Adi Robertson: How did you come up with Old Friend?

Tyler Hurd: The song sparked the idea — and originally not a VR one. But as soon as I started doing Butts in VR, and started seeing how exciting that was, I already had this idea in mind, and I was like, "Oh, this would be perfect for VR."

What was the original idea?

At that time, it was a normal short film. It was flat. And in my brain it was like, this world that was always rotating, and I really wanted the marching element — the marching band and synchronized dance moves and choreographed production of crazy moves. I wanted to incorporate the stuff I had in Butts that worked: the bright colors, the happy, crazy animation with the wiggles and stuff.

"I'm just — what is this? Reality sucks!"

Of course, when I first started it, I didn’t have the hands or anything in mind, because I didn’t have the tech. And as soon as I got the tech, I just freaked out.

I got this Vive in the mail, and I woke up in the morning and the first thing I did was set it up. When I got in there, it was like everything I wanted it to be, but it was way more exciting than I thought it could be. I went through [Old Friend] like three or four times on my own when I first got in there, and I had tears coming down my face. I was so excited. And I took the headset off, and I was back in my bedroom, and I wasn’t wearing any clothes, and I’m just — what is this? Reality sucks!

The Vive part was an afterthought, but it works so well - the noodle arms make you want to dance, and it kind of builds this emotion.

You’ve mentioned that physical presence was this thing you needed, but that you had never realized you needed.

There’s something that happens to your brain when you’re grounded — like, everything that happens when you switch it from "I’m just a floating head in the space looking at stuff" into "I am actually in the space." Having your feet planted and having your hands in the space, it’s like, your brain just switches something else on. I feel like it allows you to let go a lot more, and really feel like you’re somewhere else. If you take the hands out of it, it completely changes it.

I had some trouble trying to include the hands without encouraging lots of interactivity, because I didn’t want people to be figuring out mechanics. It’s like a three minute experience, I want people to feel like they’re there and dance and enjoy themselves, but not "What can I do with him? What can I do with him? How does this work? What’s this up here?" And not watching this animation that I slaved over! Animation’s really hard!

Part of it also is that I worked in video games for a long time, and I got a little exhausted with working with interactive stuff. I worked on this game at Double Fine called Happy Action Theater. It was for the Kinect, and the idea was you just put it in front of a group of people, anyone can come and go as they want. There’s no fail state, and it was just fun. And so I’ve incorporated a lot of that stuff in my work now, a lot of the ideals we had — like no fail states, let people do whatever they want and encourage that.