[Andy Tsen] Some ambitious bets?
Well, we decided to build a VR MMO, for one thing.
[Lauren Frazier] People assume that you need
to be this giant, 500-person studio with $100 million budget.
If you don't have that, then you can't do it.
We just set out to prove that that's not true.
What makes us different from a regular game studio
is that we're a small team, a diverse team, and a remote team.
Andy is, first and foremost, my friend.
But he's the CEO and co-founder of Ramen VR.
I'm Lauren Frazier, and I'm the CTO, and co-founder at Ramen VR.
Colin is the lead game designer.
Kat's our lead concept artist.
Jordan is one of our rock-star engineers.
Jessica is our lead environment artist.
And together, we bring the game to life.
[Andy] The inspiration for "Zenith," the game,
was that Lauren and I were both big fans of MMOs and JRPGs,
and we had a lot of our formative experiences in games like those.
We were excited to be able to take that, and bring it into the world of VR.
[Lauren] Virtual reality MMO, I don't think
it's really been done with a team this size before.
I think that Unity has really been the catalyst for all this.
It allows us to spin up in the editor quickly.
It allows us to profile, and see what's going wrong with performance quickly.
We use Plastic to manage our files.
And a lot of art assets are things that we buy from the asset store.
Unity really enables us to develop much faster.
[Katherine Bartlett] The most important thing
about creating a new fantasy world is just
thinking about the emotional impact that it will leave on a player.
[Lauren] Games that make you think, games that make you feel,
are really important.
We take a lot of inspiration from the environments around us.
[Andy] I love to go on hikes.
For me, it allows a chance to meditate, and be reflective.
[Lauren] A lot of times, we like to just go and walk.
And those kind of things have found their way into the game.
[Andy] Hopefully, when people experience "Zenith,"
and they enter the Amarite Forest for the first time,
they will get that same sense of awe, and peacefulness
that they might have gotten if they were wandering
the redwoods in northern California.
[Katherine] I like to see more elevation in general.
My favorite part of the process is definitely
when you're at the early phases, brainstorming ideas with the team.
[Andy] When we first started the game,
we only had the ability to run around the world.
And we didn't even think about adding gliding or climbing.
But it was after kind of exploring the game,
and really thinking about what VR can do differently,
we decided to include both.
And everybody really loved it.
[Colin Krausnick] The one thing I love is flying.
This new version is much more freeform, depending on how your hands are turned.
It feels very organic.
[Jessica Sweeney] We really had to adapt the environment,
and incorporate new elements to support that.
[Colin] I'd say in general, everything almost
is twice as difficult to do in VR,
just because you have to make so much more interaction.
All those interactions have to feel good.
[Andy] Being able to prototype really quickly was super-important.
And Unity allowed us to do that at a rate that wouldn't have been possible
with other engines.
[Jordan J.] DOTS has really allowed us to do things where we can have
literally hundreds of thousands of objects,
without compromising performance.
Compared to the MonoBehaviour workflow, it's really just like a new window
into a new era of games.
[Presenter] You guys hungry? I'm going to cook you guys some food.
[Andy] Building a community is just as
important as building the actual game itself.
[Lauren] It's pretty much the reason why you would choose to play
online versus offline.
There's a lot of online games that get reputations
for being not necessarily a place that you would feel safe being yourself.
I think that for us, we really want people
to feel like they can participate in the community.
Whether that means that you want to look a certain way, sound a certain way,
act a certain way... whatever you want to do,
you can feel empowered to really be yourself.
[Presenter] Hey, guys. How's it going?
[Lauren] We use Vivox with spatialized audio.
As people come closer to you, they get louder,
and you can hear if people are behind you, in front of you.
It just adds to this feeling of realism.
You can just turn to the person next to you and say,
"hey, do you want to do something?"
[Presenter] You guys want to do some swimming?
[Audience] Yes! I didn't even notice.
[Jordan J.] I think just building different systems in the game that
allowed these kinds of experiences to happen is really what makes it feel
special for me.
As the technology gets better, and better,
we want to try to be up there on the forefront of trying
to push forward the medium.
[Andy] It's something I've been dreaming of ever since I was a kid.
[Katherine] Seeing positive interactions gives me a lot of hope
about the trajectory of the game.
[Audience] That totally worked. Thank you.
[Lauren] My hope is that we can create a place that is vibrant,
and it's fun, but it's respectful, and safe.
Yes, it's a video game. But lessons in the game,
they still translate, and they still apply to the real world.
If we can do something like that that gives that kind of experience
to a lot of people, that becomes a cultural touchstone.
[Andy] My hope is that for games in the future,
they become more inclusive, and more welcoming,
and that they allow people to truly express themselves in ways that they
can't do in real life.
[musical sound effect]