Welcome to (virtual) reality

Autumn Taylor is the social media, public relations, and marketing manager for Phaser Lock Interactive, a small VR studio based in Austin, Texas. The company recently launched their first game, Final Approach, for the HTC Vive and plan to release the game for Oculus and Playstation VR. Taylor’s job is to tell the story of the studio and their games in order to help consumers understand their value. As an independent developer studio, Phaser Lock Interactive is able to take consumer feedback seriously and they strive to make the consumers feel like a welcomed part of the development process. In addition to her work with Phaser Lock Interactive, she is also an organizer for VR Austin and contributes to VR community-building efforts. Taylor herself is interested in immersive stories and hopes to create games that make the player fully invested in the storyline.

What made you interested in VR?

I’ve had a love affair with video games for most of my life, so that’s what allowed me to make my first contact with virtual reality. I got involved in game development when I came to the University of Texas. I remember falling in love with virtual reality when the game developer’s club I was in got to try the original Oculus Rift developer kit. I’ve worked on virtual reality projects for game jams and in my spare time ever since. Additionally, with my strong background in writing, the potential for storytelling in VR was immediately apparent. I’ve always loved video games that were able to tell a story and move me- working in the VR industry is a natural extension of my desire to tell immersive stories in games.

What was your most memorable experience in VR?

I’ve had the privilege of developer access to almost every title released or in development, but a simple game jam project has been my most memorable experience recently. At the Global Game Jam earlier this year in Austin, I played a game jam game on the HTC Vive that has players climb a mountain. My feet were on solid ground, but when I missed a jump and fell off the side of the mountain, I actually jumped and screamed! It’s amazing what can fool your brain, and that was the first time I had an experience like that; an experience that immersed me to the point that I felt such a strong emotion, like fear.

What kind of experiences would you like to have in VR?

A lot of people are talking about the potential for empathy in virtual reality. VR is already an experience that transports you to another world, but I would like to see transformative experiences in VR. There was a great talk from Nina Freeman at GDC this year about her game, Cibele. She referenced the way we design games to allow for player embodiment and how she countered this by making players embody the female main character of her game. It’s like, I already know who I am- I want to embody other characters. I want a VR experience to tell me the stories of others and worlds I know nothing about, but want to be lost in. It’s a perfect medium for this kind of transformative storytelling– literally letting someone walk in the shoes of another person or being.

I’d like to do my own game design and production in the future, and those are the kinds of experience I would like to make. Stories that transform others and allow them to have a different point of view.

What challenges have you faced in creating games for VR? What factors did you have to consider when making a game for VR that you may not have had to worry about when creating a non VR game?

With room-scale VR, like what’s currently available with the Vive, designing for scale has been an interesting challenge. This is especially true with Final Approach, where we play a lot with scale through the game mechanics. I’m the shortest person on the team, and while we were testing we found out in “God Mode” that I couldn’t reach some of the taller planes to grab them. This revelation actually led to a great feature in the game, where players can choose their own scale based on their height. So, scale has been a challenge that doesn’t really exist in non-VR games- not like this. Many of the same factors to consider in other areas of VR also apply here, like locomotion or UI/UX design. At the end of the day, games are typically a much more interactive experience than films or the likes- we’re learning every day how to allow for these interactive experiences within the gaming space.

Why is it important for women to be included in the industry?

For me, it all comes down to the possibilities for perspective. There are barriers for women in gaming and VR that shouldn’t exist in order for them to earn the right to contribute to the industry. Development is such an iterative process that you need every perspective you can get, and there’s just too much potential that lies in the diverse experience held by women across various backgrounds. We have so much to offer, and there are simply too many incredible stories to be told by women in this industry to shut them out.

Women have already made so many incredible VR and non-VR experiences, even though we make up a much smaller percentage of workers in VR. In the gaming industry, there are many initiatives that allow women a foot in the door, with support from both men and women. I’d like to see this trend continue and extend to VR, and for us to continue to be supportive of one another as we make this journey in a new medium.