#731: Natural & Intuitive Character Interactions in VR with “Wolves in the Walls”

Wolves in the Walls is a narrative VR piece based upon a Neil Gaiman novel that explores object interactions and cultivating a connection to a virtual character. It’s a project that originally started as a project within Oculus Story Studio, but was then transferred to Fable Studio, which is now known as Fable. Inspired by the Oculus Toybox demo, the team originally wanted to explore the secret life of objects, but then their focus shifted to cultivating intimacy and connection to virtual characters after seeing the immersive theater experiences of Sleep No More and Then She Fell in New York City.

Wolves in the Walls is a narrative VR piece based upon a Neil Gaiman novel that explores object interactions and cultivating a connection to a virtual character. It’s a project that originally started as a project within Oculus Story Studio, but was then transferred to Fable Studio, which is now known as Fable. Inspired by the Oculus Toybox demo, the team originally wanted to explore the secret life of objects, but then their focus shifted to cultivating intimacy and connection to virtual characters after seeing the immersive theater experiences of Sleep No More and Then She Fell in New York City.

They were so struck with the embodied interactions with the immersive theater characters in Then She Fell that they actually hired the production company Third Rail Projects to help with the embodied communication, body language design, and motion capture of the main virtual character of Wolves in the Walls. I had a chance to catch up with director Pete Billington and creative director Jess Shamash at their Sundance premiere last year in 2018 to talk about they combined insights from film, video game design, and immersive theater in the creation of Wolves in the Walls, which is now available.

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Music: Fatality

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Episode 732