Chapter 227 - VR Game Development Principles

How popular was Minecraft in Chen Mo’s previous world?

In a nutshell, it is the most successful indie game in terms of popularity and business bar none; it’s the second most sold game in the world, exceeding 100 million copies, second only to Tetris.

Upon considering 2009, the year when Minecraft was released, there were already quite a few decent PC and console games, it was nothing short of a miracle to be able to achieve success like that.

Moreover, Minecraft could and was ported to PC, console, tablets and mobile.

There are some more numbers that could back up this incredible popularity.

In 2014, Mojang the studio responsible for Minecraft was purchased by Microsoft with 2.5 billion USD.

Minecraft had over 4.31 billion views on Youtube.

There were over ten million players joining the beta test, making it the most popular game in beat.

Ordnance Survey of Britain recreated the entire British Isle with twenty-two billion blocks.

What mysterious power did the game have to be able to attract so many players?

To put it simply, Minecraft dramatically decreased the difficulty of making a 3D object on computers.

Many have had ideas of creating their own space/world. They might realise it through sandcastles, Legos, or paper mache when they were younger, and use games to do that when they get older.

There are many ways to create a virtual world on the computer, but traditional 3D softwares possessed a steep learning curve, and many didn’t have the patience to do it from scratch.

And Minecraft was a way for the vast majority to easily create a 3D world.

They just had to put the block down.

There was no need for materials, textures, rendering, terrain, vegetation, or particle effects. All you had to do was place down the block you chose.

The blocks in Minecraft were all 1m*1m*1m, so players wouldn’t find themselves losing perspective in the virtual work, and the finished products would be more believable too.

Moreover, Minecraft wasn’t just a method for creating worlds, it had really rich gameplay as well.

For Chen Mo, porting this game to VR was something really challenging, and really meaningful.

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After having gone through the design document, everyone started working. Chen Mo’s mention of tech-trees, artstyle, and the game modes were enough to keep them occupied for a long time.

There wasn’t anything to use as reference after all, how would you approach a game that was similar to Leggos? What would it look like? How do you deal with details?

This was something everyone had to think long and hard.

Chen Mo went back to his office on the second floor of the experience store and started looking into the restrictions he had making VR games.

The Illusion Game Editor supported VR games, but the ways of making a game were much different than PC and mobile games.

As an A-grade videogame designer and an honorary member of the Game Committee, he had plenty of rights in the Illusion Game Editor and could start working on VR games.

Chen Mo had already looked through the process of making VR games since he became an A-grade videogame designer, he just wanted to look through it again.

Chen Mo had experienced VR games himself, through Earth Online. Simply put, VR allows players to upload their consciousness into the VR gaming pod, and was able to receive feedback from it too.

The VR gaming pod replaced the needs for inputs/outputs such as keyboards, mice, and displayers, bridging the gap between consciousness of the player and the virtual world.

The gaming pod is also able to analyse the consciousness of the player.

For example, if the player wants to reach their hand out to grab something, the gaming pod would be able to recognise that input and turn it into an action within the game, allowing them to pick up that object in game.

It was a similar case with walking, climbing, jumping, shooting, all of which were done in the same way.

Theoretically, the VR technology of this world could analyse any intentions the player has, but it was up to the designers to translate them into actions in games.

In a cold weapons game, the player could think out pulling the trigger in game, but the game would reject as such an input shouldn’t happen.

Whichevers input to support were all up to the designers.

If you were a soldier with a gun in the game and wanted to place the gun beneath your feet, but the designer didn’t intend for such an interaction, nothing would happen.

It may sound weird, but it was something players get used to after playing a while. (Just like in AAA titles where you could only do whatever the story has you do.)

Therefore the more actions the designer planned for, the more freedom the player had, the more things they could do, the more real the game would feel.

With that meant a greater hardware demand and a more tiring gaming experience.

This was also why RTS games weren’t common in VR.

No advantage in terms of graphics.

Huge resource demand.

It took a lot out of the players, meaning they couldn’t play it for long.

For example in a VR RTS game, the player would need to select units and what actions they would perform constantly while thinking about their tactics. This was extremely taxing on the players.

Even though it was the same on PC, players had to do all of the same things, but everything was done using mouse and keyboard, and a lot of it could be muscle memory, decreasing the load on the player.

Therefore, some VR games would intentionally simplify some actions to prevent tiring the players out from repetitive actions, and in turn extending the amount of playtime.

For example, in some VR games, all attacks and punches, with no input into which direction, angle, or strength in order to simplify the number of actions which in turn reduces the demand on the players.

Moreover, VR games are able to stimulate all senses, including sight, hearing, smell, and touch.

The visual signals transmitted to the players are just like the 124° bifocal nature of humans, with around 25° of focus, just like real life.

Hearing and smell were also transmitted to players to stimulate real life sound and smells.

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Next were the differences of design concepts in VR.