The Challenge

Our company is currently developing a VR game called "The Raft" for StarVR, a proprietary VR hardware system for IMAX. The Raft is unique in that multiple players will exist in the same physical space while cooperating to stay alive in their environment. The setting is a haunted river in the deep South, and players don the roles of several rednecks sporting 80s-inspired technology.

I'm not a super fan of the theme, but it would have been really awesome to work on the project regardless. I particularly love cooperative games, and designing systems to encourage player behavior is one of my greatest strengths and passions. Despite asking, I wasn't picked for the project. That hurt, but at least I was given a month's respite on a toys-to-life prototype for Hasbro in July. I'm currently back on Bold Moves, and very anxious to move off of it for both resume and sanity reasons.

Lately the client has come back and challenged our studio to a match of Guns of Icarus, an online game that I'm very familiar with, and a frequent cited reference for the direction they'd like to take The Raft. Everyone at work seems excited by the opportunity, but I'm completely embarassed for us. IMAX assures us that we 'should beat them easily' in the upcoming match, but the message is obvious: 

"It's clear that you either haven't played or do not understand the source material that we constantly reference, despite months of design talks. We want proof that you have played this game and understand it."

This is a pretty embarrassing situation for us to be in, especially as professionals. We appear to have so little understanding of the game we're developing that we need to offer proof that we've at least played their most-referenced source game. I'd since accepted that I wasn't part of the project, but hearing this news this last week is extra disheartening. You don't have to have a passion for the specific type of game you're developing to understand the core premise of what you're trying to achieve. That's kind of what defines one as a game dev. Instead, we come across as software developers that just happen to write code for games, and the creative direction has to come from outside the studio because we look like we have no idea what we're doing.

I've been pretty frustrated with work lately. It's hard to have to stand by and watch the ball be dropped like this while being stuck on a game without any creative needs left to it.