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With three major virtual reality platforms launching in the next few months, there’s been a lot of discussion about what VR means to the video game market on the whole. Right now, all eyes are on the early adopter crowd to see if VR has the potential to be a hit with consumers. But truth be told, the VR game development scene seems much more intriguing at this point.

Even with years of hardware development and countless tech demos behind us, virtual reality gamedev is still in its infancy. There are fundamental aspects of VR gaming that still haven’t been completely nailed down, so we wanted to hear about the details directly from developers in the midst of creating VR games.

Last month, a game called 100ft Robot Golf was announced at PSX, and that quickly popped into my mind when I was making a list of potential interview subjects. It’s being released with PlayStation VR support later this year, but Sony’s VR helmet is completely optional. I wanted to understand the benefits and challenges of making the same game work properly on a traditional TV and a VR headset, so I reached out to No Goblin co-founder Dan Teasdale, and he agreed to shine some light onto the development process of his company’s upcoming release.

Dan Teasdale interview

Grant Brunner: Can you give us some background about who you are, your history in gamedev, and your role with No Goblin?

Dan Teasdale: Hi! I’ve been making games for almost two decades now — starting off making strategy and sandbox games at places like Pandemic Studios, then as a senior and a lead designer on the Rock Band games at Harmonix, as well as the lead designer of the Kinect marionette shooter The Gunstringer at Twisted Pixel.

A few years ago, I co-founded No Goblin with Panzer to make interesting and unique games! Our first game was the limo-spinning FMV adventure Roundabout, and we’re currently working on 100ft Robot Golf for PS4 and PlayStation VR.

GB: Was 100ft Robot Golf VR-compatible from inception, or did you and your team decide to add support for VR later on in development?

DT: Originally, 100ft Robot Golf was just a TV-focused game. We pitched it to Sony, who brought up the idea of bringing it to PlayStation VR. We weren’t super familiar with how much VR had progressed, so we crashed a friend’s place to check out the PlayStation VR, the Vive, and the Oculus DK2.

It’s kind of cliche now, but we instantly converted from “man, this VR thing seems overhyped” to “this is absolutely fantastic and we’re now crazy VR people.” As a designer, it opens up so many new ideas and mechanics that the struggle wasn’t how to add it into 100ft Robot Golf, but instead how to keep us focused on just one game and not the dozens of ideas that were now possible.

GB: What is the benefit of playing the game in VR other than the incredible novelty of the whole thing?

DT: In a way, 100ft Robot Golf is almost a perfect fit for VR. It’s got a huge sense of scale, it has a smooth and predictable movement model, and it allows for full awareness in the environment. The game is fun in TV mode, but being able to exist in a world that has a fully destructible city and huge robots is something else.

GB: Are there any challenges that 100ft Robot Golf faces specifically because it’s designed to work both in and out of VR? Or can you have your cake and eat it too?

DT: From working on other games, Panzer and I are used to having to support five different controllers at once, or making a core shooter game work without a fire button. From that perspective, supporting two different camera and movement models is actually a pretty calm challenge to tackle!

Having said that, we are making sure that this isn’t just a “we turned on VR” mode, because that’s a terrible experience for anyone playing your game. We have a completely independent camera model, game HUD, and control model for movement in VR that we’re designing to both remove any sense of nausea that you can get from “bad VR” implementations, while at the same time is completely accessible without having to relearn a set of controls.

We’re also not “dumbing down” the game for VR — I think that was one of the big mistakes that motion controlled games made, and I don’t think anyone wants to repeat that. The huge robot golf game you can play in split-screen on your TV is the same game you can play in VR, it’s just the VR mode is way more immersive and amazing.

GB: Most of what I’ve heard about VR gamedev indicates that frame rate is the most important technical aspect of making sure your VR experience doesn’t suck. 1) Would you agree with that claim, and 2) has it been particularly challenging delivering a consistently high frame rate?

DT: Frame rate is absolutely critical — any kind of frame drops not only break immersion, but they can also make you nauseous. Making people throw up after playing a game is not really a reaction I’m looking for as a designer.

In terms of challenge though, we’re secretly saved by making a four player split-screen game as well. If we’re maintaining a frame rate rendering the game four times so each player has a dedicated view on a TV, we’re usually in good shape to max out the frame rate for two eyes in VR.

GB: Were there any standout surprises when you and your team began developing for a modern VR platform? Anything that might have defied your expectations despite your many years of experience making non-VR games?

DT: The biggest surprise for me was that the actual “getting a world working in VR” part was super easy! I’d scheduled a week to get VR up and running, yet it only took an afternoon before we were running around cities and testing out our various camera ideas.

Beyond that, I feel like the big scary things about VR design are now pretty well known amongst VR devs — don’t rotate the camera separately from the player’s head, don’t “follow” things, use the player’s gaze for movement if possible. The real scary stuff is coming up with new interaction models that obey those rules.

GB: Provided that VR takes off reasonably well in the next few years (and it’s economically feasible), do you see yourself and your company developing more VR titles in the future?

DT: For us, we just see VR as another tool we can use to make a rad game. If we have an idea that makes sense in VR, we’ll definitely make another VR game — but only if it makes sense from a design perspective.

GB: Is there anything else about developing for VR that you think the readers should know about? Anything that might give them a better perspective on how different it is from more traditional development?

DT: Developing for VR actually reminds me a lot of making games in the PS2 era. Back then, things like camera models and interaction rules weren’t locked down to a science, so you’d spend a bunch of time coming up with inventive and cool ways for players to view and interact with the world.

I’m excited because I loved those times, and VR is a brand new open space that needs to solve these problems all over again. I’m super excited to see all of the new inventive models, mechanics, and genres that people will come up with in the first and second waves of VR games.