Stranger Things VR is part action adventure, psychological thriller, and deep dive character study of Vecna, who the main villain of the Stranger Things tv show introduced in Season 4. I have only seen Season 1, and so there there parts where I had to watch a recap to get a bit more context but it definitely can still work as a standalone piece. Seasons 1 and 4 are apparently the ones that give the most context to this VR experience, but there are also other references that from throughout all of the seasons. If you’ve a fan of interactive VR narrative games, then there is plenty of interesting experimentations with pushing forward what’s possible in telling stories in VR. There are also enough innovative VR mechanics to have some satisfying gameplay elements, but the story is clearly the main focus here.
I had a chance to catch up with the co-founders of Tender Claws Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro in order to get a lot more context for how this project came about, how they pitched it, the development process of iterating between the story, character study, gameplay, and worldbuilding. I also get a bit more context for what people should know about the series before jumping in, and so there’s a bit of a primer even within this conversation that should add additional context if you’re completely new to the series. I’d recommend at least watching through the first season, and perhaps watch the beginning of the this recap to get a bit more of an introduction to the character of Henry, who ends up transforming into Vecna. I really enjoyed playing through this experience, and there are elements of psychological terror that sent chills down my spine, but it’s not too much of a horror genre with cheap jump scares. Lots of innovative ways to use changes in lighting, flipping between reality filters, and sound design that are really well done. And I really enjoyed my overall playthrough with only getting caught up on a few chapters.
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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 the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So in today's episode, we're going to be doing a deep dive into Stranger Things VR, which is a piece by Tender Claws that was built upon an existing intellectual property from the Stranger Things TV show that has been streaming on Netflix. So I had a chance to sit down with the co-founders of Dinner Claws, Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro, to break down both the process of how this project came about, their development of the story, and this combination of both the narrative elements but also the world building and the gameplay design, and so get a lot of insight on both the story development as well as the game development process and how those two are playing together. So I really enjoyed playing through this game. I think if you're a fan of Tender Claws, you're likely going to like this. I think if you're very familiar with the Stranger Things TV show, you'll also likely get a lot out of this experience as well. It's difficult for me to know how this experience is going to land with the general VR public because there are a lot of more experimental things in terms of the gameplay and blending in the different aspects of the narrative, but I actually really enjoyed it and felt like it was diving into new aspects of VR design and gameplay interactions and how to tell a story within VR as well as creating these real moments of psychological terror that is sprinkled throughout the piece as well. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Samantha and Danny happened on Wednesday, February 21st, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:50.205] Samantha Gorman: Hi, my name is Samantha Gorman. I am the co-director, co-founder of Tender Claws and for Stranger Things VR, I am the co-narrative lead with Bria Smith. I'm also a professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, working in VR for a number of years since the early 2000s.
[00:02:09.753] Danny Cannizzaro: And I'm Danny Cannizzaro. I'm the other co-founder, co-lead of Tender Claws. And yeah, Stranger Things VR is kind of our fourth or fifth big VR game at this point, which I think is an interesting place to be at just in terms of it's starting to feel a little bit less of like a brand new thing and more of something that like we've had a few iterations to play around with.
[00:02:35.446] Kent Bye: Great. Maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into VR.
[00:02:40.485] Danny Cannizzaro: Sure. So I originally studied illustration and painting, and then just out of undergrad started collaborating with Samantha about 20 years ago. And we did a mix of conceptual art, installation, and eventually a lot of it around language and writing due to your background. Samantha, do you want to talk about?
[00:03:01.981] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, so my background is I started as a poet and sometime in my summer year of college, I was recruited into a science visualization chamber called The Cave, which was very early type of VR technology. And I was mainly interested in dimensions of text and language, kind of off the page. and in space. And also the idea of space as a performative navigation through language. So those are the early conceptual underpinnings, but then that evolved into learning different forms of computational media and design and eventually more into the game space, which is where we work today.
[00:03:38.228] Danny Cannizzaro: And I think, yeah, there's this moment around 2014 or 2013, when like Apple came out with the iPad and was kind of treating it as the future of the book and the future of reading, but was pretty much just doing these kind of like page flip eBooks that were doing exactly what regular books could do. And, um, we decided to make a project specifically to try and figure out what can a touchscreen multi-gesture tablet do that is still kind of a book kind of reading, but feels more native to that medium. And I think that impulse has kind of carried through of us trying to like compose things that feel native to the medium and have fun exploring with new technologies and making things specific for them.
[00:04:19.507] Samantha Gorman: I think that point I would just reiterate as one of the unique things about our studio is because our training and conceptual background in materials and art, we are very interested in thinking conceptually around the strengths and affordances and constraints of emerging technology. And then how do you strengthen that in service of where does, for me at least, where does story intersect with that?
[00:04:44.790] Kent Bye: Yeah. And so I've had a chance to play a number, actually all of your experiences that you've released on VR so far. And with this latest one was Stranger Things VR. Maybe you could give a bit more background and context for how this project came about.
[00:04:58.354] Danny Cannizzaro: Sure. So we heard that Netflix was interested in doing a VR title related to Stranger Things. And so we decided to pitch for it. And we ended up pitching something that was very tender-clawsy, an experience that took place in these abstract mind voids. Rather than just being characters off on a side adventure, you would go into the minds of Max and Eleven, and it all happened in these kind of abstract, psychological void spaces. And the series seemed to line up really well with that. And this was pre-season four. This was like Vecna as a character had not been introduced to the public. And I think our thinking on it and like the type of stuff we're doing just lined up really well with where the series creators were taking the show. And so I think they saw our pitch and saw some of these like ambitious kind of ideas and the fact that we want to just really make something that like was a full-fledged, like ambitious artistic experience and that resonated well with them.
[00:05:57.048] Kent Bye: Nice. And I know that I've had a chance to see the first season of Stranger Things. And then as I was playing through this experience, I was like, wait a minute, I don't know who any of these characters are. I had to actually watch a little bit of a recap. And so maybe you could talk about just as you're diving into this, you said you started this before even season four had started and before Vecna was even introduced. And so how would you describe the Stranger Things world? and how this piece is trying to either be a supplement to the TV shows and what you would recommend people watch or know before they go into this experience.
[00:06:31.713] Samantha Gorman: I can talk to the general Stranger Things world and then Danny can talk to like the context of the experience. So, you know, Stranger Things is very like two sentences, but it's set in the 1980s in a fictional small Midwest town called Hawkins, Indiana, where there's a secret research facility that's essentially meant to raise, train and test individuals with strong mental abilities like telekinesis. And the first season follows Eleven, this kind of young girl escaping from the control of the facility and learning to live in the world with the help of friends she makes along the way. And it's very much, for me, the larger themes of the show that I read into it and that I was interested in is outsider status and connection and, you know, what makes a monster and how do you, like, you know, learn to be in the world. So I think the thing I'll say about, in general, the impulse of it was definitely more of a character study and kind of like a little bit more of an internal and emotional journey around those themes.
[00:07:31.453] Danny Cannizzaro: And so where the game ends up being placed is it expands upon both as a character state, but then also expands upon kind of like what Vecna, season four of the show, reveals Vecna as kind of the big bad, this former research child that also has powers, that has been in the background of seasons 1, 2, and 3, and now is revealed in season 4 and is the foil to XI. Since the show is so much going along the journey from XI's perspective, we were excited to show some of these beats from seasons one, two, and three, but more from Vekna's perspective of where Vekna was in the background, what his point of view into some of these events were, and string them together into an arc that complements the show and expands on the show.
[00:08:20.820] Samantha Gorman: And there's certain, you know, I mean, it's such a, to some degree, if you know about Stranger Things, you're likely to know that there's a character that exists as, you know, Eleven. So there are certain, like, touchstones and familiar moments that are present that we baked into the game.
[00:08:37.850] Danny Cannizzaro: And we think that both the show and our game, it is one of those things that if you look at the fandom, the wikis that exist out there, you can go down the rabbit hole of details and lore, and it is something that you can play through the game knowing not too much of the series, and you'll get some of it. you'll hopefully still have a good time and be able to piece stuff together. And maybe it'll make you interested in going into the show and digging deeper into specific things. Or some people watch the shows and binge it all together, and some people watch it and go scene by scene and get really deep in. And so we tried to make something that could stand on its own, but really did reward those that wanted to. really dig into it. I think that's actually a common thing of a lot of our experiences is there's this element of like digging deeper where like the player's interest can kind of guide which parts they kind of tunnel into.
[00:09:28.118] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's always a little bit of a tricky thing when you talk about an existing IP with a TV show and then like trying to avoid spoilers or other things that are going to ruin one or the other or making sure that you can create something that stands alone without having this feeling of being lost. I found that when I was playing the experience, by default, all the subtitles are on. And then I was like, OK, I don't actually know who any of these characters are. But and then I turned off the subtitles. But then I actually felt like, well, there's so much text that's going on here that sometimes when I was in the middle of different experiences, I thought to myself, you know, I feel like I'd rather see what the text is and who's speaking, because there's a lot of off camera, off screen voiceover. that's happening. So I'd love to hear who are the main characters that people should know about, or if you were to recommend any season to watch before playing the game, or if you think people can go in cold and then go after, if there's like a recommended way for people to get the most out of this experience.
[00:10:26.184] Danny Cannizzaro: So I think the biggest characters in our title are Eleven, Henry Creel slash Vecna and Dr. Brenner. And so season one of the show really introduces like Eleven and Dr. Brenner, and season four kind of introduces Henry Vecna. Our experience kind of weaves through all the first four seasons in terms of what it's showing and what touchstones it's showing from different perspectives. I don't think we have a set like you really have to see it this way or another, like Samantha Doudna
[00:11:00.367] Samantha Gorman: Well, I think it helps to know like that Vecna is a main villain of the series and that's who you're playing. And there's like on the very base level, the tension of like he's after something, you know, and after this girl and trying to, you know, get revenge. And then, you know, there is a sort of like moment where the goal is fulfilled and there's a point of view change and then you play as the target that he's been after.
[00:11:27.218] Kent Bye: Yeah. So it seems like there's a mechanic where your plan is Vecna, but he's incepting in people's minds. And so there's a lot of perspective shifts that are happening throughout the course of this piece. And so how did you decide that you wanted to embody the villain? Cause that's sort of like a non-traditional way. Cause maybe the main story is told from the perspective of the heroes and the protagonists, and then you have this antagonist that you're embodying. And how did you come to that insight to embody the main villain or the main antagonist in the story?
[00:11:56.050] Samantha Gorman: It felt like less of a debate, more of just a natural flow of things and what I thought was an interesting challenge and an interesting writing challenge. As I had to spend, you know, obviously a lot of time with Bria Smith also as the co-lead, like, living in the world. And there were a lot of unanswered questions for me that I thought could be juicy and interesting areas to expand on, like, OK, well, what was happening in this other existence in the background? And I think it was also this sort of playful joke as we were, I mean, VR has potential to line with perspectives and you know different perspectives and we're like oh well what if it's the perspective of the demo dog and that like was kind of like a joke you know like to the hive mind and we're like no actually there's something kind of interesting here that feels like a conceptually relevant challenge of what does it mean to be inside a villain, that you're not an empathetic character, but it's the trajectory of what is becoming a monster, and he literally forms as a monster in one of the chapters.
[00:13:04.193] Danny Cannizzaro: I think like we talked about earlier, when the project was coming around, our original pitch was before season four existed and we already knew we wanted to set in these mind spaces. And then as we started getting some of the early scripts of season four and talking with one of the writers of the show, Paul Dichter, we realized that there's a great overlap with where they were heading with the series in terms of making the big bad villain of it, someone that can go inside dreams and that exists in the psychological space. already overlapped with so many of the spaces we thought would fit really well into a VR game. Like Samantha said, it wasn't this big decision from the outset of like, oh, we're going to tell from the villain story. It just kind of like, as we progressed along with thinking through the ideas and mechanics, it made a lot of sense. And it was also a lot of the like, area that we could really get into and expand without feeling like we were just retreading what the show had already shown. The show is very much from Eleven's perspective, but it establishes in season four that Vecna has been around the first few seasons, and so we realized we could go through those seasons and show Vecna's trajectory and how he uses Will as a spy, or then how he corrupts Billy and hasn't gathered the flayed, and follow along of stuff that the show shows and is happening, but string it together from Vecna's perspective as he makes and enacts this plan for revenge on Eleven.
[00:14:29.037] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm wondering if you could elaborate on your iterative process of combining these major aspects of this game, which is the story development and the script writing, the world building and the gameplay. And so maybe talk about like, where did you begin and how did this feed off of each other of the gameplay back into the story development and vice versa, as you're developing this as an experience, like maybe you just walk through that process of how you constructed Stranger Things VR.
[00:14:58.517] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, this is understandably a question that our studio and us get often and one of the it's harder to recollect because it's so from small and large moments day to day integrated and bouncing back and forth ideas like I know Dani could probably elaborate and add more to this, but one of the moments I remember is writing a brief idea of a treatment and going into the upside down. And then there was like, okay, well, what is upside down? What are worlds that shown VR and this idea of avoid space. And this is really early on before we were officially doing the project. the idea of a void space, and then the idea of a void space and led to minds and memories, which led to different types of writing and characters and thoughts. And then they're just like a constant iteration and cycle between mechanics and world and, yeah, I guess, design of the experience and narrative.
[00:15:51.888] Danny Cannizzaro: Yeah, I think Our vertical slice, the first parts we fully built out were chapters one and a little bit of chapter two. And so the first chapter one is this void testing thing where Dr. Brenner is guiding you through a meditation and you are like, in a chair but you go into this black void space mentally and he has you imagine things and you kind of reenact telekinesis and it's a space that we look for in a lot of our projects where like your motivation as a player sitting there lines up with the motivation of the character who's sitting there and like imagining these things and following along to the instructions and it felt like a good narrative fit and And then once we started looking at the scripts and knew that we were going to be telling a story more of Vekna's perspective, we knew we really wanted to create this iconic moment from the show where Vekna kind of pulls himself up with vines into this meditative space in the attic. And then he goes into his mind palace, which is this red kind of hellish dimension space with all these vines and nethering and you see on the series a lot. We had these two kind of like specific mental spaces from the show, the void that Eleven goes and reaches out into. You see her going into multiple times throughout the series and this like mind palace. And I think we started building mechanics around those and mechanics around what you see the characters doing telekinesis or as soon as we knew that we wanted you to be able to like reenact that moment as Vecna kind of like pulling himself up with vines and we started building that out. And that led to kind of a new mechanic of like the control over the vines and the movement style that like felt pretty fun and like tied into the show in a specific way. And so I think, yeah, it is very much organic and a push and a pull and like a back and forth between mechanics and story.
[00:17:41.256] Kent Bye: And so Samantha, did you, had you had the full arc in your treatment? Did that stay pretty much preserved or did that change and evolve throughout the course of developing it based upon some of these other world building or gameplay components?
[00:17:53.625] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, I guess I don't write in the standard way where there's like a treatment or a script first. So like, I should have probably clarified by treatment. I've been like. a poetic moment or like a vision of the characters interacting that sets a tone and maybe draws out themes that we can expand upon. So, I mean, there is like a lot of the iterative design, there's like a skeleton usually, and that can evolve, you know, sometimes even a lot. that is generally talked about. So we're working on kind of a macro level of like this idea of a skeleton. And even that skeleton is a very iterative process that's informed on mechanics or moments that we really want a player to experience or feel. And like the basic arcs of like the character study of the story. And then at the same time as we're doing a macro envisioning, there's usually like very almost micro polish tests for mechanics. So those two things are happening at both sides of the large and the small. And as they evolve, they kind of inform each other to flesh out a lot what's in the middle. I think that, Danny, is there anything you, does that seem right?
[00:19:07.292] Danny Cannizzaro: Sounds right to me.
[00:19:09.557] Kent Bye: Well, you've mentioned a number of times, Samantha, that you were diving into this as a character study. And there's this quote from Marbert McKee that I refer to a lot when I think about immersive stories. He says, true character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure. The greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature. And so in this piece, you're both doing a character study of Vecna and some of these other people that are in the cast in the show that you've mentioned. And there's also this component of VR where sometimes you can be the one who's making choices and taking action. And so you can have the potential. So the character who's being revealed is the player who's actually embodying the experience. And so I'm wondering if you could elaborate on how you think about character and the development of character and what you were really trying to explore in this piece where there's kind of an interesting blend where you're both doing a character study, but you're also creating a situation for people to kind of embody some of these different situations.
[00:20:07.670] Samantha Gorman: Yeah. So I have very complex and nuanced feelings about like interactive narrative and branching narrative. And a lot of times I feel like, you know, there's spectrums of choice, right. And, you know, there's still like, authored choice. And for me, in order to write, you have to imagine all different scenarios of the player as the player, but also the player is inhabiting the character. And I think the thing that I was trying to hold onto is the idea of monsterhood and being a monster or making a monster. And, you know, it's not like there's large narrative branching choices, it's more of like the small mild things of feeling like reactive or embodying something. where we want the narrative to feel more reactive and embodied than true player choice. I think there's other ways I can frame it, but Danny, do you want to talk about it?
[00:21:04.494] Danny Cannizzaro: I think there is a difference between this title and some of our past titles. Some of our past titles, VVR, VVR2, The Under, the player character is much closer to you as a player. The player character doesn't speak in any of those. They don't have their own character. Whereas this one is set very firmly within an existing world that has existing stories, and there isn't room for you as the player to change that story. And it's less about you changing that story. And there's a ton of VO coming from you, the player, whether you're Henry or Levin. And so I think that changes that dynamic a little bit, and the working within this existing world that has more set constraints as to the story. So this is less of a, a choice-driven one than maybe some of our past projects.
[00:21:52.120] Samantha Gorman: I guess it's like witnessing, like active witnessing maybe, or like, yeah, like haunting or, you know, a presence or being carried along.
[00:22:01.060] Danny Cannizzaro: I think one thing that was interesting for us, the MR segment is kind of a standalone thing. Like they're related, but they kind of exist on their own. And there is a difference between the two as to like your relation as the player and the MR one, you are yourself. You are in your room. Like it has the conceit that Murray has shipped you this like weird piece of technology, but you are putting it on and you're kind of like not role-playing as 11 or Lucas or Billy, but you are like just whoever you are in your room kind of like participating in the story. And so I think that is an interesting kind of like shift. And one of the reasons we did it is just that's what MR lends itself more to. It's like, if you're an MR, you're in your space. And so like your choices and your thing become part of the game more, whereas in VR, where we're taking over everything and speaking for you and doing it, it's refined interest and fun and choices and a different thing rather than a narrative branching choices.
[00:22:56.937] Kent Bye: Yeah, that makes sense. And we'll be diving into the gameplay part of my interview here next. I have one last questions around the story, which is just that how, as I was watching the piece, there's these dates that are establishing a pretty firm timeline. And then when I watched the whole Stranger Things recap, it also gave a comprehensive timeline that was showing these different dates. And so you're able to correlate the Stranger Things VR with the overall canonical timeline of what's happening in the TV show. And so it seemed like, as I get the impression, since I haven't actually watched all four seasons, but there are certain experiences that maybe you're diving into some of those offscreen moments that you're diving into the perspective of Vecna where they didn't necessarily elaborate that on the show. So I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that process of like aligning this Stranger Things VR with that canonical timeline and how you were also weaving in these offscreen moments into what you could do with what was the supplementary Stranger Things VR experience.
[00:23:55.469] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, so I think it was really important for us to feel like it could be officially part of the story, even though, you know, these are things we're imagining and expanding on moments. So we did put a lot of effort into trying to be authentic and understand, immerse ourselves and understand the spirit of the IP. The dates was one way, one anchor point that we used. There's other anchor points of even if you're not as familiar with Stranger Things, there's some iconic imagery or scenes that we're tapping into throughout the different chapters. You know, I think it's important to say that us working with Netflix was actually really supportive and positive experience. This being our first IP game, you never know what to expect. But we felt really trusted to be artists in our own right and think about how we might envision the characters in the particular story that we're telling.
[00:24:53.692] Danny Cannizzaro: And just as another example of kind of how we did these moments is there's a scene on the show where Vecna speaks about how he found himself like pushed out of our world by 11 and says he became an explorer and like he found the greatest thing of all and it shows him performing the Mind Flayer and it's like a powerful couple minute monologue scene from the show and so that's something that we take and like this is great, this is cool, this is compelling, we can make it chapter five of our game and make it an hour and a half like really blow it up and so it's like It does a lot of those kind of transformations as well, where it's either a beat from the show that's in a different perspective or something that's just really expanded upon. Yeah.
[00:25:41.040] Kent Bye: Well, I wanted to get into the actual VR experience with some of the gameplay mechanics and with each of your titles that you've done, you always are pushing the edge for how to move around a space and explore a space with locomotion mechanics. And here you have yet another innovation with how you're moving around with this dual aspect of sitting out like a shadow smoke, and then being able to use the vine. And so maybe you could just talk about your process of trying to continue to innovate of locomotion mechanics within the context of VR.
[00:26:12.535] Danny Cannizzaro: I think that is a place that we as a studio find fun to try and do something new and not just fall back on the standard things. In VVR, VVR was early enough that teleport felt like an innovative locomotion mechanic and was something that companies were exploring. The Under Presents was our game about time and space and time loops. And so we're like, oh, we can make this the locomotion be that you're bending time and space and you're actually collapsing time and space and scrunches in and just like unscrunches your new space and tying it in narratively. And then this title at first did not start out with the vine walking, but then as we got into season four and the scripts and the characters. And we started kind of like, this is one of the things that we were prototyping with. And like, at first it was just kind of like moving around and like you could summon vines and pull yourself quickly, almost like a little dash mechanic side to side. And then started to just realize that like, well, if we just get rid of the like ability to go down and let you go up really high, it was fun. And so there was like this element of, just like a found fun thing that like, one of those things we talked about, like not being there from the outset, but something we find along the way and then start to like fold more and more level design into accommodate. And it does tie into like stuff we see in general. I mean, we've been working on this title for a while. So I think more things using similar motion mechanics have come out in the space since we were first playing around with this fine stuff. But there's lots of like, climbing experiences that are doing that kind of like you can anchor point, move around things like gorilla tag, or like really playing with the fun ways you can move yourself through this three-dimensional space. And yeah, it's just a space we'd like to try and find narrative specific ways for the locomotion so that it's not just a artifice. If there is a way to do it, it's not like a requirement, but if there is a nice way to do it, we lean into it.
[00:28:06.596] Samantha Gorman: I think it's important to say that when we first saw some of the concept art of Vecna, there's a very iconic shot even of Stranger Things has a villain and it's Vecna. You'll likely see him hovering with his vines in his attic. It's sort of like an iconic shot you see in the show. And I think that idea was really spread for longer.
[00:28:29.283] Kent Bye: Yeah, another mechanic that you come back to again and again is this inception mechanic. So you're kind of going in deeper and deeper into layers of reality. And in this case, you're doing it in a way that you're going into deeper layers of other people's minds. And so maybe you can talk about this recurring inception like mechanic where you're going deeper and deeper into layers of VR.
[00:28:50.887] Danny Cannizzaro: Yeah, I feel like from VVR to the under also has those things. And I think we talked about that being the promise of VR. If you look at the sci-fi movies made since forever with VR, it's always been that it'll get so real that you forget what the level of reality actually is. And so there's been this recurring idea that when you are recreating reality, why stop at one recreation of reality? You can have these nested realities. You already are in a nested reality within your reality. You can have further ones. I think that is something that just fits really well with the medium. I would say the other thing that ties into that is this idea of letting the player dig into stuff. You remember the Pry? It was a story where there's a chapter where you have the text and at any moment you can pinch two lines apart and get more detail. And then you can pinch between those two lines and just keep expanding it out and get deeper and deeper into it. And it's a similar motivation where it's like, you are not changing the story, but you're choosing where you tunnel into or which reality you open up to explore and get a deeper... So I think those impulses kind of guided some of that.
[00:29:57.121] Kent Bye: Yeah and playing the game I noticed that sometimes when there's a number of different core mechanics that are using like a combination of different buttons and maybe it's just because I grew up in the NES era and not in the Xbox era but I found myself constantly iterating between like the telekinetic summoning and throwing and crushing and then the shadow smoke with throwing of the vines and possessing of different entities. And then there are some ways that you disable some of those existing mechanics and you switch over to the portal mechanic where you're able to kind of look in between the upside down into kind of more of a mixed reality experience in some ways where the upside down represents this mixed reality augmentation that's mirrored on top of the world. It's like a digital twin. but you're able to use a portaling effect to kind of go in between those. And so I'd love to hear about your process of developing each of these mechanics and how to use them in combination in a way that gives you an arc of the gameplay mechanic on top of the story that's also evolving. Cause you're having these moments where you're have to introduce a new mechanic or describe things to people so that they understand, okay, now I'm going to add this additional thing so that by the end of it, you're using all these things seamlessly.
[00:31:07.405] Danny Cannizzaro: Yeah, I think some of it is VR has kind of standardized to grip being like the grab. I mean, it's the grip button, it's literally in its name. And so like, we knew from the start that that was going to be telekinesis. And whether you're playing as Vecna or Eleven, most of the time you would have telekinesis in this title that was like, One of the problems with Stranger Things VR game, you're going to be playing with telekinesis. And so we had that mapped to telekinesis, and then the trigger conceptually became kind of like other psychic augmentations or reaching out with the mind. And whether that reaching out with the mind took the form of opening a portal for remote viewing as Vecna and spying into spaces, or depending on the timeline after he's absorbed the hive mind, sending out these corruption tendrils that you can use to literally pull yourself into those minds. there was some amount of conceptual overlap to the mapping in our minds of that, or playing as Eleven, this visualization of a cleansing, the flip side of it. Because I think narratively, a lot of the title is this playing as Vecna, playing as this foil Eleven, what makes them similar, what makes them different, why does Eleven not join up with Henry when offered the chance. And so it was interesting to have the controls mirror that a little bit too, where it's like the corruption for one character and it's the cleanse for the other character. But yeah, it is always a balance and it's something where it's kind of like there's no overall correct answer for how to introduce the new mechanics and how to teach it. And it is a tricky thing and did lots of play tests. And probably one of the areas we spent more time revising was tutorials and when we introduced things and how do we make the vine climbing clearer. Cause like some of them, I think at early stages worked really well for us, but were hard to teach. And it took a few cycles of playtests or changes to get them to a space where we were seeing most people latching onto them within the time needed to be able to use them and enjoy them throughout the experience.
[00:33:04.849] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, I think it's a double-edged sword of innovating mechanics in VR too. We try our best and we do many different rounds of iteration. It's always a process of discovery.
[00:33:15.605] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think by the end I had settled in and figured out most of it. I think just the experience of playing the game is that I found myself constantly pushing the wrong button or like, cause they would switch around enough times for me to not always know. But I think that makes sense when you talk about the conceptual similarities. I think at the end of it, it's what makes it a game is that you can fail. You do have to actually have some coordination to figure those things out. So I think in that sense, it did accomplish that kind of game mechanic. In terms of the other experiences, I don't play a lot of horror games, but there felt like there was some moments that I feel like this could be a horror genre, but yet at the same time, it feels different in the way that's not like cheap jump scares. It felt like you were cultivating this psychological terror in a way, or you would have things where both the music and the sound design and then You would switch the scenes from one context to another with flipping into the upside down world. There was something around those both lighting changes and the music that just gave me chills a number of times that I felt like, OK, well, this is a real psychological thriller in a way that I imagine some people who just completely avoid the horror genre would avoid. But I don't know if They would enjoy this different type of psychological thriller that you're doing here. So I'd love to hear about the process of cultivating these moments where you're really trying to creep people out or what my experience was like giving me chills. And I had enough times that clear as part of the design, but I'd love to hear about your process of creating that type of psychological thriller.
[00:34:44.995] Samantha Gorman: I think that the unique thing for us is that it's kind of a new genre somewhat for us to work within. So the fact that some of that's coming together for you, you know, in a way that feels like deliberate and designed and isn't like jump scare, I think is great to hear. But it's definitely something that is also mirroring parts of the tone of the show in the way that the show goes for, you know, sometimes a psychological thriller, sometimes, you know, straight up horror, but also there's moments of lightness and levity in the sort of relationships in the show that like help break that up.
[00:35:25.358] Danny Cannizzaro: And I think one thing that we always try and do just like aesthetically and visually is prioritize our ability to like light things dynamically to have dramatic stylized fogs and color palettes and be able to switch those like very quickly and not have to live in a super photo-real representation of the world. We're not trying to just shadow map every corner. Instead, we put more of our computational budget and our CPU budget into our ability to make the style and the art emotionally resonate with the different beats of the scene. And I think that serves us well. That's something we did even in past projects where something like VVR has this like really bright, happy, cheery surface world of activity. But then once you start digging into the other areas, like the whole palette shift and the shaders start doing these distortion effects and things like that.
[00:36:20.455] Kent Bye: In terms of the story structure, I felt like it was for the most part fairly linear in other ways of cheating that linearity that you've explored in previous titles, where you have the sense of giving people an open world exploration, but yet it's really kind of on a fixed linear path. The one exception I'd say is the chapter five with Henry, where It felt like the one chapter where I was exploring around and doing things and then I would get caught by the big black ball and then I would sort of, it felt like it was a groundhog's day. It kept coming back to these scenes and I was like, okay, I've seen this enough. Clearly I need to do something else. And so it pushed me to explore even further. Like the first time I played through that, it probably took me 90 minutes to two hours to get through that chapter. And at some point I was like, I'm doing something wrong because I'm stuck. Like I keep repeating. And then the second time I was able to be like, okay, I think I have a sense of how to get through this faster. And I did, I got through like in 40 minutes, but it was still, I was able to explore around. And then the thing that got me was that Okay, if I get caught and I go back to the scene, it's like actually a new scene. It was like a new narrative beat. So I felt like, okay, well, I'm, I seem like I'm getting new narrative parts, but here are this other part that's repeating. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about this chapter five. That seems to be the most experimental and it's narrative structure because there's open world explorations. If you do it too long, then you get sent back, but then you progress the story. So yeah, I'd love to hear about the development of that chapter.
[00:37:45.510] Danny Cannizzaro: So just as a quick overview, chapter five is the one where Henry is becoming Vecta and Henry is forming the Hive Mind and the Mind Flayer. So the way the chapter is structured is it's this push and pull between you playing as Henry and the Hive Mind that takes on the form of the Shadow Brenner. It's this giant smoke monster creature that takes on the form of Dr. Brenner, which it's pulled from Henry's memories, and uses that to speak with him. And it's just fascinated by having a human there to study. And so it is trying to study you. It's using your memories of being studied by Dr. Brenner as a child in the lab of Hawkins, while it is studying you. And you, as Henry, are trying to break out of that and take it over. And so it's this back and forth battle of wills. It is this labyrinth where you are jumping from mind to mind as it chases you down to bring you back and study you more. And over time, you take over more and more of these mind spaces until you ultimately subsume it and turn it into the mind flayer. And amusingly, to us at least, very similar in structure to VVR, with Dr. Brenner stepping in for Chaz as the role of testing you, locking you up, watching you escape, catching you again, putting you in that. And there is... It is, yeah, it is more of like a open chapter than some of the other ends. And I think in general, that's been a fun thing for this game is that some of the chapters are really short. Some are like five minute long, just little vignettes. And some of them are, yeah, half an hour, a couple hours. Like some of them go, can go pretty deep in terms of things. And because they each work a little bit as their own little vignette within the overall structure.
[00:39:26.267] Samantha Gorman: I think it's that the context that we're doing us. So from the show that Henry gets essentially like blasted out of Hawkins by L. And there's the iconic moment that we're exploding as he's wandering in this desolate land and he comes into this almost like particle being in the particle monster. And that is essentially what we're then being like, okay, we know that somehow he transfers from Henry, this, you know, refugee into this world to this powerful like Vecna. So that's kind of what we're exploring there. But I thought what Danny was talking about was pretty accurate.
[00:40:05.482] Kent Bye: Yeah, and this piece does have a lot of voice actors. It has a number of scenes that are motion capture. I'd say maybe over half or maybe even two thirds or three quarters seems to be voiceover with some of that dialogue that we're getting is through like some type of animation or motion capture. Maybe you could talk about the process of working with all these voice actors and also the process of having some of it be motion captured with a lot of it being voiceover.
[00:40:33.292] Samantha Gorman: I know Danny can also fill in a lot of stuff. I think the interesting thing about maybe the motion capture versus voiceover is reflecting, I guess, what is personal to your perspective in your mind. So a lot of times you hear, for the game, it helps to have another being goading you towards a goal or to keep Like, it would be strange if it was just only Henry talking to himself the whole time. So that voice of Dr. Brenner, Shadow Brenner-type particle monster character is often mentally projected. And then the perspectives of when you're looking at more the human world and more the concrete characters in Hawkins, those are a lot more grounded and mocapped. We were really fortunate to work with the two driving characters for the piece were Beckner slash Henry and Dr. Brenner. And we were really fortunate to work with the actors who played those characters and inhabited those characters and the voiceover and to like direct them and celebrate on the reading of the lines, which was really a powerful moment to first hear Jimmy Campbell Bowers in studio transferring from Henry's voice into Wekna. A lot of it is his natural performance. And just to feel that embodied made it feel like there was enough of Henry to keep pursuing in the voiceover.
[00:42:00.518] Danny Cannizzaro: And then on the mocap side, there was a ton of mocap in the under presents, but for all that mocap, we had a very jerry-rigged kind of like vive tracker system because it's like 10 characters on a ship for an hour. So it's like 10 hours of character mocap and there's no faces and they were very simplified ones. But this one, we knew that it's kind of a different level of fidelity that we're going to try and stylize it closer to like, a comic book or a movie poster from the 80s. And that was going to be more the aesthetic we were going for. So we used OptiTrack and FaceWear to do most of the mocap thing. And then some of the bigger scenes, we actually went to outside studios in LA to professionally mocap some of these. And yeah, mocap is hard. Character animation takes a lot of cleanup. And that was one of the newer areas for us as a studio is the amount of work involved on that side of things.
[00:42:52.027] Samantha Gorman: Yeah, and at the end of the day, people are going to hear Stranger Things VR, and some might not realize we're still an indie studio. So yeah, there was a lot of creative energy we had to bring to the production.
[00:43:04.127] Kent Bye: And I noticed that you had the mixed reality portion made by Float with Vin Vance and Kate Parsons. And I know he had previously worked on Irrational Exuberance, which is a really big live title. But I'm wondering if you could comment a little bit on the mixed reality portion. You mentioned it already, Danny, where you're talking about how you're embodying yourself and you're playing with portals. I actually had a chance to play one of the early demos of this at MetaConnect. And I didn't know if there was going to be more of that hand tracking mechanic that was going to be into the main storyline. I'm just curious if you experimented with hand tracking as a mechanic and if you decided to revert back to controllers, but yeah, just comment on both the mixed reality portion, but also the hand tracked versus controller mechanics.
[00:43:46.240] Danny Cannizzaro: Yeah, I appreciate the shout out to Irrational Exuberance because I think it was after some Indiecade that was the first kind of like VR thing I did that felt like more than a tech demo and got me like really excited to like, like Samantha had been on the like, let's make something for VR bandwagon for a little bit, but I played Irrational Exuberance and like, I think was really sold on like, oh, we can do like this medium can tell like some compelling things. And it felt really cool. So we're very excited to finally get to collaborate with Float on something. And so we collaborated with them on the MR portion. I'm trying to remember back. We'd been playing around with some hand tracking telekinesis things, and I had been playing around with hand tracking controls for the full title as an option, not as the main thing. And I think I actually started that before we full-on got into the MR portion. At the end of the day, it was just too much fast paced action combat gameplay to be super satisfying with the hand tray. It just still loses track of too much stuff behind your head and you turning around and like so much of the game design was around that that the hand tracking mode felt pretty good, solid and fun for 75% of the time, but that wasn't enough to have it be the primary thing. And so when the MR thing came up, it was the perfect example. It's like, oh, well, we can design this segment to take advantage of some of the work we've been interested in doing this, where you really get to role play as the characters doing telekinesis with your own hands. And the fact that it's telekinesis rather than trying to direct grab objects helps, because direct grabbing things in MR is usually not super satisfying. The Kinect demo of it was pretty early. And I think because the MR portion started a little bit later than the rest of the title. So it came together and changed the most in the last kind of like eight months of development. So I think actually if you once you get to play or if you play the other ones, like a lot of the mechanics and gestures we used for telekinesis have changed pretty dramatically from that demo to the further one. And yeah, pretty happy with where we got a lot of the like the portal opening and the grabbing and the telekinesis, but for the initial Kinect demo, we tried something for telekinesis where it was a little bit closer to like Eleven's gesture in the show, where you would like do this to focus on something, and then you kind of tilt your hand up like this to like lift it up. And it felt really cool if you did it right, but it was like slightly too, and then if you crush something, it was just like this crush action. It was like super into one, but it was this double step to select and lift stuff up was just a little bit too hard to teach. And so we ended up. switching it over to what most of our playtesters were doing, which is just reaching out and grabbing and just being like, okay, we're still going to use that reach out and grab as the thing. And then the crushing something became almost like this snap, where you could just tilt your hand like that and snap it. And that proved more intuitive and was less steps to do. So I mean, Yeah, the hand tracking stuff is an area that like, we're still excited to continue kind of exploring as a studio and figuring out how to make even better. Like, I don't know, it feels like an area that still has a lot of potential in the field.
[00:46:55.613] Kent Bye: Awesome. I know we're coming up at the top of the hour. We'd love to hear if you have any thoughts on the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling and what it might be able to enable.
[00:47:06.392] Samantha Gorman: I'm interested, I mean, this is in general in the collision of immersive storytelling and spatial computing and kind of like the world around you and how you understand the world around you. It's a totally different project, but we've done some projects around this, is what happens if there's an interpretation, a layer on another person? How does that change your interaction with them? How does it change how you're engaging in content? And what does that potential say for storytelling? In terms of the specifics of VR now, Danny, is there anything you want to add?
[00:47:42.028] Danny Cannizzaro: I mean, I think just in general, some of the new stuff that we're excited to explore as studios, or at least me personally, I'm definitely interested in the way that Gaze tracking can be folded into more things. It's something we've wanted to do since Pry, which is a reading experience where the experience knows where you are in your reading and knows when your eye catches on a word and how it adapts to that. And I think that we're finally starting to get to a place where the technology lets you do that. And even some of the early experience we've done with that are really cool. And then also, we've been starting to play around with the possibilities of machine learning, generative AI. Our game Tendar from 2017, 2016 or whatever had built into it machine learning models to do object detection and sentiment analysis in a MR context of this. And I do think those kind of potentials and all the generative AI stuff are dramatically shifting what's possible and what creation things are. And so that is a space that we are interested in seeing more artists explore and look at critically and look at not just as ways of like replacing other ways of doing things, but what are the unique affordances that the technologies can offer.
[00:48:58.518] Samantha Gorman: And yeah, we had an early, like very early form of Gen AI piece almost 10 years ago that was like this form of, you know, play. So it's funny that like these themes can recycle throughout the like culture and, you know, like the particular moment. It's very, it's interesting.
[00:49:13.206] Danny Cannizzaro: Are you talking about the play?
[00:49:14.686] Samantha Gorman: Yeah.
[00:49:15.667] Danny Cannizzaro: Yeah. Samantha made a play generator that would, this was before like large language models.
[00:49:19.929] Samantha Gorman: So it's using, what was it using? Markov chains on top of processing in this library called Rita.
[00:49:25.697] Danny Cannizzaro: And it would generate the play and the stage directions and feed them to an actor in real time who would then have to attempt to perform them. And there's this tension between this sometimes impossible text and the human trying to interpret it. So these are areas that we've been interested in for a while. VVR is a story of humans doing TaskRabbit-like jobs for AIs. And so I think that whole space is very interesting to us right now.
[00:49:51.121] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Danny and Samantha, thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help break down Stranger Things VR. I think you've managed to take a big IP to push forward the story and the narrative in that sense, but also continue to innovate with what's even possible with immersive storytelling within the context of VR. So very much appreciated playing through the game and also having a chance to help break it all down. So thanks again for joining me.
[00:50:12.213] Samantha Gorman: Thank you.
[00:50:14.220] Kent Bye: So that was Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro. They're the co-founders of Tender Claws and they've just released the Stranger Things VR today on Thursday, February 22nd, 2024. So I've a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, well, I got a lot of insight into how this project came about and they made this pitch and they wanted to really explore some of the psychological void spaces of the upside down world, but also in this featuring of the main villain of the show that is introduced in season four. And his character's name is Vecna. So I had only seen season one of Stranger Things. And so as I was playing through the game, I felt a little lost as to who's who and there's all these character names. It's been a number of years since I've even watched the first season. So I found myself going and watching like a recap video to just get a sense of what the overall narrative arc of the show is. And that actually helped to ground some of the deeper context because you're sort of thrown in this world. And I think it would work if you're just playing this on its own, but I think you will definitely get more out of it if you are familiar with at least some of the main characters and some of the main dynamics of the show. So I feel like another thing that I had the experience of was that there's a lot of cognitive load when it comes to listening to voiceover in the midst of exploring around in the open world. By default, they have the captions that are on and I found that I at some point turned them off and then I needed to turn them back on because sometimes I'll be in the middle of a battle with one of the Demogorgon dogs and it's just like I'm missing what's being said. And I feel like, well, this narrative part is probably more important than this interaction. And so there's a vast majority of some of these narrative beats that are given to you as this psychological projection, as Samantha was saying, and that there are other scenes that have the motion capture. I found that those scenes are easier to track because you have solid characters. And sometimes when I'm being spoken to, it's difficult to keep track of all of the different narrative beats. especially because you're kind of switching different characters and there's different people talking different times. And so, yeah, I feel like there's certain aspects of the story that are more difficult for me to understand what was happening in the moment. Now that I've had this conversation with them and understanding the overall trajectory of the characters and what they were doing with each of these different scenes, I think in hindsight have a little bit more insight, but I do think that I would benefit from going back and actually watching the whole season and then coming back to the game and playing it again, just to see a little bit more grounding. I feel like as a standalone experience, it is satisfying to go through each of these different worlds. The one that I had the most trouble with was the chapter five, where I did feel like the most lost at certain moments, but I feel like there's a certain way that you eventually kind of figure it out. So it's a bit of a puzzle, but there are other narrative beats that are sprinkled throughout. So if you want to really see all those different interactions and scenes, then you just play like you normally play all the other worlds, and you're able to still feel like you're progressing, but at the same time, they have these moments of Groundhog's Day, like you're clearly not doing something completely correct, so there's a bit of a, trying to solve a bit of the puzzle of that chapter. And then at the end, there were some moments where you die and it basically says game over. And you're like, well, this doesn't feel like a very satisfying ending, because all the other times that you die, I played it on story mode, wasn't playing it on the most difficult level of the gameplay interaction. So I was playing it on, I just want to know the story. And so the battles weren't that difficult. However, at the ending, even on that story level, there were times where I died and had to play that whole last section over just to get to the final ending. So I feel like there's a lot of innovations with what Dinner Clause is doing with how to pull in all these narrative components and how to take an existing IP like Stranger Things and to turn it into a VR game. I think this is actually one of the better adaptations that I've seen in terms of really not only pushing forward the story level of Stranger Things, but giving you an embodied experience of one of the main villains. Playing with these telekinesis mechanics is really satisfying and also this kind of blend of all these other locomotion Mechanics that feel somewhat innovative for how you're actually moving around the space Like Danny said there's other games that have been exploring some of the similar types of mechanics and especially the gorilla tag You're moving around by moving your hands type of mechanic. This is more of a abstracted generalization of that where it's kind of like a spider-man esque where you're shooting out these vines and swinging around and And yeah, it just feels like a unique way to explore through this world. So overall, I feel like the experience is somewhat experimental and pushing forward different innovation aspects. And I feel like some people are comfortable with that type of experimental vibe and trying to really push forward what's possible with the medium. So if you've enjoyed previous Tender Claws titles, I'm pretty sure that you'll really enjoy this one as well. And if you haven't enjoyed previous Tender Claws titles, then it's a little bit more of a hit or miss. If you're a fan of Stranger Things, I'm very curious to see these different intersections, because there are people who are really interested in narrative in VR. There's people very interested in gaming in VR. There's people that are fans of Stranger Things. And then there's just people who are just more casual fans of VR in general. And so I feel like there is a very interesting intersection for what this experience is going to resonate with people. Like I said, I really enjoyed playing through this game and there were some moments that I felt a little bit lost or difficult to track, but after watching a recap I feel like I was getting a much broader sense of the overall trajectory of the piece. So yeah, lots of really fascinating insights for how they developed the project and this kind of iterative process of both discovering some of these locomotion mechanics and how that was playing into the overall story. So yeah, I really enjoyed playing through this experience and the whole mixed reality portion is also interesting to see how they were able to really pull that off. The demo at MetaConnect was really quite rough because the mechanics were difficult to understand. But I feel like after you play the game and then you go to the mixed reality portion and you're just using your hands. you kind of understand the core mechanics of some of the different gestures that they teach you as well and then it ends up being a little bit more of a narrative arc in the first mixed reality and the second one's more of like an infinite runner where you're just trying to get a high score of killing all these different enemies but in that one you're playing yourself and in the other throughout the course of the piece you are playing Vecna but you're really listening and bearing witness to some of these different stories from this first person perspective so It's a little bit different than some of their previous titles, where you have a little bit more agency and choice and interaction. And there's much more of a narrative arc over this piece and much more of a character study and deep dive into the character of Henry slash Vecna. So that's all 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, and please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listless reporter podcast and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to make this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
