Meta Horizon Worlds Spotlight: Sensei_Jay

Welcome back to our weekly spotlight on the people building for Meta Horizon Worlds and their amazing creations.

Last week we woke up after a very, very long sleep aboard a beleaguered spacecraft—and had to figure out how to save ourselves and our ship—in gausroth’s Derelict.

This week, we checked in with Sensei_Jay, a very popular creator who’s built many of his own worlds and also helped many others with theirs.

I was first introduced to VR by a friend who showed me his Meta Quest 2 headset. I knew right away I wanted one, and since my birthday was coming up, I bought myself one as a gift.

I have a degree in marketing, so I've trained myself to always look for a need that’s not being filled. For example, I noticed that many people really like Paddle Golf, but there were no other paddle golf courses out there in Worlds. So I built Paddle Golf: The Canyon Course.

At the same time, I like taking great ideas and improving on them. So in my golf world, I added a scorecard mechanic that tracks everyone’s scores and makes them available for all to see.

As a world builder, my goal is to always create an amazingly positive experience for visitors. I start by coming up with a list of benefits the world needs to offer, and then I figure out the features that manifest those benefits. For example, when I created The Chess Room, it was important that the chess-playing mechanic was easy to understand, worked efficiently, and never impeded players’ choices. So visitors can play a real game of chess, set up chess puzzles, lessons, or even previous games for others to see, just like they could with a physical chess board.

I’m a videographer, video editor, and VFX artist. Programming is mostly a hobby for me. One of my first worlds was The Hipster Cafe', and I built it specifically to shoot a four-minute short film called The Horizon Hipsters.

And it’s become my real life job to take care of the videography needs of many of the highest-quality creators in Worlds.

If you want to be a successful creator in Worlds, mutually beneficial collaboration is key. Developing win-win relationships for building, scripting, and testing worlds enhances the creative process in an astonishing fashion. I can’t imagine not collaborating with other creators.

If I were talking to someone with an idea for a world, I’d suggest they just start. Draw out a few sketches, look at some inspirational reference photos, talk to a few people to get a little constructive feedback, and then start grayboxing the world out. Build in big, broad strokes first, and then go back and take care of the details.

The real value of Worlds isn’t in its technical aspects so much as in its social elements. There are lots of computer games that are visually brilliant, but there’s nothing like Worlds for creating a tremendously impactful social experience. I also believe the potential for working, learning, playing, and socializing in VR is fantastic. It’s opening doors for people who are elderly, shut in, disabled, socially anxious, or even just separated from their loved ones, and it allows them to foster relationships that will last a lifetime.

Social media has changed how we interact with people, whether they're friends, family, or coworkers. Interacting with those same people in VR takes that dynamic to the next level. There’s absolutely nothing like the totally immersive social experience that can only be achieved in VR.

While I enjoy playing VR games such as GOLF+, NFL PRO ERA, and The Thrill of the Fight, my favorite VR experience is Worlds. There’s nowhere else I can go and always find friends and interactive experiences like I can in Worlds.