I interviewed Job Stauffer and Robin Orr, the two design innovation leads on Starwave, at Meta Connect 2024. They also met and fell in love in VR, and each share their respective journeys into the space through building community around VR fitness experiences. See more context in the rough transcript below.
Here’s the launch trailer for Starwave:
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Music: Fatality
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] 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 future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing my coverage from MetaConnect 2024, today's episode is with Job Stauffer and Robin Orr, who are two of the design innovation leads on Starwave, which is a relatively new rhythm game that is more focused on achieving flow states. So Job is somebody who's been a long-time enthusiast for fitness within VR and has worked on a number of different previous projects and really got into soundboxing and then from there into Within's Supernatural. And by starting a lot of the different communities from Supernatural, had a chance to meet Robin Orr through that, who ended up becoming his partner. And so they talk about their own journey within the fitness space within XR, but also their own process of meeting and falling in love within the context of virtual reality. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Jobe and Robin happened on Thursday, September 26th, 2024 at MetaConnect in Menil Park, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:19.958] Job Stauffer: My name is Jobe Stauffer. I'm one of the two design and innovation leads on a project called Starwave. I also work with a studio called Tigertron and several other studios and my partner here, Robin Orr.
[00:01:33.720] Robin Orr: And I'm Robin Orr. I am one of the other lead design and innovation with StarWave. I work on level design for StarWave and I also am an educator outside of that for K5.
[00:01:46.855] Kent Bye: Maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:01:52.560] Job Stauffer: Oh my gosh. So I've been working in video games for about 20 years. I've come all the way from, you know, early days at Rockstar Games working on like GTA 4 and San Andreas and Red Dead. Worked in games for more years, worked at Namco Bandai, I launched Dark Souls, was a a telltale person for many years working on walking dead and minecraft and all these things until about 2016 that sort of like stressful way of life especially working in games was getting the better of me i was vastly overweight and unhealthy and also just really needing to do some r d and vr at the time did some R&D and VR Skunk Works projects at Telltale with early Vive projects, and can remember all the way back to the days where Nate Mitchell and Palmer Luckey came into Telltale's office, dropped early dev kits on our desk, and said, hey, Telltale, what do you guys think you could do? And I was really into it. I started doing research. I discovered something around by the time we got Vive dev kits, a project called Sound Boxing. It was one of the first Vive get up and move to music projects done by a guy named Eric. I was working at Twitter at the time. Anyway, long story short, it totally enthralled me. It mesmerized me. And 50 to 100 pounds later, I kind of became one of the first known humans to kind of transform their bodies and realize that fitness and movement and VR was going to be a big thing. dovetailed my whole career into pioneering in this space, helped work on a project and produce something called Rave Runner that eventually became Audio Trip, and then helped launch another little project called Supernatural in 2020. And, you know, that's actually where I met Robin. We helped kickstart that community as well on Facebook. And I got to meet so many amazing people during that really challenging, wild time for the world and was just really blessed that Robin was one of the first people to sort of come into our community and we became very good friends then and that's where we connected and she had a different path before meeting me as an educator, I would say.
[00:03:55.353] Robin Orr: Yeah, so I am more the consumer side of things as far as games go, but I had always been into VR when it came out. I had an Oculus Rift and Cardboard VR, Google VR, all that fun stuff. And then in 2020, retreated inward but also outward in a sense because you know going into vr but then also expanding that universe among so many other people that were also doing the same and that's where we met we would dance in supernatural together and so doing level design with star wave i feel that background of embodied movement and flow in vr has really allowed the level design to take off with that in star wave
[00:04:43.991] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think I started with Audio Shield and then to soundboxing, and then eventually Beat Saber had come out. But yeah, these rhythm games I had always been a huge fan of. And soundboxing, you would put in your own YouTube link, and then you would listen to whatever you want, and then maybe create your own beat maps. So yeah, I had a lot of fun playing through all those games. And I remember back in 2018, we had a conversation at Oculus Connect at the time, and that it was the same year that Carmack had gotten up on stage, and he was really skeptical that people would be wanting to get out of their chair and to walk around and to exercise and be fit. And I remember talking to Aaron Stanton and to you, and Aaron was talking a lot about, he had this whole like machine that he was using and measuring how many calories are people burning as they're doing this location-based entertainment experience that he had himself all geared up and getting actual metrics. But he had a whole ranking system to look at different games to see like, okay, how much exercise could this actually be where this could be a whole fitness trend. I had a long discussion to you about that. But at that point, the wider decision makers at Meta hadn't really caught on that this fitness aspect of VR was going to be a thing. And it's since become very much a huge thing. So I'd love to hear your perspective from the last time we spoke and what's continued to happen to really prove out why this is such a viable use case for VR.
[00:06:03.055] Job Stauffer: Yeah, goodness. You know, I remember that connect and I remember Aaron was at the show and he watched Carmack say, no one's ever going to want to do this. And he bet him a pizza that this was going to be one of the biggest things in VR. Aaron and I are good friends and we helped kickstart the Virtual Reality Institute of Health and Exercise in partnership with the kinesiology department. at San Francisco State University. And we could see it then. We knew it was gonna be a trend. We knew it was gonna be the best use case for VR because it's not a matter of going in and doing a fitness experience and you're gonna simulate the gym so much as it is. Once you pick up the sword out of the stone and you start hacking and slashing and you start physically embodying the same action that we love performing with our thumbs and our buttons and our controllers and our butts on the couch, Gaming goes through this paradigm shift where you're physiologically going to be performing what is inherently exercise by experiencing the thrill of gaming in VR. Thus, the byproduct of that physical experience becomes calorie burning. It becomes a mode of fitness. It becomes a mode of physical activity. Adding that to, OK, games that can become physical and then fitness minded programs that can also become virtual. It was all going to be coming to the same point. So the perspective on that is, you know, right around 2020, I was actually living in Aaron's house in Campbell at the time in Silicon Valley, launching Supernatural in partnership with Within. And we just knew it was, this was it. This was like, if anything was going to bring fitness into the forefront of the meta platform, the Quest platform or VR, something that felt like Peloton, something where coaches were going to be telling you, come in every day, make it a habit, you know, check off a box on a Tuesday, a Wednesday, a Thursday, because the more that you're returning into the headset and the more that you're doing this for yourself and for your body, the more you'll stick to it, the more that you'll see, quote, fitness results. So that was some early eurekas, was really just that matter of coming in, check your box, make it a habit. And I think Meta caught on really quick. You know, it was the right time when everyone was stuck in their houses. The Quest 2 had just launched. I remember Robin and I, we'd started the Supernatural community. We had a group that we met through. CNN showed up. Michael Andronico from CNN saw our post. He's like, can I come see what this is all about? He ran a piece on CNN. It was the first thing about, you know what? This Quest 2 is actually really good for exercise. I sat in on this brunch group with these people that do Supernatural. And I remember then emails came in. Look what CNN said. They said it's good for fitness. And it was like it spiraled. Meta caught on. And then the next thing you know, Meta's buying Supernatural and Within, and fitness is gonna be really big, and everyone was just exploding. I was like, you know what, this is huge. People can do this at home. This is where you wanna get your workout in. You don't have to go to the gym. The gym is wherever you are. And I think from the meta perspective, all these years later, 2024, the one thing that still lingers from that era and from that paradigm shift that I think they're still struggling with and we're still challenging is way back when meta would have, OK, we have a gaming team helping games come to the platform, and we have a lifestyle team helping apps come to the platform. And games are games, but apps are apps. And Supernatural, it's an app. It's a fitness platform. But when you're a developer, you come to the platform, you're sent to this convergence point where you have to decide, am I going to list my product as an app or is it a game? And we took that approach and said, you know what? We're going to challenge that because that's more of a remnant from effectively kind of their structure and as an organization, different managers and directors filing different products under certain brackets. We said, you know, 2024, we want to put one foot into the fitness app space, one foot into the gaming space and develop something from the ground up that completely blurs the line and challenges that and says, you know what, this is the gamiest fitness app we could create, but it's also the most fitness minded rhythm game that we could create and kind of just say, you know what, all of that is kind of going away. The lines are blurred. We want people coming in and just having fun, whether they're trying to lose weight, whether they're trying to get fit. It's time for that now to kind of continue to challenge that. And we see other devs doing that, too. And whether it's in sports or rhythm gaming or fitness app production, it's you're getting up, you're getting physical, you're doing something great for your body and props to Meta for really kind of leaning into it and, you know, seeing that this is what people really want. A lot of people are coming to this and coming to the platform for their health and well-being. And it's good to play VR. It's good to get up and do VR. And even if you can't get up, say you're physically challenged in some way, you can't get up from a chair or wheelchair, you can still stay active. and there's experiences for anyone in those situations and we accommodate to that and it's good to have gone through this evolution and that Meta has bought the ticket in and said, you know what, we see you, we hear you, let's get people in here, whether they're fitness minded or not, let's just get people moving and keep people active.
[00:11:18.055] Robin Orr: And I'll add on to that that, you know, you have people that are looking specifically for fitness games with coaches that are directing them to do, you know, specific moves and exercises. And then you have others that are looking for the most gamified workout possible so that it doesn't feel like a workout, but it is. And so I feel like Starwaves, you know, especially fits that perfect balance between the two.
[00:11:43.390] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could also elaborate a little bit about your journey into, like, coming into and discovering some of this fitness in VR and then deciding to help start the community. And, yeah, just a little bit more about your journey into where you're at now.
[00:11:54.879] Robin Orr: Yeah. Funny enough, it was my mom that convinced me to give Supernatural a try. You know, I did Beat Saber. I would download the custom maps and such and play that all the time and play. my mom found supernatural first and she was digging it and she said you know you should give this a try as well and i hopped in this guy job over here followed me immediately because i think you were doing that with everyone at the start as soon as they would join it was follow follow follow and then back and forth and so i followed him back and saw he had like 80 000 points for the week and i'm like and unfollow I'm like, I don't have, I can't keep up with that. And then I did eventually follow him back again later, but no, it was just very much the introduction into the more formal fitness that is VR fitness. It challenged me, it pushed me, having the coaches there, giving that feedback and that like motivation was exactly what I needed. We were all alone, we were all separate, you know, staying in our own places and such, but like, And that right there was that first like, oh wait, this person is here in this room with me talking into my head, like talking about this exercise that I'm doing and pushing through and continuing to go forward. And that then, I think it was even the coaches that suggested the Facebook community beyond that. And then joining the Facebook community, getting an invitation to the 100K Club, because that was something that you had started and then went through retroactively and added everyone that you had followed that had over 100,000 points. And so, got the invite, got the invitation to post an introduction. It just kind of evolved naturally of just people all alone but also wanting to connect and be together. And so from there we would have team challenges and like community, yeah. I was put on his team for my very first challenge and I was like, I'll be a cheerleader on the side and like hype people up because I'm a teacher and that's just what I do. And our friendship just evolved from there and it's all about community and bringing it back to that connection with people.
[00:14:08.820] Kent Bye: And so for StarWave, were you the founders and developers and creators? Or was it already being developed? Talk about the origins of StarWave and if it was already a project that you came onto and helped to evangelize what they were already doing.
[00:14:20.771] Job Stauffer: Yeah, so it is sort of like the end result of everyone's dream projects that all met at the same point. It precedes us. An incredible team at Tigertron was founded by Sam Kennedy and James Mielke, some old school video game journalists that founded 1UP.com, used to run AGM, Ziff Davis folks. They did a project called Jupiter and Mars, which was a dolphin exploration, a nice message about the importance of saving the environment and the importance of the ocean. They had a dream of doing sort of a music dance experience in space, but really didn't necessarily know how to make that work. They had an amazing pitch deck. And I remember end of 2020, Sam showed it to me. He saw what we were doing with the Supernatural community. He's like, hey, I got a project for you. We want to do this thing. We need to know how to make it work. What do you think? And I was like, oh my gosh, I just accepted a job going into VR healthcare and rehab and helping paraplegics learn how to drive a car and eat cereal again. I can't jump on this, but here's some pointers. They went away. Meta gave an awesome grant for sort of seeding the idea of space, constellation, creatures, something really pretty. And James Mielke, he did a lot of work with Q Entertainment. Q Entertainment, for those of you that don't know, Rez, Child of Eden, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, just one of the most brilliant, genius game designers of our time. He worked with Mizuguchi and helped produce Child of Eden. So there's always been this sort of a DNA from these Japanese developers that we always have known and loved, kind of colliding with this ethos of Western VR fitness nuts like us to come in and help design that and make that peanut butter and jelly sandwich work. So about end of 22, early 23, we came back together and like there's a light demo with some ideas that just it was like, OK, we got this far. We're in space. How do we make this flow? How do we make this connect? And from there, Robin and I came in to take the wheel and design and say, you know what? This needs to be really leaning into finding your own flow. Everything else in this space is kind of effectively tricking people into moving by turning them into a marionette. you know, the designers are pulling the puppet strings and saying, go up, go left, go right, go down. You kind of take away that creative thought process and it works. It's getting you to move without even having to think about it. The thing that we haven't experienced yet until we got into Starwave was let's take that out of it and let's say, find your own flow. Let's give you empowerment to knock things out into the sky, into the stars, in any direction, but carry that momentum forward. We're not necessarily striking a hot knife through butter like a beat saber block. We love that. We're not necessarily popping a balloon like Supernatural and it just disappears. We love that. Let's move the momentum out into a fantastical way Every strike is gonna send things out into the sky and give that dopamine hit every single time, as opposed to the cherry on top of the sundae. Let's make everything all cherries and let's make it all very sweet, but let's not tell you how to do it. Let's say, if you wanna go up, if you wanna go down, go for it. If you wanna sidestep left and right, go for it. Let's move that gravity towards you. So if you wanna move around your room, you can duck, you can get freestyle. let's take these genres that we all love, some of the stuff that we've worked on, you know, Beat Saber is 2018, Supernatural is 2020. How do we push that forward into 2024? And it also be this culmination of so much amazing talent, not just with us at Tigertron, but There's a team at SkyMap Studios out of New England that's been making games for over a decade, more in the engineering side, really Unreal experts. We haven't seen a lot of games in this genre take this on on the Unreal Engine. So that's really part of our secret sauce is all that talent and just that bloom lighting and that crisp smoothness we get from Unreal. And it's really like everyone kind of got to arrive at this same point and everyone's best talents and everyone's best dreams and ideas came together and it's just like we want the player to go with the flow and say no find your own way through it we had to approach this and say here's what it is now we got to keep chipping away at it and just go with this flow and if this feels right we'll tweak this if this design feels right we'll make it that if we need to send asteroids at you and you can hit them with your crystal wand and break it open and find a crystal and collect them then Let's figure that out and let's just see what this turns into. And the ultimate thing that we're super grateful for, and this dovetails back to Supernatural, is all that work that we did in building the community and sort of identifying the people that played it the most. Like her mom, Robin's mom, was the first human who wasn't working on Supernatural that had like spun a million points over her life. That's how we met. And her and then everyone else that came into that group of achievers later, they became our friends and our community. So when it came time to say, hey, we're building something new, we got to work with the most experienced VR flow experts on the planet. who have proven themselves with time in the headset and know what they want and know what feels good. And we had an army of like 50 to 100 of the best experts in the world and who are like family to us to come in and help make this thing and help start our community. And we couldn't have done it without them. And it's young. You know, we're three weeks into the market. We are currently the top rated new app on the market of the month and the season. They surprised us yesterday. They sat us right in front 10 feet from Zuck on the show. And then the show opened with Starwave was XOXO Bluff playing Starwave was the first frame of the shot. So it's just been a dream and it's just awesome. It does not happen without community. That's the lesson from not just VR Fitness, but every project here in VR. It doesn't happen unless you find that common unity of passion where you know you're tapping into the vibe of what people want and just leaning in and listening and doing what feels right and listening to the common desires of everyone that loves this stuff.
[00:20:30.100] Kent Bye: Yeah, Robin, I have a couple of follow-up questions. First, let's go back to your mom getting into, like, fitness and becoming, like, a million-point scorer and supernatural. Maybe you could just sort of give a bit more context for your mom and her journey into VR and, like, how she came to become such an enthusiastic evangelist, even introducing all this world to you.
[00:20:49.386] Robin Orr: Sure. I will say that I got into VR first. And then I preordered... I think it was the Quest 1, first iteration after the Rift, so no longer tethered. I pre-ordered it, and I was super excited to get it, and it was going to arrive in March or something. And she pre-ordered one, and she picked hers up from Best Buy the following week. And I'm like, OK, time out. Wait a minute, what? So she got a head start into VR, into the new headset.
[00:21:19.363] Kent Bye: So you got your Quest, and then she got it a week later? What was it that catalyzed her to do that?
[00:21:25.666] Robin Orr: Ooh, that's a good question. I feel like she probably tried my rift enough times to know that it was something that she was interested in trying, and I think this would have been... 2019 is when the quest came out, yeah. Okay. Because I think at that point she was in Florida, most likely, with my grandma, and just had a whole lot of extra time on her hands, basically, and was looking for an outlet, a way to kind of just... distraction and VR was also another way to connect with us back in Washington State with like Star Trek and mini golf and just you know being able to stay connected with us through an embodied experience versus just a phone call or you know FaceTime it was different in VR it was you were there together and even if you weren't physically there together. So yeah, I think that that's probably where her VR journey stems from, is just trying to find something to, finding a distraction as well as a way to connect with family. And then she found Supernatural first. I don't even, she's always one of those that is like, she'll always have the first iPhone, she'll always have the first iPad. You know, she is, Very much on top of new tech. And so that's probably what it was, was just, you know, oh, there's this new thing. I'm going to go check it out and give it a try. And she loved it and suggested that I give it a try and moved from there. She's also one of our beta testers. Absolutely.
[00:23:02.047] Job Stauffer: She's the top of our Starwave leaderboards right now. She was like 20 million points behind on Saturday, and by Tuesday afternoon, she had gone up six different ranks and knocked Besmondo, who was churning up tens of millions of points from over in the UK. So now they wake up every morning and they see who in the UK is number one. Goes to bed. Holly gets in. She pummels past him, 20 million more points. she goes to bed and it's just like a leapfrog all the time and it's just fun seeing everyone like get active and get on that leaderboard and it's kind of that driving force is like it's not really about the points but it's that that little extra motivation for those that need it and holly is an absolute monster so look out for holly oars on there
[00:23:48.362] Kent Bye: And yeah, maybe you could also elaborate a little bit more around your journey into StarWave and going from the supernatural and getting involved. And then what was the catalyst to then dive into this other new, maybe there was experiences that you weren't satisfied with or you were looking for something different? Or what was it that made you want to get involved with this project?
[00:24:06.468] Robin Orr: I think it has a similar relationship to why I left the classroom, to be honest, was I spent 12 years teaching second, third, fourth grade in the classroom. And then in 2020, I was the remote teacher for a year and a half and everything was turned on its head. Everything we had to relearn, okay, how are we going to engage with kids in this new setting? How are we going to teach? Like we were on our toes and like, When we came back then in 2022, like that formal, all right, we're coming back. We're going to all be in the building together. No more remote. And we're going to go back to exactly how things were done before. It's like, no, this was our chance to innovate. And like we did this whole shift. Let's keep moving forward. Let's keep innovating. Let's keep making progress and change for good and that just wasn't what happened and so I left the classroom at that point and I work for a company now that does innovate and is creative and is inspiring and so I have that creative outlet. And then with Jobe, you know, we're, we're partners. We have our VR design lab out in the garage together. And I think Starwave had that natural evolution beyond supernatural. So like we had supernatural, we were doing supernatural for years. It was the same coaching. It was the same music. It was the same moves. Exactly. And like, We weren't seeing that innovative leap anymore since it first came out. We were still doing our multiplayer versions of the audio call and the 3, 2, 1, go. They do have multiplayer now, which is fantastic. But there needed to be more of that, I think, earlier. And so Starwave, to me, feels like that natural evolution and innovation beyond.
[00:25:58.731] Kent Bye: And so is there a multiplayer mode in Starwave?
[00:26:01.175] Job Stauffer: We're working on it. You know, it took Supernatural, what, like four or five years to get theirs. We're still very tiny. We are not a multi-many-million invested startup or meta-owned $100 million organization. We're indie. I think we're taking a beat to make sure that when we're able to do it, it's going to be just right. But right now it's typically, you know, the irony is the way that Robin and I met, just kind of getting on the mic and just starting at the same time is really what most people like or need. And you get to keep that focus on the flow in front of you. And it's not really about competing per se, but I think when we do get something, it's going to try to maintain that aspect of it where it's still about you and your own action in front of you. And just making sure that you can better visualize the people who are vibing with you and flowing with you and some more surprises. it'll be a minute you know we're only three weeks out and we've got a lot more updates to grow and something soon but um yeah we just want to make sure it's it's innovative and it's fresh and for now just the base single player experience is kind of it's that meta multiplayer experience really of leaderboards that really seems to motivate people more like i said you wake up someone in the uk's beat your score it's time to wake up and beat theirs and just kind of tag team it and leapfrog it so That's where we're at with it. More soon. Who knows?
[00:27:34.429] Kent Bye: I wanted to ask around the scoring because I know something like Beat Saber it has a very specific scoring system that you have to like have elongated hits that ends up being like both the precision of motion and the ability to move your body in a way that feels like that as you improve you can actually see an improvement in your score so that there's like a scoring mechanism that can actually motivate you to improve in the play but With StarWave, it sounds like it's got a little bit more open-endedness and creativity. So how do you balance that getting away from the regimented marionette controlling of the user, but yet at the same time create some sort of scoring mechanism that rewards that flow state, or at least is able to match someone's internal phenomenological experience for how it feels like, but still have some sort of metric for them to know that they're doing it as good as they can to have a leaderboard component to it?
[00:28:28.356] Robin Orr: For sure, yeah. So Jobe mentioned that you find people that match your vibe. Your vibe attracts your tribe, that kind of thing. And we really leaned into your vibration with Starwave. And so the way that we have our scores broken down is our energy and frequency, which combine to add to your overall vibration. And so your total score, those millions of points that Jobe was talking about, they're your vibration. And the energy is, you know, the slicing through, the follow through, like how hard are you knocking those stars back out into space? And the frequency is how accurate are you? Like, are you hitting all the notes? Are you missing some notes? The stardust also applies to that as well. So like... jumping into a Stardust Trail halfway through will affect that frequency. But then it all adds up to your vibration and an overall percentage or a score. So we do have our cosmic and our nebulous and our different descriptive words for your score based on the percentage because we do have those folks coming in from Beat Saber that want to know, was this perfect? Was this good? How does this stack up? And so, you know, we have those those terms, but nothing's ever like failure or like you lost. It's just it's celebrating what you did and continuing to add to that overall vibration, whether it's a hard day today and you're just barely hitting the notes. That's what that day is. And that's OK. We're still celebrating your time. We're still celebrating the energy and like building that overall vibration.
[00:30:00.197] Job Stauffer: One other aspect to it, though, that does kind of eek from Supernatural is you can't lose. That was one of the best, most genius sort of design decisions to bring the biggest, widest, bluest ocean audience possible is there's no losing if you're getting in and trying to do something good for yourself and good for your body. trying to develop a healthy habit and raise a good vibe. So there's no like lose noises. There's no like, oh, I missed it. And there's no, you're dead because you didn't have enough fun. It's just how much more are you moving? And there's no like extra difficult, like master difficulty. It's just, What we adjust here is how wide is your flow. If you want a more of a physical challenge, you can widen it, you can narrow it, you can raise it, you can lower it. It's more adjusting to the physical challenge of difficulty that you want to make yourself as opposed to, we're going to throw things faster and we're going to do things like every other rhythm game does. It's more, some people physically can't do that. So it's part accessibility and it's part servicing the ability for yourself to challenge yourself further if that's what you're looking for. and never penalizing you for trying. And that's really key. I think in Supernatural, in our experience, just get in there and have fun and you cannot lose as long as you're trying.
[00:31:17.587] Kent Bye: So so in terms of like the metrics, in terms of evaluating like either your own personal anecdotes for your own fitness journey or like other type of metrics or things that you gather from why fitness and VR is compelling as a space and what kind of like metrics for success that are looked at. So what are some of the individual personal anecdotes that you may have or ways that you start to think of what's happening in the VR fitness space and trying to understand what's happening in this ecosystem?
[00:31:44.656] Job Stauffer: I mean, the more tangible metrics are just anyone developing and publishing an app. Put it up there in the space and what's it selling? What's the engagement like? We can look at that and see who's doing really well. We're doing really well. Other apps in the space are doing really well. But in the sort of broader sense, it's kind of more cultural. So once that zeitgeist starts to happen where it's like, oh man, Kelly Ripa, Today Show. she's playing it and they're playing it and like you know billy eilish is playing it like it starts to become less this like oh man these weird people like vr vr fitness what do you do exercise what do you do about the sweat like that that was the story for like six years was what do you do about the sweat that doesn't make any sense but now it's just like you know people don't even question that and i think meta's done a great job of leaning into positioning the image of what fitness is and how active VR experiences can be. And I think you'll start to see that in all of their advertising, you'll see in all the trailers and the normalization of just staying active in VR. And the more that you start to see that reflected everyone's stories and, you know, seeing this normalized, it was always inevitable. It was always bound to happen, just like we started this convo all the way back to even before challenging Carmack. We knew this for years. It's just going to take time. So look at like the 3S. We just tried that facial interface. We said this for years. You were just saying this like once they launch it with like a facial interface liner, that's like a sneaker. Like it's designed for fitness. It's breathable. It's mesh. It's you're going to sweat in it. You're going to see through it. It's going to feel like a Nike headset. Like it's already going in that direction where the platforms meeting sort of the use case for where it needs it. And mass pop culture is starting to use it more and more every day. That's been happening since 2020. And, you know, there's the metric is Other than sales, it's hard to really point to anything other than just your your thumb on the ground and up in the air to the vibe of the zeitgeist. And it's just it's a continually growing trend. I remember like watching HBO. Right. And one of our favorite shows is The Righteous Gemstones. You ever see that one? Oh, my God. You should check it out. Danny McBride, John Goodman. Anyway, one of the main characters gives the guy a gift, a VR headset. And he's like, oh, my gosh. Finally, I can enjoy my two favorite things, dancing in nature and space. And it cuts to him just dancing in his living room and getting physically active. We're like, see right there. And like, you know, it's normalized. Once pop culture starts to reflect it, then you know. Then you know. It's like, yeah, we're arriving. It's arrived. This is normal. Like, if you can laugh at it, we got it.
[00:34:37.406] Robin Orr: Yeah. Yeah. I also feel like this is all just feeling nothing based on like actual facts. But with 2020 and many people retreating inward, I know that there has been an uptick in anxiety and social anxiety post pandemic and going to the gym and exercising that way causes more stress for some than others and by having a space in your own home to be able to get fit and do what you love without having to go and buy a bunch of different weights a bunch of different equipment just being able to put your headset on get your heart rate up and and move like I think a lot of other people are also finding that as a way to to keep them moving without having to pay for a gym membership
[00:35:24.462] Kent Bye: Yeah, and just to kind of a follow-up with Carmack, after that, whenever he said that at Akas Connect, a number of years later, he became one of the top-scoring Beat Sabers, at least in the context of meta. So he became an actual, like, huge enthusiast, and I think that's how he actually met his new partner, is through, like, Beat Saber.
[00:35:41.056] Job Stauffer: You know, like, and props to him. It's like, that is how we met, and I don't know... you know, related is without the pandemic and without VR, I don't think that she and I would have connected the way that we did. It was a way for us to make sure that we became best friends first. You know, we were literally stuck in the garage and we couldn't leave our houses and suddenly meeting all these people through a community. And here's this person that like, wait, I'm not the only weirdo that wants to hang out and dance and sweat in VR. Meeting all these other people that love it through this thing, I'm helping to launch and like, here's this person that likes playing games and wants to play Racket NX. And next thing you know, we're playing mini golf. And the next thing you know, it's like you can't go out and socialize, but yet we're standing with each other around a campfire in big screen and dancing to music. And next thing you know, we're... playing a fishing game, but we're really just sitting on the dock looking at the stars and suddenly holding hands in VR. And, you know, the one other thing aside from fitness is, you know, it's really still human connection is really where I think it's hard to really quantify that as well. It's great that Carmack met his partner through Beat Saber, but when you have the ability to meet someone in a virtual space, whether they're 10,000 miles away or 10 miles away, but those guards are down and that safety is there because you're almost more present with each other and each other's inner selves. effectively kind of your soul and your consciousness is there in a space where you can connect on a deeper level before you have those hesitations or that anxiety of being physically near each other where you, you know, we had spent five, six months hanging out in VR, dancing together in space before we ever physically met in person. And once we did, it was, I felt like I'd ride it home. We, it's, it's, Falling in love in VR is a profound and beautiful experience and I'm really happy for Carmack and anyone else who's ever had that. It doesn't even have to be a romantic love, just some of the most beautiful friendships and loving friendships and families are found and forged in VR. And there's a reason for that. There's that emotional connection is so profound because, you know, emotions are energy in motion. And when you have your energy in motion and you're physically there in a space, but not, and it's just your energy, you have this literally deep emotional connection and this presence with each other that is really next level and it's um people have said we should write a book about it but we're still writing the book and still just enjoying each other and kudos to anyone else that's ever experienced that i think hbo did a really good documentary two years ago i think it was we met we met in virtual reality it was a joe hunting he permitted it at sundance and they acquired it from sundance yeah Amazing, amazing documentary. If you haven't seen it, watch it. Just a beautiful, beautiful story and relatable to us, but it's just, it's a human story and it's, those stories are happening every day more and more in VR and we're starting to see people in our community meet each other through Starwave now and that's, that's next level. That's really surreal and we're just grateful that, to be doing this for people, so.
[00:39:21.226] Robin Orr: Yeah, it goes back to that immersive feature of VR. I'm in my living room, but also I'm not in my living room. I am dancing in space with Jobe and listening to David Bowie. I feel physically safe because I'm in my living room and I don't have to worry about like, oh, what was that really loud bang? Like, you know, we had a cart going by just a minute ago. Like there's lots of, you know, external stimulus around us, you know, when you're outside and doing things like that. But when you're in VR, you're like there. don't have a better way to say it but like that physical sensitivity is all focused into the headset then and so it's truly like your authentic self in the headset and your brain has less to worry about about what's happening down that sidewalk or what's going over there because like you're in a safe space basically.
[00:40:18.336] Kent Bye: Great. Well, as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what each of you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and fitness might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:40:27.860] Job Stauffer: The ultimate potential? You know, everything that we've experienced, I think that we were fortunate because we were kind of the tip of the spear of the niche of, I would say, a very neurodiverse community of enthusiasts. very omnipresent in the VR community for a lot of reasons. A lot of focus, a lot of blocking out external stimuli, and just getting into a focused flow state. But I just played the demo for AlloVR, the yoga experience. just seeing sort of the um the holographic glasses yesterday that zuck brought out in the suitcase and just seeing the sort of volumetric recorded projections in the yoga experience and seeing the yoga teacher in front of you you could walk all the way around them and they're volumetrically recorded and presented and projected in front of you And that was eye-opening for a lot of reasons. And for people like us who kind of met in VR and we kind of met as an abstraction, we spent time sitting around mirror gazing. I didn't know it was a thing. We ended up doing that. And then we found out through the documentary that's a thing that people do. Yeah, mirror dwelling. Mirror dwelling. And we'd hang out, and I was a hot dog, and you were a bagel or something. chili pepper, an ice cream cone, and just giggling at each other. Like, I guess where I'm going with that is, I think the ability for people to be present with one another and feel a safety of presence, whether it's an abstracted avatar representation or an ultra holographic, aloe VR, you know, new Zuckerberg glasses representation is next level. And I think it's really about the evolution of human connection and presence with one another you know all the pieces are here for us as developers and humans to kind of figure out how to bring people closer together and in ways that we've experienced you know early on that i know are profound and will lead to deeper more lasting relationships because people really get to know each other on a deeper level through this immersive space than most any other way humans have before in our entire history so that's what i see i see more opportunities for that
[00:42:52.970] Robin Orr: Yeah, I always tie things to education, and I know that there is the potential for more mainstream education with VR. I know that there are a lot of companies that are trying and doing, and I just think that mainstream factor needs to increase even more. you know talking about that safe space and like talking about public schools and things like that like I see that being a very true potential for VR of having those connections with classmates and peers and being able to go to school with somebody that's living in Africa or living in you know Ukraine or anywhere like it continues to build that interconnected net that we have that connects us all it's those different little pinpoints in VR help strengthen those
[00:43:47.987] Kent Bye: Nice. And you have anything else that's left unsaid? Any final thoughts you'd like to share to the broader immersive community?
[00:43:54.614] Job Stauffer: No, just, you know, I think everyone that listens to your podcast is a very particular type of enthusiast that really appreciates the human stories. And thank you for letting us share our human stories. And, you know, just stick with this wild wild. It's still the Wild West. Like, you know, we've been here to connect. I don't know how many years this is now. And like, maybe if you've been here since the beginning, it's like, oh, this is old. But like, comparatively... we're still in this Atari age of the immersive space. And it's all just going to get more awesome and more interesting from here on out. And we're excited to be continually trying to forge ahead at the tip of the spear. And thanks for letting us talk about it.
[00:44:43.348] Robin Orr: Um, oh, I do have one other thing you asked about the potential for VR. Someday, dog VR. Dog VR. Dog VR, I think, would make Abby so much happier about us getting into our headsets because she gets so anxious and like, oh, mom's in her headset. I can't interact with her. It's all stressful. And dog VR. So she knows.
[00:45:10.137] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Job and Robin, thanks so much for joining me today on the podcast to share more about your journey into the fitness space with StarWave and also your own personal journey of finding connection and love within VR. So yeah, it sounds like finding these new modes of flow states and trying to work with the existing hardcore power users of these types of fitness apps and really working closely with them to listen to them and what they want and trying to serve what they want, but also each of you being power users in your own way. So yeah, very curious to jump in myself and check it out. And yeah, good luck as you continue to develop and evolve and see where it all goes here in the future. So thanks again for joining me to help break it all down.
[00:45:47.759] Job Stauffer: Thank you, Kent. Just be sure to find your own flow. And if you're looking for us, just go to playstarwave.com and come find us on Facebook. Come say hi. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That's it.
[00:45:58.264] Robin Orr: Yeah, thank you so much. Abby says thank you, too.
[00:46:01.165] Job Stauffer: Diabetic Alert, Dogs of America. If anyone has type 1 and needs an Abby in their life, check that out, too. They're lasting love in your life, and they'll save your life.
[00:46:10.149] Kent Bye: Yeah. Abby's been the fourth character in this conversation here, licking me and playing with me and rolling around. And yeah, it's been great. So awesome. Well, thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the voices of VR podcast. And I would like to invite you to join me on my Patreon. I've been doing the voices of VR for over 10 years, and it's always been a little bit more of like a weird art project. I think of myself as like a knowledge artist. So I'm much more of an artist than a business person. But at the end of the day, I need to make this more of a sustainable venture. Just five or $10 a month would make a really big difference. I'm trying to reach $2,000 a month or $3,000 a month right now. I'm at $1,000 a month, which means that's my primary income. And I just need to get it to a sustainable level just to even continue this oral history art project that I've been doing for the last decade. And if you find value in it, then please do consider joining me on the Patreon at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
