I interviewed Complex 7 director Fins at Venice Immersive 2023. See more context in the rough transcript below.
This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.
Music: Fatality
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at immersive storytelling, experiential design, and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So continuing on my series of looking at different experiences from Venice Immersive 2023, this is episode number 13 out of 35 of that series, and the fifth out of five of looking at the context of place, home, and the environment. So this piece is called Complex 7, which is a VR chat world by Fens, who last year had a piece called District Roboto. This is kind of like the sequel to that, where you're in this kind of speculative sci-fi world where robots have kind of taken over and there's not really a lot of humans around. And so you're kind of exploring around these different cities where these robots are living in them. And so the primary contextual domain is looking at this sense of home. You start off in a comfy home, but I think this piece is actually also got this kind of adventure component because you're going off into the cityscape and you're actually going through a lot of these liminal spaces from where you go from your home and out into the streets and you're kind of commuting throughout the course of your neighborhood. So there's kind of a neighborhood context, but also the larger city. And in the center of the city, there's kind of a fusion between nature and these different cityscapes. So this is the first draft of the piece. Finns actually isn't finished with the piece. He's going to be launching the official released version for Raindance this year. But this was a first take of being able to go through this transition of starting in a home, kind of like this comfy home, and all the things that Finns is trying to do with trying to create this comfortable home, and then these kind of liminal transitional spaces into this more cityscape. So the primary center of gravity of presence is it's very much an environmental experience of very exquisite lighting throughout the course of this piece. And you have the sense of embodied presence just by the nature of being within VRChat. You have these different avatars and are able to kind of move around with a sense of your own embodiment. And also there's a lot of environmental storytelling that's happening in here. And there's a lot of mental presence trying to figure out what the deeper backstory and the context is for this world that he's created. As he moves forward, he's going to have more explicit things that you can start to read from these different robots and get different dialogue to get a lot more context for this world and how it came to be. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Fens happened on Thursday, August 31st, 2023 at the Venice Immersive Festival in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:36.963] Fins: Hi. Yeah, I'm Vince, and I'm a world creator. I used to be a 2D concept artist, a freelancer, but I recently joined VRChat as a 3D artist, and currently I'm making immersive world. That's about it.
[00:02:51.213] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR.
[00:02:56.128] Fins: Yeah, so five years ago I downloaded VRChat after I saw it on YouTube and I've been always the kind of guy who loved making like world and maps and little custom games and building even sims, the sims and all that kind of stuff. So when I found out that you can make like environment and you can invite people to it on VRChat, I was sold. Like instantly I got talking to it and I downloaded the game and I got started. But at the time, I wasn't that good with 3D creation. I was a 2D artist at heart. So 3D was a bit challenging for me to get into. Even though I have some previous experience in playing around, not like professionally, but playing around with like Blender for my concept art and doing some basic game engine stuff like Unity was like completely new to me. But yeah, it's been a journey of five years. And well, last year I was hired by VRChat and become a full-time professional 3D artist.
[00:03:49.673] Kent Bye: Nice. And how many other artists or world builders does VRChat have on their roster? Just me. Just you. So you're the only world builder. So any world that's in VRChat and the official releases probably have your fingerprints on it?
[00:04:02.343] Fins: Pretty much, yeah. So since from here to last year, I would say the Steel and Gold remaster, which is our most recent release, and the New Year Eve 2023, and the Spookality 2022 is my work.
[00:04:17.584] Kent Bye: Great. And so I know we had a chance to talk about some of your experiences that you had at Venice last year. And so let me talk about how this project was a follow-on sequel from one of the worlds that you had created last year called District Roboto, which I guess was inspired to some extent by the video game of Stray. So maybe you could give the lineage of inspiration for how we got to here this year.
[00:04:37.578] Fins: Yeah, of course. So Koala, the person who was the co-founder of the game Stray, is kind of like my spiritual mentor when it comes to lighting. I discovered him back in 2017 or 16. I was like playing around with Unreal Engine. So I browsed the forums and I saw him giving out all those lighting tutorials and projects that you can download and open it in your own Unreal Engine. And I was just amazed by the lighting that he did. at the time, so I was absorbed, but at the time I was also still mostly a 2D artist, so I wasn't getting that much into it. But over the years, he made a pitch for a game called Project HK, I think it stands for Hong Kong, and I was immersed in how he built the lighting in that world. And there was this very prototype scene that he built with a little robot and some cat walking around. It's very simple but the lighting was amazing even though there was no texture whatsoever. So down the line, even though I've been waiting for the project to complete, I knew it was coming. And I wanted to make a little homage, a little love letter. to the very person who inspired me to take on the journey to become like a 3D artist and a lighting artist. So I made District Roboto which is like heavily inspired by Stray and a lot of it were like reference to the world of Stray and you have robot and you have cats. It's very much the same. Same with like Complex 7. Complex 7 was like a sequel to that because like Roboto was a nice world, but it was just all visuals, right? People come in here, nice robot, nice lighting, but people don't really understand the world. Like, why robot? Why cats? Why is it like this? And Complex 7 is to expand on that, to take my own little twist on my own universe and why the world is the way it is right now. So it's more narrative in environment, the whole telling, more narrative based. When it finish, there will be gameplay and more piece that help people understand the world better.
[00:06:37.545] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah. So you, I had a chance to get a little sneak peek guided tour from you before coming out to Venice, which I thought was really helpful because you're adding a lot of the other context of the different scenes and a little bit of the backstory. And so imagine though that by the time the piece comes out, you're going to have a lot of that. That's either like, I guess, how are you going to tell, part of that story relative to when you were giving me a guided tour, you're able to explain everything, but how do you expect that people are going to experience aspects of that environmental storytelling or are there going to be little audio snippets or little pieces of text or is it all just going to be embedded into the environment for people to extrapolate what this world may be like?
[00:07:17.872] Fins: So, when it comes to environmental storytelling, I try to make it as accessible as possible, right? Because VRChat, unlike Sandlot game, VRChat is an international global phenomenon where everyone come and enjoy the world and I try to make it in a way that transcends language barrier. and in a way that people understand it. So even though there's gonna be English and text in here that requires some understanding, I hope in a way that I can reinforce a universal feeling where people can look at that and they understand exactly what's going on. So hopefully in the final version I can make that more clear. And also I plan on add narrative to the NPC, give them more personality. Maybe they're going to be chat box and stuff. Of course, I'm going to try to have as much localization as possible, translation to different language. A lot of my fans are from other community, like Japanese or Korean community, where sometimes they can't enjoy the world as much. And I take the effort to try to include translation. And I found it to be very effective because sometimes they feel that they are left out. So yeah, in the final projects, the robot probably will talk to you in some capacity. They will give you like fresh quests, give you little side quests here and there. Kind of like, I would say, encourage you to try to form a relationship with this robot, like the way that you form a relationship with a human. And for doing that, you are rewarded with like more place to explore or place that you didn't think that were accessible now is accessible. And the more you do that, the more the story open up and the story make more sense as you do that.
[00:08:59.340] Kent Bye: Yeah, more follow-ons for where you see the future of those chatbots, but first I want to set a bit more context of the piece because I feel like it's kind of in like three major parts that I see where you're in this really cozy home and you know that's a whole genre within VRChat of the comfy places for people to set as their home worlds, but then you have a whole city that you go outside and then you're entering into this whole other realm where you're more in this liminal space of kind of in between these different complexes and you go through an abandoned complex and then eventually you get to what I'd say is the centerpiece climax of the I guess architecturally and spatially you have this big vast tree in the middle of this town square I guess with a lot of these buildings so it's kind of like this really vast architecture so you're moving from really constrained spaces to somewhat more open and then like really wide open so love to hear a little bit more about this world and a little bit more context as to what's happening in this world.
[00:09:54.207] Fins: So it's kind of funny, initially it wasn't meant to be a homework, a personal homework of mine, because I absolutely love the aesthetic and I want it to be a little personal homework. So it make to be cozy, it make to be functional as a place to hang out with people, with mirrors and all that kind of thing that you usually like in a cozy world. But then I decided I wanted to expand onto it and just not to be a cozy world. And I think it's kind of worked because it's a door purpose. If people come in and they just want to use this space to hang out, to play with their friends and they like the environment, you don't have to move from the spawn point. You don't have to move from that little cozy place. But if you decide to venture out of that door into the hallway, and there's always this little curiosity, people always have the open door like, wait, there's more to this? And I like to instill a sense of exploration, like the unexpected as well. Like they expect this to be a cozy place, but when they go out the door and just keep going, just keep going, the door open, and then just dive into this. It went from this very home feeling, this very warm feeling, to this very dark and cold place in the tunnel with all this strange thing, and you see all this more darker version of this world and the story that unfold. So it's a little contrast, right? When you start at the home base, it's warm, cozy. As you get out, it's a little rainy. When you go into tunnel, into transit tunnel, all dark and grungy. But then you are rewarded with that exploration by exiting the subway and going to the city center, where now the fun start, you know, that you get to explore this whole city with all the place to be.
[00:11:29.297] Kent Bye: Yeah, when we were doing a tour, we were both talking about Dr. Morrow and a lot of his worlds and how we both sort of draw a lot of inspiration for how he's able to create this open world exploration where you're constantly discovering lots of new things as you go through this world. But yeah, I'd love to hear any comments that you have around Dr. Morrow and some of the work that he's been doing.
[00:11:48.604] Fins: Oh, Dr. Morrow is an absolute master. I adore his work and Dr. Morrow can craft a story behind. I would say it's the best textbook definition of environmental storytelling. But like they don't give away too much to the point like hand holding you and try to tell you, hey, this is what Dr. Morrow is so good at like giving you enough for you to form your own take on it. And it can mean a lot of things. which you will never know for sure what it actually means and I think I like that a lot because it's very artistic and it's very everyone gonna have their own little take on the story and sometimes it's pretty close to what he does and sometimes it doesn't and that's okay it doesn't have to be a definitive story for any particular player everyone gonna have their own little opinion on it and that's why I really love Dr. Morrowork not just the quality and the environmental design but like you feel like you really belong in this world you take in all the the piece the details that he goes into so I'm very inspired by Dr. Morrow.
[00:12:52.795] Kent Bye: Yeah, I see his genre is a bit more surrealistic and dreamlike and it's got a little bit more of a nonlinear nooks and crannies where you could go through the place and maybe not discover a number of the different little spots. And so I always like to go into one of those worlds where someone knows where to show me around. And so as I was going through your world of Complex 7, there was a little bit more, I guess, of a linear journey. At least, you know, you were taking me on the journey. I don't know if, I would have reached a number of different dead ends if I was going by myself because there were certain doors that you were taking me to. It's hard to say because you were guiding me through, but I guess it's a little bit more of a linear journey, would you say? Or are you trying to also try to create these little hidden Easter eggs for people to discover as they go through? Maybe they'll miss something and then it'll take the community discovery process to find all the things.
[00:13:41.763] Fins: Yes, actually, yes. So right now it's extremely linear and it's also kind of designed for the festival in a way that it's accessible and people just kind of came in, they get a feel of it and they leave. But for the full release, there's going to be a lot of interior, a lot of places that you can go into and some places that you can't initially, but then after you do certain things, maybe quests or you find a little easter egg or a little key just dropped somewhere. and it's kind of like they have the same symbol and maybe you just take a guess oh maybe this is the same key for that door that I just saw earlier and it actually opened like those little things will be very strong in this particular release because this is exploration so the very beginning is very linear but as soon as you get to the city center after that it's like all on you to explore the rest of the city. And there will be a lot of branching, and alleys, and home and place that you wouldn't think to go to, but there's a lot of place to see.
[00:14:37.483] Kent Bye: I guess one of the mechanisms that I see a lot in the work of Lucuza is these little objects that you have to go find, and then once you aggregate them all, maybe that unlocks something. Are you planning on having additional elements like that, where you're encouraging people to explore around and they're able to discover these little collectibles?
[00:14:53.744] Fins: So, everybody has a little bit different taste of what exploration means to them, right? Some people like to collect collectibles and then after you collect 20 things, you get some reward. That was Roboto, right? In Roboto, there was some little cat that you can collect and after 20 robots, you can get a bunch of free avatars that you can clone and favor. They're based on the robot inside the world. and that's a little thing that encourage people to do but not everybody like to run around and try to spot tiny little robot and not everyone enjoy platforming or jumping or puzzles so i'm gonna try my best to have a bit of everything and it's okay if you don't get them all and that's the whole thing about social VR right you see on twitter or your friend like oh wait you didn't you go to that part of the city like wait i didn't know there was like a part of that city where you can go into and then you come back and they show you and this create a discussion about the world and it's just a little thing that you just didn't know existed and just go by word of mouth like the way it was like all games back then where you kind of have to like go to the chatroom or the forums just to find out like a secret cheat code or like a hidden area in this game i want to recreate that little feeling because i really miss that
[00:16:08.066] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'd love to hear you maybe elaborate on this genre of home worlds in VRChat and all the different things that you try to include in this experience to hit all the different stuff that people like to do, like whether it's mirrors or beds or whatever else.
[00:16:22.841] Fins: So Homeworld in VRChat is a genre of its own. There's a lot of amazing homeworlds. Homeworld is one of the most popular genres in VRChat. That makes sense, right? People want to get to VR. They want to just chill with their friends. They don't really want to run around or do something too intense. They just want to lay back in a warm little space, whatever, and then just talk away their days. usually mirrors is included because people like to see themselves because the FOV in VR is not really great so like our perspective and our awareness is not as strong as our natural FOV so with the mirrors you can see and feel how your character moves so it's always I usually make a joke about every world that has to be a mirror, but there's a reason why people always try to gather around mirrors. And yeah, it's included there. Warm lighting in the home world, it's inviting. There's a little bit of contrast between the light from outside shining and it's contrast with the warm candlelight and the string light. Those things you find a lot in the home world as well. And cozy bed and a lot of pillows all over the place. One other thing I want to strongly put into, I don't know how to describe it, but a lot of, I wouldn't say a lot, but like chill world tend to be a bit starlight, right? It's very clean, it's very organized, and it's very perfect down to the dust and That's kind of not how we live in real life. Maybe I'm a messy person, but like, the space that people live in are quite messy sometimes, and things get displaced, torn around, and it's very busy. And that's what I wanted to really emphasize on the home area. Like, things are scattered around. Somebody lives here. It's you. You live around here, and it's your space, but in a way, it has a personality, and it's not just like you walk into a model home where everything has been neatly placed. So yeah, that's my take on it.
[00:18:23.706] Kent Bye: I know last year when we talked about your inspiration from Stray to develop the District Roboto, there's a lot of lighting techniques that you were trying to mimic and emulate. And so I'm curious to hear a little bit more elaboration on what types of further innovations were you pushing forward with the lighting in Complex 7?
[00:18:42.839] Fins: So when it comes to the lighting, it's just a weird form of like smoke and mirror, I would say. Some people would think that lighting is make sure that you try to show the light as accurate as possible, and that's true in a lot of cases, but sometimes when you try to tell a narrative, you have to go out of your way and make light where it doesn't exist, right? You have to place like effect reflection probe, you have to change the color on it, you have to make an invisible light where it's light casting but there is an actual light, no light casting object exists in the world, it's just there just to emphasize on that particular area. and try to sell the narrative. And that's what I'm trying to do best. It's not something new. I think this is an industry standard knowledge. So it's not something that I'm inventing, but I found that it's a little bit lacking that people don't really try to light the world more, I wouldn't say boldly. I try to play it safe, usually I'm just like, oh, candle, I have some light, okay, that makes sense. But what if you want to emphasize this book near this candle that had like an important piece of information, how did you want the light to make sure that people distinguish that from all the hundred other books inside the same scene? And that's just the trick of it all. It's a constant problem solving that I'm constantly dealing with whenever I'm making a project like this.
[00:20:03.485] Kent Bye: And is most of the lighting baked, or do you have dynamic lights that require you to actually go into VR to get a final sense of how everything looks? I'm trying to get a sense if this is something that you can do in an external app with Blender, or if this is a process that you're engaged with that you really need to see the full context of the whole environment and have both dynamic lights and baked lights in order to really get a sense of what it's going to look like.
[00:20:26.235] Fins: So all the lighting in Complex 7 is baked for performance purpose, of course. But when I lay out the white box and try to get a feel of the scale of the scene where there's no texture, it's like all box, this white box, I put in some point light and I try to tell from the editor like, hmm, this is kind of work. But sometimes you kind of have to bake the lighting for it to really see it. And even then, it's not final. Because after that, you place in all the texture and all the objects and you're like, wait, this lighting doesn't work quite as well as I thought it did. So you have to rip everything out and re-make again. It's a tedious process for sure. You just mix and match and try all the different colors to see what sticks the best. And it's not unusual for me to spend entire days back in the lighting over and over and over again. And this is one of the hardest projects I've ever taken on when it comes to lighting. Because the world is so big and my computer barely can handle the amount of mesh and map information it needs to render. But as much as I wouldn't wish to use real-time lighting, with the fidelity that I'm trying to go for, the draw call is already quite high. So any more real-time lighting would just double the draw call. It's not acceptable. It doesn't matter how cool or amazing or pretty your world is. If it's laggy or uncomfortable to play, people are not going to have a good time. And that absolutely needs to be addressed.
[00:21:51.065] Kent Bye: It was over 700 megabytes and I know that's a quite a lot of stuff that's packed in there And this is something that you would ever imagine could get on to a quest to request three that's coming out Or is this something that's going to only be PC VR for now and forever?
[00:22:04.863] Fins: Yeah, I don't particularly make quest content. Usually I want to try. It's kind of funny because I work at VRChat and my primary job is making quest compatible content, quest first thinking. And then when I make my own project, I have to flip that thinking around like, okay, fidelity and detail first, not quest. But eventually I do would love to, like, especially if the quest should come out with better specs, like let's open up more a possibility of trying to get like maybe not the full experience but like I would say like half even half wouldn't be ideal if we put complex 7 into context I would say maybe they don't get to go outside the apartment or maybe they get to see a little bit of like the city center and then there's just a taste of pc vr I would say but for me to realize my vision and the amount of details and stuff that goes into the world like right now it's just not quite possible yet but yeah we see
[00:22:59.403] Kent Bye: I can imagine a future where when I look at something like VRChat as an experience, I see that the community is really bifurcated into this PC VR, super high fidelity, amazing, incredible experiences, and then the Quest is all these compromises in the way that it's not nearly the same fidelity. But I imagine the future with cloud rendering and the ability to have just the hardware of the Quest and then have all the processing happening on the back end, I could see a future where that is a catalyst for this type of cloud rendering is to be able to have those types of immersive experiences that are a whole other level of fidelity and immersive experiences. That's something I imagine would be desirable in the future.
[00:23:37.975] Fins: Oh absolutely and I wouldn't totally advocate for that. Accessibility, as much as I love VR and as much as I love all things PC VR and I want fidelity, I want details, I want amazing graphics. It's still a niche, it's still a niche thing and not everyone owns a $4,000 gaming machine that can run the highest setting on a headset. And that's the reality. And this kind of experience, you want to get it to many hands, to many people as possible. And right now, how do we get to getting to that point with fidelity, but also accessibility? And I'm really looking forward to that day where we have enough power to do that.
[00:24:27.203] Kent Bye: Great. And so what's next for you and Complex 7?
[00:24:31.139] Fins: So I have about three months left, or two and a half months of development left for Complex 7, so the art is almost there. I have to finish the rest of the city center, all the branching out area and stuff, but after that it's mostly logic, sound design, and getting the NPC, their personality, their questline, testing the logic, making sure everything is functional. which is still a lot of work for one person, but hopefully I can get it out for Raindance Film Festival. It's selected for Raindance this year as well. So I hope to get it out by the end of the years and that's about it for me.
[00:25:08.154] Kent Bye: Okay. Yeah, I know Maria of Raindance has a really great selection of different VRChat worlds as well and I guess when you have the the AI and NPCs what what kind of system are you're looking at are you looking at any type of generative AI models or any sort of like in world that AI or if there's any Ways that you are thinking about if it's just gonna be like prescripted Like things that people say or is there gonna be something that's a little bit more interactive when you think about these NPC characters in your and complex 7
[00:25:38.737] Fins: So the NPC are designed in a way that the sound they make this is like a little bit bop robot sound. So there is no like certain language that you have to understand, but they're going to have chat box where that would be easier to, you know, translate between language. Um, as far as AI goes, I'm not, um, maybe I'm going to use chat GTBs to help coming up with lines and personality of certain NPC. Like chat GTB is really good with coming up like, clever line and fun stuff for you to like pick your brain on and try to use it. But the NPC themselves, each of them have their own like little routine. Some of them have their own, this guy is security guard, that guy is just like a musician, you give him some money and play music for you. Some of the NPC are hostile against you for some particular reason and that's something you find out. But yeah, I'm trying to keep them as accessible as possible at the same time. kind of let people experience them in a more immersive way where they don't start bugging out or don't talk to you or glitching all over the place. So this is something I'm trying to figure out. NPC is hard in game. It's a very hard thing to do, especially if you want it to be synced with other players, where they have tried to have the same experience. That is something I'm trying to look into, but it might be local where it just doesn't ruin the experience by trying to network the NPC.
[00:27:02.752] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know that Mike Salmon has done a great job of helping to scout out the different VRChat worlds and then feeds them to like a broad selection to both Liz and Michelle, the co-creators of Venice Immersive to make a selection. And it's always a great time for me to kind of check in with what some of the best of the VRChat worlds that are out there, but how do you keep up to speed with the latest worlds that are out there? Is it through Twitter, through playlists, through word of mouth and following creators? How do you keep abreast of the latest and greatest with what's happening in VRChat?
[00:27:35.077] Fins: So as a part of working at VHS, it's my job to keep an eye on the community and I want to be a community advocate. I want to advocate for world creators because being a world creator, I know that it's hard. to make a world and how much work it goes into making an experience. And a lot of people are just doing it for free, right? Some people have Patreon and stuff, but most of the people, they make an experience for people to experience for free. And I really want to showcase and help the world creator community as much as I can as an employee, but as also fellow creators. And as far as discoverability, like, usually at around 9 p.m. Pacific time, I join a group called Adventure Team. It's run by Toki or Tokyo. And basically what they do is they just go through every lab world, every new world together. It's like a group of 20 to 30 people, sometimes even 50 people. And we all just like check out the world. And because the motto is that, like, everyday thousands and thousands of world coming to via chat and sometimes you lose that little gem in that the flood of like content coming in and discoverability right now can be improved and right now it's up to the player to also like help like You know select like the best and get those, like, content that deserve, like, shouldn't be seen by the mass. And we try to catalog and try to push it out of the lab and get people to know about it. And also, yeah, word of mouth and friends and little world hop here and there, but, like, my main source of world hopping has been thanks to the adventure team.
[00:29:20.896] Kent Bye: If you say 1,000 worlds per day are coming out, how many do they get through of this adventure team in, like, an average day?
[00:29:29.013] Fins: I would say on a busy day, on a busy schedule, they won't be 20 days. I'm sorry, 20 worlds or 30 worlds if we try to move pretty fast. But sometimes it's less than 10. Some days where it's very slow, some days it's very busy where we need multiple days to even run through the list and then the next day a bunch of new worlds come in and we have to add that to the pile sometimes. It's fun. You never know what you get because sometimes you get a planet of mirrors and okay, all right. next but sometimes you get something really cool and you spend an hour on that and I was like oh no it's time almost time over already so then we didn't get to do as much right
[00:30:08.640] Kent Bye: It's the firehose version of the VRChat world consumption. I did want to ask one follow-up question, just in terms of, from your perspective as a world creator, you are lucky enough to be hired by VRChat to be doing that full-time, but that's one out of many, many different world creators, and I think that the sustainability of the model of people to do this and to do it full-time, what can you say in terms of moving forward what the potential VR chat monetization may do to help cultivate an ecosystem of creators and makers so that they would be able to find ways to get supported by either the community or Find ways that you know, they don't have to be these passion projects without being paid but maybe they could transition into doing it more full-time like you've been able to do but you know under the auspices of Being an independent creator
[00:30:57.460] Fins: Right, so this is quite a personal little topic because before I joined VRChat I had a Patreon I opened for like a couple months and supposedly I'm one of the more up there creators in the PC VR community. But even then, despite my marketing and my following, I couldn't get more than about $400 in Patreon support. Half of that is from my friend who was very generous. I have one friend who donated me $100 a month. And other couple of people, $30, $50 a month. Even then, I couldn't get past $400. And I understand how hard... One project cost me a lot of money. certain projects like, I would say Treasure Heist cost me upward to almost $1,000. It's just like dev, asset, music, licensing, and a bunch of other things. Excuse me. Voice Creator. And that's just the raw material, right? It's just a logistic. Not counting the time that you spend. make in the world and how do you feed yourself or make it to the living when all of the cost goes into the material and you don't get anything back as a profit. So it's a hard little subject. And I know world creation is tough. It's 90% passion for free. People put in months and even years of work. And literally this is out there for free for people to play and they don't ask much back. And we have other people who monetize it. We have Jars or Osteo and other amazing game world creator where they was able to make a living. But that's still at the top 0.01%. and how do we get this to everybody where they can turn this around and maybe it doesn't have to be right it's just a weird fine line of light you don't want to turn your hobby into a job but at the same time you want to feel like there is enough support for you to do this hobby if you want to So if somebody want to make world for fun, they don't really care about money. But if they get $50 or $100 a month, they feel more happy and supported and even incentivized to make the content and push it out there for people. Maybe it cover the cost of like the asset they need to buy or the music they need to license. And that is what I want to see. And if you want to push it beyond that and they want to make this like a business, where they make amazing content and they try to get as much you know donation of like patrons or whatever then good for them. But we want to open the option for that and that's just something I'm really looking forward with you know Muslims, Haitians and the team is working hard on that right. So, I'm looking forward to it. I'm just an art guy, so I don't know the details super well into the little gears here and there, but I hope it will be serving to our community.
[00:34:02.487] Kent Bye: Yeah, I know. Talking to M. Prowler, he was concerned that the introduction of monetization would start to change some of the culture of the, more of the gift economy of the way things are now versus into more of a, you know, monetized interactions. And so, yeah, I think it's something that's needed to help support the creators, but also it's going to inevitably change different aspects of the dynamics. Yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'm curious what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and environmental storytelling, immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:34:36.870] Fins: VR is still so misunderstood. I feel like even after all these years, people still think it's an issue. It's like a fact that will fade away. But when, and a lot of people were wrongly assumed by the day of like maybe the gear VR or maybe even worse like the cardboard box where users kind of look through a little pretty picture and then that's about it. But the potential is so much and as more and more technology progress so you can see like Maybe they start to address things like the FOV, the clarity, or even comfort. Comfort is like one of the big things. People thinking in the VR, people think of the huge little awkward headset in front of your face where you are tethered to a bunch of wires. That looks intimidating. That looks scary. That looks like you need a $4,000 PC to go along with all that trouble. PC devices don't want to bother. And I understand that fully. But as more and more standalone headsets getting more powerful to support more high-fidelity content. PC VR headsets maybe getting smaller. You see the Beyond VR, right? It's amazing how small that thing is. And it looks like it's still in class, and people may be more receptive to that. And they're like, oh, yeah, it doesn't look too bad. Let me give it a try. I think the hardware is just a barrier and then how we solve the hardware problem where then we go into the software problem and the content problem and then after that we try to see how what kind of content are meaningful for the players like educational, movie, entertainment, like there's all kind of use case. People do work in VR, people do socializing of course in VR, seeing their family from like other country, I would have never met some of the best people I met in my life without VRChat. It's life-changing and I wish that there's in the future that we can emphasize on like how important the space in VR is. People think VR is like a skepticism, right? Like it's a place for you to escape to, to hide you, for you to fantasize and get rid of the ugly reality, but at the same time I feel like it can be a friend to reality. It's not a replacement. It's not a place to hide to. It is a place for you to expand onto your daily life in a way that's very positive.
[00:36:57.209] Kent Bye: Great. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:37:01.982] Fins: I'm just so honored to be a part of the finale and it's been an incredible journey since the past five years. If you tell me from five years ago that I downloaded VHF from a YouTube video and that I would be working at the VR company and be at some the place here, it's still hard for me to kind of like, take in like, I was looking at people playing Complex 7 at the gallery and I'm like, wait, this is a real person sitting here playing my world and enjoying it. Like something in my brain is just trying to like process that because like for the longest time, sometimes you feel a little bit detached from your own project. You push it out and people love it, but like, it's always like, there's no face behind it beside an avatar, but when you see how much of an impact you have in real life, with your immersive, your VR project and you realize how valuable that is to society and to the people that enjoy it. So I want to say that please like continue making, keep on creating, be creative. Express yourself. This is the digital freedom. It's the place for you to be. It's just like anywhere else on the internet. The more people contribute to it, the more prettier and lively the place will be. So, yeah.
[00:38:16.225] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Finns, you've certainly been a part of creating a lot of really amazing worlds, and I know that people have had a lot of really amazing experiences over the years. And yeah, this piece of Complex 7 has a real masterpiece of lighting, I'd say, and creating this whole sense of a vibe of going from a house to a city into this whole landscape. So looking forward to the final release as it all comes together. And yeah, thanks again for taking the time to help break it all down. So thank you.
[00:38:39.682] Fins: Thank you, Ken. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for listening.
[00:38:43.385] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this interview from Fitness Immersive 2023. You can go check out the Critics Roundtable in episode 1305 to get more breakdown in each of these different experiences. And I hope to be posting more information on my Patreon at some point. There's a lot to digest here. I'm going to be giving some presentations here over the next couple of months and tune into my Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR, since there's certainly a lot of digest about the structures and patterns of immersive storytelling, some of the different emerging grammar that we're starting to develop, as well as the underlying patterns of experiential design. So that's all I have for today, and thanks for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And again, if you enjoyed the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listen-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
