magical Worlds, as well as MiWu, are they going to have like their equivalent to their Steam distribution platform to have their own VR arcades? Or how do they kind of fit all together?
[00:20:43.509] Thorbjorn Olsen: They are working on having something similar. They already have something similar up and running. So in the VR arcades, you can start the games basically straight from the platform. Of course, you have to install it on the drive, but it's similar. And custom made for the Chinese market, basically.
[00:20:57.735] Chen Lin: I don't think there is any distribution platform in the offline arcades yet. Mostly, they are just online distribution channels. So for them, they are doing a lot of the offline arcade thing.
[00:21:11.882] Kent Bye: I see. And so when I see here at CES, I see a lot of different mobile headsets from China, and a lot of them are of varying different qualities. I haven't seen any Chinese headset that's been on the equivalent of the major five headsets, either the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR. Google Daydream is, I think there's probably some equivalence in terms of that's probably on the low end. I feel like a lot of the headsets that I've seen so far are kind of like at the bottom rung. Even the PlayStation VR is still at another quality. And so for you, as you're developing for VR in this ecosystem, are there other competitors out there in terms of the Chinese headsets that are being used in these? Or is it mostly you see the HTC Vive being used?
[00:21:57.220] Thorbjorn Olsen: For our development for PC, it's only two headsets that counts, Oculus and the Vive, of course. For console, it's still PS VR. There is no competitors that we know of at the moment.
[00:22:09.777] Kent Bye: And so I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, like what's going to happen to all of these Chinese headsets that I see here, and what's going to, like, if they're actually getting any penetration in the marketplace, I guess. Is it mostly mobile?
[00:22:22.947] Chen Lin: You know, China is a country, a big country. It's not very balanced, developed. So part of the country, like Beijing, Shanghai, those countries, they are like very advanced, developed, like Western countries. And there are also a lot of villages. In China, we divide them like a Tier 1 city, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, Tier 5. So they have different levels of customers. So like for us, because we're in Beijing, well of course we always go to the international big brand, but for those people who are living in tier three, four, five, remote areas, they haven't really understand the, it would take some time to educate them. What is VR? How do we play VR? And if they wanted to buy, maybe they wanted to try from the cheaper ones first. And then maybe in a couple of years, those big titles, like big brands with their developments more advanced, the cost will be lowering down as well. And the people then they can go to the markets, more remote markets. For example, like for mobile phones, the Apple and Samsung, they started from tier one city, but I also know in tier two, tier three, tier four, five, all the youngsters, they will save up a lot of money to buy the Apple phones and Samsung phones. But still, there are a lot of people who don't think it's important to have expensive hardware. And then they go for a lot of the cheaper Chinese phones. And even for Xiaomi and Huawei, Huawei is more expensive, right? But for Xiaomi, it started with a very, very cheap price. a good enough experience so young people without a lot of money, they can try the cool stuff on the much cheaper device. Even though it might not be as smooth as Apple, they can still realize most of the functions and that's okay. And then they can save up the money for the future. And then so is for the VR sets. So now they can use a little bit of money to at least understand what a VR is. And then in the future, when the big brands become cheaper and they have more money, they will upgrade their equipment.
[00:24:46.859] Kent Bye: Yeah, it seems like the smartphone market has been able to penetrate into these Tier 1 cities, as you call them, in that, do you foresee that people are going to start to buy hardcore VR-ready computers to be able to actually play VR within their home, or do you see that it's mostly going to stay in VR arcades for a while?
[00:25:05.438] Chen Lin: I think VR arcades first, definitely. But we also think of mobile, VR mobile. We wanted to develop something for the mass market and we think this will probably go first. Yeah.
[00:25:18.730] Kent Bye: What do you think it is? Do you think that it's just a matter of money and expense or space or cultural?
[00:25:23.535] Chen Lin: They have the phone already.
[00:25:24.756] Kent Bye: Well, I'm just wondering in terms of eventually if you feel like that there's going to be a consumer market for VR.
[00:25:30.583] Thorbjorn Olsen: Well, we feel that it's the price point. Price point, of course, right now it's the early adapters that just want to have everything new and try it out, and actually are willing to spend the money on it as well. They go for it. And we see the sales, when it comes to Vive, Oculus, etc., has already tapered off greatly, right? And talking with people, ourselves, and interviewing people, we always hear the same thing. Price point is too costly. And second, not enough good content out there. Waiting for good content, long gaming experiences and other experiences in VR. And last, it's the first generation hardware. It will wait to the second, maybe third, to make sure that what they spend their money on, if it's going to be still as expensive, is actually something that will be good enough and last for a while.
[00:26:16.922] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think that's different. It seems like a more robust gaming ecosystem here in the United States. People who already have a lot of the PCs that are able to drive a high-end virtual reality experience. And so for them, it's just a matter of getting the headset. But there may not be as many gamers like that in China, it sounds like.
[00:26:35.612] Thorbjorn Olsen: Actually, I just want to point out something. Carnage Chronicles, for instance, are running at a smooth 90 FPS at a 970 NVIDIA card. And a medium spec PC, so it's possible to actually not have just a high-end right now if the developers just optimize enough for it.
[00:26:52.713] Chen Lin: And during these two days here, when we see our customers, after they play our game, they say, I got to get one of these. I got to get one of these. So you see, this is how the content driven the hardware market move forward. Most of the people, they were afraid, if I buy this, what do I do with it? So now, if there are a lot of great contents there, and there will be, probably just this year, 2017, there will be lots and lots of contents out in the market, and then that will make people want to buy.
[00:27:24.990] Thorbjorn Olsen: Actually, we had a really good quote here. So he was trying the game and when he was done, he was super excited and super happy and basically what he said was like, the future of VR is three years in the future. Well, that's what he had been thinking. But after trying the game, he said, but you have it now. So that was like, wow, you really like it that much? We're just blown away.
[00:27:46.410] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that, you know, there's this triple legs on a stool where you have the technology is driving the content and having the audience. So, you know, they're kind of going back and forth. We've got pretty much the stable hardware. There's still innovations that are happening, but yet, you know, we've got the content that's being developed and the audience. And so I think it's sort of going back and forth, back and forth between those. And that, you know, one of the things that Alvin Graylin from HCC, he's the president of the Chinese region for HCC. And so what he said was that there's a lot of people who, if they can sell virtual reality as an educational use case, that there's a lot of parents who would be paying for either English tutoring, and they could see that there's a way to potentially in the long run get a better, more immersive education from VR, then the Chinese parents will be willing to pay for that.
[00:28:39.545] Chen Lin: Yeah, I'm just curious to hear that. That's totally true. We pay everything for our kids, no matter what. You know, like, especially when it's for education. Just for fun, maybe not, but for education, we will spend no matter what. Yeah.
[00:28:56.319] Thorbjorn Olsen: I always like to pull this analogy because I really believe in VR and education combined. It's like, you're sitting there, you're at school, reading about, let's say, Time of the Dinosaurs. Alright, flipping through the book, you see some cool pictures or drawings basically, everything. You see this scale model, a human standing next to a T-Rex. Okay, he's big. But you don't understand how big it is. It's just big. And then you put on HD Survive headsets, for instance. You're suddenly in a prehistoric jungle. Walking around, it's pretty, it's cool. And you start hearing sounds, footsteps coming closer. Boom. Boom. Maybe a little bit of shaking. And then suddenly you have this huge foot next to you and you start looking up and it's like far up there, there's the head of the T-Rex looking down upon you. That's when you really get it. And there's so many instances of this, examples of this, for VR and education combined. You have to just make it stick in your mind much quicker.
[00:29:59.570] Chen Lin: For example, travelling in space. You can go visit all our planets, the solar system. Travelling into your body, you recognise there's a heart. There's just so much we can do with VR.
[00:30:14.115] Kent Bye: And it sounds like because there is that educational angle, as well as what Alvin had told me, was that China doesn't want to just be seen as a manufacturing arm of the world, but yet they want to be seen as a leader of innovation. And so they've the Chinese government actually investing a lot into virtual reality companies and technologies. And so is this something that either Magical Worlds or MiWu is getting additional funding from the government?
[00:30:37.560] Chen Lin: Yeah, they are also working on that. Because during last year in our office, you know, their office, we're together actually in the same building, and we have the government people constantly coming in, like the Minister of Culture and the Minister of science, you know, institutions, you know, the head principles of science and technology institutions, and also the local government, you know, from other cities, they are like the mayors and president of the provinces, they all come to visit Magical World because they wanted to learn what is this. all very curious and when they say wow this is cool and then they probably think and then we can go back home and you know go back to my local government I'm gonna have a big science park you know to incubate a lots of developers so we can go to this industry and maybe most of them might die but still it's never hurt to try you know
[00:31:41.780] Thorbjorn Olsen: Yeah, it never hurts to try. It's actually funny you ask that question, because recently Chen Lin and I have been holding a couple of speeches in front of important people in China forums, talking about China as the next innovative superpower. Because basically, through my Western eyes, being in China for soon a decade, interacting with the society and the Chinese people, I've seen this gradual change, first in the consumer market, that they don't want to accept shitty products anymore. And they don't want to accept copycat products either. They want the real deal. And as Chen Lin has mentioned, they're not willing to pay the money for the real deal as well. And this has started to reflect in developers as well, from hardware to software, that shit. We cannot just copy other games anymore. We need to think ourselves. We need to bring our own ideas to the table. And it's a gradual process now that is going just faster and faster and faster. And we especially see it in the younger people in their 20s. They don't want to listen to their old bosses anymore. They want to do the real thing. Don't tell them to copy something. They will not do it. They will leave you and they will start their own company and they will do something original.
[00:32:55.252] Chen Lin: Our employees, we have hired a lot of very talented artists. And those kids, they were born during the 90s, so 1992, 1990. three, those young kids, and they were the new Chinese. And a lot of the people who join us, they speak a certain amount of English, have been influenced by Western culture a lot. And most of them don't even watch a lot of, they probably only watch American TVs or American movies and European movies and play only games from Steam that they purchase, right? Because before in China, even in the 80s, I was born in the 80s, I still had gone through some hardship when China just started to open up. My generation still had a little bit difficulty of spending money on games or something. But the young Chinese, they don't care. It's entertainment. That's something you pay for. Like we all go to the cinema to watch the Hollywood movies, the superhero movies. You know, in the Chinese market, the movies are like easily, even, wow, that movie, Blizzard, movie a lot of people criticized it especially in the West but they still got like 1.5 billion RMB sale in Chinese market because those people they were fans of Blizzard they were fans of wow they've been following the game for their entire youth so like for 10 years and then when the game came out okay I don't care if it's a good movie or bad movie I'm going to watch it because that's my youth and my memory I invested all my time and energy and money in it So the young people now, they are cool. We have lots and lots of really cool Chinese kids and their creativity is way better than the older generations. And they like to, you know, see, we have those characters from Carnage, you know, the monsters, you know, created this from our young Chinese artists. So that is very unique, super creative. I think they are proud of their own work as well because that's original, that's not copy.
[00:35:09.779] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think one of the things that Alvin said is that there's been a very strong emphasis of math and science but yet the arts is something that hasn't been as emphasized within the culture of Chinese parents and so him just sharing some anecdotes of people going into Tilt Brush for the first time and being able to paint and draw and just have their minds blown and that they really responded to it and it felt like that there was a mostly ignoring of the importance of the arts and creativity and that virtual reality in a lot of ways is actually bringing that out of both the entertainment side but also for Chinese people to actually express their creativity but also to include that within their education and to see that as a crucial part of their education to have that balance between having these entertainment experiences but also creative expression experiences they're able to perhaps make them top performers in math and science to be able to have a more holistic approach to education. So I just thought that was interesting as well.
[00:36:07.513] Chen Lin: A lot of young moms, like moms my generation, we especially have received more education and Western influence. And when we were taking care of our kids nowadays, we wanted to find clever ways to teach them instead of just traditional ways. We are trying to look all over the place on the internet or all resources. We have a lot of, you know, the Chinese, we call them self-media, you know, on WeChat. They have these moms and daddies, they have received their education abroad. dealing businesses with Westerners and they have seen how the Western educational system to help the kids become creative and innovative. So they established their media and then they try to influence more parents how to teach their kids in a different way to make them more creative. and they even selling a lot of products, like educational products, from US. Recently I just subscribed a magazine called High Five, that's from US, for my kid. So now young and young, more and more young parents, they pay a lot of attention to bring up their kids in an innovative way, like we send them to art schools, we send them to Lego schools, we send them to robot schools, and early educations, It's happening a lot. So that will be better for the future.
[00:37:38.962] Kent Bye: Yeah, to me coming into CES the first interview I did was with Alvin talking about China and it just immediately became clear to me all the different institutional pressures and cultural pressures that are really putting virtual reality as almost like a top priority for the entire country to be able to help invest government funds and money to really catalyze the ecosystem in this new immersive technology and that in America it's not as taking off with as much institutional support in that way and so To me, it's really fascinating to hear as you're working on this AAA game with this type of art styles and yet having high-level government officials come in and kind of see what you're doing and interfacing in a sort of official government capacity to see those funds that are being put into these technologies. But it's really the gaming and a lot of the interactive experiences that are really on the leading edge of what the people who are young are wanting to use it for and that you kind of have to have the games first before you can have like the really robust both the content pipelines but also the interaction design to be able to have the best optimized educational experiences. I think there's going to be a lot of lessons that are coming from the gaming first before they can actually have everything in place to be able to create some of the most amazing educational experiences.
[00:38:53.416] Chen Lin: In China, we have a lot of schools, they have already started to teach kids, you know, they have like an AR classroom. So some of the very top tier schools in Beijing, they have this VR, AR classroom with very expensive, that AR computer. I don't know from which developer, I'm not so sure. But I saw the pictures, they have like eight machines in that class and kids are sitting around to learn from AR software.
[00:39:28.053] Thorbjorn Olsen: I basically think that the Chinese government especially have understood the power of VR and AR and what the future can hold when it comes to utilizing the power as well. I mean, in Europe as well, European governments, they don't really care much for VR and AR yet either. There's no push for it. But in China, President Xi said just a few months ago that AR and VR is going into the five year plan and it's a national focus all the way from the top.
[00:39:59.078] Kent Bye: Wow.
[00:40:01.099] Thorbjorn Olsen: So basically what I want to say is unless Western governments wake up, you know, Asia and especially China is going to just power ahead, you know, and just develop everything. And then people are starting to lag behind, which is not good.
[00:40:17.914] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what I might be able to enable? Have you watched the Westworld?
[00:40:38.244] Chen Lin: I don't know.
[00:40:40.065] Thorbjorn Olsen: That's the first time I have that question, actually. It's kind of cool. Well, for me, the ultimate potential, well, I can definitely see that we are getting more and closer and closer to the time where people stop living in flesh space and just go for virtual reality. I think that's the ultimate potential, that people are going to shift their life into a virtual reality world, not with the current hardware we have. That's not going to happen. But ultimately, because the FlashBase doesn't fulfill their desires and their fantasies, basically.
[00:41:08.342] Chen Lin: You know what I want to say? The ultimate potential is called infinity. infinity so we finally get rid of this body and live in matrix but a much better matrix yeah that's the ultimate and I want that because then I will live forever
[00:41:30.220] Thorbjorn Olsen: We kind of had this funny discussion sometimes in the studio, right? I guess everyone, especially game developers and creative people have that. It's like, okay, so what if this world we're living in right now is actually a virtual world, right? And maybe the worlds that we came from is just, they're too fantastic, so we wanted something that doesn't have magic and all these kind of things, right? And then we're going back to creating the magical worlds and then we want to live in those instead. It's like a circle, it's like going around and around and around and around.
[00:41:58.417] Chen Lin: Because if not, then death will be such a horrible thing. But if it is, I'm looking forward to that. To find out. So yes, there you have it.
[00:42:12.249] Thorbjorn Olsen: Ultimates beat death.
[00:42:16.033] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:42:19.205] Thorbjorn Olsen: I would just say, first of all, Kent Bye, thank you for the interview. I really appreciate it. And to all gamers out there, check out Carnage Chronicles, especially when it comes to Steam. We're going into early access in late Q1. And you just hope you will enjoy it, because we do. And we are super passionate about providing you the best gaming experience in VR possible.
[00:42:42.633] Chen Lin: And thank you very much for Voices of VR. So actually we can carry out our voice as a VR developer through this media. Thank you so much.
[00:42:54.009] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you.
[00:42:54.830] Chen Lin: Thank you. Awesome. I think we had a great interview.
[00:42:59.790] Kent Bye: So that was Chen Lin, she's one of the founders of Nordic Trolls, and Thorben Olsen, he's the head of production and development at Nordic Trolls. So, I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, yeah, just to see that there are some AAA gaming studios that are, you know, existing in China was interesting to see, especially in the context of CES, which was you know, filled with a lot of different technology and hardware companies. And so Carnage Chronicles has been released and was something that I could see how it would be very appealing to have a game like that in the location-based entertainment, just to be able to do these multiplayer and to be able to have a wide range of different roles and different weapons and you know, just a diversity of different gameplay. And, you know, as developers, they just wanted to have these direct experiences and wanted to have a AAA game. And it sounds like a lot of the people that were involved with Nordic Trolls are coming from having to develop a lot of mobile games, where many of them seem to be, you know, perhaps PC gamers. And so they're kind of hardcore gamers just having the luxury of being able to develop some of these AAA titles. So it seems like that in China, that there's a lot more investment for these types of experiences, but also that it's kind of an interesting mix between this particular company having a lot of native Chinese people as well as a number of different expatriates and local talent kind of all blended together in this kind of unique combination. And that's something that I saw as well as to, you know, at Kingdao, that there was a number of different expatriate people who would move from other countries and a wide range of different motivations and incentives and things that really drawing them to that place, whether it was the available income and investment or the culture or the exotic sort of adventure nature of what it means to be living in China. And yeah, so it was just interesting to hear from, you know, kind of the indie VR developer type of crowd, how the major headsets there were a lot of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, and that a lot of the other headsets that, you know, they don't spend a lot of time, you know, either debugging or working with too much in that. as developers, they're kind of at the top tier and wanting the best hardware that's available. And that doesn't seem like there's a lot of other VR headsets that have come out that are really pushing the edge when it comes to the quality scale, at least for what they're doing for development. And, you know, one of the things that I really got from this interview was just to get a lot more insight into the different trends in the culture. Just someone like Chen Lin, who was born in the 1980s, she was somebody who, over time, the whole culture was opening up a lot more, and that one of her top priorities now, as she has a child, is to give everything that she can in terms of education and opportunity for that child. That was one of the things that Alvin Graylin had said was that, you know, if a parent in China can have some sort of way to give their child an extra opportunity, then they will put a lot of their investment and money and resources into doing whatever they can to support the education and development of their children. And so it's really interesting to hear from Qinlin a lot of the different ways in which that she was having on WeChat group discussions with other parents and subscribing to different magazines and to have her child go and experience these different things, and that the children and the youth of China are very into having entertainment experiences, and that they're willing to pay for them, and that it sounds like there's a bit of a, perhaps a conflict between having money and resources from their parents on some of these entertainment, and whether or not they want to invest in their education, or have them be able to have access to these types of entertainment experiences. It sounds like that the youth were highly influenced by a lot of these different types of Western culture being able to have access to a lot of these movies and that, you know, things are really changing when it comes to other generations. And so I think there's probably more and more of a generation gap, especially as some of these youth are growing up with technology. I think that Jenny Gao was talking about how, you know, she didn't have her phone until she was like maybe seven or eight and that you know, kids in China were getting access to some of this mobile phone technology as young as two years old. And my impression of just, you know, walking around in Qingdao, China and being in China just for like three days, that I did see quite a lot of people that were kind of tethered to their phone and either chatting or talking or, you know, connecting to them either as they're walking down the street or sitting around or even as they're driving around their cars or on their scooters, kind of having their phone in their hand and being able to either you know, have in discussion and conversation and dialogue through WeChat or sending voice messages. Yeah, it just was kind of something that was just in part of the fabric of their reality. And that, you know, as these huge cities, they're just looking for more and more entertainment opportunities. So that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a donor to the Patreon. This is a listener supported podcast. And so I do rely upon your donations and your membership in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
