Julie Heyde - VRUnicorns at CopenX, September 2016

because I'm on a travel lockdown, so I'm not allowed to fly for a little while, and I could actually bike here. It's only 20 minutes from my home, so that's amazing. And I'm here to talk to you about, it's okay if I kick off my shoes, because shoes are not comfortable when you have this disease thingy. Take that as a yes, as a misnomer. I'm here to talk about how we made, or how we're actually still developing, selfie tennis that's out there. Has any of you tried that in ACC booth? Yeah, yeah. So selfie tennis, and also ski jump, and also archery. It all started that we were working on another game that I'd been working on for quite some years, like other people were working on it as well, and then a little over a year ago, we got a Vive for the first time, and the other game was kind of a walking simulator, whereas the Vive, as you've seen out there, that's full room scale, right? So it means that you can do so much more. So we started prototyping a lot. We call it game jamming, because we're all game jammers. Are there any here who are game jammers? Nordic game jam, any other game jam? That's kind of what we do. We all know each other from various game jams, both in Copenhagen, the Nordics, all over the place, Iceland for that matter, and then we just started jamming out weird stuff in the evening in the office, and one of them ended up being selfie tennis. One of the guys, Mee-Line, got an idea late night, said, hey, what about if you play tennis with yourself, and then you just teleport to the other side of the court whenever you get the ball over the net? And Ray Shu from my team, he just captured that idea. The next day, we were supposed to work on this other game, so the rest of us were, and Ray Shu was making a tennis game. I kind of remember looking on his screen and being like, that's not what we're supposed to do, but I'm not gonna say anything. And then in the evening, he said, hey, do you really wanna play tennis with yourself? Sure thing. So the development team off, like sort of in the Unicorns, we are Unicorns, we call it jamming Unicorns because we're working on free games in parallel, and some people, they kind of own the game. It's usually the people who came up with the idea or the main developers in it, and then we hire people in as freelancers for instance, doing some of the art, doing some of the audio, doing some of the animations and whatnot. So this is just like, I think it's fairly updated, except for like most recent people. So this is what we do. We're a group of game jammers, and then some of us, we work across multiple games. Like I'm hands-on on all three games. Simon is as well, Ray Shu is sort of as well, but each people's sort of like who came up with the idea for that game owns that game. And this is the team that made Selfie Tennis, plus Andy was one of the guys on the Unicorn webpage just before. And this was I think a week before we launched. When we were still in San Francisco, because we ended up spending a lot of time in the States up to launch, and then we launched Selfie Tennis around the Vive launch. You haven't played Selfie Tennis yet? Just like, it's fun. Just poke them out there. And make sure if you play Selfie Tennis that you get to try some of the fun stuff. Oh, I'll give you a little teaser. Did I have audio? I didn't, right? No audio. I'll try this. Ah. That's not enough. Anyways, that's just one of our trailers. I just wanted to show you a little bit about what it's about. So basically, you play tennis with yourself, right? And this was actually when we did the physics update, because when we published Selfie Tennis, we released it, we didn't know anything about real tennis, which gave us like a bit of an issue when people who actually knew tennis, they started playing it and gave us feedback and said, it doesn't feel like tennis at all. So we had to rewrite all the physics, because we're using Unity in-game physics before, then had to rewrite all the physics to an update, and then suddenly we got the feedback that it actually feels like tennis, which is great, because it's not real tennis. You play with yourself. So whenever you shoot ball over the net, you kind of want to be able to receive it again. So you get teleported to a position where it's fairly easy to receive it, but you have to do a little bit of work as well. That's why it's good, it's room-scale. And then it's not just about the tennis. The first, very first prototype, one-day prototype, that Horatio jammed up, there were some characters in the game. It was main characters, and you could hit them, give them a proper spanking, and then blood would come out, which I thought was amazingly fun, right? I was not very good at the tennis part, but I'm very good at hitting people. So the only problem was at one point that my niece, who is now seven, she was playing it, and I got told off by my sister-in-law that it was like male characters, and there was blood coming out, and you're not supposed to show that to kids. So when we made the final art that we hired Andy for, before we launched, it was like, okay, we need to make them gender neutral, and what about if we, instead of having blood coming out, just have hearts coming out, because it makes everyone happy, right? The good thing about being a game jammer is that you're kind of used to, you can do whatever you want. You don't ask for permission anyhow. And also, the reason that they all have these tennis ball heads is that we didn't have time to actually make the characters' heads, but we had a lot of tennis balls, so we just put them on. Quick and dirty all the way through. So a little story, like a later update, and also, by the way, we signed with the Bulbar this time, who's our publisher, and we have a selfie stick, of course, and then we made an update where we wanted a lot of new rackets then. We also wanted a racket that was actually the size, sort of in-game as a real racket, because we realized we had modeled the first racket after a kid's racket that I had brought to the office, because I thought it was a real racket I'd stolen from my family. Wasn't good. Everyone was complaining about the racket, but then you can see the killing spree, which is the part I really love. So you have a pony corn, like a pony head on a stick. You can jump around, and then you have a lightsaber, because we really love the people at ILM, and they were making the Star Wars VR experience at the same time, and invited us there, so we thought, okay, we're gonna do an ode to them. You can actually slap these people around with a lightsaber jumping around on a horse on a stick. We'd made perfect sense. And the jumping mechanic, we had made that, who I had another game jam that we had been at in Iceland, where we had decided we're not gonna work on any of our games right now. Just gonna make something silly. So he was working on a spider, and he was asking for a little bit of advice with how the spider should move, and I was like, well, a spider moves like this, right? Back and forth, and we tried that, and it was really hard on the back, so he said, what about if it moves like this? Yeah, kinda makes sense. I tried it, then I stole his script. Like we work in Unity, so you're just scripting in C Sharp. So I stole his script, put it in another game that I call Sprint Race. You can search for Sprint Race, it's out there, it's on itch.io. You can race around where you have to jump, or like jog on the place, and then you move, because it just messes with the delta in your hat, right? And I was out traveling, and then Horatio decided to put in Self-Etennis, because I actually wanted that pony corn, I wanted to shoot a rainbow out of the corn so you can move around in the level. That's how we make games, I don't know how other people do it. Let me see, oh yeah. So this update went quite well. Like I said, we launched around the Vive launch, that was back in April, and especially this guy, a YouTuber, he made this video of how he used the pony corn. And he put it on Reddit, and we saw like a spike in sales like this. What we found out very early on with the Vive is that since, like remember back in the day, when like one person at the street, one kid had a console, every other kid would go down there and play it, like not all of us had the fancy stuff. So when we saw the price point of the Vive, we were like, hmm, that's probably gonna be quite expensive, not everyone would have it. And when we started game jamming a lot, inviting our friends to our office in the evenings, like a Friday evening, we were game jamming, we'd do weird shit, we would show what we were working on, because we always have like 17 games in development. And then what I also like really looked at was how fun it was to observe people, and how much people laughed when we made some really crazy experiences. Really crazy experiences, we had one we called Race to the East, where we would basically slide across the wall, and then, like sorry, slide across the floor into the wall, and then jump back, and then slide again, because we had made a game mechanic that meant that you went giant mode whenever you were close to the ground. So you could travel very far distances the closer you were to the ground. But of course, people get injured, and we realized that was really, really fun. So when Self-Eten is launched, quite a few journalists went out and said, this is the most dangerous game ever, but we love it. And is Shen, Shen, are you in the room from ICC? There you were. Shen got a little bit upset with me at one point, because all the developers, all those game developers who got kids early on, he was one who had to replace all the broken controllers from Self-Etenists. So he was like, Julie, seriously, tell people to wear wrist straps, okay? Because the thing is, sometimes you throw the racket to get a heart update or to knock someone out, and we do it as well in our team, just throw it against the window, right? It just happens. Luckily, the Vive controllers are really solid. We haven't broken anyone. A few scratches, but everything works. You make good hardware. If you don't know it, Vive is a collaboration between Valve making the software, SteamVR, and then ICC, who's making the hardware. They're out here, really nice guys. Oop, not so interesting. So, but we don't only make Self-Etenists, right? So at the same time, we were jamming up all these crazy prototypes, also working on SkiJump, because one of our friends, he's actually here in the video, Torsten, he used to be a professional ski jumper, and we really wanted to make an ode to him, because he has always talked about this VR game where you could ski jump. So this was like the second version of SkiJump, and he's the one playing it live on stage at his own event down in Berlin. It's very simple, you ski and you jump. And he was just super happy. You can throw snowballs. It's also quite dangerous to play, because that's what we do, because you actually have to physically jump. And when my sort of condition that I have right now was at its worst, I couldn't stand and I couldn't jump, so I couldn't play our own game, and I was also working on it, so it was really bad, because I couldn't test it. It's kind of my role. I'd make stuff and I'd test, and I'd throw out ideas, shout them out in the room. So, sorry for the yellow screen, that's how all our trailers start. So we actually decided sort of early in the summer that we wanted to do a multiplayer version of SkiJump, because we're working on the single-player version, but we saw that a lot of the VR gamers, they were requesting multiplayer version, especially a lot of people requesting self-examination as multiplayer, and I'm kind of like, defeats the title, right? But I did see, okay, this could be really interesting, but we did not have the sort of internal knowledge on how to make a multiplayer game, so I stole one of the guys from my brother's team. I'll talk about that in a little bit, and then got him to help out over the summer on some of our games, and we were going to Gamescom, showing both archery and SkiJump, and we needed to have the build ready for that, and we focused on a quick and dirty single-player build, that, to be honest, was made when I was on steroids, so it was pretty unplayable for anyone else. Oops, no. Right? Yeah. So again, you ski and you jump, but this time around, it's just like, the other one was a procedural level that we worked on for the Maze Festival back in April, and this one more replicates the multiplayer version, but it's just a single-player build. In the other build, the ski sticks didn't yet work, but in this build, what was important to me in the directions I gave to Rummy from my brother's team is that I want people to look really fucking stupid when they're playing, so I want them to have to work hard for it, like this, and that's why. Sorry for the complications about doing this. Guys were really kind and fixed up my issue with actually giving me a cable all the way up here so I can control things myself. So when we were down at Gamescom, we were demoing in Unity's booth, and this is me playing ski jump in the background, and this was a journalist that we had one early morning from Engadget, and he was really anxious when he was to try because he was like, I did not have enough coffee for this. Basically what happened because I was on full-on steroids when I did the final touches on this build was that it was pretty hard to play, and also I had a lot of energy, right? My legs weren't hurting at all. And... It's really happy, I think you'll see him moving, because most people who tried it first on, they were a little bit nervous of looking stupid, so they would ski like this, and since we made it so in measures of delta, you really just had to get into it. So in most situations, I would stand and shout at people and coach them through ski jump. But what was smart, I don't know whether any of you guys have to deal with motion sickness, the thing about having those ski sticks was that people felt like you tricked people's brains, they feel that they actually control all the movements themselves, so they don't get motion sickness. Whereas a lot of people have asked us, hey, how can you make a game with ski jumping and you don't get motion sickness? Like that's so weird. It's all about making sure that people, that they actually feel that they control everything themselves. I'll go back to my sexy slideshow. We're sharing an office with my brother and his team, and they're called Apix Game Tools, and as you know, when you're the kid's sister, you often turn to your older brother for help, like please, and give me everything for free. He doesn't give me everything for free, you actually have to pay them. And they are now working with us on a multiplayer version, because we don't know how to do that, and also means that we can focus on all the game jammy, weird stuff, where we just crank out weird features, and like, hey, it would be fun if you can do a 360 spin. The guys actually made that last weekend. Like 360 spin and ski jump. It was kind of funny when play testing it, because you actually had to turn around, or cheat and take the vibe off. And this is like our current situation in the office. We're kind of cramped in into a small office, we have free vibes running at the same time, and this is what happens. Look at the guy on the right. Yeah, play testing multiplayer games. Shen, I'm sorry, we're gonna damage so much more equipment. But they were throwing snowballs to each other. And then, that's gonna be a cute photo. So this is me, and the two guys in the middle are the guys who came up with Archery. And then Simon over there is a guy who's been art director on ski jump, making all the trailers, doing all 2D art, and also other things. We kind of have many roles. And this is like the cutest story ever in my world, because Max, Max in the middle there, him and I organized a Vive Jam together in Stockholm last year. And then I met Jacob for the first time, and then I convinced him to come down to a Vive Jam I organized in the Unity office in the wintertime here. And then they made a game that they call Pizza Hood back then, because, wait, why doesn't it work? Because in this game, you are making pizzas with bow and arrow, which makes perfect sense. And this is the very, very first, that was made this weekend, like that weekend back in, was it in January, I think? And you would take like an arrow. I was really bad with me playing at this point. I'm way better playing it now, because I played every day for play testing. I love the fact that Max is always wearing an Oculus t-shirt when we work on Vive. But anyways, what you do is you pick an arrow, you have the bow, and then you pick up an ingredient, and then you shoot the pizza. Maybe there's like more interesting part in the end where I actually know how to do it. Let's see. Yeah, there I got it. So this game has come a long way. I was actually advising the guys on what to do with getting out on Steam and whatnot, and down at United Europe and Amsterdam, and then instead, what they didn't return was just asking, can we just become a part of the unicorn? So we're just part of this crazy game jamming group, and we do everything together? I'm like, sure. That's kinda how it works. But it says that people who own the game or start the game, they own it, and then everyone else is just helping out. Here we have a few sites from Gamescom. I think it's me starting playing. Archery's actually not announced, but here you can see in the background, on the tiny screen, so we don't have any material out about the game right now. Oh shoot, this is being livestreamed. Pick up ice cream, choose a color, and then you shoot the kids in their faces, and then they turn into unicorns, because everyone wants to be a unicorn. By the way, this is Serious Sam VR. I don't even know, Shane, you don't have that running, right? Okay, I have it. I know you have it too. That's Serious Sam VR that you just saw the clip from, which is from, oops, I lost the internet, which is from a crow team down in Croatia that made Serious Sam, they're also into VR now. Do we have time for questions and stuff? Everything is over time, right? Then I'll just wrap it up with a cute picture of some of us in the unicorns suite. This is how you travel as an indie game developer. You share a bed, you get used to it. That's fine, we don't have any money. We're just game jammers, and we travel around the world all the time. Basically my main point is that with VR, it's very unpredictable about what's gonna happen. As I said, we started working on another game. It was kind of more of a walking simulator horror. We also had jump scares back then. Fucking hate jump scares, don't put them in your games. It's so 2013. It's just not worth it. It's such a cheap trick. Also don't make people sick. It's so bad because you ruin it for the rest of us. I'm just telling people off right now. But motion sickness is the worst because it means that whenever other people have to convince them to try VR, they'll be like, no, I got sick last time. It's not nice. Also, as I said yesterday on the live stream, a robot made with us from the office, I wish that everyone's first VR experience was the vibe, is the vibe, because the fact is when you can move around in VR, you can't get motion sick. And it's very hard, at least, unless the game designer or the game creator is really bad. And I just wish that that was the first platform everyone tried, but that's also just me. We love room scale. We work in room scale. And then the main point of this is don't think that you can think of this great game designer, experience designer, whatnot. The most important thing is to prototype things. Like as I said, archery, then Pizza Hut. The first version was made in two days. There was a core mechanic. Have a bow, you have an arrow, shoot things. You shoot kits, you shoot pizzas, you shoot anything in our game. Ski jump, you ski and you jump. And then we build everything else around that. So it means we know there are two things. You need to be able to ski, you need to be able to jump, and steer a little bit, right? You steer with your head and your sticks a bit. And you move forward with your sticks. Selfie tennis, you play tennis. That's one thing. And then just fuck around for the rest of the time, right? So it's very sandboxy, but at least in VR games, focus on one core mechanic and then jam out the rest. And have very early prototype, always have a playable build. And since very young industry, very young scene, all developers are very helpful to each other. Like we share our builds very early on. All our friends do as well. We give each other feedback. And it's basically just about doing it instead of talking about it. Like we call me the idea guy sometimes. I don't really have a title. I'm the chicken bitch. He says my title on Twitter. Because I make fun of other idea guys by just shouting out random things. Like I want a pony coin in the game. And then Horatio's like, great, I'll make a fucking pony coin. And then he makes the pony on a stick, right? That's Horatio did that. And because it's so easy to come up with ideas, but implementation is the hard work. But jam it out, prototype really early on, test it on a lot of people. Luckily we've been fortunate that we could travel around with Self-Etennis early on. It also was great for awareness about what we were doing. It was amazing PR at the same time. And of course smashing someone else's hardware is also really good PR. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. I can't see your face. Okay. Then we'll have the two of you. People can ask you questions outside. I'm here. Sorry. I'm throwing beer. Yeah. Just one question. Does it help to be like crazy when you're doing a VR games? I think definitely it does because everyone is like, it's easy to do something normal, right? But if you want to actually make an impact, you should do something crazy. So stuff like this. Yes. Like we decided very early on, we're not going to do anything that was me too. Like we needed to do something that we really believed in. And like elsewhere, we wouldn't be on this crazy journey. Like, as I said, we sleep four people in the same bed when we travel. Like there's no privacy. You get used to it, but we all crazy and we all in this together. So that's where we put our effort. If you see further out from just not the your games, but about the games or all of VR games, what's the best thing at the moment, you think? Like, so I really, really, really like to punch people. And it's just better to do in a VR. I have a fight club. Some people also in the room are part of it. And, but so I like shooters. I like space private trainers also out here, amazing guys in Belgium making that game serious. And VR is also one of the best shooters. And then like, if any of you follow that Twitter account called punches bears, like crazy weird unity, physics, animation, you will know it. I know that. So I kind of took his vibe to unity at one point. He later got his own vibe. He's working on something where you can actually punch the bearing VR. And also one of the guys from grow forces that we also forced into VR, we gave him a vibe. So now we're one right down, but he's working on a game called corn. It's available on it. I O if you have a not porn, but corn with G G that way, where you can also just punch. I love that. I like, I want our next game. So you spank a lot in our games. You could hit things and so on. You can shoot things, but I really want our next game to be a punching game. Perfect. That'd be the last word of Julia. Hi. It's grown up.