VR / MOBILE GAME
VR / MOBILE GAME DEVELOPMENT
In Spring 2016, following Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus, Blue Genie’s lead, Hâd, initiated a bold project in a Crytek-supported university lab to develop a unique VR game. This venture aimed to navigate the unexplored realms of VR gaming, capitalizing on its immersive capabilities while addressing the industry’s evolving challenges.
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Challenges and Opportunities
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In VR’s early days, we were tasked with designing from scratch without many guiding examples. Positioned in a lab with access to other experimental VR projects and many new VR users, we seized the opportunity for vital initial user research. This setup revealed VR’s potential and its challenges. For instance, a rollercoaster simulation, though appealing, often caused user disorientation, underscoring the need for a careful balance between immersive experience and user comfort.
Another significant challenge we faced was the limited market size, as VR goggles had not yet become widespread. To broaden our audience and add another layer of complexity to our project, we decided to make our game accessible on both mobile screens and VR headsets. This decision not only increased our potential user base but also required us to innovate further, ensuring an engaging and seamless experience across different platforms.
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Design Decisions
With our findings, we decided to develop a turn-based strategy game. This allowed the user in VR not to engage in too many fast directional movements while playing. Besides, it was one of our favorite game genres anyways. Moreover, we were able to come up with a user interface that could work for both mobile and VR.
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Style – Influencers
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Game design and development is the ultimate playground for us creative technical people. Still, we were influenced by many other good designers.
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Style – Our Designs
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Game design and development is the ultimate playground for us creative technical people. Still, we were influenced by many other good designers.
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Designs by Evelin, our most amazing art director at that time
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The Making and The Tools
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Game design and development is the ultimate playground for us creative technical people. Still, we were influenced by many other good designers.
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In games the designs come to life. Here’s a sample of our animation descriptions for one of our characters.
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“I’ve known the amazing ease of use and power of Unity in theory but this game showed me how easy it can really be to make games using this multi-faceted tool.” – Hâd
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