My wife, Wonder Bright, has absolutely fallen in love with the VR experience Gnomes & Goblins. Her mindset and approach to the game was almost totally opposite from my own. While I focused trying to solve the scavenger hunt puzzles within their core explore, craft, and collect game mechanic, she immersed herself into skipping rocks, role playing with virtual characters, and becoming fully immersed reliving her childhood fantasy adventures in the woods of Eastern Washington. Needless to say, she was able to discover a lot more about the true nature of the game than I was in my initial 90-minute session, and it was her six-hour exalted exploration that inspired me to take another look at so many of the things that I had missed in my initial playthrough.
I mentioned in Wonder’s experience in my interview with the creators of Gnomes & Goblins and how she had a completely different mindset. This actually matched with Wevr’s playtesting where they saw a lot of newer VR users able to discover a lot of their experience if they had a more chill, meditative, and Animal Crossing mindset rather than a goal-oriented, checkbox checking, Call of Duty mindset.
Gnomes & Goblins is the first VR experience that my wife has really gotten excited about. It’s also her first video game experience that’s she really ever played. So it’s the first time she’s so fully inhabited, explored, and fell in love with any interactive game / immersive experience. She’s already logged over fifteen hours exploring, playing, and discovering all of the delightful creatures and stories embedded into this master class of worldbuilding.
We’ve been sharing a lot of conversations about Gnomes & Goblins over the past five days unpacking it all. Her feelings range the full spectrum of unabashed love and praise for the joy that this experience evokes in her, but she also has some specific feminist critiques in that she’s not able to fully project herself into a world that doesn’t have any female-identified bodies, and she’s not a huge fan of having to steal artifacts from the homes of Goblins without their explicit consent.
She found that the core game mechanic of collecting “artifacts” actually got in the way of the types of reciprocal relationships and experiences that she was yearning to cultivate. “Stealing” these objects and bringing them back to her tree house felt like a colonial narrative trope that ended up making this beautiful and sacred world a lot more like the type commodified world that she’s trying to escape. She just wanted to have more opportunities to be in deeper relationship and interact with these little virtual goblins rather than hunt for objects. Her desire for deeper connections with virtual beings point to the future of AI-driven character interactions, which are certainly on the technological road map for future sequels or future iterations of where these types of immersive experiences are headed.
As I was preparing to record the intro and outro for my interview with the Gnomes & Goblins creators from Wevr, I realized that there was a lot of Wonder’s perspectives and experiences that I wanted to include, but that I didn’t feel that I could properly digest and capture in my own words. So we decided to sit down on Wednesday morning to record a recap of the conversations that we’ve been having about this experience covering the full spectrum of why Gnomes & Goblins has so quickly become her first and most favorite VR experience of all time, and what changes she like to see to be able to more fully inhabit, cultivate reciprocal relationships, and immerse herself as a participant within the culture of the Goblins.
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Music: Fatality
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.412] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. So my wife and I met during Oculus Connect 2 in Los Angeles back in 2015. And so we've been living together, got married, and I've been showing her different experiences and talking about different stuff around VR since we met. And Gnomes and Goblins is the experience that she, above and beyond anything else, just absolutely loves. She loves being in there. And I had gotten early access to the experience. I was playing around. I got to a point where I hit a block and I couldn't figure out more stuff. And then I had her play it and she actually started to figure out stuff that I didn't figure out. So then I went back and played it some more. And then I had a chance to talk to the creators, Jake Rowell and Neville Spiteri of Weaver. And, you know, they're saying that they actually found something very similar that when you approach a game like Gnomes and Goblins with that meditative, chill state, this mode of being where you're not trying to accomplish or achieve anything, that you actually end up doing better. And when I approached it, I was approaching it with that mindset of that doing, achieving, goal-oriented, game-like, mechanic mindset, and found different frustrations. And then I would watch my wife play, I would see what she was doing, what type of experiences she was having, and then I would go in and have a different experience. So I wanted to have my wife, Wanda Bright, on to be able to talk about her experiences, but also some of the challenges that she has in terms of the ways in which she sees the game mechanic gets in the way of the types of experiences that she wants to have. And I know there's different issues with the open world exploration of Gnomes and Goblins, where it can be a little bit confusing. And from an experiential design perspective, how would you shift it? And I think the things that she starts to talk about with the types of experiences that she wants to have kind of require an entire re-architecture and a different philosophical orientation away from focusing on collecting objects and more on focusing on what's it mean to really be a part of this world and to be in relationship to this world. And that, I think, is from a technological perspective, that's going to maybe drive the future of VR into a different direction. So I think it's worth unpacking her experiences and what she wants to acquaint us where VR, I think, is going to be going into the future, that once we get there, we'll have worlds and experiences that are able to achieve what she wants. But right now, what Gnomes and Goblins is able to do is push forward the larger conversation of what's even possible. And then by doing that, they're experimenting and doing things that are new. And as we see those things that are new, then we discover what else we want. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Wonder happened on Wednesday, September 30th at 9.29 AM in Portland, Oregon. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. All right. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell me a bit about what you do in the realm of VR.
[00:02:54.827] Wonder Bright: Well, I'm married to you, Ken, bye. So what I do in the realm of VR is listen to you talk about VR and sometimes listen to your podcasts. And then I do experiences when you tell me about them. And one of those experiences was Gnomes and Goblins. That's my favorite one so far.
[00:03:17.707] Kent Bye: Oh wait, you didn't say your name. What was your name? Introduce yourself.
[00:03:23.725] Wonder Bright: My name is Wonder Bright.
[00:03:26.125] Kent Bye: Okay. So yeah, maybe you could talk about your experience of gnomes and goblins and what is it about that experience that you enjoyed so much, probably more than any other VR experience that I've shown you so far.
[00:03:38.228] Wonder Bright: Yeah. Um, so I did the preview a couple of weeks ago.
[00:03:44.889] Kent Bye: Yeah, that was at the Venice film festival. They had a number of the different narrative chapters before the full release came out, like a few weeks later.
[00:03:51.535] Wonder Bright: Yeah, so that was my favorite thing that I did. And basically what happened to me when I did the experience is I was transported back to childhood. And in order to understand the impact that this experience had on me, you kind of have to understand that I spent a lot of time as a child We lived for three years in eastern Washington in a log cabin that my parents built themselves, and I spent hours and hours and hours of totally unstructured playtime in the forests. And I read lots of fairy tales and was really invested in the idea of gnomes and fairy creatures. and would leave little trinkets on rotted log stumps for them. And I had so many involved stories about woodland creatures and fairy creatures. And my parents also read to me every night when I was a kid until I was 12 years old. So I was really steeped in stories and narratives and a lot of fairy tales from a very young age. And so when I walked into this enchanted forest, and I met the hint fairy, and then I started to meet the goblins. I felt like I was five years old again, and I was in a realm that felt super familiar to me. It was so beautiful and so heart-centered, and I just wanted to stay there. I could have lasted on the river boat ride down to the grotto. That could have gone on for like 20 more minutes. I honestly didn't need to do anything. I just wanted to stay in the world and I wanted to talk to these creatures and I wanted to interact even more with them. So for me, it was still an experience of just becoming like a child again, and just utterly delighted by the people and the place that I found myself in.
[00:05:59.937] Kent Bye: Yeah, I had early access to this experience before it was released to the world and so I played through it and then I knew how much you loved this experience and then I was like you got to check this out and you start playing through it and you started to discover things that I hadn't discovered and your experience actually came up in the context of me doing the interview with the creators because They were creating this experience to go beyond the normal market and virtual reality to try to reach people just like yourself who would really fall in love with this world and just Be and be in this meditative chill state rather than to have this goal-oriented Mindset one of the creators worked on Call of Duty and he calls it his Call of Duty mindset which is like a first-person shooter like very goal-oriented intention of Achieving the goal and they said they tried to create an experience that got away from that And what I found is that you were able to discover things that I didn't discover and you were able to experience it in a way You know, they said that people who are very experienced VR gamers they go through the entire first part without ever needing the hint fairy at all and and that people that are just kind of roaming around a little bit, they actually need the hint fairy to be able to help guide them to what is next. And so by the time I got to this open world where I really actually needed the hint fairy, I didn't even pick it up because I didn't think I needed it. And I didn't even know what the hint fairy could do. So it was almost like I missed out on being confused because I was such a seasoned VR player that I went straight through the narrative without ever needing the hint fairy. But when I needed it, I didn't even know it existed. And they said that they actually found that people who were Not vr players actually had a better time and actually did better at the game than people who were actually trying to like solve it So there's something about the way that you played it that actually gave me a different insight to the experience that I was dismissive of certain aspects, but there was also things that I I knew I was missing So then I did the interview with them and then went back and spent some more time in it. But I think your experience actually was a part of what they were actually trying to do. What you described to me just now about your experience was exactly what they were trying to cultivate.
[00:08:19.288] Wonder Bright: Well, it's funny that you would describe, quote, needing the hint fairy, because I didn't ever have a relationship to the hint fairy that I needed the hint fairy. I wanted to hang out with the hint fairy from the first moment that I picked up the hint fairy. I was a little concerned because the expression on its wee small face looked a bit alarmed. This is going all the way back to the preview. And so I was worried that when I was shaking the hint fairy that I might be hurting the hint fairy. And yet it produced the most marvelous effect. And it would sort of sparkle and shimmer, and then the whole world would warp and weave. And these lights went everywhere. Fairy lights went everywhere. And the sound is this beautiful bell sound that's just this really delightful tone. So I wouldn't describe my use of the hint fairy as relating to it as a need. I really experienced the hint fairy as being my companion on the journey. Like, if you're hanging out with some friends and you're, like, exploring a new neighborhood or a new bar or whatever, you talk over the menu with them. I'm, like, talking to the hint fairy about what we're looking at. It was a different experience for me altogether. I wasn't thinking of it as a game mechanic. I was thinking of it as my companion.
[00:09:46.762] Kent Bye: Well, there's a certain part of the second part of the open world. There's like the prologue that is introducing you into this world, those 10 chapters. And then the last chapter of The Goblin Life is this open world where you can spend anywhere from four to 20 to 30 hours exploring around. And you had explored around and discovered how to get into places that I couldn't figure out how to get into because You know, and this gets into a little bit of spoiler area for people who haven't done the experience, but there's a certain part of shaking the hint fairy and being able to use that mechanic of having the bell in your belt, which I didn't realize there is a belt with the portal or the bell. And I don't think I even put it into my inventory. at the beginning and I just left it there. So I don't think I even had it. And so I didn't know that you could ring the bell at any moment to get small. So my first experience of going around this open world was seeing all the different places, exploring around, and then literally not knowing what to do next because I didn't have that bell. And that bell, if you ring the bell at home, then you can see all the objects that you're trying to gather, which gives you a lot of clues. And then it also allows you to get small, which allows you to go into some of the most compelling places that you couldn't have given into. So it was a bit of this moment when I realized, oh, you got small, that I was like, oh, I clearly haven't been able to see all of this world yet. And I went back in for another three hours or so, exploring all those parts that I had missed because I didn't even know how to get small. I think there was a certain part of your approach to the game where you're able to unlock different things that I didn't know about and then I went back in and that was also some of the things that they said they wanted to try to do which was to make it so that you had to talk to each other in order to figure out how to do stuff and so Because the game is still relatively early out there I've probably reached a point where I Don't know how to do certain things and then when I try to search online or find different places where those conversations would be happening There's no one else that spent 12 to 20 hours in the experience which collectively is what we've done because you had your play session that you spent about 10 hours and then mine somehow got deleted and then I have to like go and and and use yours and play off yours. And so I got cumulatively around 20 hours into the experience based upon your play session and my play session. And there was still things that I don't quite know how to do. And then they're trying to create this conversation around it so that in order to figure it out, it actually creates this whole other meta layer of needing to refer to the wider public in order to understand. And Jon Favreau told his team that that was some of his favorite moments Video games was when he had to go out and participate in a conversation about it in order to figure out how to do something So that became a bit of a piece of knowledge that it was actually very difficult to figure out on your own So there's actually something that they're embedded within the core aspect of the game But there's a challenge of making some of those things so arcane that it literally becomes impossible for you to do on your own own, which means that if not enough of a critical mass of people actually go through and actually complete it, then there's not that discussion to be able to, how to figure out how to do things, which then ends up looking like bad design. But they're trying to cultivate this exactly what happened with us, which is that you actually got further than I did. And I was like, Oh, wow. You just gave me some insights about this that I wasn't able to figure out.
[00:13:08.417] Wonder Bright: Well, I have a couple of thoughts about that. The first being that I don't think I have ever related to the game or any game as being something that I needed to figure out. And that, ironically, is what allowed me to find the things that I found in Gnomes and Goblins because I stumble into them. I'm not actively searching for them. So every time I discover some game mechanic like, oh, I can get small, I'm just completely delighted. I have no expectation. I don't have a list of things that I think I'm supposed to discover or not discover. I'm literally happy to be in the world. And the reason this quote-unquote game works for me is because I don't have to discover anything to be satisfied by the things that are happening in the world and by the discoveries that I get to make. I mean, honestly, my favorite moments in the game have not had anything to do with the game. They've had to do with skipping rocks. There's a bridge at the destination to Gnome Hill where there's a river and you can skip rocks there. And skipping those rocks at night and diving under the water and just being in that river is one of my favorite moments in the game. And then there was another time in a treehouse sitting next to a goblin and just sitting there looking at the forest and listening to the crickets and then occasionally like scooting over so that I could make the horn blow. Those are my favorite moments in the game. And it's not a game. At that point, it's just not a game. It's an opportunity to be in a forest. And I should say that we got the game on the heels of the wildfires in Oregon, where we literally couldn't go outside and the whole house is smoky. And the opportunity to actually go to this imaginary forest that so speaks to my childhood experiences and just be in this idyllic scene is, I mean, it was really, it was really special.
[00:15:26.352] Kent Bye: I had a really interesting experience watching you play because when I went through that scene in the prologue, the goblin goes down and plays the flute and there's three ladders in there and there's a little hint fairy that's flying around and the hint fairy goes up to the top of the tall ladder and then I climb up to the tall ladder you get up there and then the hint fairy goes down to this other area so then you have to learn how to climb down the ladder and then I go back to follow it and it flies over this other place and I go over there and then by the time I get to that point then the hint fairy goes over into the goblin that's playing the flute and when you started to play that scene you just sat down next to the goblin and I'm like thinking to myself wait that's not what you're supposed to do and then and then the hint fairy just comes up right behind you once the song finishes and I'm like oh my god you just found a whole other way to experience that so There was like a part of my game mind that was like, okay, they're trying to teach you how to climb ladders. They're trying to teach you these different mechanics and how to like figure something out. And that's a lot of what you try to do in these type of prologues is like teach you the core mechanics so that when you come across them, you can like know how to climb ladders. Like it's possible to even climb a ladder. But that was such a interesting moment because I kept trying to tell you how to do things. And every time I tried to tell you to do something, it was the exact opposite for the state of being that you were trying to cultivate within the experience.
[00:16:56.103] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, it's actually really funny because this has been an ongoing subject of debate for us since I moved in with you. What was the name of that dance music game? Oh, is it Audio Shield? Oh, Audio Shield. Yes. Thank you. I loved playing that. because I just wanted to dance. I didn't care about points. It was definitely a moment where I was like, what is he doing? Why are you trying to ruin this for me? I couldn't understand what you thought you were trying to accomplish by giving me tips on how to score better. I was like, I don't know what you think I'm doing, but I'm not doing what you're doing. So just leave me alone. But you were so adamant that the game was like this. And I didn't know how to explain to you that there's more than one way to play that experience. And I feel in some ways as if this experience, Gnomes and Goblins, I've been able to get it across to you because I was more successful on your metrics of success simply by playing it my way, which is not to try to win anything. It feels a little like a full circle moment in terms of being able to describe why my approach works for me, even if it's ignoring the general metrics for success for a game. Because I think this experience is unique and special in the way in which it allows you to just be in a world. I haven't had that before. The world building in this piece is so new to my mind because it's just unending. Like this is when you're just so grateful for Hollywood storytelling and just, you know, Jon Favreau, like just thank you so much for creating this place that I can explore like this because the attention to detail and the desire to use any, like any detail as a storytelling craft. Like, you know, I lived in Los Angeles for years, and I know lots of people who work in the industry. And I know, I used to date a woman who did sets, and the kinds of things that she had to do in order to produce a character out of an object. Like most people just don't understand how many people are involved in crafting a story and the amount of attention that goes into arcane detail to create world building for something that maybe has two seconds on a screen If that, it's all there to help the actors inhabit the world that they find themselves in. And as an actor, you walk onto the set and you have this experience of looking at an object and being able to project your character's experience into that object. And Gnomes and Goblins is the first world where I felt narrative in every single thing that I looked at. There is a craft to the creation of the place that they've so lovingly put together that means that I can find myself, I can create a narrative for myself in my relationship to that world. It's totally not about Well, in fact, and we'll get to this in a moment, because if anything, the problems I have with the world have to do with the game construction, the game mechanics that, quote unquote, move the narrative forward. I actually get really frustrated with all of that stuff, because to me, the strength of the game lies in the narrative construction, and lies in the narrative that not only is provided for me, but that I begin to create as I'm interacting with the world. and the perception that I have of the world that's been created is my favorite thing about it. It's just so beautiful a place to just be and discover and explore.
[00:21:04.976] Kent Bye: Yeah, this dialectic between being and doing was actually a big part of what they were trying to achieve. You know, your experience that you're just describing is exactly what they were going for, but yet they're doing that within a context of gamers who are so used to doing in all these other previous game contexts. And part of the challenge is that they're trying to release this into a market which is being led by gamers who have this doing center of gravity where they want high agency, they want all these things, but yet there's something about the VR medium that's actually like the strength of the medium that is actually more on the yin side rather than the yang sort of act of doing. It's more about being and being a relationship and noticing the changes and being in a place. And I think that I went in with that young, doing, achievement, goal-oriented mindset. And I think that what was so striking was to see how you objectively did better in the experience on my metrics by just being and being in relationship and to just have it more of a place that you're going into. And that's what the creators had said, that they wanted to create this chill mindset and this meditative space and that meditative mindset and that they're trying to cultivate that, especially in the time of the pandemic, of creating this opportunity for people to go into this world and to just be, rather than to check all the different boxes. So you have this experience that is not only being received by this community, who maybe is approaching it in a way that is actually the opposite of what they're trying to do, and then getting these different reviews, you know, like Ben Lang from Road to VR gave it three out of 10 stars because it was like a beautiful world, but like, you know, And I think there are specific things that they need to change to make it better in terms of trying to either cultivate that or make it more clear or, you know, there's this tension there of trying to serve everybody on those audiences. And I think by trying to serve everybody, they sort of are doing injustices to both ends of that spectrum and creating an experience that has a potential to not land into people like yourself who would not normally have like a VR headset in the gaming PC And it's a challenge because they're trying to expand the market and do something that's different. But yet, you know, how do they describe it? How do they explain it? And that's a big reason why I wanted to have you talk about it, because, you know, just our conversations helped inform me of helping to take another look at it to really see things that I had missed the first time around. and to really surrender to it. And I'm happy that I did that because I did start to really get a sense of what those merits are, but still have different experiential design critiques around how to like get to this place that they want to get to. But it's this weird place where VR is not big enough to be able to have it out into the world where people who have the technology, who are aware of it, and the type of people that would probably like this the most, probably don't have the technology and the hardware to even have access to it.
[00:24:05.915] Wonder Bright: Yeah, well, that is for sure. And also, I think the tension that you're describing between the way that gameplay mechanics are generally produced and this new idea that Gnomes and Goblins presents, which is what if the world is actually part of the mechanic in a way that is specific to creating a very detailed world? That tension is not resolved successfully in Gnomes and Goblins, in my opinion, as of yet. But Gnomes and Goblins is pointing to something really, really exciting to me personally. And I hope more people play it. Play doesn't even seem like the right word, to be honest. I hope more people experience this just to get a sense of what might be possible to do. For my money, like to my mind, The contradiction between the gameplay and the world building is not resolved successfully in Gnomes and Goblins because in many ways the gameplay disrupts from the beauty of the world that they've created. And it actually contradicts it. There are lots of things that happen in the world. The things that excited me the most about it initially, the hint fairy, my interaction with the hint fairy, my desire and ability because the hint fairy was so delightful. And then my first experience of the goblins was just, oh my gosh, I love them so much. so much, I just want to hang out with them. I could have like talked to them on the garden path for hours. My favorite things about the world then get kind of messed with the minute that there has to be like a kind of game mechanic in it. Because my experience of it is that the minute that I really started to understand the game mechanics, then the creatures that I was interacting with became pawns in my narrative. So I started out by describing how delighted I was by the hint fairy and my relationship to it was that this was my companion on the path. But after about two hours, once I was actually in the goblin forest, I was no longer talking to the hint fairy. I was just shaking the hint fairy because I'd got used to it. And now it's a game mechanic. Now it's a tool I have in my pocket. And now I've developed this whole facility with the bell at my hip where I pick it up, I shake it. Once the hint fairy arrives, I select my hint fairy, and then I shake that hint fairy. And it's like this seamless, skillful set of actions that I go through in order to do X, Y, and Z. And that phrase, in order to, is me learning the game mechanic. And what the game mechanic actually does is it tends to distance me further from the world itself, and further from my desire to explore it, and more into a kind of a cumulative colonizing mindset. Because once the game mechanic really infiltrates my brain in the experience, then all of the goblins and all of the things that they're doing end up being things that I have to do in order to. in order for this, in order to do that. So it's no longer enough to just be in the world. It is something that you have to progress through, and you have to progress through by going through a certain series of hoops. And I get that I'm an outlier and an anomaly, and there's loads of reasons for that. For my money, a much more satisfying gameplay for this particular world would be to have interactions with the creatures that inhabit the world and to have an interdependence that develops as a result, rather than me being forced into this accumulative role play where I'm going out and I'm stealing objects from these creatures that I was initially so delighted by. Oh, they're so cute. Oh, they're so beautiful. Oh, what a wonderful world. I'm now being pushed into the role of seeing them as being a piece of the puzzle that I have to use in order to get wherever it is that I'm supposed to be getting instead of just thinking, no, this world is already pretty magical. How can I contribute? And I go into it with this desire to contribute because these people are so engaging and wonderful. And I discover after like three tries at the brewery, there's a pub at the brewery where if you go down to the pub, you can actually serve acorn brew to all these adorable goblins. And the first two times, I just had a blast. I was just like, oh, hey, here you go. Do you want an acorn brew? Yeah, I love this acorn brew. Here's one for you. Here's one for you. Until all the acorn brew was gone. And then the third time I did it, the goblins actually started to get mean with one another. Like they would grab the acorn brew from the person I just set it in front of and drink it down themselves. And it was so weird and disturbing. This is not the interaction I'm looking for. I want an interaction where I give something to someone and then they give me something back. So that I'm not just walking into somebody's house and stealing a book. I'm not just walking into somebody's house and taking a map off a wall or a diagram off a wall. I want to feel like I'm a part of the world. That was the thing that enchanted me so much when I came to it in the first place was oh I just want to be a part of this and now all of a sudden I'm not a part of it anymore I can't be interdependent with it I have to use it for something for my own benefit and then I go back home to my treehouse and I've got this collection of quote-unquote artifacts I'm sorry, what am I, like an anthropologist going to Papua New Guinea and like collecting people's cooking tools and calling that artifacts? Am I like the Queen of England with collections of items from around the world in a museum that correctly belonged to this other country that I went to and conquered? But I don't want these artifacts from these beautiful creatures that I just met and was so enchanted by who have this beautiful forest home. I don't want their artifacts. I want to be a part of their world. And why am I always taller than them? Even when I shake the green fairy and get small, I'm still taller than them. Everything in the game is engineered so that you are aware that you are superior to. No matter what you do, they always look at you with delight and deference. If a little goblin walks past you and you look at them, they keep your eyes And then they will walk backwards and still keep your eyes, like they sort of like walk with their back bent and their eyes looking up at you as they go forward. Like if you look at them, they look back and they are always looking up because even if you're shrunk, you're still taller. You are always in a position of superiority. And it just. makes me sad because I can't actually be a part of the world the way that I want to. The way that I felt that I was being invited in, I successively feel as if I'm still never quite a part of. And then when I go back to the treehouse and I see that I've been stealing these artifacts from people and collecting in this treehouse that they built for me, by the way, I just feel like my sense of superiority is never challenged by anyone except for me, the real person who's actually going through the game, and it makes me sad. And also, there's no women. There's no female characters in this game. And that also is just weird to me. And I recognize this as a thing that happens in mainstream storytelling a lot. I know exactly what it is, but it still bums me out. You know, like Disney has a classic shtick of making something that is apparently gender neutral to stand in for everyone. But we know that they're not gender neutral because they make a real point of making female characters look female. So there's no such thing as gender neutral in Disney. And I know that. I've been watching Disney my whole life. Well, my mom wouldn't really let me watch Disney when I was a kid, so maybe this is part of the reason I can see it so clearly. I've been watching Disney for a long time and I get it. Even when I was a kid, I got it. Even though my mom wouldn't let me watch Disney, I still, we didn't even have a TV and I still received that messaging. I still wanted to look like a girl. I still wanted Barbie dolls. I still wanted all these things because I was sensitive to the fact that that's what girls looked like. And now I'm in this world and all the goblins are gender neutral. So of course I can like see myself in any of them, right? Because that's what gender neutral means, isn't it? No, that's not what it means. And then when you go down to the grotto and there's this massive, great, big, tall, like mystical man in robes, and he's a man. And you know what? Guess what? I'm pretty sure he's a white man. He's cast out of gray stone, but he's looking pretty white to me. So who is this world for? Who gets to assume that they're superior to everyone in that way? I can tell you it's not me. It's just not me. And that just sort of tears at the fabric of the very thing that I love the most about this world, that I feel when I walk into it right at the start, which is, I can just be here. I can be. I love it here. It's OK for me to just be. And it's not always okay for me or women or people of color or indigenous people in this world to just be. We don't get to assume that we're superior. So when I walk into this world and the assumption that the game mechanic produces is that I'm superior, I get thrown out of the game because I know that's not true. And I don't believe that the things that say that I'm superior make me superior. I can't project myself into these gender neutral goblins. I can't project myself into this masculine identity of some superior father god that is this mystical figure that collects all these artifacts. I can't see myself in that. I don't want to see myself in that. I want to be sitting in the tree house next to a goblin looking at the river and listening to the crickets. I just want to be there. They've made this beautiful, beautiful place and they're asking me to ruin it.
[00:35:47.070] Kent Bye: Yeah, we just on our morning walk and you're saying all this stuff and these deep insights of your experience and realize that like I'm not seeing these things because I'm a white man and I don't immediately articulate that which I think it's why it's so important to have diverse teams working on these things because, you know, something like this would maybe be called out a lot earlier to the point once it gets to this point because there's certain assumptions that are built into this game. And before I did my interview with the creators, you asked me to ask a specific question. You really, really, really wanted me to ask this question, but maybe you could explain what you wanted me to ask and why.
[00:36:26.932] Wonder Bright: Well, I mean, I like to try and be a backseat driver to you sometimes, which is maybe not fair because I get really riled up. I mean, I start yelling and stomping around about things that I see and stuff that I'm upset about. I think in that moment I was really starting to understand the insidious nature of the perception and the assumptions that underpin Gnomes and Goblins. And I was getting really riled up about it in that moment. So really what I wanted was for them to be held accountable for the thing that they'd done to ruin my favorite game ever. And the reality is that I don't think that I think the only way for these things to change is for us to have more diverse teams. I can't imagine that they understood that they were creating this thing that I've just described. Because I think for white men, for people working in tech, for a lot of creators that are getting the money to make these things that are so marvelous, they don't ever have to question those assumptions that they hold. You know, like my nephew is 10 years old. He's just the light of my life. But I know that if he went through the game, he wouldn't see what I see. He would go through the game and he would have his sense of superiority and his assumption that he should be superior confirmed. And I don't want that for him. I'm glad I don't have it. I don't want to feel superior. I think it's dangerous. I think it causes harm. And it disturbs me that a game that might be a child's first experience of VR is going to instill these kinds of values at the same time that it hardwires it into a child who is full of excitement and joy about this world that they're discovering. And it just, it makes me really sad. I wanted you to ask them. I don't even remember what I said, to be honest with you.
[00:38:46.473] Kent Bye: I think you said something around, like, why are you stealing these objects from these places? Like, why, why is it okay that you can steal these objects?
[00:38:55.459] Wonder Bright: Yeah. I mean, I think I think I don't really have that question because I think it's okay because we've said that it's okay. Western culture has declared that it's okay because we're superior. And as long as we go along with that, as long as we assume that it's true, then it will continue to be true. Only those of us who know that it's not true know that it can't be true.
[00:39:34.657] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I actually asked the question, it was at the end of the interview, and it actually produced a lot of heat and discussion because it was something that in some context had been brought up from other people that had experienced it. And I think the way that you articulated all the ways in which that is embedded into the core mechanic of the narrative that has these underlying settler colonial mindset that is a colonizing narrative to some extent. that has so many different issues with it. And I think there's a way to shift out of, like a philosophical shift, away from putting the value in the objects that you're collecting and putting the value in the relationships that you're building. So what would it mean to, rather than for you to gather a trinket, in some ways that's a production of Western capitalism that when you go on tours that you buy things to remember stuff of that memory. There's also the approach where you're building relationships, not only to the people, but to the world around you. And so what would it mean to be invited in, in more of a relational dynamics so that you feel like you're actually a part of the community, and that there is an exchange. And, you know, one thing is like, if you find an object, what is the dance of consent is what I had said in the interview, which is, that you're picking up the object and they come up and you ask can I take it or whatever and they give it to you like there's some sort of ritual in which it's given to you as if it's a gift and that's made clear that they're choosing to give it to you for whatever reason rather than for you just taking it and it not being in their world anymore with them not even being in the room. And so that doesn't happen in reality, where you just go into somebody's house and take stuff. I mean, that is a part of a larger cultural context that is just not okay. It's okay within these game worlds, but it feels empty to be in this room where you're collecting objects and not being in relationship to the world around you. I would love to see when you achieve something you feel like you're invited into a community ritual or you're invited in to participate or to produce something that is being used or if you create this brew it's like a part of a celebration or you know they need this for this type of experience but that it's rather than the objects being the focus it's the relationship and so how do you feel a part of feeling more connected to the goblins more connected to the world around you rather than this extracting mindset that I think is, it's a philosophical shift from focusing on the objects and substance metaphysics and more into the relationships and more relational metaphysics. It's a whole different philosophical orientation that I think gets to a whole other experiential design, which means that you are cultivating interactions with this being so that you feel actually more part of this community rather than feeling alienated from consumerism.
[00:42:18.283] Wonder Bright: Yeah, in Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an indigenous woman talking about indigenous practices and what it's like to live in a world through those perspectives. She has a wonderful chapter, which funnily enough, in relation to this conversation, is called The Gift of Strawberries. where she makes a distinction between wild strawberries and the strawberry shortcake that her mother would bake for her father every year on his birthday, and the difference between that and then buying strawberries in a store. And I don't remember the details of the chapter very well, but what I remember really clearly is the distinction she's making around the value of those wild strawberries and that wild strawberry shortcake versus the commerce embedded in the mass-produced strawberries and her experience as a child collecting wild strawberries for her mother for that shortcake versus being paid very small amounts of money to work for a woman who owned a strawberry farm and not being even allowed to eat any of the strawberries as she was collecting them, and how much less she valued the strawberries that she produced on the strawberry farm than the wild strawberries that she and her siblings would pick for her father's strawberry shortcake birthday dinner. And this idea that we have in Western culture around the value associated with objects is really disconnected from the value associated to those objects when they are experienced as a part of a world that we are interdependent with. So this financial value versus this idea of the intrinsic value and what it means to use the strawberries that are produced in the world naturally, these wild strawberries in nature, and to gift them to her father for this strawberry shortcake birthday dinner that is a celebration and the value of that ritual in her family versus this commodified value Kimmerer doesn't call the strawberries strawberries. She calls them heart berries because it's attached to a myth of the strawberries having blossomed from the heart of a daughter who died. And in this way, the body becomes a part of the gift and the heart berry becomes a part of this connection to this larger ecosystem. And I felt like I was so close to experiencing something of that. I know part of it is just my magical thinking that is a carryover from a childhood that is a really unique childhood where I spent so much time in a forest myself. And I also suspect that my unique perspective allows me to see something possible in this world that might not be obvious to everyone else. Because instead of creating this beautiful world that you're then, through the game mechanics, expected to more or less, like, make more like your own world, like the world I'm trying to leave behind. I'm now supposed to make this beautiful untouched world more like my world? And I don't actually want to, you know? I'm more interested in what happens if the game mechanic produces a different result. Exactly as you say, interdependence. I'm not interested in commodifying this world. I'm interested in learning about the world. I'm not interested in winning the world, I want to learn about the world, I want to be in the world, that would be more satisfying to me. And I don't know if that is a game that anyone else wants to play. But that is the game I want to play both in virtual reality and in this one.
[00:46:36.566] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that they're trying to push the medium forward in different ways, and I think they certainly are. And then as we get there, then you have this weird mix of the game mechanics with the narrative, and you have it pretty separated from the typical cinematic part, which would be the prologue of these chapters where you're getting introduced to the world. That's more gated, you're just going through. And then the open world that they have, it still has this object accumulation just in terms of ease and programming it's like constraints for what even the game engines can do the stuff we're talking about is like getting into the level of Relationship building and trust building and AI and virtual beings and relationship between AI and virtual beings I think that is the trajectory of that we're on but it's also like even if they tried to do that right now it would be like that within itself would need to be a lot more of a smaller experience just to experiment with what the core mechanics of that relationship building are and I think you're starting to see that with Agents, which I showed you and that you also really enjoyed and so you have these types of different interactions that you can have They're more emergent and you have AI that is reinforcement learning but an intelligent entity that's there. So Putting more of that intelligence within these goblins so that they have their own agency and in that you don't have a default of just deference but that you can actually like make them angry and they don't relate to you and how do you how do you cultivate that trust and it becomes more about building rapport with them and that within itself is a mechanic that I think we're on the trajectory of going to. But I think the thing that you're speaking to and maybe revealing and showed to me and asking them and then after that, I had probably put it into like three or four hours into the experience and then last night I spent another nine or 10 hours really trying to like do as much as I can to see if there's things that get unlocked in terms of that relationship building. And there are certain experiences and sequences that they have in there that are interesting in that, but still at the end of it, it comes back to that core issue of not feeling like I'm in a relationship to them, that it's like, performative animation sequences that happen that are there for my entertainment rather than being in direct relationship. And when I asked the question to them, their answer was that you have done things to them, you are in relationship to them, you put out the fires, you saved the buddy, you do these different things. But in terms of this one-on-one interaction, as you point out all these things about the height being taller and everything, I think that It gets to that issue of not really feeling like you're a part of this world, but that you're kind of swooping in and taking these objects and swooping out. But at the end of the day, I think that produces an experience that is not as satisfying as I think it could be, or the type of things that you want to see in the experience, I think, is going to require further experimentation, maybe in the smaller experimental phase, to be able to eventually get into big experiences like this. But yeah, those are just some thoughts because I think that at the end of the day, it's going to maybe reveal some of the real affordances of what you can do in VR that goes beyond what the existing game mechanics are and what the existing cinematic storytelling mechanics are. But I think having your sense of agency and being in relationship to the world around you and to those beings I think is the core issue that even after playing for another nine to 10 hours is sort of still my complaint that this is maybe, deeper issue that they have to go back to the drawing board for the next iterations or like I don't know if they can necessarily fix this just by adding more goals and other game mechanics like what they actually want in order to do that that would get people further away from the types of experiences that you've had because those game mechanics get in the way and are in contradiction to the types of meditative chill experiences that they're trying to create yeah I
[00:50:18.388] Wonder Bright: Completely agree with you. I don't think that this game can be quote-unquote fixed if you're taking my criticism as something that they need to do differently for this particular game. I think this is a conversation that goes into the future. And also, by the way, I want to be really clear that I love this game and I'm going to go back and play it some more. I'm going to go back and be in that world some more. My criticisms of the game are so pronounced because I love it so much. because it introduced something to me that I then felt it robbed me of. I was actually especially irritated when you told me that they had said that you were interacting because you had gone and you had saved, et cetera, et cetera, because I'm like, well, oh, I saved it, did I? So now I'm the white savior. Again, it's reinforcing a superiority experience, and that's why they've built me my beautiful treehouse. It reinforces that hierarchy. This is not interdependence. That's not being in relationship in the way that I mean. I want to actually be a part of the world rather than a savior. And it's interesting that you bring up agents because that was a game that totally tickles my philosophical leanings. It was so, we talked about it, this may be a conversation for another time, but it is so beautifully designed to have you understand that what is occurring in the world is a mirror of your own actions. And that was fascinating to me. And yet, I don't necessarily want to be in that world. I'll probably play it a couple more times, because it tickles me intellectually. And I think it's a wonderful game, and I 100% love it. But I won't be there. I will go back to Gnomes and Goblins and play that again, because I just want to be in the world. The world is so wonderful. Yeah, I think it's, I'm very curious to see what else they do and where they take this. And I hope that more people begin creating worlds that are like this, that maybe work for more people.
[00:52:45.132] Kent Bye: Right, and finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:52:54.699] Wonder Bright: Oh my gosh. Well, we've had a lot of debates about this over the years, and I think my answer is changing and evolving as we go through this. This is an interesting time to ask me that because this game is both the best and the worst thing that I've experienced. I love it. And I also love to hate it because I'm so upset about some of the things that I experienced. Because, I mean, honestly, this is the perfect example. Here, we've created a world, this beautiful, amazing world, and due to the game mechanics, there's this undercore assumption that we're going to... I shouldn't say this because I haven't played the game all the way through yet, but... Just the inherent game mechanics, to my mind, are duplicating a mindset that has got us to the process of creating a world that doesn't work. And the thing I don't want to have is virtual reality creating worlds that are beautiful that we then go in to exploit. And I'm thinking about a character in a novel called The Ender Story. If anybody's read that, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about. But I think it's entirely possible that we could be creating these marvelous worlds where we just duplicate our same mistakes. Meantime, our world is literally burning. Like, the earth is literally burning. And I have this terrible feeling that the optimism that creates some of the things that I love about America is also the thing that is the most directly responsible because it's so twinned to this individualistic notion of what is possible, like any person can achieve their dream. But so often it's not like, what happens when it's our dream, not one person's individual dream? And, you know, the debate that you and I have had over and over again is that VR, as far as I can see, seems to just be reproducing the world that we exist in. So, I mean, I guess my answer to you, and maybe this is an answer that I'm not going to be able to change, is that the potential of VR is the potential that exists in humanity. And I go back and forth between abject despair and Total shiny hope and I I see that in VR Great is there anything that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community Hi Thank you
[00:55:44.126] Kent Bye: Yeah, thank you so much. And you know, we've we've been talking about these things for a long, long time. And I'm glad that you found an experience that you love so much, but also been willing to share some of your your deeper thoughts about this, because you know, we it's definitely impacted my own perception of it. And I think the challenge of experiential design is this dialectic process, because it's an amazing achievement for anybody to finish anything in VR, to come together and pull everything together. And so they're fusing all these things together, and then once they create something new, then it's like, okay, this is what it does well, and this is what it doesn't do well. And I think the world building and everything, your experience, I think, reinforces to me that this is a very compelling medium of where this is all going to go. but yet there's still some deeper issues that still need to be addressed in terms of both the experiential design and in some ways the deeper philosophical underpinnings for the affordances of the medium and how to really fully explore that and make that manifest. So yeah, thank you.
[00:56:46.725] Wonder Bright: Thank you.
[00:56:48.146] Kent Bye: So that was Wenda Bright. That's my wife. She's also got a background in acting and theater and been immersed in stories for all of her life. So I have a number of different takeaways about this conversation is that first of all, well, this is an interesting example of the types of conversations that we have all the time. Although we had already had the structure of a lot of the stuff that we had talked about in this, and we recorded it into the rigorous format of a podcast. when we have conversations, it doesn't necessarily feel like I'm like interviewing her in this specific fashion. And it's more of a conversational dynamic. And we've just been talking about Gnomes and Goblins pretty much nonstop for like the last five days. And it's been kind of fun to see her really take on to this experience and just really love it so deeply, but also have specific issues of things that she wants or things that she gets frustrated with. And then she had me ask this question around collecting these objects and why is it okay to kind of steal these objects? One of the things that Jake Rowell and Neville Spiteri of Weaver said is that anybody that goes into an experience like this, it becomes a mirror so you're able to project different experiences that you have in life onto this experience. And I think that as Wunder is going into this experience, she's noticing all these things. You know, it certainly is not the intention of the creators, but yet at the same time, it could be the unconscious result of a lot of the decisions that they made that is replicating different aspects of our culture and society and being unconsciously projected into this world at the same time. And those are things that I didn't necessarily see. And I think part of the reason why I decided to record this conversation is that there are certain things that Wunder was saying in terms of critiques of this experience based upon her own direct experience that I didn't feel like I could articulate and have it land in quite the same way because it wasn't exactly my experience and I can't share all that information on her behalf. So I think that's why I think it's so important to have diverse voices critiquing and talking about these experiences to give this different type of feedback, because I think it may reveal different aspects that may make the experience better for everybody. And that type of insight could provide this key that unlocks the next iteration for where all this goes. At this point, it's probably too late for an experience like Gnomes and Goblins to push a point release to be able to change this core underlying collecting mechanic but really thinking about how are you in relationship to this world as you're gathering these objects and what is this consent that you have that does feel like you're kind of like going in as an anthropologist and taking these artifacts and understand that the intention is that when you go on vacation you're gathering these different trinkets but When you're going into people's homes and they're not there and you're taking stuff off the wall, then it gives this feeling of like, ooh, what is this that I'm doing? And for me, it's not satisfying to just go around this world and collect these objects. It's not enough for me to really be motivated to spend the amount of time that I would need to to find all of these objects. I think that each time that I collect an object, I want to feel like I'm growing deeper in relationship to the world around me, whether that's having some level of interaction with the goblins, that's unique, some sort of unique animation or some way of engaging or unlocking or participating in these different community rituals. Like what does it mean to become a part of the culture and become a part of the community and feel like you're actually embedded in a more reciprocal relationship with these beings rather than just a one-sided relationship or ways in which that you are coming in and becoming the savior or the asymmetrical power dynamics that they're assuming in that dynamic and how do you become more of an equal part that you're equally participating just being a part of this culture and included in this world and participating in this world and like you become a vital part of the community and like how do you actually cultivate that within these virtual worlds? I think when you start to think about it in those terms, rather than the substance, metaphysics, fixed objects that you're aggregating, collecting, and consuming, it becomes more about these relationships that you're building and you are cultivating trust or becoming a part or contributing or participating in what is seen as a community ritual. So that's all that I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
