Interview: A $3 Million Job Simulator Behind the Scenes

"Job Simulator" may be one of the biggest surprises of VR content that has emerged in the past year. The company's development company, Owlchemy Labs, also received more than $3 million in revenue.

At the DICE summit last month, the CEO of Owlchemy Labs was interviewed by VentureBeat. The following is an interview record.

What do you think about the impact of Job Simulator?

Accidental joy. We previously announced that last year’s game’s sales exceeded US$3 million. Seen in many places, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Live, and more.

At the time of making, we think that the owners of VR hardware will not be the main users. They will share with friends and family because VR is rare. What we want to do is not a game where you have to understand the background story to play. Instead, you can just give it to a friend and tell him "I have no brain to play."

We also won many awards. It feels good, but it is also very strange. The peculiar reason is that if you tell others about the game's game, the other person will be surprised: "Why do I want to work in the game?"

You already understood that VR's market size in the first year will not be big?

I don't think this is a market size thing, but what I need to think about is what is the use of VR in the first year? There will not be a game that can play 40 hours in a row, and there will be recyclable gameplay on a mature platform.

Tell us about the history of Owlchemy?

We have been doing mobile games and PC games since 2010. At the time we only had four people. Using Unity we launched four games.

Then Oculus DK1 changed everything. We believe that the future development depends on this. Later we got the developer version of Vive. The interaction between the room scale and the hands completely refreshed our understanding, which means that we have to rethink the game development and design, and it starts from scratch. The most interesting part of "Job Simulator" comes from Room scale and hand interaction.

Can your 3 million US dollars fill in the expenses?

Some hard to say. Many people think we are very successful, but that depends on how you define success. Survios (Raw Data Developer) has released some figures just like us, but it is not enough. Everyone is still discussing whether the entire VR ecosystem is big enough. Can any practitioner succeed? I think the world is about “reasonable” II. Word's: If your expectations are reasonable, then you will always find some kind of success. But some people will always think: If I invest $100 million, can the games you develop give me double returns? The fact is that the market for VR is not yet able to accommodate games of this size.

What happened to your next work, Rick and Morty?

We haven’t finalized the release date yet. The only certainty is that we will land on Vive. That's it. In addition, Justin Roiland, the dub of Rick and Morty's original TV series, also participated in our development. We have been developing this game for about a year now and we have encountered a lot of challenges, such as 3D modeling, and a more sophisticated 3D model in the VR environment.

In comparison to Job Simulator, only 4 of you developed 16 months?

True, 16 months is all the time in this cycle. Now we are doing "Rick and Morty" while still trying new projects, and at the same time "Job Simulator" for PS VR and Oculus Touch.

"Job Simulator" is very humorous, I think humorous game belongs to your world?

Tim Schafer is the key figure that keeps the humor element in the game going. In the past, many adventure games were humorous, but they are becoming less and less. We set ourselves a goal that we should not be serious about our games. This is true for us from the earliest games to the current VR games. This is very important to us.

VR is very special, it can stimulate people's natural childhood. Even serious business people in suits and ties are instantly infected when they experience "Job Simulator." I think because in VR you forget the people around you.

It seems that many companies are afraid of humor.

It's not easy to do it well. I can't say that we did a good job because the humor needs to take into account the player's participation, so this is a risk factor.

For Job Simulator, we set a background premise in the product prototype period: a robot can do all the work of the future world. Under this premise, whether it is a designer or something else in our team, we must think: "When I'm designing an office computer keyboard or a kitchen mixer, what will these things be like in this strange future world?" You need to understand this premise, and then have some sense of humor.

The sense of humour is also something we need to consider when recruiting, so that we can do a bath together instead of one person to do one thing.

What do you think about the prospect of VR?

Our company's belief has always been that we should understand that the VR market will grow to the point where analysts predict far more than they predicted. When we were working on "Job Simulator", the Gear VR in the market claimed to have the highest shipment volume, Vive had not appeared yet, Oculus was the only choice in the high-end area, and PS VR was only in the concept stage. Our design concept is: "The standard for VR interaction is to use two hands and one head. These three parts all need to be tracked." So we can't just play with Gear VR. We took some risks because we didn't know what kind of controllers Sony and Oculus would have. Fortunately, we were right.

Do you think Nintendo will enter the VR market?

Only aesthetically speaking, we feel at heart that the image of Mario will not be out of date. And I think too much about the question of who will win in this war. I think this is a wrong way of thinking. Because I don't think this will be a game after a big fight to decide a winner, it will be a hegemony, like the Android market. This is why we do not do exclusive. What about Nintendo? What about Apple? Who knows?

Keyboard Case For Huawei

For protected the huawei tablet, our company produce huawei smart keyboard or Bluetooth Keyboard case can qutomatically pair with huawei pad once it securelty clicks in place, transforming your tablet into a portable laptop. protecting your tablet against sratches and damages anywhere you go. This kind of leather case is not only a leather case,The leather case keyboard is a kind of leather case with Bluetooth keyboard that can be connected to and protect ipad. After plugging into the USB interface of the relevant device (or connecting via Bluetooth pairing), you can use an external keyboard to type.

huawei m6 keyboard case,m5 pro keyboard case,Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Case for HUAWEI,Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Case

Dongguan Jupu Electronic Co.,Ltd , https://www.jupumade.com