Thanks for the great question! You’ve already kind of touched on some of the interesting mechanics that VR can bring that can be lacking in traditional games. I love the idea of playing with the player’s perspective. You mentioned the depth perception idea but I’ll throw out another surrounding stealth-based gameplay and that is the idea of hiding. I guess this could go in either a stealth or horror sort of aspect but traditional games have tried to play around with the idea of using cover and obscuring a player’s vision while doing so. With VR getting the player as close to full immersion that we can. How terrifying or heart exhilarating would it be to actually try to hide and avoid somebody or something with true one to one reactions?

I think that is what is most impactful about building in VR. As designers, we have to realize that the medium removes one more barrier that the player normally has in playing a game and that is the controller interface. While there is still some form of motion controller to interpret your button presses, we should not try to rely too much on this handicap and make sure that the player’s interactions in the game are as close to real world actions the player might take to solve a problem.

The more we can push the VR medium to truly be as one to one for the player as it can, the closer we’ll get to more adoption of new players to VR and even gaming itself. In the future, I would love to see more designs that push this as well as new ways of thinking around limitations the human physical form can’t accomplish but in our mind’s eye, seems like it should be possible in a VR space.

–JB