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Project Red

The VR game scene is heating upward, and it'southward non but almost AAA titles, equally we're finding in our new series on developing for VR. Hot off the heels of our interview with No Goblin's Dan Teasdale, I had the pleasure of speaking to an indie developer named Samantha Kalman. She's been making games for years, and now she'south decided to take on the claiming of making multiple new VR games on her own.

Thanks to her fascinating groundwork in both the creative and technical aspects of game development, hearing Kalman's thoughts on VR lends a new perspective — not just a improve understanding of what VR is now, but a hopeful vision of what VR can become. If you still classify yourself as a VR skeptic, Samantha's infectious passion might only change your mind.

Samantha Kalman interview

Grant Brunner: Can you tell us about who you are and your experience in gamedev?

Samantha Kalman: Certain. I'm Samantha Kalman. I started making games equally a hobby in my early twenties when I discovered [the Unity game engine] which was at version 1.0 at the time. I was working in software testing when I found it and started doing hobby stuff. I became QA managing director of Unity when information technology was very, very small — fewer than 10 people. Followed through with Unity up until 3.0 — released that as office of the team.

And then I became an indie programmer total fourth dimension. I tried a couple of times to go far work. I made a game called Sen, which is a music game that'south up on Kongregate.com. That made me no money, and then I went and got a job at Amazon where I was a design technologist, which is basically a designer who writes code, on the Amazon Burn Phone. I was there for a year and a half working closely with the user feel and the 3D presentation of the device. And then tried over again with indie games.

I felt similar Sen was an unrealized idea — like unfinished business. I returned to this thought of "how do you make a game that helps people brand music?" So, I spent the next couple of years making Sentris, and that's out, and information technology kinda did it. Since that has been finished, I've been going into a lot of VR experiments. You know, just playing with a couple of dissimilar projects and ideas with the platforms.

GB: You've publicly discussed 2 of your current projects: Project Ruddy and Unwinding. Tin y'all give u.s.a. an overview of what those are?

SK: Yeah, so, they're two projects, and they're pretty dissimilar. Unwinding is an experiment for me to do what'south called basis-up game design. Where equally Sentris was acme-down — I sort of had a goal, and I was aiming toward that. Unwinding is a ground-up where I'm trying to play with mechanics, and learn about what's interesting in VR. And sort of build toward an undefined goal and meet what kind of fun and challenging experiences can sally in the meantime. Both projects share a similarity of creating a feeling of existing in an incommunicable infinite. So, Unwinding is kind of similar a infinite metaphor. Like, there's kind of a planet thing and then y'all are solving puzzles possibly inside the planet — very abstract puzzles.

Project Cerise is more than of a world building experiment. I honey the look of Rez, and wanted to build something Rez-like that has a sense of impossibility. But in "Red" information technology'due south really nearly the motion — the sensation of moving through space. Kind of being surrounded, and maybe even being overwhelmed by geometry and how shut it is to you. There's some light Metroidvania mechanics on the tabular array for that game.

Unwinding

GB: All I've seen of these projects are your blog posts and screenshots from the early stages of development, and they're both very abstract in appearance. Practise the games take place in first-person, or is it so abstruse that you're not even really a person — you're an abstract form equally a camera in the game world?

SK: Yeah, it's a good question. I think that all VR games are inherently first-person — even ones where you're controlling an avatar. The really incredible affair nearly VR is that yous are a person who is wearing this thing that is providing you a lens into the earth. Information technology'south like picking up a pair of binoculars, and looking at the world far abroad. Only you're picking up a pair of goggles, and y'all're looking into a different world. This is one of the almost incredible things about the medium: to exist looking first-person into a world.

When the iPhone came out, people were like "Oh, when we start developing games from the basis-upward for a touch screen, that's going to be a game-changer." I think that for VR, edifice a game from the ground-up ways acknowledging that the person playing it is a person. It'southward nigh like a quaternary wall thing, but it's non exactly. I think information technology's important to acknowledge that there are people stepping within these worlds.

Next page: Early adopters, accessibility, and the draw of VR

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