In this episode, host Sam Distaso dives into the cutting edge of VR game development with Devin Reimer (founder and CEO of AstroBeam) and Ed Saxton (CPO of Schell Games). From the early startup days of VR to the evolution of mixed reality, Devin and Ed share how their studios use first-principles thinking to craft unique experiences. We explore how hit games like Job Simulator and Among Us VR came to life and how these teams operate in a young, constantly evolving market.

We also unpack big questions facing the VR space: Will the use of generative AI lead to more fun? What will improvements to voice and hand tracking unlock? What actually goes into making smart NPCs work? Will smell-o-vision ever work? If you're curious about the future of immersive games, this one's packed with stories, laughs, and insights from two of the industry's most thoughtful builders.

We’d also like to thank Neon – a merchant of record with customizable webshops optimized for conversion – for making this episode possible! Neon is trusted by some of the biggest names in gaming and can help you sell direct without the typical overhead. To learn more, visit https://www.neonpay.com/?utm_source=naavik 

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Sam: Ed. Thank you so much, Devin. Thank you so much. My name is Sam Distaso for anybody tuning in, we are gonna be talking about some really, interesting things that are happening in the VR and the MR space where things are headed.

I've got a couple of the pioneers, in this world who have created some of the most. Compelling and exciting and human experiences out there. So love to toss it over to you both to do a quick introduction and then we will just start diving into all things VR/MR. Uh, so Ed, do you want to give us a brief introduction, you a little bit of your background of what you're doing right now and we'll hand it to Devin?

Ed: Hey, I'm Ed Saxton from Schell Games. So Schell Games is a VR studio located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We're about 160 people now, so that's, that's relatively big. But, we do a bunch of crazy stuff from like educational tablet games to the VR that I think people have seen and we're most known for. I expect You Die, Among us, VR, things like that to theme park rides.

So like we have a pretty wide range of the stuff we work on. And I am, I'm the Chief Product Officer there.

Devin: Yeah. And I'm Devin Reimer. I'm the founder of AstroBeam. We are working on VR games, but really focused on your voice, so being able to naturally speak directly to NPCs and have them talk back to you and do actions in the world.

And then formally I was the co-founder of Alchemy Labs. We made the games Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator.

Sam: Can I ask, how did you, just to start off with, how'd you get onto the idea of Job Simulator, Devin specifically, and that one, when everybody was talking about all the things VR could be and do and everything, you landed on that and it ended up taking off like wildfire, but how'd you land on the idea?

Devin: So, yeah, we were really early to modern VR. We were, I convinced my co-founder that to drop everything and announce that we were pivoting our company to VR, this is like DK one time. And so, we got really in there. We were like working on so many things and we kept running into these roadblocks where the games weren't actually that engaging because at the time we're using keyboard and, game controller we're like, this is just.

It feels like a little addition to games, but not like a big thing. And we just kept working through that. And then we had built up really good relationship with Valve and then they were like, Hey, we're working on this secret thing that's gonna be all tracked. And they, we had talked to them and they were like, could you make us a demo?

This is like November. Could you make us a demo? Buy GDC to show off this hardware, and by the way, it doesn't exist yet. And we're like, yeah, of course we could do that. And so the, the thing it just like was one of those game development processes that the constraints of everything just led in the right direction.

My wife was eight and a half months pregnant, so I couldn't travel. Our team was remote and Valve sent us one headset and so we had to fly everybody to my house up in Canada and we went in the basement and we just worked for one week 'cause that was all we had was one week to like turn out what ended up being that thing.

And yeah, we worked all day and then we drank and then we went bed and then we just like repeated. It was just like this epic thing. But we kind of had this like idea that, you know, what do you do with your hands lots. And a lot of the ideas we had were kind of job related and we kind of started working on the things and we, when we ended up starting working on a kitchen, we're like, wow, this is kind of interesting because all of a sudden you don't have to teach players all of these interactions, they can just get it.

And then we're like, wait a second, what if it's all about jobs? And at the time I was reading all those books about the singularity, which is ironic considering what I'm working on now. But like reading all these books about the singularity. Then I was like, oh, well what if it was like robots trying to do stuff?

And then we're like, no, it'd be way better. Instead of like post-apocalyptic, if it's like utopia Robots solved everything. Solved all jobs, and they felt bad for the humans. And were like, how do we make you feel happy? Let's show you what jobs used to be like. And that was just kind of went from there.

Sam: I, I love that the, the singularity is what led to those amazing robots that you see in Job Simulator.

Okay. Thank you for this background. I'm really, I think you've done obviously amazing pioneering work even before what you're doing right now. What you're doing right now gets me very excited. But before we dive into it, Ed, can you talk chat a little bit of the Schell gains progression from I expect you to die.

I know Jesse Schell's like a legend in the space, and then obviously Among Us VR, just all the cool things y'all have been doing.

Ed: It's crazy to join a studio with, you know, Jesse at the helm as VR’s becoming a real thing because Jesse was doing VR when they were basically like helmets hanging from the ceiling to absorb the weight on top of your head.

Right? He worked at Disney in the virtual reality studio and, so I joined mid, I expect you guys run. So I remember asking a lot of questions like good development, and the premise behind it was, again, like Devon talked about. The, the medium, especially at that point was really constrained. Like it's still, VR is a constraint, Mr is a constraint, but it was really constrained then, like what can you do with these headsets and things?

And in a brainstorm, somebody had come up with the idea of like, you always end up with like the heroes and movies getting like, you know, tied to a chair or on the train tracks or something like that. And like, oh, VR is also good if at that spot too, if you're not moving around. So what is, what if we just put our hero in these situations where they're like locked in a spot and you have to solve it?

And like that, you know, the idea of being like, stuck in a car. Well, what makes the car interesting? Like, let's put the car on a plane. Like, that's something that would happen to a superhero. And I think much like Jobson, which huge fan of like the, the humor in it too. Sort of nods to the constraint a little bit.

Like if you take yourself really seriously in those moments, like you just feel out of place. So when you add that element of humor in there, you start to realize like, oh, this is how it is. And like, you can't, you can't take it too serious. And like we put you in the most serious of situations. Like, we literally expect the player to die multiple times before they finish.

The stakes are as high as they could get. So like you wipe away some of that with humor and it's, it's really exciting. And then that's, that has just continued to grow with us and those principles. One of my favorite things when I joined and talking with the, I Expect I team was, they were doing a ton of play testing at that time.

And the, the thing that really made, I expected, I what it, what it is now is we would have players coming in at that point, everyone's pretty naive to VR and they would try to do something so then that would go like, okay, that's a way to solve the puzzle now, right? Like, they tried that, that's the way the human brain works.

Like let's make that doable. And I think that shows, and we've tried to use that design lesson in a bunch of stuff that we've done.

Sam: So I love how you both put that with, humor and first principles for this new hardware, literally worlds and environments that we're in. And in some ways maybe you can boil it down and say, listen, gaming.

The whole core function of gaming, or at least a part of it can be when there's something humorous involved. Not always, but something that feels very human. I remember, um, when I was at Altspace VR and it was a tiny startup, our CEO used to always tell us the fastest way to feel immersed. Is to laugh. The second you laugh, you're immersed.

Like that's the moment. And we built out and did all types of, that's why we got started with virtual live comedy shows as like the initial starting point for things. 'cause it was like you get people laughing and all of a sudden you're not worried quite as much about the heaviness. You're not trying to figure everything else out.

You know how to joke and kinda laugh with folks to that end. Just for a second. It's a little bit of a dovetail. If we look at where the current state of hardware today and where it looks like things might be heading, which is obviously, say it's untethered, maybe it's lighter and lighter form factors, how do, how will you two think about first principles?

What feels human when you're developing for that kind of paradigm, and is it any different or do you think it'll be pretty similar? It's how you kind of approach early VR days.

Devin: Oh, it there is, you know, what I'm finding is over time as we develop things, we're giving more and more control to the user, which means from a game development standpoint, you're losing more and more control and you need to figure out how, like a, a thing that I say at Alchemy, and I continue to say at AstroBeam is designing things to embrace the chaos.

Right? It's like Ed was talking about like. Oh, that person just thought of that. Now that needs to be an answer. Right? That continued through all of our early VR work, and now we're working on like, talking to MPCs and ai. People can say whatever and they think whatever, and all of a sudden it's like, oh man, we have to do this whole thing again where we're kind of relearning.

All of these rules, which is like, let the user do things survive, like continue have the user think they're super smart. And we spent so much time as like, like, I expect you, diet also does an awesome job of this versus, and you're like, yeah, no one's ever thought of that before. It's like, yo, thousands of people thought about that before.

That's why it works. But also that's awesome that you feel that way.

Ed: Yeah. One of my, one of my favorite IX I play tests was a lot like that where somebody was solving a puzzle and they kept dying and they're like, they were really down. They're like, Ugh. Huh. And then they solved it on like, try five. And they literally said, I am the smartest man in the world.

Right? And I was like, that's it. That's what it is. But that's, I mean, this is crazy. Like when you think of VR, like it's been going a long time, but consumer facing, it's a really young medium. Like we are involved in something really young and it's defined by the people playing it. Right. Like people play it, they decide how they use it, they decide how they like it, and that, that evolves what we as developers continue to make it.

It's super fun. 'cause it's, it's always new. It's pretty fresh and there's great hardware out there right now that's really affordable, that's accessible to take with you. It's super fun to see people playing it and have more and more people enjoy that.

Sam: You know, it's so true. I mean, I, we were, I dunno if we were talking about this ED separately, but it was, you even look at how like the gorilla tag game and how it got started and they're like, well, you know, you have your hands and controllers and that just seemed like a natural way to kind of get started moving in this new kind of paradigm and those types of innovations.

To your point, in some ways there's been so many tiny miniature hype cycles that come up and down and come and go every six months that it can feel like what's been around for a lot longer, but. I don't even know when you say that it, this new kind of consumer facing VR industry kind of started in this round.

Do you say that it started when it was a tethered rift to a heavy gaming pc? Like maybe that's a pretty small, you know, user base and you can count for that. So, uh, here's a question for you all, and this is just a, a brief hypothetical. If after the DK two. We could snap our fingers. And the Quest three came out afterwards.

 How would the industry have changed if that would've happened? And I'm, the only reason I ask it is because when I talk to people outside of this gaming space or outside of the technology space. Many of them will say like, like early on, they'll see some of the views like, oh, that's what I want. And then they'll ask, oh, when can I be able to do that easily?

When will I be able to put my mom in or my son in or just hang out casually. And now you fast forward, like, now the headsets are pretty incredible actually, but what do you, what do you both think? Do you think that the industry needed to go through this call it. All the hardware iterations to kind of get there and that'll end up being the best for the industry?

Or do you think that, oh, it's a shame. We couldn't have caught lightning in a bottle, right? When some of those early videos of DK twos kinda came out to have a consumer facing VR hardware that could have met those needs right off the bat,

Devin: I guess I, I'll jump in. I think that we are way more software bound than we're hardware bound and we have been for some time.

If all of a sudden Quest three would've launched at Quest One, we would've got a lot more games that looked better because for anybody that developed for Quest One, it was hella hard, that was some of the hardest optimization work I ever did, to get things to work well on that device. But there's still so many less, like there's games that are coming out now that you're like, there's no reason hardware wise they couldn't have shipped on a Quest One or Quest two.

Right. It was just, we're figuring so many things up that's in the VR round, in the MR realm, like. Mr. Because it took a long time to get to that point, right? So much learning is currently happening, right? And that's gonna take a lot longer. And so we're kind of like waiting for those cycles. So that would've kind of sped up.

But there was a lot of things that need to happen on the software side to get anywhere close to where we are right now.

Ed: Yeah, you talk about Mr too, and I think because of the way it's, it's sort of staggered a little bit is we're learning all those design lessons in Mr. Again, they're just, they're close.

Like, we lump all these things, Mr. You know, VR under, like XR umbrellas and things like that. 'cause they, they are really similar. But when you start designing for the two of them, it is, it is different. Like the way people play those games is very different. The way they feel when they're in each of those environments is very different.

I know for a long time, like I've always thought that Mr was gonna trend really casual and then, you know, VR was gonna be where you go to like really feel this immersion. But then I see games like spatial ops that are out there right now, and I see people building like these, like indoor Mr. Shooter things that are huge.

Like that's the opposite of casual, right? So like people are figuring it out as they go along and they're figuring out what makes sense.

Sam: So, let me add, just to piggyback on that, ed, do you think. To have compelling social experiences in this future we're heading to, do you need there to be other humans or can you take a Devon approach and say, you know what, we're gonna have smart MPCs and that can drive the social interactions.

Ed: Oh wow. That is a, that is a great question. I'm sure Devin has a very different lens on it than I do, like, based on his work. I look at this industry and I think like in order for it to continue to grow and continue to take off, there just needs to be more people playing it and talking about it.

Right? When my kids are at school, they need to be talking with people about. Playing these same games or doing these same experiences that really are eye-opening. I, I really strongly hope that we are at like the start of the next console generation. I. Like, I remember playing like my NES in my house and like my parents being like, oh, they're playing that game box thing, right?

But I grew up with that and now like at my age, everyone I know has a console in their home, right? It just, it's very secondary and I think like that's what happens. It starts with teens, the young adults, they really get in there, they start talking about it, whether it's playing socially in there with each other, or just being social about the experiences that they're having in those worlds.

Like that will help move the medium forward and that will help grow it.

Devin: Yeah. I guess to the, I guess the way that I've been kind of thinking about kind of the, what is, I think the evolution of what an MPC , is, is I. Up till now, we've essentially had two buckets, right? We've had, you know, we have an MPC that's got some games, some pretty amazing like AI and path fin and stuff like that, but you can't really talk to them and limited interaction, right?

They're kind of like these, like what we'll look at is dumb MPCs, right? And then we have. Social where you have humans that are just like chaos factories and doing all this, right? And it's like, well, here's your options. Right? And that isn't great for a lot of different things, right? It's like as soon as you have a more social, more complex environment, which we've been finding in VR is really hard to do.

This traditional NPC in VR, right? A lot of things I play, it feels like interacting with wax characters where this would feel totally fine or flat screen, right? It's like I just have different expectations, right? But then on the social side of things, right there is like a lot of, like a lot, a lot of young people really like social, but all of a sudden you cut off a certain age demographic where like, I don't have fun with those experiences 'cause I don't like kids yelling at me and running like I want something a little bit more stable.

And so I'm thinking that what will end up happening is like, this will end up being. Something that can finally land in the middle, that can like pull some stuff from the social side, pull some stuff from the traditional NPC side and like be a thing. It's also gonna mean that like social things will be on top of that and single player things.

But it's kind of this new like, you know, layer across things that we just haven't had before.

Sam: So, to that I would love for both of you to ruin all of our hopes and dreams and done, done easy. Generative AI is all the excitement in all different types of ways and transformative this and funding that and all the different things.

Can you talk to me about how real or not is it going to be used in terms of improving the funness? In games and maybe that stickiness of a game to get, people wanna keep coming back, or is it going to be more like, yeah, it'll be a side thing for a long time here, and then it'll ultimately kind of evolve like all technologies into the background, but you're trying to, you know, what do you call it?

. Square peg into a round pole, round hole kind of a thing and doesn't quite fit. And I know you both might have slightly different approaches, but Devin, let's start with you. What do you think, so for generative, a AI in the call XR,VR, AR, MR space, overhyped under hyped, what do you think?

Devin: So one big problem is that a vast majority of stuff that people have seen have been.

Tech demos by generally tech bros that are like, are really good at like engineering and stuff like that, but like on the creative art side of things don't have as much of experience. Right. And so they're like, look at this thing, right? And. People in the creative space are like, oh God, why would we ever want that?

Right? And so, right. That's where we're in the zone where like that side of things that is all of a sudden going to be deployed and fix all of our problems and game development is gonna be done by everybody instantly. And you're gonna think of this idea and have a game at the end of the day. Like that stuff is all completely off.

But I think that is actually weirdly then under hyped. On particular facets of what we're doing. I think that like some of the stuff within how MPCs are gonna involve, I think is under hype because people see bad examples. There's cause like yesterday was another bad example went up. They've seen all these things, but they don't kind of understand where that is.

Right. And then there's things that like you don't think about like. Voice, like we're pushing so hard on voice. Voice is not just MPCs. Okay? It's a new interaction medium that is only now possible because of kind of the advancements in AI and gen AI on responses and stuff like that. And so like that's gonna all of a sudden change so many different things.

People are gonna look at that, it's like, oh, that works. So therefore it is not gen ai. But it's like, well, no, it still is. Right? And so, there's like. Two sides of this equation right now, and it's really hard, I think, for an average person or even somebody that's been in this space to kind of decouple the two.

Ed: Yeah, I think, Sam, you said something in there, and Devin you hit on it too, is like increasing the funness. That's the part I think that, that, uh, gets missed. Right? And it's all the stuff Devon talked about that is like sort of hyped up and talked about and is maybe not a thing, right. But it's like, what will the player implications be?

Like how is this going to make it more fun for the player? And I mean, that's how great games are made. We think about what's gonna make it more fun for the player. We think about what's gonna make it more immersive for the player, and then we go do those things. Like, that's the stuff that, that I'm excited about.

Devin: Yeah. And one thing just to add like something it's important is that within gaming. Building games. We have this long curve of building games. Building games is very time consuming, particularly in things like, you know, traditional AAA and VR and stuff like that. And so to get the really good stuff you need, the technology that a lot of these things are running on, getting mature enough and then two years.

And so everything is constantly lagging behind. And so people are showing tech demos of things. They're like, look how magic this is. And it's like, well, is that stable? Is it cost effective? When could this actually come to market? Plus two years. Right. And so there we're on this like curve where, you know, everything is still being kind of figured out there.

Sam: So when you, so to that point and like sticking on this funness point for a second, 'cause I think that's like the, that's the most beautiful thing about gaming. You know, a lot of times you'll get technologists that get come into the gaming space 'cause they're like, oh look, most new technologies are created, pioneered by, you know, in gaming, in, in various ways.

But it's all still. To make it more fun, you know, like to, like, there's a ton of technologies you can just kind of throw in there and that later on I do wanna pick your brain on some other things that you know is now the time for other cool things that we've heard about a lot, but maybe haven't hit mainstream adoption.

But when it comes to the funness, I. There's obviously NPCs in games and Devin, you're kinda living and breathing what that could look like. There could be kinda more storytelling aspects, within these games and what is that gonna look like? , and I think the one part that I'm intrigued about and, and I don't know if now is a good time for you both to pop the bubble on it, but is, , making these games a lot more personalized to me.

And so do you two see that there is going to be. Between those, say three areas. If we were to look at, so if we say, Hey, smart MPCs, if we say general kind of storytelling or if it's just more personalized, which of those do you think, would you be more bullish on? More bearish on? Is it? Yes. All of the things.

All in those certain, you know, kind of time continuum or is it like one of those or two of those? Nope. It's totally all smoke. The tech either isn't gonna work or it's actually not gonna add that much funness to the games.

Ed: I, I've always loved the idea and I think. Playing games as a kid too, that your, your actions impact the, the future decisions and outcomes in the game, right?

We've all played like great AAA story games our whole lives, and like you played it a certain way, but that didn't affect the next ending, or there were two ending options you could get. I love the idea that there could be possibilities where like, you know, I. I log on with Devin the next day and we're both playing the same game, and I talk about it and his experience is vastly different.

And we're like, oh, but how did you do this? And it's based on the way that I interact as a player. Like those are cool dreams and I, those are things I hope that start happening.

Devin: Yeah. And I, I, I agree. I think the, the thing that. Gets lost here is people are like, I don't want a garbage generated story and I also don't want that.

Right? And so part of this like development thing is like learning what the technology is good at. It is gonna end up being the folks that are like, okay, how do we spend, like right now we're working with MPCs and people are like, oh, it's just generating the dialogue and it's like. Sure, but like, you have no idea the amount of work that we have had to pour into getting these characters to do the things that we want them to do.

Right? It's way more work. It's not like a replacement for, for any of this work. And so trying to figure out how, in the case of storytelling, like how do you craft a great story and then you use the technology to adapt it, to move it, to flow it, to make it feel natural for the user because games, particularly on the story.

Side of things, you are just such limited. Access to like what actually is going on. And it's understandably so is that gonna mean that there's not gonna be like these very linear story games going forward? Of course there is. Like, we are now like 30 years past where everybody said only multiplayer games are going to exist.

And I still play a lot of awesome single-player multiplayer game, single player non multiplayer games. And so that's like a big thing that people just need to kind of grapple with is like. It's gonna take some time for things to be figured out. There's gonna be bad examples, but I'm super excited for the team that like understands what makes all the technology tick.

And on the creative side, what makes good story.

Ed: I love that you pointed out, Devin, how much effort you're putting in to making this possibility. Like how much work there is, right? Like, I think of it when we, we've all seen movies or TV shows that, that have different qualities of writing, right? And the amount of effort that goes into that craft.

And Devon's like, yeah, this isn't like a switch I turn on and characters just do things, or MPCs just do things like I'm putting in the effort behind the scenes. Yep.

Sam: See, I, I love that and it makes me, it makes me wonder like, well when you're, when you're putting together these games and these stories, is part of the joy knowing that you got to the same end point, you know, at the, that everybody else is getting to, but faster or better gear or whatever happens to be?

Or do you think the idea of like these games is gonna evolve a little bit? Like where is there a world where. You know, the, the, the granny that was always like, oh, you're gonna lose yourself in that video game. You know, you'll never come out, you'll never get do any of this. But we are like, Ooh, okay.

The granny might have been a little bit ahead of her time, didn't make sense before, but like, I. Now, like if you have like smart MPCs, then one is like a friend, another was like a coach or a professor, and you can go on all these other journeys, like you can start to argue would there be a path, even as we're seeing it with generative AI now, where people use these smart AI as therapists or as friends or in for humor, where you will actually want to invest more in those relationships.

Not just even in the content, but the re relationships than you do outside. And is that a good thing or a bad thing? Because I could also argue maybe that's a good thing actually.

Devin: Big thing, like when I am working on a problem, this is same with like VR. I love games. I love comedy. That's like the thing that I like drive.

But a big driver for me is someone that kind of loves the advancement of technology is what can we enable going forward, right? Because of this, like as you mentioned earlier, Sam, like gaming, gaming often drives. Technology forward. Right? When we finished Job Simulator and I was like at events and I had like, you know, people from like Boeing coming up to me being like, we make every new employee in our, r and d division play your game so that they understand how like the future of VR and XR is gonna work.

Right? And it's like, oh, that was not my use case. But I know that we can kind of push things forward. And a big thing that I want to try to do with the work that we're currently doing on MPCs is push forward that like, what. Wood interacting with a character that is not just inside games end up feeling like and stuff like that.

And there's so many things that you can do in games that are far safer from like a user perspective than a lot of these other things that could have negative, and really bad negative effects. Right. And it's like gaming can be the one that we kind of like learn some of these things in a much safer.

Environment, before we end up kind of continuing that path forward,

Sam: what do you think, ed, are you ready to lose yourself to, not Eminem style, but like ready to lose yourself? I like lose yourself, make way more friends than you ever could in the, in the virtual space.

Ed: Yeah. I mean, I, I am ready to, to hang out with Evan Smart MPCs, and I, I totally agree.

Like I would, we. This technology needs to work itself through smart MPCs and games before it's like AI therapy, right? Like that, that's a scary world, right? Like, uh, and I want there to be, be like these really great ways for kids to have, that service provided to them. But it's so early that I'd rather have that smart MPC out in the context of taking you on a journey in a game that you get lost in.

Sam: So we're all. GTA with smart NPCs is gonna happen before therapy.

Ed: Yeah, I, I think the therapy thing is already happening though, right? Dalia? That's.

Devin: Yeah, that's the, that's, that's one of the, the challenges. A lot of people are running a lot of these technologies to the conclusion before you do all the intermediate steps of how this stuff works.

Right. We were talking about that earlier of like what the steps through this process and when it comes to this, there is a hell of a lot of. Steps, right? There's steps on the technology side of trying to figure things out. There's steps on the consumer side of things, like people don't know what these things mean, what they do and all that stuff, right?

There's that side of the equation. We kind of like have to walk all of this stuff through and games to just a great onboarding thing because by definition, if you're building them right, there are fun experiences that people can. Can do, uh, for a little bit, kind of learn where the technology is, what their expectations are, before things kind of continue forward.

Ed: And just like we talked about, you know, job sim and I expect to die earlier, I think like the Great Games doing this are gonna be designed and built within the constraints of what works now, OT of that early VR, if you, if you remember playing it, were, were things that were like, oh, this can't work now, but I bet in five years this will be really cool.

So like, you put it on, you're like, yeah, but it doesn't, it doesn't work now. Right. And that, that helped both of us stand out. Right. Because we were, we were designing things that worked right now and they, they were great for.

Devin: Yeah. And like to add that you were talking about like GTA with smart MPCs and stuff like that.

I think one of the things that people kind of lose in this, and it's the same thing with VR, is they take what they're used to, right? Four VRs, flat screen games, and they're like, now. In my head, I'm gonna add VR and it's gonna be Epic. Epic And also right. And it wasn't, it fundamentally wasn't because it took the games that were like, you know, as Ed is mentioning like that from right from the start, it's like, what is good with this technology?

How do we build something super specific for that? And if you look at VR, like the games that were successful were the ones that were like. You can only do this in VR. This is super special. It is super tailored to what this is. And like smart APCs read the exact same way, right? People like wanna drop them into Sky Room.

There's mods all the time. It's like, but do I really want to talk to every peasant? What am I gonna say? That's interesting, right? It might be a temporarily novel thing. So it is going to be a different type of game experience. It isn't gonna be this super plug and play thing that is gonna be built specifically for this technology.

Ed: You mentioned about like cramming flat screen games with VR on top of it. Like we did that, right? We built among us VR, but the pitch for that was not how do we take this flat screen and just jam it into a headset? It's like, oh, like the idea of Among Us VR, like social deduction games, like we've played those at parties, like we played those on playgrounds and like the idea of hearing footsteps behind you and turning around like.

That's a, that changes the game into something different. Like, we wanna try that so I remember like those first meetings where we were talking to 'em about it and explaining like, that's our, that's what we think this game is. And it's almost like that's a different game with the same, same sort of brand over top of it.

So it was a fun approach to it too. Like we didn't go in and think like, oh yeah, we just slapped this game in a headset and we make it fine. It's like, and we had to start over. Yep.

Devin: And you had to build on all of your previous experience. Like I don't think you, I don't think you could have built among SVR as your first thing before.

I expect you, nah. A hundred would've been a disaster 'cause it was like all of those things you have to kind of learn and build up to get to that point.

Ed: Yeah. We had to look at like, what's fun in there? What do people actually like to do in there? What are things that make people feel okay in those spaces?

Sam: Well, so to that point, and you guys, it's such a great job, re-imagining how that could be, how that game could work in vr. , if you think about now hardware, can you guys talk a little bit about, I dunno if it's the challenge or the opportunity of not knowing exactly what hardware is going to look like in even a few years out.

Like we come, you know, if you take like consoles or mobile like. Really awesome. There's gonna continue to be really interesting innovation. Frankly, there's probably gonna be even a lot more than we can anticipate because those are all just getting so much more powerful. And so things that we always thought, oh, that would never work on a phone, oh, can now work on a phone.

We look at like VR or MR. You have all different types of form factors and some that are fully fleshed out. Some that I'm sure are heavily under NDA and kind of working, but that sort of gets to your point, ed, of like, but what works today yet? You guys have to build in much longer development cycles than what's today and even what the headset of, not like the distant future, but like what does that head-mounted display look like?

Is it somewhere in between these RayBan stories and the quest? Is it something radically different? Is it in a VPV version 2.0 or what? You know, Google's kind of cooking up and there's a lot of big players here. How do you. Can you guys talk a little bit about the challenge of developing for this space, especially right now where you have, even with the same device, it could be a VR experience or an MR experience as an example.

Ed: Yeah. I think that's what makes this space really fun to be a part of, right? Like it's a wild ride. It's, it's a rollercoaster. We know things are gonna be changing really fast. That's really fun. And there, there are definitely people in game development that I'm sure Devin, you've come across and you come across that like.

This isn't for them, right? They, they, they want like a long cycle of I know what's coming next. I think there are some of us that thrive in like, Ooh, that's exciting. That's a new problem to solve. That's something cool. How could we work with that sort of tech? How could we make that really fun? So I, I find it very lucky that like, this is the area we're in because that, that's sort of how my brain works and I get excited about, but you do, like, you constantly talk to other people at the studio or other studios.

You start thinking about what's next and you start imagining like how you would solve those problems a little bit and then you're almost ready for them as they come 'cause you've thought about it a lot. But yeah, it's exciting. Like I want the tech to keep pushing forward. I want it to keep getting better.

I wanted to introduce. E remove constraints, but introduce new ones because there's exciting new tech out there.

Devin: Yeah, for I am, I'm also in the same bucket. Like every once in a while I'm like, huh, if only I was doing so in traditional games, I would just look at another game and we would just do the same things.

We wouldn't have to figure this out. Like this would be so stressful but also like, I'm just, I just love that I. Being on the edge of things and pushing things forward. 'cause I think, I dunno, like in like games, I think that's like one of the awesomest place to like be pushing the edges of what's possible so that everybody that comes after can look at that.

Like with jobs and I was like telling people all the time, used a demo before that game even came out was like, I'm like take stuff, take stuff learn, go. Like, this is the only way we're all successful is if we can pull enough stuff up. 'cause if any one studio needs to solve all of the problems, like.

We're, we're in a very, very bad place, and so that is like. Always super important to me. And one thing I do about all the time, which is like talking about this, like when is the technology going to be ready? Like what is that kind of thing. I have this thing that I did at Alchemy and I continue to do where I like spin up an r and d thing team, a really small team, like two or three people that I'm on, and I create a checklist of why a technology won't work.

And I did this with VR. And then more recently after I did Alchemy, I did this on hand tracking. I made this whole list of why hand tracking wouldn't work, and we're like, let's go. And the way we're gonna go is use what currently exists in a current game and just try to figure it out. And we worked on that for three months and we're like.

We could do this. Like this is doable now. Right? And so we ran ahead and like Alchemy now is like big pioneers in that. We've got dimensional double shift recently came out, which is only hand tracked and it's a multiplayer game. That's bonkers town, right? But it allows the industry to move forward because everybody can look at it and go, wow, this is what's currently possible.

Ed: This, this is super true. So like, super shout out to Devon and then the, the Alchemy team that's there now for their work in hands, right? Like Devon said, like, not one studio can push forward all of these things. So like I'm calling Andrew at Alchemy and I'm like, Hey, so about hands, right? Like what? What have you learned in the last five years?

I'll tell you stuff that I've learned, right? It's, it's, it's a fun community to get to talk to people and know like, yeah, Devon and team are like, they're solving this hand thing and then we can talk about it 'cause that is how we're all gonna push this forward.

Sam: So on that note, let's just, let me just double click into the hand piece because I feel like, , hands hand tracking how that works, whether it's in like a gaming environment within, you know, a headset or if it's separate, it's more kind of functional, moving, moving things around, you know, whether you're tapping, you're grabbing things,

I know for a while there the issues with some of the handpiece was the tracking of it and getting it exact and kind of working each time. Have, are you two feeling, do you two feel bullish or like a little bearish in terms of the future of hand tracking without controllers in games for, you know, in the XR space?

Devin: I am ultra bullish. And a lot of people are like, oh, because you think that hands are gonna be able to do everything the controllers can, and I'm gonna tell you 10 reasons that's not the case. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but that's actually irrelevant. Right. I think a lot about, I. When Mobile and I iPhone relaunched, and they were like, here's a touchscreen.

And then Microsoft was up there talking about all the reasons why a touchscreen couldn't do what a keyboard could do. And I'm like, yeah, sure, dude, but like, it doesn't matter. This is what people are gonna want to interact with, right? This is the thing that is going to drive that forward, and it's gonna mean things are different.

It doesn't mean that like all of a sudden there's gonna be no VR games. Controllers, right? You need some good tracking. If you wanna do a gorilla tag like experience, that's always going to exist, right? But I think that as the primary input in VR, XR, AR, all the things, it's obvious to me that the primary input is gonna be hand tracking, and then you're gonna use different types of controllers for more specific experiences.

Ed: Yeah, I, it's funny, I, I see a lot of people and they think that Devin is saying that controllers are gonna get thrown into the sun, right? And I, I think that's not what he's saying, right? There's going to be a use case for controller games, but there's gonna be a use case for hands games too, and maybe hands interactions for your menus and things like that.

The touchscreen is a really great example of like, that was never gonna work, and then it worked, and now everybody has one in their pocket, right? And hand tracking just. Like, you talk, Sam, we talked a lot about tech. As it gets better, like the tracking of your hand in these experiences from the displays or the head mount displays are, it's just getting much better.

, so the things that you learn and the constraints that you're in is slowly, those constraints sort of widen out this just becomes much more natural to use.

Devin: Yep. And, and back to the conversation about building for the tech, like. Early stuff that we did with vacation simulator for hand tracking, vacation simulator wasn't built for hand tracking.

There's so many bad things in that game from a design standpoint when it comes to using hand tracking that I would never do if we were doing hand tracking to the start. Right. But meanwhile Alchemy finishing up dimensional double ship. Right. That game was built right from the start for hand tracking.

So like they could weave and stuff through the, some challenging areas, but then on the other side it's like. Wow, this is way better than with controllers, these particular interactions. And so there's always that lag time, right? That like couple year lag time as the technology gets better and then the games kind of figure out how to adopt to it.

Ed: It is amazing too, watching people use hand tracking and the experiences that you make and like, you know, like right now, this is a gesture that works really well in hand tracking games, right? There are very few things in your life you pick up this way, right? So, don't give me a sledgehammer and tell me to pick it up with my hands when I have to do it this way.

Like that, that's gonna break the user's brain instantly, right? Give them something that they, they wanna pick up this way. And that's that constraint that we both talked about earlier. It's like, yeah, I, I want them to do this thing, but it's not quite there yet. So like, I'm gonna come up with this other version.

I'm gonna design around that constraint. And when you do that, it does feel really good. It feels pretty magical.

Devin: Yeah, and like things you just don't expect. Like when we were starting to work on a dimensional double shift, like we had a rule at Alchemy that we tried not to use the trigger and the grip like at the same time.

And it's not that people couldn't figure that out, we just figured the mainstream couldn't figure it out. When we were doing demos, it was like, hold the thing and then do the thing. Right? It was just too complicated and we kind of had that as a rule, right? And it was like, where are the buttons? And then.

We expected that not to work in hand tracking because why would that be better? And we built like a, a simple thing like a water, and people were just like, they grabbed it and went like this. Then we're like, and we're like, oh shit. We don't have to teach that. It's just use more hands in our whole life.

Exactly right. It's like, and I think like also to segue into like the stuff like I was talking about with voice is like, voice is I this weird thing where in gaming and technology, I. It just hasn't worked and it hasn't been like voice isn't a good input. Voice is a fantastic input. This is how this whole thing is currently happening.

It's a fantastic way of communicating, but the technology wasn't there yet. And so now the technology's there, it's like, let's rethink stuff. And I'm super excited. Like what we're building right now is hand track and its voice and the onboarding is just super easy 'cause everybody has talked and used their hands and they just get it and they can go.

Ed: It is really weird, like games for a long time have wanted to use voice, right? And it's just like, it, it was not at a spot where it felt comfortable. You weren't talking like the way we're talking right now, you were talking in a very different way that you had to be taught to talk again. It was like picking up the sledgehammer like this. It's the same thing.

Sam: So to that. Coming back, circling back on one topic we touched base on, but just let me ask one last question on it. Back on the smart NPC front, this idea of voice and hands. You could argue that sums up not all of communication, but it's a lot of it, right? They always say, you know, a lot of it's nonverbal.

Well, now if you can kind of get head gestures, you know, kind of tilting there, you can be speaking with your hands. Obviously you can pitching stuff, you can point, you can kind of pick up on those types of things. And obviously you have your voice. What type of game plays do you think emerged first under those technologies being more advanced than haptics or, you know, may maybe some of these other kind of ones.

Devin, what do you think? And then, and I'm curious.

Devin: Yeah, that is been my last almost two years because I had some theories, , but I knew I needed to test them. Like I didn't go and like, this is the game. Building, building that, because I knew I didn't know enough, right? I didn't know which problems were gonna be easy and which ones were gonna be impossible.

And just like VR, I found in the early days they were flipped. It was like, oh, that's no way to do that. It was like in afternoon. It was like I solved it and then it's like, this should be trivial. And it's just like, no, that's just impossible within this medium and so we're kind of working through things there.

One of my engineers joked that we're kind of building conversation as a game, and it's like, what does that mean? Right? And so it's like all of these ways of input are now kind of flipped. And what we're trying to do is make something that is more. Human right. More like what you are used to as a human.

We're building a lot of work, we're doing a lot of in innovative work right now and seated things because I spent most of my career doing standing stuff and I'm like, okay, I wanna spend some time on sitting. 'cause people spend most of their time sitting. If you look at people talking, I. They're generally seated, right?

Or they're leaning on something right? And I'm like, well, why are we fighting against these things? Like I'm not like running around and talking to somebody. I'm running around and talking to somebody. That doesn't seem quite the way that we kind of go about things. So I'm trying to pull things from the way people normally do things so that we have that anchor.

And then how do I put twists on them and unique game things on them that make them feel very unique.

Ed: I mean this, this is Devon's world, right? Like this is a question geared for devs. Well, this is my, this is my pitch to Devin, to like, I just want average intelligence. MPCs not smart MPCs. Right? Like, I don't, I don't want 'em to be intimidating me. He is not too much.

Devin: Oh, funny. We had a thing a couple weeks ago, where we were working on something and then, we had to like, help the NPC solve a problem and then the NBC just ended up getting too, too smart. And yeah, just worked through. And then the user was like, yeah, sure. What do you think?

What do you think? What do you, and then it like, and I was like, uhoh, we made an NPC play the game. And I'm like, we have to change that because the goal is for the Cuban to play the game, not the NPC to play the game.

Ed: Yeah. That's gotta be a wild world, right? Like, it's like you ask this NPC with unlimited intelligence, like, what would you do?

And it just tells you the, all the answers. Yep, exactly. What I would do is go forward and turn left. I'm not sure why, but you'd want to open the door.

Devin: Yeah.

Sam: It's a different world. Yeah. I love that. I have, there's all types of fun examples of people that are trying to build like this game, but for this platform and kind of rethink it and sometimes the tweaks they make to improve it and make it more efficient.

Kill all the fun, you know? So if you're playing a social game that's about guessing something that you're kind of trying to enact with your hands or something and you get hints that they start telling you or they perfect your movements a little bit, it's like let you just killed all the fun of it.

Ed: Action. I imagine the smart NPC and among us vr, just telling everybody who the impostor as we win it. It's red. Like, ah, what, how do you know? It's like it's red. Oh, this game is, is not fun anymore. Well, can’t buy.

Sam: Hey, you, me, Patrick. Okay. So I wanted to just wrap this with is I wanted to do a little bit of what call rapid fire, but if you think going out, putting on your real fut, you guys live in the future anyways, putting on that, those future facing hats.

So, uh, let's see. A couple things. One is, I'll rattle off a few of these. Which of these do you think will become real and which of these are just totally vapor, not ever really gonna be a thing? Okay. So if I talk about haptic vests, smell. And, let's say something that's more audio visual, but you drive the audio visuals everywhere that you're kind of going in this virtual space

Ed: And, good, good. Yeah. I'm gonna go with smell. I, 'cause I'll say like, if you guys remember the Void, I did the, the Star Wars and the Wreck at Ralph. My favorite moment of the wreck at Ralph Experience is like, you come around this corner, it smells like vanilla. It's amazing, right? And it does feel really great.

You're in this world, the Star Wars one smells like sulfur, and it's, it's less fun. Like, it's like, oh, it smells bad here. Yeah, I, I don't want like to be walking in the room or my kids are playing a game and I don't wanna smell what they're, they're playing. Right. Like, I that to, that's not a version of immersion that I want right now.

But you could tell me I'm wrong. Like, I remember like the early video game controllers with the rumble pack. And I was like, oh, it just, it makes my hands numb. Like I don't want this, like it's just shaking all the time violently but guess what? It got better. And now it's like playing a controller that doesn't have haptics is a little weird.

Sam: It is, it's so true. Okay, so you are bullish on smelling the right way.

Ed: Bless himself. Theme parks have been doing the smell thing for years, right? Like they, they pump out that smell to get you to go like to the ice cream stand or the funnel cake.

Devin: Yeah, I, I am in this unique spot where, in the early days of VR, every company that was trying to make hardware would contact us and give us a demo.

And it was like bonkers time 'cause like so much is being done, but like 99.9% of it was really not gonna ever work. And so definitely got some smell demos, some haptic demos and stuff like that. Smell will not in my lifetime, in, in an average user's case, the physics just isn't gonna work. And smells are one of those things that trigger way too low on the brain.

And people don't like certain things. You can't just close your eyes to smells. And so like that one, just, even if you could solve it nasty, haptic haptic best stuff is like, there's always gonna be groups of people that are just gonna love that stuff, but like there isn't, it isn't like, I always think about the value trade off, right?

Like, it's the same thing with like hands and controllers, right? Controllers are gonna continue to assist, exist. They're awesome for certain things, but for the mainstream. I think that the value proposition isn't there, right? It's like, well, I use the controller and it doesn't get me anything. And now it has a level of complexity, a level of additional thing and stuff like that.

So I think the other one was like kind of like being able to like customize stuff through. Like yeah, like that stuff, that stuff is gonna be, gonna be big. It's just gonna take a while. It's not gonna be magic, it is literally going to be people doing a lot of really hard, smart work.

Ed: Yeah, I wanted Devin to like rip his shirt open and wearing a haptic vest right now.

Sam: That would the, I should have given you some heads. I feel every word you're telling me, Eva. Okay, last, last one on this kind of real future facing stuff but like I said, I kind of wanna take advantage of this opportunity 'cause I don't know where I'm gonna get to. People who know this space as deeply as you two do and have actually had to, as we start off with like first principles, think about what is the nature of what this beast is.

Hardware, software, social, you know, not all the rest. Think computer interfaces is there a world where, you know, could that help people socialize more deeply in these immersive spaces? Is there a hive mind of sorts with gaming? Like, is that gonna be a thing or is that purely sci-fi and like, no, no, no.

That there's no real strong need or desire or a good fit there with that kind of technology.

Ed: I have one brain and it's a lot to handle, right? Like I on a, a hive mind of what other people are thinking out there. I do see things like, man, I watched the, a Connect this year. There was the live translation demo.

I. I look at that and I think like, oh, it'll be so useful. Like, I grew up across the street from my grandparents. My grandmother migrated to America after World War II. She spoke French, right? She spoke great English whenever I was born. But her, her sister, so like my great aunt and uncle would visit every other summer and they didn't speak English.

So at the beginning of summer, I didn't understand them at all. At the end of summer, like we could communicate with each other and they would come every other summer. So in a, you know, after I adapted to summer, I couldn't talk to 'em again. Right? Like, I, I lost all of that and like, how crazy, like I had a great relationship with them.

I loved them a lot. Like, but how great would that relationship have been if the barrier was so small that I was like, oh, instantly I know all their stories and I know like all these stuff, all this stuff that they're having going, so like. There is stuff that is going to like change the way that like our kids and our kids' kids interact with each other and just process information and that sounds really exciting.

Yeah, but I, I, groupthink, hivemind brain scares me. I don't want that.

Devin: It's, people misunderstand it because it's an output device, not an input device. And so, um, you have to be thinking about it from that perspective, right? It's like, I, it's not a two-way street, at least anywhere in, in near, near term.

And so there's definitely things, but I think that this might be paths of least resistance on, you know. They, like meta is working on some stuff with like, you know, twitch muscles and stuff like that. And that's much more analog to how we have interacted with other things. And I think there's other ways that we can kind of deal with some of these output things going forward.

But, you know, it's, it's always really hard to tell. I was talking to my wife yesterday about how. When we were kids, we were trying to explain things to our children that we did, and it was like hard, and I'm like, ah, wow, I've got old. But then I was like, what things are my kids doing today that they're gonna explain to their kids?

And I'm like, I don't know. I beg, that's really hard for me to take a guess of what things they're gonna consider. Super, super silly.

Ed: It's crazy. Ask a kid to do the gesture for talking on a phone. Like they don't do this.

Sam: Yep. That's so funny.

Ed: They do, they do this.

Sam: Right? Like it's just very different. Well, you know, I will say, this was awesome.

I. I am, I am convinced that as long as this future of humans and machines in gaming and the singularity looks much more like the robots and job simulator and you know, the kind of interactions and ways of dying, and I expect you to die, if that's what that future looks like, then we are headed to a great, amazing, exciting future.

Everything else terrifies me, yeah. Thank you so much, Devin. Thank you so much. This was a, this is our first episode of the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm Sam Distaso, so, and I hope y'all enjoyed it.

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