Category: Dice

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DICE 2017: Magic Leap’s Graeme Devine on Ghost Girl Murder Mystery Game Concept

DICE 2017: Magic Leap’s Graeme Devine on Ghost Girl Mixed Reality Game Concept

Graeme Devine, Chief Game Wizard at Magic Leap, took the stage today at the DICE Summit 2017 in Las Vegas to talk about the future of mixed reality. Devine has been part of the digital games industry for more than 30 years, starting at Virgin Games in the ‘80s with stints at id Software, Ensemble Studios, Microsoft and Apple where he worked on a variety of projects from 7th Guest to Quake to Halo Wars. As Devine sees it, “The games industry will lead the way to mixed reality in every vertical” as it’s the only software technology that shows constant interaction with the end user.

But designing games in mixed reality will have its own set of challenges. When talking about how the video game industry has progressed over the past few decades, Devine says, “the worlds are much more beautiful, the graphics are much more stunning, but the world is still on the other side of a piece of glass where I play as Master Chief or Lara Croft. The challenge of mixed reality is to move game design on again, and it’s really hard because now the games happen on our side of the piece of glass, in our homes, to us directly, or at least the very cool ones will.”

Devine then went on to describe a mixed reality game concept he’s been talking about since as early as 2015, but he shared a few more details today on how interactive entertainment may play out on Magic Leap.

Graeme imagines an experience where you have a set of real wooden cubes that you place on a table. The tutorial of the game starts and explains how to use the cubes and how the interface can understand what real-world objects are. As you’re going through the tutorial, you hear a noise coming from an adjacent room, and see virtual lights flashing on and off. The lights get brighter and the noises get louder, compelling you to go investigate. Freaked out yet? Yeah, that’s the power of mixed reality!

“There in a room is a ghost,” Devine explains. “She looks directly at you – because she can because we know where your eyes are – and she points directly at you, and then she points past you behind you, so you look behind yourself and there on the ground in an outline of a dead body… in your house. And you turn back to look at Alice and she’s gone, and in your ear you hear ‘Will you help me?’ So now you’re on an adventure in your own house where a ghost is helping you solve a mystery that happened to you directly.”

Alice is the titular spirit of Ghost Girl, and you can communicate with her – and she you — by using the cubes. She can teach you a card trick with a real deck of playing cards, and she can interact with other real-world objects in your house, not in a corporeal sense, but by referencing them or shining lights or asking you to use them throughout your adventure.

Another neat concept Devine describes is how mixed reality experiences can interact with other forms of real-world media. Using Netflix’s Stranger Things as an example, he sees Alice and you hanging out on the couch watching the show and she says, “Well no one really calls it the Upside Down, not anymore, and it’s not really like that.” Alice may even suggest taking physical items you have in your house and doing interactive tasks with them, such as “This concept they have of putting Christmas lights up on the wall… we should do that! You should go get the Christmas lights out of your attic!”

Devine continues, “So we go to the attic and get the Christmas lights, we put A to Z under them, and all of a sudden we’re communicating with the other side. I’m doing things in the real world; these are not possible on a console, these are not possible on a laptop, they’re not possible on an iPad – these are things that can only happen in mixed reality.”

It all sounds frightfully eerie, but also very interesting and entertaining.

As part of his closer, Devine pushed hard that mixed reality must be a unique platform, it can’t just be an add-on. “It has to be perceived as differently as television is from radio, as radio is from newspaper,” explains Devine. “We need to create a compelling platform that people will line up for four days at Best Buy in the rain and snow.”

Now excuse me while I go put my coat, gloves and boots by the door…

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Oculus Engineers are Working to Make Rift Games More Compatible With Vive Hacks

Oculus Engineers are Working to Make Rift Games More Compatible With Vive Hacks

During a panel discussion at DICE Summit 2017, Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin was asked to discuss the concept of open platforms in the virtual reality industry. Rubin’s company has infamously been at the center of an exclusivity debate following its decisions to keep the games it funds on Oculus platforms only.

Rubin was asked by CEO of Insomniac Games Ted Price: “What would it take for Oculus to be more open to having its titles on other platforms?” By way of an answer, Rubin addressed the hacks and workarounds people are using to play Rift games on other platforms such as the HTC Vive.

“Just this week I played Dead and Buried with Vive users. I could tell they were Vive users,” Rubin said. According to him, he knew they were Vive users because their in game voice chat was being distorted by the “hacks they were using.” Rather than condemning these actions, Rubin claims that, “we have done nothing to stop this right now and in fact members of the team in Menlo Park are working now to fix the mic problem.“

Rubin’s comments here paint the picture of a much different company than the one that once patched one of its launch games to block users of a hack known as ReVive. That patch was later undone in an even further patch and Rubin is now admitting that Oculus is apparently moving from passive acceptance to actively fixing problems when it comes to these types of hacks. Rubin did not specify which hack he was referring to in this particular case.

Rubin’s response was that “[at Oculus] we totally agree [with the idea of an open platform]” adding that “this is an issue where we agree with the industry more than most people think.”

Jason Rubin and Ted Price at DICE Summit 2017

Rubin pointed to Oculus support of The Khronos Initiative as a sign of its commitment to keeping VR an open platform.“[At Oculus] we support the Khronos Initiative…if there was an open platform for VR we would support it…an open platform is never created by one company and the right way to do this is through the open standard……we believe in the open standard and we will be part of that ecosystem no matter what…it’s not that we don’t support openness, but right now is not the right time in our belief system with what’s available.” 

The “one company” Rubin is referring to is most likely Valve who’s Steam content distribution platform is hailed by many as a more open platform than Oculus’ own Home due to its willingness to make VR programs available to both Rift and Vive users.

Rubin, then would challenge the notion that a truly open platform for VR exists as of yet, even including Steam. Instead, he restated Oculus’ commitment to The Khronos Initiative and says that the company is “committed to join it.”

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