GenesisVR, the God game in VR and crowd-sourced design

So the idol is a static thing right? Meaning it drops down from the sky and then it sits there perhaps having some kind of influence. Then there's an avatar as well? I'm sorry, with all the work I've been doing lately I haven't really had the time to follow all the comments in depth.

You are speaking about the physical appearance of the player's hands being tied to the idol. I'm interested what the idea of the idol is in the game. What effects are you considering it to have right now? I mean effects that are affecting the NPC's rather than the player, if any at all.

There are two things going through my head right now:

1: If there is no gameplay statistic that sigifies which people are 'your people', it'd be the player's own sense of affinity that makes a people 'your people'. Does the game really need to signify it any further, and if so, what if that was a choice available to the player as an alternative?
I mean, you could choose to feel an affinity with a faction in the game, or you could actually use gameplay mechanics to claim a peoples (wether those people like it or not). And which option of the two you choose has consequences. This then becomes another layer of 'what kind of god are you?'.

2: With idols, I think largely in the direction of 2001: Space Odessey's monolith, which was used to 'uplift' homo sapiens into a technologically advanced species by influencing their ideas. (it influences the apes at the start of the story to come up with the idea of using tools) In that sense, monoliths aren't so much a tool of claiming ownership as it is a tool of influence. But if there's only one idol per player, wouldn't a sense of ownership naturally come forth from having to choose which faction to use it on?

Well, if the player can't be motivated to guide a people because they come to feel some affinity for them, then there's a problem.
Thing is, creating an adversary basically won't work because as a god, you're just too powerful. If you weaken the player to deal with this, then you lose the sense of being a god, and if you give him the power that makes him feel like a god, then any adversary is easily dealt with, making the game easy if the adversary is what provides a sense of purpose to the player.

So it's the weakness of the chosen people that dictates the pace of progress. It's those people's progress that should feel like the player's progress. So destroying everything except for the chosen people should feel like a failure. Perhaps if the player does this, then the people surrender their free will, which creates a fail-state.

Perhaps the spawnpoint can be generated by letting the player choose his own set of commandments before play (a character creation type of thing) and those commandments are used to find a starting location for the player near 2 different people, one of those has very opposing commandments, the other has less opposing commandments. But should the player want to, they can explore further and ignore those two peoples.

I actually have more difficulty with a win-state. Let's say you get a people to match your own commandments, and they worship you and have no current enemy left near them. You could use this as a win state, but it feels a bit like the win-state of a Total War game, where they then give you the option to keep going instead of ending the game there, and it always feels more fun to keep going.

Now that you put it that way, it sounds awesome. It almost makes me want to help you develop this game full-time. Almost. (Yeah, here I am saying it as if someone needs someone like me at all, haha)

How about lots of different factions that want you to be their god and the game is to try to get to the right group for you. So your power idol is taken by a Faction with certain commandments (A,B & C) by you want to have (a faction with) A, F & Z, so somehow you need that faction to come get you, or move you somewhere closer to where you want to be, by making yourself more attractive\unattractive with miracles. 

Once with your desired faction you try to increase that influence to take over the others.

This isn't immediately related to what's been posted lately, but as I've been diving in and out of some low end VR stuff recently (I picked up a Google Cardboard headset, in particular the ViewMaster VR, for anyone interested), I felt like I might be able to better contribute some edge case stuff. It's already been mentioned that the aim is to avoid heavy menu use where possible, which is definitely a good way to go from what I've been seeing.

However, you will have to have some menus somewhere. I don't know in what ways this has been considered so far, but I seriously hope that right at your feet has been thrown out. That has to be the worst, most awkward placement for menu items I think I've ever seen. Wanna exit a level? Okay, first stare at your feet. Tweak options? Feet stare.

It just feels way off. For that matter, "focus" interaction for selecting the menu options also feels a little too loose. I think if you're going to use that option, it should be accompanied by some gesture or physical switch pull/press to better connect the interaction. To my surprise, the base ViewMaster VR apps actually had a fairly clever idea with this, which won't apply to the Vive as much but might still be useful in some regard, which was to employ taps to the screen (in Vive's case, perhaps taps to regions of space?) to lock/unlock stuff like the camera movement. Nothing too outlandish, sure, yet something I've not noticed too many other Cardboard apps taking advantage of, despite many kits coming with magnetic/capacitive buttons.

Coming up with some means to lock view over a region probably isn't too much of a concern with the positional tracking though, now that I think about it, but if you ever wanted to stretch the player's presence somehow, that might be something to think about...Although I don't think that would work all that well.

More I think about it, the less I think what I observed may be valuable depending on how many buttons are available with the Vive controllers. Many of the headset minus positional tracking problems are easily resolved with controllers and tracking. Guess maybe the only one that might not be as much is the jump from the game to non-VR desktop, but even that's resolved through lifting off the headset to look at your monitor sooo...

Regardless:
-Wherever/however you implement menus, please no looking straight up/down.
-To a degree, lock in view on that menu once it's opened if you can. Yes, it's cool to be able to look around the menu, maybe the first few times, but after that, it just feels unwieldy.
-Avoid focus selections for stuff without accompaniment of trigger pull or button press, as it feels too loose. (Or provide a toggle for this method.)
-Consider view position lock in through gesture/tapping of space to better orient self around focus area/object or otherwise "stretch" presence.
-Gracefully bridge jump from game to non-VR environments however possible.

Edit:
More to the recent post:
Here's a curious idea, what if you create a compromise of people selection? Similar to Lord Ba'al's and morsealworth's ideas of they select you or you're placed in the middle for them to fight over, what if instead you weren't an idol, but a totem? The trick being that, as they fight among themselves thinking they've the right deity backing them, they're in reality dealing with aspects of you as a player, making it so that in some sense you're fighting yourself as you try to sift between them.

This could in turn create a "win" state of trying to recompile your powers, albeit in an augmented state. A destructive deity would come out with a wrathful victory as their powers were reshaped into more insidious means as your actions incited more volatile beliefs between the people (in particular, what's meant here is that you integrate even disbelief abilities with successful conquest of an enemy people). A more benign deity would come out with essentially the opposite, and a balanced deity would create a stalemate or diplomatic peace with a peculiar balance of the two, just as a few examples.

"Lose" state might be a matter of balancing out belief/disbelief, so that if any aspect is thoroughly overwritten with disbelief abilities, it locks itself from being reclaimed creating a particular challenge in approaching other peoples (i.e. using direct intervention or indirect intervention through letting peoples wipe each other out). Maybe even make this a basis for the emergence of fully opposing deities, which then compete to wipe you out from recompiling completely?

Biggest idea basically being:
-All opposing deities are in reality aspects of the player deity, i.e. totems.
-"Win" state is the recompilation of those aspects/totems.
-"Lose" state is the lockout of multiple aspects/totems via disbelief.

 Commandment was not what I meant, sorry I used the wrong word what I meant it more to indicate a set of your values as a god like kind, benevolent, peaceful or unkind, cruel, violent etc. not "thou shall not be violent".

You guys move really fast!

Ok firstly Aynen, what you said in that first sentence is a critical question and one I've been trying to keep within sight the whole time. The method of motivation that I keep seeing on that front is that the player can spend time at their own pace watching the factions and react accordingly

Exactly - adversity as a God is a weird exercise without going into God-Battle tropes. Which is where I wanted to split the gameplay loops of NPCs and Avatar (you) so that we could create an 'adversary' in the NPC-NPC interactions, whilst essentially looking at ways that a different loop addresses your gameplay as a God. The thing is, I instinctively believe that God vs. God gameplay is just not that engaging and feels like forcing a type of gameplay system on players who might not necessarily find that compelling. Remember that Jupiter was supposed to have opt-in combat? I think this is a point that 22Cans had early on designed to facilitate too.

The creation of fail-states are actually not as rigid as we assume here - the idea is that we can define partial failures, subjective failures, contextual failures or instead delegate that term to resolution: B, C, D for outcomes of tasks/objectives/obstacles. I might be floaty on this because it is still premature, with closed gameplay loops, or mechanics, those fail/success states become adjustable or can be scaled.

On the topic of commandment picks before play, that's the general 'extension of scope' I want to aim for by including an idol. The visual representation of an idol, or the customization before start of gameplay session, can open the field for a number of these concepts to be considered. The spawn point picking between two people, however, becomes an interesting design/technical challenge - how do we get the AI to pathfind the idol to a position between two factions on separate islands? Would this provide one AI an advantage that is outside of the player decision making process? What if we had 4, 6, 10 villages? What if the idol is spawned into a location where no NPC pawn can pathfind? - this isn't a process of shooting that idea down, but instead stress testing it and giving some idea of the decision making trees I considered with the original idea of player-driven placement.

The 'win' state is something that is bothering me - I'm in favor of starting the build development with sandbox play and fleshing content/depth out. A win state can be something that we work towards as we identify what, if anything, people like doing in the game. Otherwise, trust me on this, I'm a sandbox player. On Total War, I've never finished a campaign and absolutely love starting them over and over again.

Addressing gillburt's comment, I can see that suggestion a fairly bit more clearly. Adding any degree of complexity into the game is never an easy feat, but I think if I can start thinking about how each population is defined by rules for reference in AI systems, we can start prototyping them. NPC archetypes, God archetypes, things start fitting together. Just ironing out the process of adoption will be key. Maybe, if you wait long enough, someone does choose you? That could be a valid form of promoting both types of progressing gameplay.

morsealworth - we're definitely going to do the Skype call with people thing. I do a fair amount of work outside of work hours, so for me it could be chatting with people and figuring out a good time to do some community chats. It'll be really good for us to even do share-screen paper prototyping stuff. So far the entire exchange here has been super rewarding and surprisingly not as intimidating as I first thought it might go (everyone has an idea of a God game, but we all have an idea of a God game, so we're trying to find our idea of a God game). Also your ideas have been rad.

Lord Ba'al - I purposefully shied away from picking the start spot, I think I'm leaning on the Civ method of 'roll for spawn' but wanted to be forgiving on being able to just up and relocate. The rest of your idea, I'm actually doing some thumbnail painting of because the idea of you being the spark of conflict or rivalry is a fantastic way to start the game. Almost too fitting to how your presence, by existence alone, is a disruption to the people there.

Spiderweb - I think we're starting to find some overlapping agreement on NPC archetypes and God archetypes. I've been chatting a bit with one of our developers who has advised ways of setting out the design of the NPC manager and also definitions of NPC behaviors, the types of rules they use and their logic. An example he provided was the food one; if I have food, I must check that I have X wood, if I have X wood, I will spawn a house and NPC pawn etc. The behaviors that govern the execution of that logic might be variations of that. I'm doing some language reading on AI programming theory tomorrow, so I'll be able to write it in the right... syntax and rule? Blackboard rules? If anyone here does AI programming, feel free to step in.

Gmr Leon - Cardboard is awesome! My boss actually did a talk here in Australia at GCAP this year on VR best practices and integration of human psychology. Best practices in VR don't... really.. call for menus to be at your feet what the f- ? I'm not 100% sure why that is a thing, but it's not really anything by what I would consider good UX design. One of the things we do in our office is experimental mechanics practices in VR, so developing new interaction methods, testing different movement/tracking/avatar actions etc. Today, for example, I got to bounce around a room in VR in micro-gravity, including pushing off walls and launching myself using my arms. It's just a part of tech development. GenesisVR, for example, was first a movement and interaction prototype that wanted to test a good/comfortable method of navigating over villages on an island using motion-tracked controllers in VR. It has worked resoundingly well, and I was really pissy about people speculating on the gameplay elements of it until I got to do something like this with a community first. I wanted to repeat that we will be aiming for a non-VR release/PC release as well. I'm straight up not going to promise or scope anything on par with something like Universim, but I can say that mouse/keyboard and gamepad controller will be interaction methods we've decided to implement. Also the messed up thing in coincidence is that the locked view on menu thing is something in a prototype test we're looking at for diegetic UI displays in VR (like, focus on your menu on your arm, the view is locked as you navigate items, we had that discussion this morning). Whatever track of VR analysis you are doing by trying these things out, keep at it!

--on totem idea; I think if I understand here that there is a composition of beliefs that are indicated by physical assets (totem/totem parts) and your actions begin to align these into certain directions? I think there is something interesting here, but it'd have to be balanced by the proposition that there are no enemy Gods. I do understand though, that your 'parts' are essentially embodied by NPC AI behavior sets across the island.

The entire game is an emergent mechanic (especially because of this forum), all games are combinations of mechanical prototypes proving to be fun working in concert with each other without catching fire. Or fire if desired.

The thought I have here, though, is that sounds like it risks integrating the god aspect into the simulation, which while it may be entertaining to watch, loses part of the game in the process. Then again, I think you may have covered this exact point earlier in the conversation and I've overlooked it.

Might be also that you dissolve the whole god part into the people with your interactions and their use/the occurrence of divine abilities basically representing you without them being directly employed by you, only sown through however you've guided the situation up to that point. Extremely hands off, but not leaving everything to be simulated, if that's what's sort of being aimed at. Also flows with Aynen 's earlier mention of feeling "your" progress through the people's progress.

Stuck at what might characterize the player's interactions at that point, but may just need to review earlier posts to see what's been said on that.

Yeah...They were free games, so chances are it's some devs throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks and fits. That...Definitely does not. Might be worth tossing an email those devs' way to point that out, come to think of it, hopefully they'd dig it. Also, doh about the non-VR release version, I had double checked the OP for what control interfaces you were using and noted no mobile release, but didn't catch that part. That should make things...Interesting. That already expands things to require two distinct control schemes, but if handled well, shouldn't be too problematic. As to pinning menus to virtual space, it figures, that's something I imagine many, many VR devs will be/are figuring out around now, especially as some are likely going to target around the Rift launch for their releases to get in on early adopters' (and their own) ignorance of what makes a good/great VR experience.

As to totems: essentially, yes. If you were to think of each totem as representing a box of divine qualia, whatever those may be (e.g. aggression/peace/wisdom/etc.), they're divvied up by the people somehow and how you guide each affects them in different ways. The balance emerges as you fight with yourself to become however you/they envision you to be while perhaps denying the complete loss of full realization or emergence of other gods.

It's a very rough idea at best, especially as the whole fight with yourself idea is mainly exposed through the people's conflicts with each other, as the idea is that in the same fashion that your interactions affect them, their behavior reflects you (and your interactions). Probably the most peculiar notion there is the possibility for the arising of a more typical enemy deity, which could just as easily be scrapped for something else.