For the past year, Tony Davidson and his 17-year old son Kai have been tucked away in the hills of Oregon collaborating on a VR experience that was inspired from one of Kai’s dreams. Thunderbird is a puzzle adventure game that surprised everyone at Unity’s Vision Summit awards in walking away with the best VR experience award. Even Tony thought that either crowd favorite Fantastic Contraption or Job Simulator would be rewarded, and so there was a collective gasp of surprise when they won the award. I had a chance to catch up with Kai and Tony to get their reactions to winning, what’s it like to be a father/son team, and how their Thunderbird puzzle adventure takes inspiration from dreams, myths, and Eastern religions.
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Thunderbird is a beautiful experience that takes you into another world. Tony and Kai designed a number of room-scale puzzles that make you use the all of the space in your room. There is no teleporting required, and so moving from room to room solving different light reflection puzzles starts to progressively unlock a deeper sense of presence. Tony learned lot about the limitations of trying to do an open-world puzzle game called Ethereon, which helped inform their decision to keep each puzzle to the size of a single room.
There’s also a lot of mythic symbolism inspired from Eastern Religions that’s embedded throughout the experience, and Tony said that they’re really trying to create a meaningful and transformative experience. There’s also a lot of craftsmanship and attention to detail put into the Thunderbird experience, and the light puzzles have an interesting effect in allowing you to slowly discover more about your world through these one-handed and two-handed interactions. It feels like you’re going through a ritualistic initiation into another realm, and I felt a lot of wonder, awe, and a deep sense of presence as I progressed through each of the puzzles shown at the Vision Summit.
Winning the best VR experience at Unity’s Vision Summit Awards is arguably a lot more meaningful to the potential success of their project. It was announced over the weekend that both Fantastic Contraption and Job Simulator are going to be bundled with all of the HTC Vive preorders, but Thunderbird was mostly unheard of in the wider VR community before the Vision Summit awards.
Tony and Kai still have a long road ahead to complete Thunderbird, but this recognition has helped to validate what they’ve done so far and encouraged them to keep going. During his Best VR Experience acceptance speech, Tony dedicated his award to all of the struggling independent VR developers who were tirelessly chasing their dreams. For Kai & Tony, they’re literally taking inspiration directly from their dreams and making a transformative experience out of them. I’m really looking forward to when they finish so that I can completely immerse myself in their experiential narrative, and learn more about the hidden symbolism that’s embedded throughout their experience.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:09.894] Kai Davidson: Hi, I'm Kai Davidson.
[00:00:14.037] Tony Davidson: And I'm Tony Davidson of InterVision Games. We're creating a virtual reality adventure series called Thunderbird.
[00:00:21.466] Kent Bye: Cool. So I think the last time I talked to you was at the very first SVR con in 2014 and you were working at that point, Ethereon. And so talk about what point did you decide to stop working on Ethereon and then start working on Thunderbird as a puzzle game? Right.
[00:00:36.878] Tony Davidson: So yeah, at the end of last year, we were, you know, we had the Kickstarter fundraiser for Ethereon, which didn't end very well for us, you know. So on the way back from a VRLA conference, Kai and I, we got into a conversation somewhere around Mount Shasta, you know, we're up in Oregon. And he was telling me about a dream that he had. And it just kind of spawned a brainstorming session. And that's how we came up with the idea for this one. Also, I should say that we had experienced the Crescent Bay at the Oculus Connect show, and that really inspired us a lot. It made us realize that the potential is already here, you know, to create the kind of premium experience that we're most inspired to make, you know, in VR. So, with Ethereon, you know, there were a lot of fundamental flaws, I would say, with the game design. You know, the open world approach with having to deal with navigation and a lot of those issues were just problems that didn't need to be tackled, you know, once room scale came around. And that really opened up a lot of potential for better VR game design. And so we just embraced it. We wanted to create a whole new experience, kind of start over with a lot of the ideas and lessons that we learned over the couple of years that we worked with Ethereon. And we just made the decision that it would really be best just to scrap that and to start over and start fresh and take what we learned from that and create something new and something better.
[00:01:57.198] Kent Bye: So what was your dream? What was the dream that inspired Thunderbird?
[00:02:01.584] Kai Davidson: So I had this dream where I was high up on a mountaintop and I was inside of this emerald cavern with emerald stalagmites, you know, and we were kind of like roaming through there a little bit and I was pretty inspired by that, you know, and I just thought of ideas. My dad and I thought like, what could we do, you know, based on this concept of this emerald cavern? So we went from there and went crazy with the idea.
[00:02:30.403] Kent Bye: Talk about, like, first of all, that you're obviously a father-son team, but how do you kind of split up the work?
[00:02:36.086] Tony Davidson: Oh, well, Kai's an artist, so he started out very early, about four years old, you know, with just traditional art and sculpting, you know, a lot of sculpturing. And by the time he was eight and he got a hold of Spore, you know, creature creation, he started taking a stronger interest in 3D. And then by the time he was 12, he did a lot of digital painting, you know, with Wacom tablets and whatnot. He just became a better and better artist. He dedicated his time to it, you know, many hours a day. He's always had a really good focus and a very good eye for art. And I actually lean on him quite a bit for art direction. And so what happened was, you know, again, once he came down and saw the potential of the Crescent Bay, he took an interest because that kind of represented the quality of art that he wanted to make. He wasn't very excited about what I was doing. I couldn't really get him to join me on Ethereon. So, yeah, once we decided to embrace that level of content, he jumped right in. And he's basically learned on the job, and he's developed his 3D skills to what I would say is pretty much production level. So some of the greatest assets that are in the game were his work. like that turtle door on the ledge and that brass Garuda, that bird statue. That's all his work, you know, ZBrush and Substance Painter, the whole pipeline. So he's done really well. So that's allowed me to take on more of a technical role. And, you know, I'm just learning programming and we were using Unity and I would say I was struggling a bit, or I just wasn't moving as quickly as I would like to. So when we switched over to Unreal to take advantage of their motion controller support, because we were developing for PSVR and we had access to the Move controllers, and we really wanted to jump on that early last year. Basically, it allowed me to take on a more technical role, and I really love the Blueprint system in Unreal. It allowed me to do rapid prototyping and just do advanced interactions like I just never knew that I could do. You know, I didn't have the talent as a programmer experience to make that happen. So, with Kai, you know, I let him kind of take the lead on the art for the most part, and then I just focused on everything else. So, yeah, it's worked out well. We have a pretty good little team thing going between us. So, I say we're co-creating it, you know. So, I believe that's pretty accurate.
[00:04:49.952] Kent Bye: What was it about virtual reality that inspired you?
[00:04:53.347] Kai Davidson: Oh, well, you know, the very idea of, like, going to, you know, a new place with, you know, just technology. You know, you can create these worlds and then through technology be transported to somewhere else. You know, that's really inspiring to me. You know, it's like no other medium, really.
[00:05:11.823] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think that's the thing that I take away from the Thunderbird experience is that you're kind of using the room scale to walk the maximum of the distance to be able to actually solve the puzzles and that you start to get this sense of deep presence but also really being in another world, another place that you've constructed in that, you know, taking a lot of time and effort to do world building and from that world building be able to tell a larger story.
[00:05:36.208] Tony Davidson: Yes, that's right. You know, of course presence is extremely important. You know, I think there's a sort of threshold for me anyway, when the visual fidelity of the experience, if it's impressive enough, it's much more easier to sell, you know, the experience in VR and to attain that level of presence.
[00:05:53.187] Kai Davidson: It's really amazing to see, you know, something you once had as an idea and then to spend months creating it and then to finally, you know, view it through the HMD and then to see it, you know, right there like in full scale, you know, as if it's real, you know, instead of like on a little monitor. So, you know, that's really awesome to just take your ideas and then view them in virtual reality. You know, that's really rewarding.
[00:06:22.668] Kent Bye: What's it been like to work with your dad in this way?
[00:06:26.011] Kai Davidson: Oh, it's been a really good learning experience. You know, he teaches me everything about 3D in the pipeline, you know, so it's been a very good learning experience for me, you know, to become familiar with the whole, you know, industry of like CG and so on. So I've learned a lot from him, you know.
[00:06:44.532] Tony Davidson: Oh, it's the greatest, you know, frankly. I enjoy it a lot, so... I have a lot of respect for Kai as an artist, and frankly I'm just thrilled to have him work with me, to have somebody, you know, and we share a very similar vision. We're inspired by a lot of the same things, you know. Thunderbird is essentially based on a mythological creature, or myth and legend, a lot of it inspired by Eastern cultures. So, yeah, you'll find that kind of thing in the game, and he's also very inspired by that. It's kind of loosely based on legends and myths around the Himalayans. And so we're both very interested in those things. So we gel well together. And like that brainstorming session, things just seem to fit together very well for us. So I'd say we have a really good working relationship. And yeah, it's awesome. It works both ways. Again, I really respect his opinion, his eye. He has a fantastic eye. And so we just help each other. And we've learned to work well together and support each other. And it's a fantastic experience. So it's awesome.
[00:07:43.570] Kent Bye: So, last night at the Vision Summit Awards, you walked away with the award, so maybe talk about that experience.
[00:07:49.135] Tony Davidson: Oh, that was mind-blowing. Honestly, I was not expecting that. There were some great titles that were up there, very popular titles, and I'm actually a huge fan of Fantastic Attractions, so I'm not sure if the judge messed up on that or not, but we're very thankful to have the award. It means a lot to us, frankly, because For Thunderbird, you know, we're sort of tucked away up in Oregon, back in the hills and just really focused on development. And like Kai says, it takes many months, you know, thousands of hours before you can actually realize a vision that you have in mind. You know, it takes a lot of time and a lot of craftsmanship. to fabricate, you know, an entire world from scratch. So yeah, basically being, you know, tucked away as we are in the woods, you know, we really have no idea if what we're doing is going to be something that other people will appreciate, you know, if they'll get it, if they'll vibe to it. So it was just extremely rewarding for us to see that it's well received and that people like it, they get it. You know, that really means a lot to us because you don't know, you know, you're just taking a real risk and It takes a lot to do these experiences and it is very challenging but it's also very risk-taking and you don't know. You might spend a long time on experience and maybe people just aren't ready for it or they don't get it, they don't appreciate it. So it was just awesome to have that recognition. It's very validating and very inspiring. It helps to motivate us to continue with what we're doing. So it really means a lot to us.
[00:09:11.628] Kai Davidson: So yeah, me too. I think that was quite a surprise. I wasn't expecting that either. So I'm very thankful that we were awarded. We put a lot of work into it, and I'm very happy to know that other people are liking it and appreciating it. This really means that Thunderbird probably has a good destiny. So I'm very happy others like it.
[00:09:39.393] Kent Bye: And so finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what this might be able to enable?
[00:09:46.500] Kai Davidson: Oh, well, you know, it's really going to change the way we interact with, like, digital devices. It's going to open up a lot more about every industry. And I just think that it's going to change the world in a very good way. Like, we're going to advance forward in, you know, a way I think humanity is meant for. I think that it's going to change a lot of things.
[00:10:12.430] Tony Davidson: So yeah, as the technology gets better and better, you know, I mean the sky's the limit with this stuff. You know, I'm sure you know that. We're probably only limited by our imaginations, you know, as things converge with tech and our ability to create these sort of experiences and believable experiences. I'm very interested in a lot of other aspects of virtual reality. I do see a huge potential for VR to literally explore other worlds, like potentially to go places that we can't physically, like say to Mars, the stuff they talked about here at the Unity Summit with that. I see a huge potential in that. some of these ancient civilizations, you know, that are buried underground, you know, the ability to visit those locations before you even, you know, dig them up, you know, and to transport yourself there virtually, and I don't know, I see a lot of potential for it. Of course the educational aspects, and for us, we're very interested in the transformative experiences, you know, of With Thunderbird, frankly, we're trying to create something a little more meaningful, you know, to draw people in and train them into the experience. And, like, for example, with what we're doing, a lot of techniques we're using to develop the suspension of disbelief, you know, sort of incrementally, one puzzle or one interaction at a time, so that the story unfolds, you know, as you progress through the experience. Thunderbird, I describe more, in my mind, I see it more as like an experiential narrative. You know, we're not into narrating the story to people as it happens in their space. We just want people to have that experience. So, for example, if you tried Thunderbird and if you were to tell somebody about it, it would start to sound a lot like a story. You know, your story that you had. And that's kind of the approach we have with Thunderbird. We want to create these kind of more meaningful and memorable and transformative experiences. And I really see VR as having the ability to do that. So yeah, that's kind of our interest in it.
[00:12:03.744] Kent Bye: Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
[00:12:06.546] Tony Davidson: Cool. Thank you, Ken. Thank you.
[00:12:09.169] Kent Bye: And thank you for listening. If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash Voices of VR.
