Before we even began developing prototypes in Virtual Reality, we focused on identifying some general principles from traditional game mediums, and looked at how those principles might apply to game design with virtual reality.  This research phase was very useful in giving us context in regards to common themes of good and bad applications of new technologies, and also gave us some ideas of where we could go with our own VR projects.

The projects, and things learned from them, can be found on other pages on this site; here, we’ll take a closer look at the broad principles that helped inform the design and development of those projects.

  • Bad mechanics, bad design, and so on, are still bad in VR    Put another way, if an idea doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work, and you shouldn’t think VR is going to change that.  Hopefully, you find out pretty early if some mechanic isn’t fun or intuitive, or if a design choice just isn’t the right fit for your project.  In that case, VR support won’t act as some magic spell to make those issues go away, or become less of a problem.  This is probably one of the more obvious principles we came up with, but it’s still very important to keep in mind.
  • VR shouldn’t be used for the sake of having VR    With many new technologies, there are projects that try to incorporate those technologies just because it’s the newest thing.  This is not something we would recommend (with VR, or any other emerging technology).  Instead, try to use VR only when the core idea of the project wouldn’t be the same without VR.  For our team, this principle manifested itself in asking ourselves, “Could we make this project without using VR?”  If the answer was yes, then we would take a closer look at the vision for that project, to make sure we weren’t just using VR as a gimmick with no real substance behind its implementation.
  • Keep in mind the restrictions of the hardware    As exciting as VR is, you can’t do everything with it.  Knowing what you can and can’t do with the hardware you have, and taking those limitations into consideration when first planning an experience, can go a long way towards the feasibility of a project.  For example, even though the HTC Vive supports motion controls, those controls don’t have a particularly high degree of precision; they’re more of a hammer than a scalpel.  With that in mind, something like making buttons fairly small and close together probably wouldn’t go so well with the technology’s current state.
  • Player comfort and safety should always be considered    This should never not be true when designing software, but VR presents some additional concerns that bear mentioning here.  For one thing, the technology is still new enough that there’s a good chance that your audience may not have any prior experience with VR.  This means they won’t be used to wearing a headset that effectively blinds them to the outside world, and they might be much more susceptible to simulation sickness than the developer who’s been testing with the VR hardware on a regular basis.  You need to be making sure, from the beginning, that your project won’t induce (or at least will minimize) any claustrophobia or motion/simulation sickness related discomfort.  Also, make sure the player can reach everything they need without moving to the edges of the play space.  No one wants to be moving towards something in VR, only to find they’ve just run into a wall, or table, or another person, in the real world.

Although this page can’t list everything you need to know to make effective use of Virtual Reality, it hopefully has given you some idea of what to think about when planning a project, and how this medium differs from, and is similar to, more “traditional” interactive media.