A VR Multitasking Mechanic Proposal

Two individual game mechanics are often more engaging when combined in a parallel, time bound manner. Action adventure games do this all the time. Fire at an enemy while paying attention to your health to retreat to cover. Avoid obstacles while being dragged along the street, while also pointing a gun to fire at an NPC etc

What if we combine a flying obstacle avoidance mechanic with an enemy shooting mechanic. The player flies by orienting her left controller in the direction she wants to fly. The player is continually drifting forwards towards obstacles and may not point her left controller backwards. She shoots using her right controller (for right handed players) at enemies that spawn and float towards her.

This mechanic leverages VR in many ways:

1. Leverages large frustum of view – The player’s moment to moment experience and decision making must be made based on visual input from the world all around her.
2. Leverages hands in physical space – The player’s input to the world is based on physical orientation of her hands. Both are made possible only through VR.
3. Hand Synchronization – This benefit is not necessarily unique to VR, but made more visceral by the medium. Human beings are mentally wired to move their limbs with a degree of association between them. This is why playing an instrument is difficult. The studio within PlayStation I’m working at titled Pixelopus, launched Entwined based on breaking this association. In the game, the two PlayStation joysticks each mapped to control of a separate character. The game was about navigating these characters independently but parallelly. The proposed mechanic could potentially leverage this, in the context of breaking association between hand movements.
   
   
                      

Before and during prototyping I would also be engaging in a risk analysis phase:

1. Alignment with Higher Level Goals – Does this mechanic align with the type of games the studio is interested in? Can it support a narrative? Is it too “arcady”? Should this be a primary or secondary game mechanic?
2. Player Comfort – Is it fun to be looking around the world rapidly? What is the optimal play session duration before a player’s hands begin to ache? Does flying induce nausea? Is it even possible to be moving one’s hands independent of each other?
3. Visual Input – A large frustum of view is great. But does the mechanic cause sensory overload? Can the player process everything in the world intelligently? Are her actions random or driven by visual input?
4. Production Impact – Do we have the resources to create content that provides a meaningful arc to the experience based on this mechanic?

Parallel to the risk analysis phase, I would also engage in identifying the core engagement of the mechanic. The findings here feed directly into the risk analysis phase. Basically, this phase is to identify the different ways this mechanic can be engaging. A large part of this phase, is identifying the basis for player decision making and the time scale at which these decisions are being made. Stated otherwise, the we’re trying to identify the time between visual input and player reaction. In first person shooters, this is a quantifiable metric called Time to Kill (TTK). In our case, this boils down to level design semantics:

1. Reactionary – Here obstacles are placed close to each other and the player weaves in and out, making on the fly decisions. Think about driving in GTA.
   Enemy Spawn - Close to the player, Intended as elements of surprise
   Obstacle Sizes – Small
   Enemy Health – Low
   Player Speed – High
   
   
    
2. Strategy Based – Here obstacles are clumped together with an escape route. The player must identify and navigate to the escape route in time before the collision. Think about the flying obstacle sequences in God of War.
   Obstacle Sizes – Large
   Player Speed – Low
   
    
   
   Enemies and obstacles appear alternatingly, so the player isn’t forced to exercise evasion and firing skills simultaneously. Enemies appear in waves and the player must prioritize enemies based on distance to player, speed, motion type, firing ability etc. Think Doom.

Enemy Spawn – Far away from player,
(Intended for players to prioritize)
Enemy Health – Varied (Medium to High)