Tam Armstrong On the Nuances of XR & the Pillars of Immersive Gaming
This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Reality Labs, and we’re celebrating some of the developers who’ve made the last decade of magic possible. Last week, we interviewed Jesse Schell, a noted game designer, author, and CEO of Schell Games. Today, we’re catching up with Polyarc CEO & Co-Founder Tam Armstrong.
You likely know Polyarc as the dev team behind Moss and Moss: Book II. Epic adventures on a tiny scale, the Moss franchise introduced the world to Quill, a brave mouse with a huge amount of heart. Moss and Quill celebrated their sixth anniversary this year, and the studio behind them hits the one-decade mark next year. In fact, Moss and Moss: Book II recently received all-new visual and gameplay updates, including the ability to skip combat for the more casual players, for both Quest 3 and 3S. What better time to sit down with Armstrong for some reflection on their travels and a look at the road ahead?
Tam Armstrong: Having the opportunity to contribute to a fundamental change in the way people play games was an exciting prospect. Many of the game developers I’ve admired the most were contributors to new ways of making and playing games. It was an exciting idea to try and be a part of that legacy.
TA: That’s right. For just shy of two months, fellow Co-Founder Danny Bulla and I worked with the Rex team to support the creation of some early game prototypes. We worked with that team through two short development cycles that consisted of breaking up into multiple small teams, drafting up a two-page project summary, and then building a playable demo in the span of about three weeks. The thing that stands out to me the most from that process was how, over such a short period of time, we made lasting friendships with the folks on the Rex team. The creative intensity of that time really bonded the team together.
TA: The exciting opportunity to help define the conventions of a new medium for games while also possibly creating something truly new and special was what convinced us. We were lucky to be connected with peers in the game industry who gave us the opportunity to see VR very early on, and it felt like we were able to see a glimpse of the future and recognize its potential.
TA: I’d say the biggest thing I personally carried over from what I learned in traditional game dev is that one needs to respect the player’s intention. We have many systems and design structures that infer from raw input what the player is trying to do. It was rewarding early on to build versions of those for the physical interaction in virtual reality. It’s rewarding to have playtests and watch players begin to forget about the simulation and rules in the machine as the games get progressively more natural to play.
TA: At Polyarc we talk about three big pillars of immersive gaming:
- The joy of physical interaction. While the feedback channels for a hands-free AR experience are not the same as controller-based VR, the underlying feature that physical interaction drives us to connect with and literally lean into the game remains.
- The power of emotional resonance. We observe that the more the game respects your presence by offering you all kinds of feedback, the more powerful the experience. As an industry, we often talk about a dust mote being moved by your hand, a blade of grass bending out of the way, or physical objects you can pick up or knock down. However, the most powerful form of feedback is another living and breathing being making eye contact with you and sharing an emotion.
- The suspension of simulation disbelief. In VR, this is often described as presence—the feeling that you’re in a real place. The AR version of this is the mirror—the feeling that the simulated objects around you are real and in your physical world.
This last pillar informs the development of our games in many ways. In terms of our game content, this is what informs the fact that all of our interactive objects, character movements, and sounds carry energy with them. Particularly when bringing these objects into our world, they need to have a sense of weight and realness to them. In terms of our playtesting, one of our primary goals is to find any moments where the suspension is failing and the player is pulled back into the real world. This can happen when the game glitches, the frame rate drops, or even when a player simply gets too frustrated or uncomfortable.
TA: Quill’s design was an iterative process with Co-Founder Chris Alderson and Animation Director Richard Lico back in the very earliest days of Polyarc in 2015. Her scale was influenced by the game mechanics and a desire to have a reachable gameplay space in a 1:1 scale world with a character at its center. The player’s interactions with her were a product of the second pillar above. We wanted the player to form a bond with Quill, and we felt part of that was making her seem aware of and have feelings about what was going on in the game. This is what motivated everything from her pointing out a solution to a puzzle (emphasizing her awareness) to her celebrating a victory by high-fiving you (emphasizing her feelings).
TA: We’re already exploring mixed reality experiences! We believe the answer to whether a game would be better as fully immersive or as mixed reality depends heavily on the game design and the desired player experience. Just as some types of video are better suited to one screen format over another, we expect to see differences in types of games based on format with a healthy amount of overlap between the two.
TA: The biggest advancements in the XR space, in my opinion, are in comfort and user experience. The less someone needs to think about setting up, putting on, and wearing their device, the more opportunity they’ll have to get lost in their game or activity.
TA: Like the differences between VR and MR, I think there will be a space for all these things. I’m not expecting a major advancement outside of this list for quite a bit longer. If we think about immersive computing as a general platform for computing, I expect to see hand tracking and eye tracking be the most widely utilized, with peripherals like keyboards for work and controllers for more dedicated gaming being the norm a lot like they are now with our current computing devices. I expect controllers to continue to be important to game players within this medium, and for the wider audience to expand around that core over time.
TA: In all the time I worked on games prior to starting Polyarc, I don’t think I’d ever seen as many tears of joy, appreciation, or heartfelt sorrow as I have with Moss and this medium. There’s something powerful about the emotional experience one can have in VR, and I cherish those moments of player vulnerability that I was privileged to witness.
TA: When we started, the hype was big and a lot of folks thought things would be moving fast. We took a more cautious approach, believing that this shift was so fundamental it was more like the development of personal computers or the internet itself. Ten years later, I see increasing confidence that the hype has passed, and we are on our way to a true foundation for a new kind of human-computer interaction.
TA: I’m most excited to share feelings with more players of our games and to help support the creation of the games that foster those feelings with the wonderful people here at Polyarc.
TA: I’d just like to say thank you to anyone who has worked in or played in this space with us over the last 10 years. It has been a life-changing experience for me personally, and I feel gratitude.
For more, check out our podcast episode with Polyarc Designer Doug Burton and Artist Coolie Calihan where they talk about their experience working on the original Moss plus their favorite moments from the sequel. And if you haven’t met Quill for yourself, dive into her adventures today. Score the bundle to save 30% off both titles, or you can pick up Moss or Moss: Book II individually with promo code MOSSONQUEST-4CF439 to save 25%.
