VRChat is becoming one of the top streamed VR game as different Twitch personalities like pokelawls, dyrus, greekgodx, and LIRIK and YouTube personalities Jameskii & Nagzz21 start to role play in virtual worlds, and then capture clips of candid and funny interactions that are shared on the LiveStreamFail reddit. It may be surprising to some that these types of open-ended and casual VR experiences are gaining such traction with the live streaming communities, but VRChat is providing an experimental virtual context for IRL streams, improv role playing, and storytelling types of experiences for streamers. Livestreaming is providing important insights into the future of interactive media, and the importance of personality, character, and environmental context for immersive storytelling.
At Oculus Connect 4, I had a chance to catch up with Twitch Streamer Zimtok5, who is a variety streamer focusing solely on VR. He talks about how some of the more casual experiences make for great streaming since you’re able to connect more with the audience, or provide a context for you to connect to the personality and character of the steamer. We also talk about streaming VR titles, what makes for a good streaming experience in VR, as well as some of his favorite experiences to play on stream.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Zimtok5 says that there are skill-based streamers and character-based streamers. Within the last couple of months, the character-based streamers are starting to find a new outlet and home in social VR experiences like VRChat. Some Twitch streamers have established audiences that they’ve connected with via chat, but now they’re able to connect to their audiences in a real-time in shared virtual spaces. Handling text-based, Twitch chat interactions while streaming is still a challenging open problem, but Zimtok5 has found some creative workarounds by peaking at a second screen through the nose hole of the VR HMD. There’s more tools available for the Vive with the OpenVRTwitchChat plug-in that puts a text chat window on your wrist as you’re in VR. Given for how VR Chat has started to blow up over the last couple of months, 2018 looks like a banner year for social VR and Twitch streaming. You can tune into highlights from Zimtok5 on his YouTube channel, or livestreams on Twitch.
.@VRChatNet cracked the top 10 games streamed on @Twitch yesterday.
It's part IRL stream, part embodying & role playing a character.
The future of interactive storytelling is immersive improv.
Follow: @pokelawls @jameskii @dyrus @Nagzz21 @Greekgodx @LIRIKhttps://t.co/TEzuAACmED pic.twitter.com/9z2Cpvzk8q— Kent Bye (Voices of VR) (@kentbye) January 3, 2018
Zimtok5 also livestreamed our conversation on Twitch, and posted the VOD to YouTube
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. So there's something that's been interesting that's happening on the Twitch community with virtual reality. There's one game in particular, VRChat, which really isn't a game as much of a social VR experience. there's been a number of twitch streamers that have taken to it and they've been getting like tens of thousands of viewers and it's really kind of Crossing the chasm into getting VR chat with you know a ton of different concurrent users over well over 5,000 concurrent users and it's one of the top games on twitch there's something on twitch where there's in real life twitch streaming when you just go around and talk to people and what's happening is that these gamers are kind of going into a VR chat and they're either doing role-playing or exploration but there's just a lot of crazy antics and avatars and worlds to be explored and it's coming up with a bunch of highlight clips that are ending up on live stream fail which is a reddit that highlights different funny moments from the live streaming world So I've just seen more and more Twitch streamers taking to VR chat and they already have an established relationship to their viewers and when they go into Twitch they have this kind of stream sniping phenomena where usually in stream sniping you have like a first-person shooter you go in and then you know someone tracks you down and kills you but in VR chat stream sniping just ends up being you going to be able to have some sort of interaction with your favorite streamer. So this is something that I've just noticing that's been happening and I had this discussion with Zimtalk5. He is a Twitch streamer for virtual reality, doing it since the days of the DK2. So I had a chance to talk to him at Oculus Connect 4, where we talk a bit about some of the unique challenges of Twitch streaming, of being able to split your attention between two different worlds of what's happening in your Twitch chat, as well as what's happening in the virtual environment. So we talk about that, as well as his experience in streaming, as well as some of his games that he's been enjoying playing lately. and kind of what makes a good streamable game for virtual reality. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Brad happened on Thursday, October 12th, 2017 at the Oculus Connect 4 conference in San Jose, California. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:38.939] Brad Peyton: Sure, so formally my handle alias is Zimtalk5. My name is Brad, Brad Payton. I'm a VR Twitch streamer, I suppose one of the originals. I don't say necessarily the original, as there's CymaticBruce, who I high-fived and hugged yesterday. I think we got on really well, actually. You never know when you're far away. But we've been doing Twitch shows for the last four to six nights a week for the last three years. Started when I cracked open my DK2 box after having waited five months for that to arrive. And then with my wife's idea, it was, well, why don't you just stream it and share it with people? And we were in Scotland at the time, we just moved up there with our kind of young family and decided, look, this is a really good idea just to be able to share with people because we didn't have many friends in the area. And so we went live on Twitch and then Reddit picked it up and it went nuts. And, you know, before long for a guy who had at that point, you know, 40 followers, We had 100 people watching, and I was like, well, this is just nuts. And within two weeks, we had literally, we had an evening where I had 2,100 people, you know, watching me play Minecraft in VR. And it was like, this is just nutty. So I really enjoyed it. When you share with people, one of the big benefits of it is that you get a lot back. There's loads returned. People come in and give you recommendations about, OK, well, you can overcome this problem this way. Have you tried that piece of software? Did you talk to this guy? So you establish very quickly this digital family that you can pick up and bring with you anywhere. And honestly, from a day or two days not streaming, I'll feel a little bit isolated or lonely because it's like I need to be sharing this stuff with my people, you know? And I think that's the beauty of being a Twitch streamer and the attraction to it is being able to establish a family who's not your blood family and bring them with you wherever you go, provided the Wi-Fi and 3G hold up. Because some conventions I've been to recently unfortunately didn't work out that way, but thankfully here at Oculus Connect it's been nice, so... It's been a good start, you know, and so three years doing this, VR only, and we've been doing some kind of IRL streaming, that's a different separate channel on Twitch, and it's been a really fun ride, just to kind of take it step by step by step, and we actually have two channels, and so I suppose people always ask you that size question of, well, how big are you, how many followers, how many subs do you have? So on Twitch we have, on the main channel, that's got 11,000 followers, and another kind of two and a half on our reruns channel. So we've got a 24 by 7 run of all of our old broadcasts, and a couple of fun segments, like just little funny bits, you know, me in a reindeer outfit saying something silly, all that kind of stuff, just to liven people up and give them something a bit different. And then my wife and I also developed a game that goes hand-in-hand with that as well, that's a social multiplayer experience. So we're just kind of coming at it from a couple of different angles. We like to just ask ourselves the question of how do we be better? How do we do something different than other people are doing and keep things fun and lively?
[00:05:42.481] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I have so many questions about VR streaming. Because first of all, most of streaming in VR is from the first-person perspective. And so you kind of are moving your head around, which tends to get some people motion sick. Or it's sometimes also not the best view of what's actually happening. And so I've found that sometimes if you have a third person perspective, that's better, but then if you're locomoting, then that, so like, for you, have you found that that has been an issue to have a first person perspective streaming? Or have you found that it works better to have a third? Yeah, for viewers, yeah.
[00:06:16.366] Brad Peyton: So for viewers, generally no. Some of the faster paced games can cause someone, if they're really erratic, the challenge is that someone who's tracking the motion of another person is using their eyes and trying to, like, garner information from the scene. And if you're moving too quickly around the environment, then they, you know, again, as you said, it can be uncomfortable to watch. But in general, probably 80, 90% of cases, perfectly comfortable. If you're broadcasting, and something I always say to people if I'm priming them before they hop in the seat to stream, because sometimes I invite people over and they have a go, is if you can just be conscious when you turn your head or make, you know, motions, then you can slow that by 10% and make that a little bit more watchable. It's the same thing as if you have a live stream broadcast and the signal starts to get a bit choppy and things become this mesh mess of artifacts and kind of like JPEG-y artifacts in the video stream. It's similar to that. You don't want to fling them through so much information at a time. But at the same point, sometimes, whether you're in a horror game and reacting to that, or you're in a music beat game and you're just jumping around the place, because I'm quite an energetic fellow, it's just kind of part of the show. And to be honest, what helps that is our presentation style. So really early on, actually, the first day we went live, we came up with what I call the 50-50 split. which is half the scene is me, half the scene is, you know, an eye or a view into the game. And we leverage that more often than not, and what it allows people to do is basically just very easily keep an eye on what the person is, how they're reacting, get full detail in the face and the eyes and all that. And I'm quite an emotive guy anyway, so people like to pick up on that. I'm also quite a Yelp-y guy, we'll go into stories about that a little bit later. And then on the other side, you've got the scene. And so, you know, the streamer's producer characteristic is to always be thinking about what's best for my audience to be looking at right now. Is it a full scene? Or is it maybe I can go back to 50-50? Because if I'm playing a scary game, Half the information is what's on scene, half the information is Zim's feckin' terrified, right? So I've found that that's really successful and actually it was really funny because during the keynote they were doing a 50-50 split or a 60-40 split on the game and I was like, we coined that. But it's something that I actually, I'm surprised it hasn't, more people haven't used that. because the kind of typical 2D streamer, right, would have easily 90 or 80% of the scene be the game, and 20% being them. But I'll be honest, when I watch a stream, and this is why we developed it this way, I'm actually more interested in the person than the game. I want to get to know the person, I want to get to know what they're like, what they're, you know, afraid of, are they partnered with somebody, where are they going in life, all those things, you know, in addition to, oh, this is an exciting game, and typically, Does that person have an opinion? Is there something that they can give to me? Or as we were talking just before clicking the record button, is there somebody who's really good? Because I think you're either an entertainer because you're funny or even you're just, sorry to say this, but kind of a dumb guy. There's some people on Twitch who, they totally pump it up. I just act like a fool, like a complete buffoon, and you're gonna watch me. You might even hate me watching me, but you'll enjoy the fact that you're watching me. So I fit somewhere in the category. I'm certainly not a skill streamer, unlike some of my favorites on Twitch, but it's really a great thing just to be able to share with people and also Like, I didn't know for myself before I started streaming that I was a Yelp-y fellow. That, you know, when a little girl jumps in front of your view or, you know, all of a sudden, like, there's one of the things on the floor there where I literally shouted out, you know, a very feminine scream as well. But I didn't know that I was that kind of guy. Because I didn't like horror games before. Because of course they scare you and it's like, well, I wouldn't have chosen that. But now, because I know it's entertaining, I'll do it. But I won't do jump scares and stuff like that twice. Because having tested that, it just doesn't work. And that's why when I sit down with a developer and these conventions, I normally just network. And they'll say, hey, do you want to hop in the game? And I'll say, no. because I've got a show to put on, and when I play your game, if I play it a second time, the drop-off is actually extreme. It goes from 100% normal reaction to, I'd say, 20%. So if I play a jump-scare game, you're going to get 20% of the reaction out of me. So it's almost a throwaway.
[00:10:47.416] Kent Bye: Yeah, I found that as well in terms of just my own reactions of playing a game but also often I'll be in conversations with people and I'll be like stop we got to hold it for the podcast because if we Talk about it too much. Then we talk about it before we talk about it Then we talk about it on the podcast then we've already talked about it and if there's no Energy there and there's no vibrancy and I think that that's the thing that I see that's really interesting about VR is that you're really trying to achieve this state of presence and Now, the tricky thing that I don't understand about Twitch is that you're almost having to split your attention between the outside world and the chat in your community, and how do you maintain a sense of social presence with these people that are watching you and interact with them, but yet at the same time, you remain completely present to your experience and have that authentic reaction.
[00:11:32.477] Brad Peyton: If you've ever seen an image of someone spinning like four plates and some of them crashing, that is the balancing act. And it's actually something that I'd say only in the third year, only this year, it's kind of clicked for me, what that takes from you as a drain. Because it's the fact that your brain needs to process two realities at once and be very much always in both realities. You can't afford to break that. And so you end up I think when I'm in VR, in particular because I've trained myself into this way, I'm, for instance, I'm in the Rift headset, I'm through the nose hole looking at chat on a monitor, people often come into my... You're looking through a nose hole at the chat. That's my trick. Wow. It's not... A lot of people say, oh, how do you get software? How do you get chat in the Rift? Simply put angles like I've set my setup so that I'm perfectly I know exactly where Chad is I'm very good at pinging that with my eyes every Say 20 seconds so I can see if people are asking me and I can react to that at the same time I might be you know evading someone who's coming at me with a chainsaw and Resident Evil, you know these things that's that's the way it goes So I'm actually as an interesting impact like people always ask you like psychological effects of you know being in VR for long periods of time any Physiological effects your eyes hurt you get a headache any of that kind of stuff and for somebody who's done several blocks of like You know 18 16 hour streams. I can answer those questions Very early on I had an interesting thing whereby I'd be driving on the road. This was in the DK2 days driving on the road, and my eyes wanted to focus more on the horizon than what was, let's say, a medium distance in front of me. And so it was kind of like an unfocusing. So my eyes had been trained to basically unfocus because it's like looking into a mirror using a Rift. Some people think, oh, it's like looking at text really close. It's not like that at all. It's like taking your focal point and going out more towards infinity. And so if you get used to having your eyes in that relaxed state, my eyes when I was driving was going relaxed. And I'd have to consciously kind of focus that little bit to look at a car that was maybe five car lengths above. So that was the first effect that I ever felt. And that kind of went away. That was a transient. But that was around like months three or four after having done this four to six times a week for that period. I was like, wow, am I going crazy or is this actually a real effect? So that was the first thing. Thankfully, there's not been anything like my eyes falling out or but you don't know, you know, you get into this stuff and you go I'm a pioneer I have to decide am I gonna throw myself on the tracks and just say it's cool technology It could hurt me because humans don't know, you know, and you just go with it So I made that conscious decision and I said, you know, it's worth it's worth the risk. I've looked at the technologies seem safe enough and I don't think I'm going to cause myself to have any degeneration in my eyes. So, okay, go at it. And it's been fantastic going through all the headsets. I run all three headsets. And in terms of kind of that effect, it's weird, but it'll tire you out faster. And I think it's because I bring it back to kind of computing. You're almost like, I don't know if you wouldn't call it like overclocking. But it's a bit like that, because whatever processor is up there is having to deal with two realities at once. You know, dealing with the chance that my wife might poke me on the side while I'm in some scary game or in the middle of driving something. And at the same time, trying to just remain aware of obviously the audience, you know, who's interacting with you, who's asking questions, who's saying, oh, watch out behind you, because they're just trying to troll you, you know, all that kind of stuff. So it's a really interesting balance. And the time when I find it most difficult to maintain that balance is if I'm in like a super fast-paced racing game, you know, something like, I'm a really big fan of like Redout, which is ultra, ultra fast. I mean, we're talking like Wipeout or F-Zero fast, competitive, like don't blink, right? Faster than even Thumper. And with that kind of thing, when you're trying to like be competitive and at the same time, entertain the audience and be aware of their needs and focus on the scene at hand, you can be pulled away from that and then go a little bit quiet. And so that's the main balance for me where I find a challenge.
[00:15:42.686] Kent Bye: Well, it sounds like that with the Rift, you're sitting down and looking at the screen, but there's also experiences where you're standing up, even with the Rift, or you have a room-scale experience with the HTC Vive. So how do you keep an eye on a chat window when you're moving around a room-scale experience while you're standing up?
[00:16:01.082] Brad Peyton: So it's a very similar experience. It depends on the headset. So PSVR is probably the toughest, because I've got chat on a display on a monitor, just like when I'm on the Rift. So if I'm doing kind of standing, oftentimes it's more of a, I go into batch processing. So instead of every 20 seconds, it's every two minutes I'm checking. And thankfully, for the types of things we broadcast, and for the simple fact that when someone logs into a Twitch stream and they see this, Sorry, for those who are listening, I'm covering my eyes. If you don't have the eye connection, your immediate impression is, okay, I can't really say something to this person because they're not seeing me. And so to get around that, I've got a great mod team. I've got a team, we've got some technology as well. So one of the things that I handed you earlier is called the Zimcoin. And with that is loaded 25 Zen Points. It's our own little currency. What does that allow you to do? One of the things is message me. So if you... I had a coder from Czech Republic help me out and build this little system. And if someone sends a message using a little prompt, it'll voice it out. So I can be in the game and someone can say, no game screen, for instance. And this is the biggest falling down point I've seen for other Twitch streamers who try to foray, even experienced mega Twitch streamers, foraying into VR. I've seen people sit there with a black screen for 15 minutes because they have no way for the audience to let them know we can't see anything. And so those are some of the main hurdles as a Twitch streamer, I think. And the questions I usually get are, well, how do you get the scene out? You said, like, sometimes you're in first person, and maybe that's not the best way for an audience to view it. One of the things that we struggle with is, you know, you'll have an environment and a capture window. And there wasn't, when Oculus rolled their first SDKs, there wasn't a standard. Back in the day of the DK2, they had this lovely, everyone will remember it, it had these kind of like vignetting black corners around this eye that was a very oculus shape. And that was very easy because you'd basically take one eye, do the 50-50, away you go, you're sorted. That was kind of a standard, but they almost broke that standard when the CV-1 came out. The development software stack changed, and I've got some games that won't give a mirror window at all. Some games, and this is from a capturing perspective, so they won't give a mirror window. Mirror window is stretched and isn't pixel perfect, which bugs me like crazy. or, you know, it's a kind of a funny shape, or it's zoomed in. Like Elite Dangerous is one game where I said to the guys from Frontier, I said, like, you gotta fix your ability to stream, because it used to be great, and now you're giving us this thing that looks all zoomed in. It's not really streamable that way. So there are some things that can help. If you're a budding, you know, VR Twitch streamer, and you're like, well, how do you do it? One of the things is the Oculus Debug Tool. There's actually a software toolkit that allows you to bring up a standardized window that comes up that works on any title. And Vive have done this for some time. They had a mirror window in their software kind of from day one, so that's easy. But getting back to your question again on Vive, not to stray too far from the path here, if I'm out and about, you know, running around my room knocking into things with the Vive on, how do I keep an eye on chat? So it's primarily the messaging function, but also there are some tools that work better on Vive than Rift and don't work on PSVR at all that allow you to bring chat into We obviously just had the announcement that, you know, home is going to change in a point where you can pin a window inside your virtual reality. And so there you go, there's the answer. I just get a chroma-keyed version of my chat window, smack it somewhere inside my digital world. There are software tools that already do that, actually. So from Oculus' perspective, I suppose they've seen what's out there, either mimicked it or came up with the same idea internally, and now they're going to integrate it. That should make things a lot easier for those going forward who want to do the same thing.
[00:19:58.374] Kent Bye: Now, I imagine that there's a variety of virtual reality games that are completely immersive and amazing for you to play, but are just dreadfully and utterly boring for people to watch. And so I'm curious for you, where's that sweet spot for games that you like to play but are also great to stream?
[00:20:14.961] Brad Peyton: Yeah. So one of the things that once you garner enough attention and you've got developers tapping you on the shoulder saying, hey, can you play my game, play my game? Here's a key, would you mind showing it? There's a whole spectrum, right? So you're going to have the university college student who's got a project that probably isn't ready for showtime. And then on the other side, you've got AAA stuff that is super long. It might actually be too much content for you. Speaking of the Gunfire Games guys the other day, sorry, just yesterday, because they added this game Kronos, which was one of the first AAA titles, really. It looked like a Tomb Raider-style game, really good quality. I went in, gung-ho, and was like, OK, I'm going to play this hardcore. I didn't even get 30% through it before I had to give up. And that was 40 hours of gameplay in, and I only got 30% into the game. So there are some things, again, like I spoke to you earlier about visual variety. It's important that you mix it up. And how do I do that? Well, the industry kind of did it for me. So I've got three headsets now, so I'm covering those three. I don't cover, I get this question as well, I don't cover Gear VR because it's not that it's not easy to stream, it's that the performance hit on the apps and the quality that comes out at the end, I don't think is matching the consistency of the rest of the show. PSVR is almost even on that low point. But with a PlayStation 4 Pro and streaming from a PC, a stream PC, then it's okay. So those titles are good. But how do you pick? You kind of, first you have to just kind of have a dabble. You have to play around. Like is a fishing game gonna be really interesting to watch? I mean one of the ones that really surprised me, actually VR as a whole surprised me, a lot of the boring stuff is some of the more interesting things to actually showcase. Fishing and talking with a bunch of dudes is really good fun. It's like, I don't know, it's really good fun for the audience, it's really good fun for me. You can literally have an interview. I've interviewed some other dev teams and like sat in there chatting with them and we're just casting away. Oh, you got a pass, you know, that kind of thing. Really good fun. Euro Truck Simulator, one of my all-time most popular games. You're just driving on the road. Why? Why is that interesting to watch? I think it's something to do with the fact that you got like motion coming at you. And also I'm not the best driver and I tend to get quite hilarious crashes. But other than that, that kind of stuff is really repeatable. Stuff that isn't, obviously first-time watches, things like Lucky's Tale, any single-player playthroughs, you'll do them once and then it drops back to that 20%. You wouldn't really revisit them. So you instead have to kind of like... be like, okay, Dev Studio, you just spent the last couple of years, you've produced this great piece, maybe it's only four to six hours long, we cover it, and then we're into waiting and crossing our fingers that these guys are gonna have enough support to come out with another title. But there is a lot out there that's really, really good. I mean, we are not in a place anymore where I would even hesitate to pick up hardware. And at $399, I mean, out of yesterday's announcements, the sexiest announcement to me, and most uninteresting, I suppose, to people is, oh, it's $399 for the Rift. But you're talking about PC quality, you know, cabled VR in the best headset of the three. In my stacking order, because people always ask this question as well, it's Rift, PSVR, Vive. And sometimes, I'm really surprised by that answer.
[00:23:28.760] Kent Bye: Wow, well I do a lot of embodied full room scale stuff, and for me, Vive is head and shoulders above both of those. Something like Audio Shield or Sound Boxing is something that's really an embodied game. You lose yourself, right? Yeah, I just totally immerse myself, and so just that level of tracking and the quality and the solidity, and there's just a lot of indie games that I think that, to me, are exciting. For a lot of developers, like Google, Vive is actually a minimum viable product. So it's actually easier for a lot of engineers and developers to develop something for the Vive. So you often find stuff comes out for the Vive first, in that you actually have to work around Oculus' 180-degree design constraint to be able to design. Actually, the developers have to design around the constraints of the technology. So because of that, I find that you actually have a lot more innovation and just new stuff that comes sooner to the Vive than the Rift. So I would say the Vive for me, personally. But I'm not a gamer, so I don't... I'm not sort of playing the same type of games that you are.
[00:24:27.423] Brad Peyton: So I think from a content perspective, I did the math some time ago, like for the price that you're paying for the hardware, the price you're paying for the software, and for the hours you get out of it,
[00:24:36.406] Kent Bye: What about the degree of presence? How do you degree for that? Because I feel like I get a better sense of embodied presence and active presence when it comes to the Vive.
[00:24:42.928] Brad Peyton: I got to say, all three meet the mark at this point.
[00:24:46.169] Kent Bye: You don't think there's any difference in those? Especially with the PlayStation VR, you get a huge hit with not being able to get full tracking the same development.
[00:24:55.571] Brad Peyton: I mean, it's got a nicer FOV, to be honest. I was super surprised. OK, you're going to cut the price in a third, and I'm going to go into this headset, Oh my god, it's got a taller and a wider view. Yes is the, like initially when it first launched I wasn't too impressed with the resolution of the headset, but you forget about it. I mean, one of the games that I recently got totally lost in, and I mean to the point where when you take the headset off it's weird coming back into the world again, was Farpoint. You know, playing Farpoint. with their gun accessory.
[00:25:24.203] Kent Bye: Right, with the gun accessory, which I think is sort of like different than sort of the normal. So I would say that's an exception, because it's a special controller that's actually giving you a higher level of embodied presence.
[00:25:32.945] Brad Peyton: That's right. I mean, it does vary very much from title to title. But still, for me, the comfort factor of the Rift is one of its primary selling points. The ease of setup. You know, I don't have to switch on any room lasers. I don't have to. The getting in and getting out of it is actually part, for me, as someone who does three-hour shows, It's a big chunk of it. If it takes me 10 minutes to set up the Vive and 2 minutes to set up the Rift, you know, that's actually a piece of the kind of overall experience. It's one of the things we were talking very briefly about Battlegrounds. Battlegrounds succeeds because it is super easy to drop in and drop out of. You know, if I think back a couple years playing like Left 4 Dead, we were queuing for like 45 minutes to find a server. It's a totally different experience and I think in this day and age, sure I just Ubered here, you know, in two minutes I get what I want and I'm on the road. It's the exact same thing. So in a world where we're increasingly wanting, now I want to be doing the thing I want to be doing, I really appreciate what the Rift can do. I think there were some bad design decisions when it comes to PSVR. this funky cable hanging off your side, so I'm really glad to hear that Sony's announced, you know, the second revision of PSVR, that's cool. But they obviously have, they don't have the touch controls pinned. They really need a new solution to that. So, it's more from like a punch for price. I think that, you know, that's why I have the three in order, Rift, PSVR, Vive. But that's not to say that Vive is like losing in any way. All three are competitors in a very strong field. And there's things that the Vive can make you do because of the immersive factor of it that the others maybe struggled to do. You know, you can't wander around so much. But there aren't that many titles that make real good use.
[00:27:18.722] Kent Bye: Rick and Morty, I think, is probably the best that I've seen.
[00:27:21.343] Brad Peyton: It's pretty good. I like that Rick and Morty also scales. I don't have the biggest room in the world, but that's part of the fun factor. You know, smashed a light bulb, nearly broke my fist on a on punching something when I was playing Gorn. These kinds of things can happen. And people are like, well, why don't you, like, upgrade, go to a bigger room or whatever. Actually, it's part of the fun factor, to be honest, for the viewers, because, oh, you might hit something, you know? Paintings and that on the back getting knocked around. So, I don't know. The three headsets are fantastic. I'm just glad to be where we are at the moment, seeing this kind of new wave of where people are pushing to, you know, reducing cost is a really important piece of the puzzle. That's why I was, I just had a big grin on my face when I saw the two channels of announcement yesterday with Oculus Go being thankfully, the godsend for those who can't afford premium VR. And then, you know, you've got other kind of headsets now coming that are promised to us in future years that are going to do inside-out tracking. I think that'll be quite interesting, to be honest, because I don't think from a gaming experience you're gonna lose much. Because with the tracking volume that they've got, they've probably done the stats. It's probably like 95% of the time your hands are in that space. It's very rare that you have it down the back.
[00:28:36.488] Kent Bye: I think that with the video game market you have mobile games, you have console games, and you have PC games. I feel like a similar ecosystem is evolving for virtual reality where you're going to have the Gear VR and Daydream. games, then you're going to have the console games, which right now is split between the PSVR, but also with these emerging standalone headsets. They're going to be completely self-contained, both with the Oculus Go as well as the Santa Cruz from Oculus, and potentially other HTC Vive and Samsung, I expect, will probably be announcing some of their own standalone headsets. And then you have the PC virtual reality with both the Oculus Rift as well as the HTC Vive, and then the OSVR is kind of a fledgling behind. And also the Windows Mixed Reality headsets that are just going to be coming out as well, which are kind of like the lower end of the PC VR, but able to still have access to some of the Steam games. And so I expect that we'll start to see a similar fragmentation when it comes to the graphics fidelity and the capabilities when it comes to those three areas. And then, you know, digital out-of-home, location-based entertainment is going to be a whole other, like haptics, a whole other realm. I think there's going to be a return of the VR arcades, which is going to be a whole other thing. I see that there's the mobile VR, the console VR, and then the PC VR, where I do expect with the console VR, there's going to be things like shooting a bow and arrow and putting your hand behind your head. That's something like with the Valve's The Lab, where they have those shooting games, where that is going to be something that I think is going to be a good test for this inside-out tracking for something like the Santa Cruz. We have these different areas of both mobile gaming, console gaming, and PC gaming. So I predict there'll be just as much differences between console gaming and PC gaming where there's some sort of stylistic differences in how you play different games. And I think there's going to be a similar subtle difference that happens in VR as well.
[00:30:22.782] Brad Peyton: Technology is going to make that difference. I think I think there's it's gonna be very difficult as you say to probably distinctly compartmentalize them aside from kind of technology, but they will certainly develop into their own channels that someone like me needs to think about is well how the heck am I gonna be taking an image out of a Completely all-in-one package, you know, how do I get an image out of that? It's possible. I I've got some friends who've tinkered with and gotten images out of, for instance, HoloLens, which otherwise, when I first tried it, it's like, this is going to be a bit of a challenge. You know, all the processing is on board, can I even get a video feed out of this thing? How's that going to work? Thankfully, from what I've heard in terms of their structuring and the software side, the hardware's gonna be compatible with taking video feeds out. Of course it will, because if you think about it, you know, one guy standing in a room playing a VR title, right, versus that person with a mirror window, and everyone can watch what that person is seeing, those are two incredibly different experiences. And I think the evocative relationship that is present when you have an audience and a participant to VR, not even necessarily multiplayer VR, but just literally an audience, That's a fantastic vibe. Anyone who's been on a convention floor feels that. You know, you see a game, you hear a shout, you hear, you know, some woman yelping because she's just, you know, she's standing on a skyscraper and thinks she's about to fall off the building. You know, these kinds of things are incredibly entertaining. So for someone like myself, I just love watching the development of how developers answer the question, How do I entertain, educate, broaden the horizons of their audiences, of those, you know, ingesting their content? And I'm just so thankful for them because it's totally changed. It's just totally changed my world, you know, just engaging with this stuff. I mean, there must be something that you've experienced in VR and thought, oh my God, you know, things are just so different.
[00:32:24.912] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think probably Google Earth was one of those experiences where I just saw, like, oh my god, this is amazing. I can go anywhere in the world. And just the sense of being able to map out the emotional architecture of my life, but going to all the places I used to live, and to be able to recontextualize the story and the meaning of the places that I've been, and how that makes who I am. I think stuff like that has been just mind-blowing. And I guess from you, I'm curious, what have been some of your most favorite experiences, both to experience, but also to stream to your audience?
[00:32:54.713] Brad Peyton: We've had some we've had some really fun ones. I mentioned Euro Truck Simulator.
[00:32:58.037] Kent Bye: That was one of our early ones We just I just want to say one quick thing there Just because we talked about player unknown battlegrounds where once I heard that it was the top game That it was like sort of a really popular scream. I started watching it. I was like what is what is going on here in it and It's actually, like, objectively, it's kind of boring in the first parts of they're looting and then they're walking around a lot, but it actually makes a good stream game because you have that same, similar kind of casual, like, ability to have a partial attention to it, but also pay attention and have a conversation. And so it's interesting that you've mentioned some of the games like the Eartruck Simulator where you're driving a car, but yet you're still able to, like, connect to your audience in that way and have kind of a partial attention to both.
[00:33:40.002] Brad Peyton: I attribute it to, it's not too far different from kind of like podcasting, right? So you can, a lot of the best stream titles are ones you can kind of tune in or tune out of, and also that tend to spike and grab your attention. So for instance, you know, if there's a near miss on the road or something like that, that's when things spike up. The situation when you ask the question about favorite memories, one of the things with my wife, we kind of co-stream sometimes. So she'll pop into the scene once the kids are down and we'll be able to do different things. One of them that we do, I'll come back to the Euro Truck one in a moment, is like using Quill for Pictionary. And again, as I said, we have kind of a point system that allows people to message, and also if they want to auction on various items, keys, game keys, and physical goods and things that we have, they can win some points if they are able to first guess what, like my wife is drawing. So she'll be drawing, let's say, a volcano, and people are just guessing, guessing, guessing. I'm reading out what their guesses are. And then when they win, we do a buzzer and award the points and keep going. And it makes for a really interactive stream. Actually, it's probably the one where all the lurkers in chat, and anyone who's a Twitch streamer knows, you'll probably have, I don't know, 30% of your audience engaged in chat. But this one really draws people out because they're like, I know what that is, and I have to say it. So I have to say it. It's a goose. It's definitely a goose, you know? And then there's the goose, goose, goose, goose, wombat, you know, just all these crazy things. It makes for a really good thing to stream. And it's actually really fun in our rebroadcast as well, because you're just listening along like you can't remember quite what it was. And so you're guessing along as well. And even though you were the one there maybe drawing it or whatever, it's great fun.
[00:35:16.416] Kent Bye: Really, really good. Wow, that's really fascinating that you're really actually engaging people in the actual stream. And I know that Vbreel has had some technology where they're working on things to potentially have some way to immerse people into the scene. Have you played with Vbreel or finding other ways to actually immerse your audience into your experiences?
[00:35:34.823] Brad Peyton: I'm a very critical eye when it comes to technologies. Like yourself, you've got an engineering background. And for me, it's kind of a keep or kill. So when V-Rail reached out, we're like, here's this technology. I love the concept of it, but the fact that you have to kind of, like VR, design by the ground up in order to take advantage of that technology, I see some real challenges in that. I would love to try it with a title that's like fully bought into and plugged into Vreel, which is essentially for those listening or watching, it's something that allows the audience to participate in the virtual reality environment. So you and I could be- Or passively watch as well, but yeah. Or passively watch, but you could be standing there. The closest thing to that that I would say I've kind of been involved with was like in alt space, they used to have events which were comedians, Bill Nye, you know, these kinds of, you know, they'd have hosts come along. and you would be part of an audience that could interact directly or interact like indirectly and with the other audience members. So, you know, if a really good bit is on stage, you might whisper to the guy to your left or girl to your right, you might be like, oh my God, that was a good bit, right? And so those experiences are really interesting because they open up the avenue for friendships to be made And I think that, of course, the social element of VR is a huge driving force for it. It is like a force of nature. And the more your software, your title, draws that out and allows people to very readily get to know one another, or puts them in a situation where they need to work together, then boom, you know, friendships are there on the table. I mean, I bring it back to games like DayZ, not too far off, you know, Battlegrounds, kind of spawning routes for these things, where you're surviving together and, you know, if that person dies in the game... you might have lost a real-life friend, because you didn't exchange details, you didn't get a chance to say goodbye or whatever. And I'm finding that in some of the newer titles. There's a brand new title coming out next month that I am absolutely smitten with called From Other Suns. And it is a three-person, you're on a ship, it's like a game called Faster Than Light, which was like a 2D, very indie style game, where you've got a spaceship, there's fires on board, there's alien attacks, and you're just trying to keep yourself alive and take a couple of space jumps over to get to Earth, and then you're sorted, right? That's the objective. Same thing in this. And I was in with, like, from the Windlands team, John Hibbins, and a couple of my buddies, and we're just piloting around, taking over the enemy ship. But the options that you have and the situations where you're literally working together to kind of fix very heart-beating situations It just bonds you, like, straight away. And there's people on the internet who are like, who are you? You know, I want to know who you are so we can play this more together. That is the thing I play games for. I don't play games to play single player. I mean, actually, I've been on to the Euro Truck devs time and time again. I'm like, guys, you have an Oculus branch. You have the game fully supported. Just bring it into your main branch so we can do multiplayer. Because there's a mod, a big popular mod, where there's literally 2,000 players driving around Berlin, all with their own trucks in this. And if you crash, you pay for that. like, not with real world money, but your in-game money that you've earned over time. And that is a fantastic experience. And actually, it led me to Twitch streaming. And then VR took off, and I loved that. And I just, we just took it from that point and moved forward. So it's really been a fantastic journey. But I think things like From Other Suns that's just coming out, I mean, such a good game. I mean, it's the kind of experience that people can't afford to miss. You have to, You have to try some of these things out because I think that the engaging factor of it is something that so many people are going to miss. And it kind of hurts me a little bit to think that even when I go to show floors now, if I go to a convention in the UK, this is a really tough statistic, but I can tell you it's probably 70 to 80% of people. haven't tried proper VR, like PC level, any of the three headsets that I mentioned. They may have tried gear. They may have tried cardboard. The majority of them still haven't tried VR. They've heard about it, you know, but maybe they've got a friend or they don't have a friend who's got it. And that's crushing to me. I'm four years into this and it's... It's like, how can you not try this out? It's a new world. And so that to me is probably the hardest thing right now, is just seeing people who haven't been baptized yet into this wonderful world of, I mean, the education side even, you know? Like you mentioned, Google Earth, being able to revisit a place that you've been before or check out a place, you're kind of life hacking it, right? I mean, I'm gonna go visit Paris. Oh, well, what's it like? What's the street like? Oh, that looks a little bit dodgy. Maybe I'll pick a different Airbnb, you know? Those things to me are, already creeping into our lives in a way that, you know, that kind of 3D geometry, that environment that you can place yourself in now and that you can experience with other people, is really a very strong experience. And I actually think that, like what Oculus was saying yesterday, I tried out Facebook Spaces and that was my first time trying their new software build. you know, it's gonna have an impact. It's gonna have an impact in the working world. You know, those of us, I think it was what Zuckerberg said yesterday, you know, it's like, the PC is something that today most of us spend, you know, a chunk of every day of our lives on. I think VR is just the next thing there. I really believe it, and I've believed it wholeheartedly since I first stepped in. I just was, I came out of it, and it felt like coming out of the Matrix. It was like, my God, you know, welcome back to the real world. VR is a way forward. And once you're into it, and this is the thing where people who say, oh, it's like 3D TV, this, that, and the other. It's one of the things that drives me to continue streaming. Because there are times when you're like, this is tough. Because it can be, as I said, it can be very draining if you're having to do. Full-on multiple realities, you know, and you can get physically tired. I've got a corporate job So, you know, I come home from that and I'm doing shows from 9 p.m. To 12 p.m After my kids are in bed, you know, and then back to sleep back to work next day. So I And what I'm doing right now is I'm branching out from that a little bit. So the reason I'm here at Oculus Connect is SciTech Games, who just launched Midlands 2. Happy to give them a little bit of a plug here, because absolutely brilliant game. I personally think it's best of show. The colors, and if anyone hasn't tried it yet, I think they really, really should. Very colorful game. They're really building into their own niche, kind of like Zelda did as a franchise. For anyone who's a fan of Dune and Sandworms, that opening sequence, not gonna say anymore.
[00:42:07.140] Kent Bye: Yeah, well as you're mentioning the social games, I'm realizing that within virtual reality there's like these completely new genres that I think take on a whole other experience. I think of like Star Trek Bridge Crew where you're like actually role-playing and embodied within these characters on the USS Aegis for the Star Trek universe, but also in something like Werewolves Within, where it's a social introduction game where you're trying to trick other people and playing. Or just even something like Lone Echo, which is a little bit more of, I guess, an embodied e-sports game. So these different types of either multiplayer or social games, I'm just curious to hear.
[00:42:43.658] Brad Peyton: So Lone Echo and Echo Arena, I think you meant. Sports game is Echo Arena, but actually Lone Echo is a game, it's worth talking about. The first couple of hours in that game were, they like touched my soul. I mean, that sounds really like hippie, but it is eerie how good quality, high frame rate, facing off to a character that treats you like a human being. I mean, the characterization in that is incredibly strong. And even when you reach down, you look at your like robot hands. Someone had said that to me before I played the game and I was like, you pull your hands up and you look at them. And you just go, wow, the detail level that they've got in this, it really is feeling AAA, a lot of these titles. And that means they've been working on it for years. You know, this is not something that, like, the golden egg has just dropped out of the tree. Like, these things, there are people, not just enthusiasts, right, there are major firms around the world pushing this. And that's why to me it's so surprising when someone hasn't even experienced it once. And it's like, it's a total gobsmack. So what I'm trying to do now, right, I mean, if we think about this more from what drives me to put my show on every night that I do, put this broadcast on, spread the good word, it really is to kind of help this all along because I'm a catalyst, you're a catalyst. Helping people understand what the technology's about, where it can go, and also bringing people into the fold who aren't techies, who are gonna think about these things in a totally different way and develop something new and exciting. I really think that, we were having a laugh, cinematic Bruce and I yesterday, because we were joking about how back in the day, we had to carry textbooks to class. Bag full of textbooks, it'd be back-breaking to the point where like, The parent-teacher association is like, you can't have kids carry more than six textbooks because you'll be hurting them. These days, they've got an iPad or something like that. So what's it going to be tomorrow? It's like, I don't know, government-issued VR headsets that you can pop into and learn your whole curriculum. and maybe not even have to leave your house. So stay with your family. Get a little bit more of that kind of wigwam effect of staying in these natural communities. And I really think the face of the planet is shaping a lot. A lot of people are working from home these days. A lot of people are doing what they do at the best of their game from wherever they bloody want. You know, and that is a huge power. So for me at the moment, and just to finish off what I said a little bit earlier, like I came in with SciTech Games, they tapped me and they said, look, does anyone want your opinion? And I started up what I call my Zim Hire Services. You know, people want to get my hand in, you know, I've been through 500 VR titles. I produce a little bit of a report scoring and say, here you guys go, this is where you need to improve. For instance, they had issues on their sound landscape and really needed to improve that before the show and they really pegged it. So, it really is great to be hard truthful with development teams and then see them take value out of that, make changes and reap the benefit from it. And I think that For me that really makes me tick because I just I want to see them do better because internally I'm ultra grateful that they spend their lives developing content that I get to enjoy because for a lot of developers they will develop it they'll spend all those hours doing it and the people who actually get to reap the feedback cycle oftentimes are people who are content creators or broadcasters. I think even the YouTube guys, they don't get to see much of the feedback. Twitch and live streaming in general is such a power because it's that direct feedback. It's that human contact. You really feel, you feel the feedback. And so for people liking games and whatever, and I would say like, you asked me earlier, right? What's that kind of rainbow span of content and, you know, what do you bring to the show? It's like a Mystery Science Theater 3000, if you're familiar with that show. You can have a rubbish game from an indie dev and be giving them constructive feedback at the same time as having a laugh, joking about bugs in the game or poor design decisions, and make it really entertaining for the audience. But actually the stuff that's like ultra competitive, like Echo Arena, is not really good to watch, to be honest. Maybe once you're a skill streamer, like what we saw on stage last night, But for someone like me, there's not a lot of scope for entertainment in a game like that. So I'll cover it, I'll play it once or twice, and then we kind of leave it.
[00:47:02.164] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's really interesting, the whole other dimension of the story and your character and the entertainment quality that you bring. But you're also, you said you've been through 500 titles, but you may be one of the people that has played the most games that I've met. I'm sure there's other people, but that consistently each and every day. I think it's difficult for people to cultivate a daily practice of virtual reality. And because you've been exploring all these games, I'm just curious, like, what's left for you? Like, what do you want to really experience in VR?
[00:47:30.525] Brad Peyton: Oh my god, I think that won't be extinguished probably for the next 20 years, seeing what I'm seeing still. I mean, like From Other Suns dropped, literally one of my moderators was like, Zim, do you know about this? It just went open beta today. I was like, never even heard of this game, jumped into it, 16 hours spent over the three days, like I was just infatuated, and I still am. Gunfire guys downstairs, I had a big hug with them last night because... My God, I just, you know, I love their stuff, and hearing their feedback, it always surprises me when dev teams tune in, and they're like, that was bloody awesome. Like, that was so fun to watch you bumble about, didn't realize there was anything but a pistol for the first hour. And, like, they get a huge entertainment value, and they also get that feedback of, well, this guy, again, not necessarily skillful, this is what that path is. I mean, my core viewers know that a game that's four hours long will take me eight hours to complete. Unboxing, right? Even as a small thing, probably two to three hours, if not more. So, you know, if you're in for it, you're in for it for the long run. But I tend to kind of amp it up a little bit. I like to, you know, push our brand a little bit and just keep things exciting and change it up without being a little bit without being too, too crazy. I'm not going to eat a habanero pepper on stream or things like that. But we do like to change it up and just to keep things fresh, because I ask myself, what would I want to watch? And the type of people who I like to watch on Twitch and on YouTube are those people who just keep changing.
[00:48:52.074] Kent Bye: Well, there's things that is entertaining for your audience, but what do you personally want to experience in VR?
[00:48:56.816] Brad Peyton: So in terms of me personally, there's games like Orbis VR, which is a massively multiplayer online game where you pick a number of classes and you can be with like a party of like six people roaming the countryside, taking monsters down, this kind of thing. Someone's spell casting with like actual physical drawing of symbols. Another person has to be skillful with a bow to hit things. So there's like a real skill element, plus the game element, plus social. When that triumvirate comes together in the right way, you are just lost at sea. And those are the best experiences. So I want to see that done for a hundred different concepts, you know. be a pirate on the open seas, be a car mechanic, all these different things. And without it, you know, there's a lot of popular titles out there, like Job Simulator and Superhot, things like that. And I know they're, like, winning all the awards right now, but if you ask me, those are not the best experiences you can have in VR. They really just aren't. They're teasers or tasters, and it's kind of like the old Pepsi challenge, where people would put down a little bit of Coke, a little bit of Pepsi, and it's like, nine out of ten people preferred Pepsi. Well, it's because it's that bit sweeter and in that small proportion, it tastes really good. But if you're like someone like me and you know, you're reading novels equivalently in VR, then you want something a little bit more holistic. Something like a Resident Evil or a Chronos. longer experiences, but not even necessarily. I love indie titles that are like an hour to three hours long because they're really bite-sized. People love a good story start to finish, love a different art style. I just played in Gear VR and I wish I could show it for my audience, but I won't be able to, I don't think. A game called Dispatch on Gear VR. Very, it's not even a game, it's like an experience where you're seeing like 911 calls. and the art style in that and the emotional landscape that they paint in it. I'm really impressed and it runs super silky smooth and the audio the voice artists behind it like applause to them because it's scary listening to some of that stuff you know there's a woman who's about to get probably beaten or killed by a man who's assaulting her that kind of thing in this really well done and it puts you in the seat of a guy who doesn't really want to be sitting behind the 911 you know phone call And it's a very soulful experience and something that I would recommend people check out because there's not much on Gear that's impressed me, being frank. And so I'm not really attracted to that as a platform, but there are a few small titles that I've touched on that. And they're ones that if you are in Gear VR, you have to try. It's kind of like casino VR poker. That was one of the first real social experiences I had. And you might think, that's a bit odd, right? You're just playing a card game. But if you're a poker player, one of the things that you, and I am. I've been doing kind of poker tournaments and running that myself since university days. I really like it because, again, it's the social side of it. It's similar to kind of like being in the truck cab. You get to talk with people. You get to understand who they are as a person. You get to know their tells and things like that. And for the first time, I can see when you move a slight little bit that you didn't before. Slight head nod, slight turn, and you can pick up reeds off that. That's amazing. Like someone's sitting off in a casino in Vegas, and I'm in Scotland, and we're playing a game together. And I can beat the guy because of the tells I pick up off of him, because of VR. So much to the point where there's quite a disconnect between how Rift, in other words full 360, you know, full positional tracking, and gear, which is just, you know, kind of three degrees. So... As an environment, what are the things that I want to try? I want to see what indies have for me, to be honest. I'm really infatuated with indie experience, and I certainly don't shy away from broken things. And I do think that people should, rather than trying to get their titles perfect, get them out there. Don't shy away from the fact that there is a little bit of acidic relationship with, you know, early access and things like that. Just get your stuff out there, get it into the hands of people who are The term is OG, I think. You know, who've been around, who've tried things since 2014, 2015, and have that breadth of experience. Get some positive feedback from them, you know? But don't worry about putting, you know, that stuff out there, because you've got a great game concept. You're not too far away from developing your feedback and finishing. You should. You should spend that quality time. You should get that feedback. And although feedback in that loop can burn a little bit, be prepared to just, you know, knuckle down and take it because that might be your first VR title. By the time you get to VR title three, you'll be nine leaps ahead of the competition because you were able to kind of go through those loops of growth. And that's what it is. I think it's, you know, indies want to grow and I just want to grow with them.
[00:53:38.946] Kent Bye: Great. And finally, What do you think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:53:46.413] Brad Peyton: That's a really good question. As a man who met his wife on a bus with a Nintendo DS, I'm going to answer that finding the love of your life is the ultimate potential for VR. Because if you can connect with somebody in such a way that you virtually meet, and then you find yourselves in the same place, I can't think of a better answer to your question.
[00:54:14.856] Kent Bye: Awesome. Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:54:18.320] Brad Peyton: Ah, probably just, if you don't mind, I'll just let them know my channel. So guys, you can find me at twitch.tv slash zimtalk5. People call me Zim, so I'll see you around. Awesome.
[00:54:29.738] Kent Bye: Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Zim. Cheers. So that was Brad, also known as Zimtalk5 on Twitch. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, to me, it's super interesting to see the different types of streamers that are on Twitch. There's either skilled streamers or streamers that are trying to embody a character. And then there's other ones that are just kind of variety streamers that are playing a variety of different games. I think that Zimtalk5 is someone who could be categorized as somebody who's just kind of like a variety VR streamer, playing all the different VR games, first person shooters, exploration games, pretty much everything that's out there, but also creating different kinds of social games that he's doing with his audience. That was really interesting to me to hear about how can you start to use virtual reality, both as a communication medium that makes it interesting to watch, but What are the things moving forward where the Twitch chat can actually become much more involved into the interaction that's happening within the virtual environments? And that's what I'm seeing with VR chat that's really kind of blowing up right now, is that some people are just embodying these different characters, they're just role-playing, they're just kind of walking around as if they were an in-real-life streamer, but doing within these virtual worlds and, you know, kind of having these crazy interactions that are often novel and surprising and different and that's one of the things that I think that is driving these types of both from the perspective of watching a twitch stream is that you have these shocking and surprising events that are happening that are just kind of beyond anything that you've experienced in real life and I think within VR chat, especially there's these moments where you're either embodied as a crazy character or there's interactions that are happening or there's something that kind of glitches out in the world or just the fact that the context that you're in is in these different classrooms or courtrooms and it invokes these different kind of role-playing roles that people start to kind of interact with each other in different ways. So that's just something that I'm seeing a lot of right now. And so looking at some of the most popular games that are happening on Twitch, you have something like PUBG, which is the Player Unknown Battleground. And for a good portion of the game, it's kind of like a walking simulator where you're walking around and just gathering loot and there's not a lot of action but that was one of the things that Brad had said was that within the context of a stream that actually makes a good stream when it's not sort of non-stop action but there's kind of like these highs and lows where you may be doing something very casual and you can kind of have it in the background and not have your full attention on it But then there'll be different moments when activity and action spikes up and then you can kind of tune in to see that. And that's kind of an unintuitive way of designing an experience to be streamed in that way, such that, you know, like Euro Truck Simulator is one of the games that he said that was one of the ones that was more popular because there's these moments of kind of spiked activity and he's kind of just kind of casually driving around and able to kind of chat and interact with the audience. So I'm seeing, within the last couple of months, a lot of bigger name Twitch streamers, whether it's Shroud or Lyric or Pokealls or GreekGodX. But also on YouTube, there's Jemski or PewDiePie or also Nogz21. I'm seeing more and more people that are going into VRChat and doing these different role-playing. In fact, if you were an improv actor or a voice actor, something like VRChat would be great for you to start to jump into and start to do these different role-playing and acting. Because I think that's going to be a whole other kind of genre within virtual reality, especially live-streaming of virtual reality, is that you're not only seeing these characters play out these different stories and dramas, but it's kind of like the essence of improv. You're able to go in and have these improv types of experiences. So I highly recommend if you want to have like an improv experience, you can embody a character, go to a location and start to, you know, play out these different scenes as well, which is, you know, can be a lot of fun, especially if everybody is, you know, kind of into it. If nothing else, you can just kind of tune into what's happening with some of these streams within VRChat, just to kind of tune into what I see is something that's really kind of starting to cross the chasm into the mainstream. Another thing to note is that people going into VRChat don't have to have a VR headset. And so they can still have an embodied experience within these worlds. And it's sort of driving the demand for them to say, oh, wow, this would be so much better if you actually had your hands as well as your head and being completely immersed within these virtual environments. And it's able to convey the level of interaction with these different people good enough to be able to kind of take these little clips and kind of put them on the internet and spread the word about virtual reality in general. And so with Zimtalk 5, he's been doing this level of evangelism for a long time, going in and playing pretty much all the major games that are coming out on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, as well as HTC Vive. So Zimtalk 5 has played well over 500 games, and he's been out there exploring all these different experiences and just out there evangelizing the virtual reality as a medium. And it's really interesting to me to hear what it takes to be able to both be immersed within the virtual reality experience and the little hacks and workarounds that he's had to do in order to actually like look at and participate within the chat. He's peeking through the nose hole to be able to see the Twitch chat and Steam actually has a little bit more integrations of being able to have a plugin that you can get for Twitch where you can actually look at your hand and see the Twitch chat as you're in virtual reality experiences. So, that's all I have for today. Just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast, and if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a donor. This is a listener-supported podcast, and I do rely upon your gracious donations to continue this coverage. So, donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
