Julie Heyde & Mariam Zakarian talk about the process of bringing the stories of Norse mythology to life with their RagnarökVR experience. Julie talks about going from hacking in Unity3d by herself to doing a series of game jams to eventually recruiting a total of a dozen people from the indie gaming scene.
Julie talks about the inspiration coming from facing one of her childhood fears of wolves, but also to explore some the Norse myths that she’s grown up with. They talk about the process of crafting an explorational horror experience, and how they’re going beyond using jump scares.
A big motivation for Julie is to create the type of virtual reality experiences that she wants to loose herself in. Their team has been taking a very iterative, game jam approach of rapidly prototyping ideas and then getting a lot of user feedback by showing it frequently at various public gatherings.
Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast.
[00:00:12.019] Mariam Zakarian: So my name is Mariam Zakarian and I'm the art director of the virtual reality horror game Ragnarok. And we're based out of Copenhagen and we have a lot of friends helping us all around like northern Europe.
[00:00:25.624] Julie Heyde: My name is Julie Heyde and I don't even know what my role is. I guess I'm a Unity hacker, game designer, builder of the game and I started on the game back in summer 2013 and then some of my friends just joined me later on. I met nice people at different events and we just grew the team and now we actually make something that looks pretty compared to my programmer idol. for instance. And yeah, so I started working on this game quite a while ago, more than one and a half year ago and it was basically started with some things I downloaded from the Unity asset store and I have a childhood fear of wolves and I put a wolf in the game and I put a cave and the wolf was running through the cave and chasing you and it would kill you. And I guess that was just me working through my childhood fear. And I really love wolves, but I'm really scared of them. And I've always been very fascinated by the wolf Fenrir in Norse mythology. So I thought, this fellow is Fenrir. And I like the connection that he has to, first of all, his father, who is Loki, and the connection that Loki and the goddess Freyja have. Loki is this sort of bipolar character that sometimes is a good guy and sometimes is a bad guy. And I don't really know any of the stories, but at one point, actually a few times, Loki stole Freya's necklace, which gives her a lot of powers. He stole her necklace and there were different ways of getting it back. And those are some of the stories. But the thing that we base our game on is the fact that Loki has stolen her necklace and you have to help her getting it back because Ragnarok is happening and everything is, find my French, going to shit, right? So it's the end of the world, it's doom day, things are happening and this is the story of the game. So Ragnarok is more of a series of events like the actual term Ragnarok and If you believe in this kind of religion, which we do, I guess we're from Northern Europe, it's a series of events and they're not necessarily depending on each other. So it's more like a lot of events happening and we just happen to put them in a certain order. So you're going through a series of events and they are connected one way or the other, you'll get to experience a lot of things. And yes, it's in VR because we are super VR geeks and we love that medium. Because you can do some things when it comes to immersion that you can't necessarily do in a game on a screen.
[00:02:50.280] Kent Bye: Wow. So it sounds like you're taking these mythological stories from your culture and then starting to actually act them out in virtual reality and experience them. And so I'm curious about what that's been like for you to actually step into these myths and to show other people and how they react to it.
[00:03:06.263] Julie Heyde: One of the funny thing is that Yeah, we're scattered all over Northern Europe. Some of us are in Copenhagen. A lot of people know about Ragnarok in general from media and cartoons and whatnot. And some of us are Danes and we grew up with this. It's part of our history. And some people just feel very much attracted to this kind of eat some meat and go into war, take some mushrooms, get high on that and go raiding somewhere. And like what Vikings did was, pardon my French, have a lot of sex. And that was just like the culture, right? I think, especially for people who grew up in Scandinavia, we have this Viking pride still, right? We went out, we explored the world, and we lost our land in a lot of wars later on, and we have, like... We were the first in America, actually.
[00:03:48.814] Mariam Zakarian: We discovered America, and then Columbus took all the credit for it.
[00:03:55.039] Julie Heyde: And I think this pride of having this culture and this awesome... I don't know whether you could call it a religion as such, but there's still... It's still being practiced in Denmark, for instance, and people are still very much believing in this, but it's also an awesome thing, I would say, to believe in, because it's... First of all, anything can happen, and it just does make more sense to me if I die to go to Valhalla and eat a lot of pork meat and dance all night and get drunk in beers. That's my afterlife. That's what I would understand. I will die eventually and I have to go somewhere. I would like to go there, right? So this is a part of our culture and it feels very real to make something about your own culture. Yet again, there are all these stories and myths and of course, because of Hollywood and everything else, a lot of other video games would touch about like upon some of the same topics but there's also one another thing is that we're picking some characters that are not necessarily well known and Also the way that some of these characters are pictured in other mediums because the thing is a lot of the mythology It's been written down by Christian priests. They were not necessarily found of female characters having sex with other people and only their partners whereas that was pretty common in the Viking days like you could do whatever you wanted and as long as you were agreeing upon it and And not that it has to do, like our game is anything about sex, but it's just the way of picturing female characters in Christianity and especially early Christianity was pretty far away from what reality actually was.
[00:05:18.307] Mariam Zakarian: The whole submissiveness aspect is very different in the culture. I am actually originally from Armenia, so I didn't really have this entry point to the Norse mythology as Julie had from an early age. When I joined the team, I sat down and I read the myths and I studied it and I became really familiar with the religion. It's also kind of weird to call it a religion because it's not really a religion. It's sort of just a frame of mind or a big world view rather than something that you practice. So what I realized was that, first of all, It's very layered. Compared to Christianity, for example, it's not binary. There's no such thing as good and evil. And all the gods are kind of fallible as well. They're just sort of humans with superpowers rather than always doing the right thing or whatever. Most often not doing the right thing. So that was very interesting to me. And also the fact that good and evil are very strongly connected. There is chaos and there is creation. especially like relating to Ragnarok again, like you have to have chaos in order to have creation. And then it's cyclical, you know, time is not linear in this context. So it's, yeah, that was the interesting thing for me to explore together with this, like the strong female characters, because it is not something that you see in a lot of the monotheistic religions. I mean, it is something that's very unique to Norse mythology, I feel.
[00:06:47.322] Kent Bye: And so what are some of the practical ways that you're translating this sort of, you know, liberated feminine energy into the virtual reality experience? And how are people going to experience that in VR then?
[00:06:58.845] Julie Heyde: So one of the things I just wanted to add to actually our characters because we have two female characters and one is Hel. So in Norse mythology Hel is also a person. You go to Hel, you go to where Hel is but she was actually kicked out of Asgore because Fyre, who is like one of our main characters, but Hel was kicked out of Asgore because Fyre was jealous of a beauty. So I wouldn't say that our game is in any way sort of like a feminist game, and I think very far from being hardcore feminist as such, because we're also dealing with all the male aspects of bipolar characters and so on. But it's interesting to see the sort of relation between people and why the story evolves, because people behave and act, you get competitive, you get jealous, you get angry and all these things. And also our characters are kind of changing persona for the game as well. and we are as such first of all the visuals like you're very much immersed like it's all around you and then also very much on the audio side of things and we're doing a lot of stuff and also I don't know how much I can actually I could say this one so the thing is most of the Norse gods are shapeshifters so they can actually turn into another being but Hel cannot which means if she wants to be a human like in whatever she wants to travel in any of the other worlds I want to be someone else you'll have to possess them and that's also part of our game.
[00:08:23.175] Mariam Zakarian: Let that sink in for a while, being possessed by something in VR and experiencing that in VR. Good luck.
[00:08:31.615] Kent Bye: Without getting motion sick, right? Yeah. And the other curious thing about your project that you're working on here is that you two are working on it full time, but you've been able to gather a lot of enthusiasm and passion and collaboration with a lot of other people that want to chip in. So talk a bit about the whole team that you've been able to put together and what is really motivating them to participate in this.
[00:08:53.450] Julie Heyde: I would like to start with my perspective. When I started working on this game, I thought it would be like, Hey, so I want to do this game myself. It's going to be completely indie, like, not depending on anyone. And I can do everything myself. I just, like, hack stuff and, like, take stuff from the Atis store, put it in there, try to tweak textures. I didn't even know how textures worked. I would just, like, apply random stuff. And it didn't look pretty, but it kind of worked. And that was cool. So I'm a game jammer. And I had met our audio director, Carl. I had met him at a game jam in Sweden called No More Sweden. And we made a music video together. Because one of our other friends, Saski, he asked, like, hey, let's do a Sleazy Boy band song because we were together with Jon, Jonatan van Hoven, making a dance pad game where you like a mosh pit game. So we call it Mosh Pit Hero. So we made a lot of punk rock songs and then we decided let's do this Sleazy Boy band song. And I told Sass I'll write the lyrics. I'll write the lyrics and I'll just yeah. So we met like us four people met there and then Carl and I of course became friends after this crazy experience. We made this music video called Dirty Britney. Very grown-up name. I picked it. Try to search for it. You'll find it. And Then he knew I was working on the game, and he said, hey, I like your concept, I like it's Norse mythology, what do you think about me doing some of the audio? I'm like, great, because I've been doing everything up until then, and it kind of worked, but I'm not really good at anything. So it means that everything is kind of... Hacked. Kind of hacked. So he joined the team and then at one point I organized an event in Copenhagen called Shyla Games. It's a yearly event. Yeah, I was not allowed to travel because of a neck injury. I was not allowed to travel. I was not allowed to work much. So I'm a bit hyper. So I just decided I'll organize an event and bring all my friends to Copenhagen. And Mariam and I met at that event because she, with some of her friends, were exhibiting another game. And yeah, The rest is history because then, well, suddenly there was a real artist on the team. And it also meant things should probably look better. And she said, we don't have the skills or the resources. Right. So.
[00:10:49.740] Mariam Zakarian: I think the thing that made me kind of freak out and just hire a bunch of people was that I really loved the concept and I wanted it to be as epic as I thought it should be. And I wanted people to be able to produce really high quality assets for this game and to get this full experience of Ragnarok. So in order to make that happen, I mean, you need people who know how to do stuff. And I mean, we were just sort of like, I'm very good at dreaming things and like putting things into concepts, art and like doing two dimensional things. But this is a 3D game and like a 3D world. So we needed people to produce those things. And none of us could really do any custom things. And so I went out good at hacking unity as a story. Yeah, so I went out and, you know, started looking for people and just, you know, actively searched and found bits and pieces online and just, you know, through friends and online. And suddenly we had a team and it just started growing. And also because we've been at all these different events, we just run into people who can do stuff and who are interested in helping us out. And yeah, so it just suddenly ended up being 10 people who are, yeah.
[00:12:02.592] Julie Heyde: Yeah, we're 12 now, right? We're 12 now, but we started out as a few people and suddenly... And it's also, as you know, we're the only people working full-time on it, so people are working whatever they can, and it's a passion project for all of us, and we've just become this group of friends. We didn't really know each other. Some of them we've never met. Some of our colleagues, our teammates, we've never actually met. And it's just kind of funny, like, hey, how are you doing in your country? How's the weather over there? And, I don't know, yeah, it's through friends and we met people at events and like, hey, we're doing this. Do you want to be part of it? You seem like you know what you're doing.
[00:12:37.282] Mariam Zakarian: I think it's a pretty amazing thing because, I mean, I can't really imagine this being possible like five years ago at all. Like, it is because of the internet and being able to connect through like different communities and different online resources that you can put something like this together. We are literally using Skype and Facebook to communicate and like, collaborate on this project you know it's pretty remarkable and also the amount of trust you have to have to like you know join a team with people you don't know and put this thing together I think it's very characteristic of the indie scene where we come from that people are very open and they trust each other and they want to make things together and it's just we should also say what we named our workspace So our workspace is named Chaos, and it's sort of because Ragnarok, there is sort of a theme there, but it's also because we're very chaotic. We're just very chaotic, disorganized people in general.
[00:13:34.262] Julie Heyde: But it's also, we're traveling to so many events. Now we're in different time zones and so on, and I don't know, we always make it work and I think it's also because most of us are game jammers from a background, so we're used to live building when we accept it. And also when we have meetings with the big guys and the big companies, the big hardware developers, I've also just given talks where I live build a game on stage, I have people playing it during my talks. in VR and like projected up to another screen. And people are like, how do you dare doing this? First of all, you don't know whether it works. Well, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Like, it's pretty easy. And how, like, why are you showing stuff off, like, all so early? Because we've just been showing all the time. Can you feedback? And I'm like, well, then people know what we're working on. Like, some things are not done, some things are not polished, and like, there are parts of the game that are super polished, and parts of the game that's just like, meh, Julie's Asset Store stuff is still in there. But, like, we want feedback, and we want people to know about what we're doing, and also we're not really keeping many secrets. Now you know that someone might possess you, though.
[00:14:31.124] Mariam Zakarian: Yeah, so it is sort of a part of our philosophy to also incorporate this whole Norse mythology theme in our whole organization. So sometimes we go and raid Devolver's booth and just camp there and smack up our gigantic, obnoxiously red posters on the walls.
[00:14:49.559] Julie Heyde: Against their white walls with no colors. Yeah, we got a bit of trouble with that, I think.
[00:14:53.423] Mariam Zakarian: Just a little bit, but you know, we can get away with it because we're chicks and we're Vikings.
[00:15:02.710] Julie Heyde: We're in the booth next week at rest actually this time around so now that we have a formal agreement at least like they told us a bit in advance so also they could I guess get So they knew, so we don't just like come and plaster up. So they were like, hey, you want to crash our booth again? And can we know in advance this time? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's cool. Oh, Devolver are awesome. Like, Devolver is the indie developer's best friend. I guess you're familiar with them, but they're amazing. Those guys are amazing. They saved me so much last year at GDC because I'd just been in a car accident. I had a neck injury. I was carrying around my stuff all the time. They said, Julie, put your stuff up at our space and just literally have your meetings here. Don't carry your stuff around. You feel like shit. So drink our beers, hang out. Friends. They understand the day. So yeah, we're going to London next week for rest. that Eurogamer is organizing to show people our game. It's super exciting. Still crunching like maniacs. But yeah, it's funny with the game jamming approach. And I know that I really do the game jamming approach. And once in a while, I get told off. Like, Julie, we need plans. And everyone needs to know what you're doing. So we just don't, out of a sudden, run away. I just accidentally told Mariam that I'm going to tweak a few things. And I just know that she starts to panic.
[00:16:15.864] Mariam Zakarian: This is when I'm just like, OK, I'm going out and getting wasted tonight then. I'm just like, I can't deal with this right now.
[00:16:23.607] Julie Heyde: So not before recently Mariam was like since one month she picked up Unity herself so it means that actually whenever I make trouble then she can just like erase them and get them back to normal which is a little bit freaky for me because before it was she would be like no Julia not doing that and I'm like haha you can't stop me.
[00:16:43.704] Mariam Zakarian: Yeah we're very we're very grown-up people.
[00:16:48.007] Kent Bye: So you're calling this a horror experience, but I'm not seeing the elements. It sounds like more of an ambiance rather than things jumping out at you and scaring you really cheaply. And so maybe you could talk a bit about your approach to horror and how you're creating that tension.
[00:17:01.522] Mariam Zakarian: So there are different kinds of horror games obviously and that is also one of the things that we really want to make an experience that's not based on jump scares and based on action horror and like the slasher stuff where you go and we had jump scare for like the first half a year and people they shut their pants. Yeah, it's also one of the things that's, you know, in VR everything just gets even more intense. And if you have jump scares all the time, people just fall over and break stuff. And we don't want to break our equipment. Like, that's what we care about the most, you know. We did break two Oculus though.
[00:17:36.384] Julie Heyde: Wow, that's quite... And also, I would literally begin, I would stand and hold people. So, after I got the neck injury, I realized, okay, I have to change things in the game because I can't stand and hold people when they're playing anymore.
[00:17:47.156] Mariam Zakarian: Yeah, yeah. So, it's a different vein of horror, I guess, than most that we've come across. We call it explorational horror. We're not sure if it's a thing, but now it is. So, explorational horror game. So basically it is very much about the atmosphere and me personally I'm very inspired by movies rather than other games. I base a lot of my artwork on things that I find inspiring and like paintings or films. So it is very atmospheric as such. It is very much the psychological aspect of horror rather than, here are zombies, kill them.
[00:18:23.933] Julie Heyde: Someone asked us today, wait, but everyone else is doing games with zombies. Why do you have a wolf? And I'm like, childhood fear. Perfect sense. And also, so I get most of the inspiration for the game design, which I guess I also do. I'm supposed to do that the most, actually. I get told off once in a while, like, Julie, you're not supposed to sit and hack all these things. We actually have a real program right now. So what about you actually finishing the game design? I'm like, oh, shoot. Yeah, but this is funny. But I have a horse. I'm a horseback rider. I've had my horse for more than 18 years, I think, by now. and I have her next to a big dark forest, and I'm really scared of the dark, but sometimes I just go riding through the forest to get that sense of horror and scared, because things are quiet, but you hear something in the distance, and suddenly a bird flies up in front of you, the horse gets scared, I get scared, I almost fall off, and all these things and experiences is something that we're also trying to implement in the game, and we actually brought you guys to the forest at one point, just a small one, And we go to, like literally where I have my horse is what I call Viking land of Copenhagen, but that was where the capital was, Raskilde. So there are a lot of Viking graves there and a lot of things you can actually like, caves you can enter. Denmark is very flat, so everything you want to, if you want to get a cave, you have to build it. So like just a lot of big rocks on top of each other. and where I guess we go to talk to the gods. And all this inspiration, like literally every time I go to my horse, I pass a couple of graves on like the path that I'm riding. And it's just a way for me mentally like settle in and get back to whatever like belief I have when it comes to the Norse mythology.
[00:19:51.824] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's really interesting to use VR to, you know, connect to these archetypal mythological energies. And I'm curious if those energies have shown up for you in any ways.
[00:20:01.967] Julie Heyde: So we actually had, I don't know whether it answers your question at all, but we had an experience last year at the Amaze Festival in Europe. It's one of our friends organizing that, so we always go there and show the game. And there was a guy, Jacob, playing, I got to know afterwards, and he played for probably 45 minutes in VR, which is a long time in VR, and he was actually the only person at the Amaze Festival then who finished the game. And back then, it was before you were on the team, we had a vignette in the game And you could shoot fireballs, the wolf was there, he would jump scare you and all that jazz. You could shoot fireballs in the game, which is like now out, at least for a while. It's been vetoed out by my entire team. But yeah, I can still put it in. I just hide it in the asset folder. But I'm so grown up right now. Yeah, I think I set this rule for the team. It's like, whoever does things first, they get it their way or something. And they're like, no, Julie, this is not democracy. I'm like, well, you can always erase it, right? But anyways, Jacob was playing. And whenever you would be shooting a fireball, the vignette would narrow in. But people wouldn't notice because they were in Oculus. So it just gave this very, like, it was such a cheap trick, but it just gave such a claustrophobic feeling. So like literally it would just get darker and darker and harder and harder to orient yourself inside of this maze of a cave that I'd created because like I like mazes and no one can find their way around. But Jacob actually like managed to finish the game and find the necklace, Friar's Necklace, Prison Garment. And the way he told me he had done it was to go after the blue light because he could see some crazy blue light and he thought it was Odin. Like I put it in there to Odin to tell you and guide you in the right direction. What was the truth? I didn't mean like I didn't want to break his heart but what was the truth was that like it was the vignette being very dark like it was completely black and then the fireballs the flames would sort of like spread out and it was actually a graphics issue I had on my computer because it turned blue. But this led our player Jacob to actually find the necklace and he had been looking and searching for them and like whenever he could see them he would go in that direction. And he thought, because he's very much in Norse mythology, so he actually thought it was something I'd put in like for Odin to like talk to you and guide you in the right direction. I need to put this in because I also had no idea how to fix that bug.
[00:22:14.263] Mariam Zakarian: So yeah, one thing that I think is important to mention relating to horror games and VR. So last year I was giving a talk at PGA, Poznan Game Arena, and I was doing a lot of research about virtual reality and graphics and stuff like that and I came across three separate articles that stated very clearly that in the future we expect people to die VR horror video games because they will get heart attacks so you know that sort of we're not really sure if that should be part of our PR strategy like this game will make you yeah this is the game that will kill you literally you know yeah I think it is a very powerful medium I mean it's very powerful in the sense that you can't get away you know you can't like You can close your eyes, but if you have headphones on, you have the head-mounted display, it closes off everything, you know, that's not in the game. And we love screamers.
[00:23:08.737] Julie Heyde: I love when we have a screamer. Remember that guy actually in Poland, who was in Game Arena? That was a guy who played for a long time and actually almost fell over at one point with the laptop and everything. We just had it on a small stand and he almost fell over. But anyways, he was done playing. he took off the mask, I was about to call it the head-mounted display, just took it off, he looks at people, there's like a two-hour line whenever we exhibit, right, because like VR is a thing, so you always have so many people standing, so everyone's just standing looking at him, he had been moving around so much, he takes it off, he looks at people, and then he just runs. We're like, I'm like, what just happened? I run out and they're like, are you okay? I just ran out. I was laughing so much. But yeah, we have, like, especially really tall, big guys sometimes turn out to be the best screamers possible. And whenever people start screaming, it just creates more attention and more people come over, right?
[00:23:59.461] Mariam Zakarian: It's pretty great. I put together this little one minute video of everybody who screams at our game. It's pretty entertaining to watch.
[00:24:09.097] Kent Bye: So what other things do you guys want to actually experience with NVR then?
[00:24:13.221] Julie Heyde: So I tried something two days ago where I got to... So something I didn't say before was that I think I have like a bit of a fascination about like the afterlife and you actually have to commit suicide maybe. That was how the game sort of started, that you had to show that you were worthy for this thing and that you could actually manage things and you could only go into this part of the world if you were actually dead, right? So we've been playing around with that, like how that fits into the story. The rest of the team think I'm crazy sometimes when I talk about this, and it was actually not. But it's more about whether you should just give up on life or you should actually continue your struggles and so on. So I haven't really decided how this should work out, but the thought still fascinates me.
[00:25:01.919] Mariam Zakarian: And I have a... It's important to know the Viking afterlife is actually, like, it is a pretty special place. This is where most of the game is taking place, so that is why, like, the whole death aspect. It's not as morbid as she made it sound.
[00:25:17.004] Julie Heyde: It's not just because I'm crazy. I don't want to commit suicide, but it just fascinates me, especially as I said earlier on, the afterlife of Vikings is meat, beer and party. Like, who didn't want to do that? Like, who would not do that? So... And with that, I really want you to put yourself on fire. Like, that's a super fascinating thought. And I got to try a VR demo the other day, which is a tech demo where I was able to put myself on fire. And I'm just standing and screaming to Mariam, who's also in the same tech demo, like, I want this. I want to just put myself on fire. I see all the particles. And it was just crazy. I'm still high from it. And suddenly I saw the thing I've been imagining, because I have this crazy imagination sometimes, like a little Mario man, like, think about it, close your eyes, like, we're doing this, and can you feel it? And so I go all crazy, hyper-Julie on it. And I was able to, in this tech demo, to recreate something that I really want us to have in the game.
[00:26:13.323] Mariam Zakarian: Yeah, so that is also, with VR, you can do all the crazy things that you can't do in real life. So for example, things like, Yeah, setting yourself on fire, for example. You wouldn't be able to do that in real life without consequences, but you can do very interesting, really dark things in VR that seem very real and very surreal and awesome, and get away with it. All that matters is how you frame it, pretty much.
[00:26:42.371] Julie Heyde: And also, actually, we got access to a GVR recently, and at the beginning I was just doing some quick experiments with it, And I went to my brother, like my brother is doing game AI, something called Epix Game Tools, and he's helping us out on the game and like recreating all our AI and like stuff that actually works compared to my stuff for instance. And I went out there where his offices are and there are also like other game developer and game tech companies there. And I just showed them this quick demo I'd made and a lot of people just wanted to like jump. like over the edge and I was just I remember so one of the girls she's Danish so she shouted this in Danish so in Danish when you actually if you want to commit suicide I always talk about suicide you want to commit suicide you're saying I'm jumping and literally she was just like in the day when she's like I'm jumping like I'm taking my own life she's just yelling out loud like all her colleagues are just looking at her like Did she just commit suicide? Yeah, she went over the edge. And it's funny to see how many people, because we've been very sort of particular with our design and discussing like should we allow people to actually jump out of the edge and we have that in our current demo just to see how it actually works how many people are actually doing it so you die instantly like when you make the jump but it's interesting to see how many people just like hey I like this like that's been something I've been very much against having as I felt no we don't want to like we want to scare people but we don't want them to like do stupid stuff and then we decided we'll still have it in the game and I said well if they do stupid stuff that you also got them die from it Then it's your own choice. If you want to commit suicide, you'll die. So they're reset to the back of the game. If you're doing this, then there are consequences. And it's funny to play around with those consequences. Of course, the demo we have right now, we're testing a lot of things. And that's basically also why, as you know, we're going around to shows, we're letting a lot of people play it, I say, and it's still in my lap, in my bag right now. But the thing is that we're testing all these mechanics and design questions and so on, and the best way to do it is just to throw it at people. and say this is not done so don't expect it to be super polished or maybe like something to be a bit funky over here in this area but just try because to see people's expressions like live playtesting and live building is phenomenal but it's also we're in unity right so it's just so easy just tweaking like oh you think that distance was a bit too far or wait the wolf is running too fast now or like our giant our snow giant the Jotun oh he's not moving fast enough or like he doesn't turn in the right way or whatever like we can just tweak that on the spot and we do that I know it's nerve-wracking to you it's also sometimes nerve-wracking to me but Marv is just standing next to me and like almost screaming at me like Julie are you sure you should fuck around with things right now that's fine well if it works it works right I just have a tendency to like forget to playtest myself which is always kind of fun and I wait why are you speed running through this level oh Yeah, shoot, I forgot to actually change a few things.
[00:29:35.776] Mariam Zakarian: Improvisation, man. Improvisation. It's all about improvisation.
[00:29:39.879] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you see as the ultimate potential for virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:29:48.855] Julie Heyde: I would never have to see people in real life. It's funny when, so I sometimes feel like a small kid because we get to demo a lot of like the new things and so on I guess it's because we've sort of been a VR developer for a while and people know us. And then when I get to demo something that I don't want to leave, that's where I'm just, yeah, I got this. Isolation is amazing. You know, I get easily distracted and the fact that I can just immerse myself into something so wholeheartedly is amazing for me. Like this demo I got the other day, I texted the guy, I want to go back. I was like, can you just leave it here and I'll just... I don't have to see people. Normally, I'm known to be a social person, but I just love being completely alone. Especially in this game where I could do whatever I wanted, which was crazy. Also, that's my main reason for making this game. It's a place I just want to be in. I just want to immerse myself, I love Norse mythology, I love the characters, and I just want to be there. I want to hang out with my wolfie, even though he does kill us once in a while. He's pretty hardcore when he does.
[00:30:52.919] Mariam Zakarian: So for me, I mean, I am an artiste, as you call them. Yeah, not really an artiste. I'm very fascinated, I've always been fascinated by surrealism and making these dreamlike, strange worlds where you get to explore aspects of reality that you don't normally get to do in other media. So VR has been pretty interesting to work with for that because you can really do a lot of things that affect the person really deeply with very little. We don't really have that many assets in the game right now, but it still creates such a strong atmosphere. I think it's a very interesting thing. It's very powerful. It's a very cool medium. It's also a very theatrical medium, so you can tell a lot of story through it. I get selfish as an artist, of course. I want people to feel what I feel. All this martyrdom and expression and all that stuff. To me it's interesting to explore that to communicate to people in that way, you know to actually like be able to Communicate all these ideas that I have in my head in a very efficient way and VR allows me to do that Great well, thank you guys so much.
[00:32:06.308] Julie Heyde: Thank you. Thank you
