There is an issue within the Virtual Reality development community of moving the player around the world. The technology hasn’t quite reached the ability to move forwards and backwards like in a traditional game without causing the players to get motion sick. What the majority of VR games do is allow the player to hop around by teleporting (games like The Lab and Vanishing Realms) by placing their reticle over a space in the distance and appearing there. This eliminates the motion sickness caused by moving like a player normally moves but takes away that level of immersion by constantly reminding players they aren’t actually in that world they are in a video game.
My solution is to create a game where teleporting is an integral part of the story and premise of the game. I would create a social deduction game where the player is a Private Investigator who has an ability similar to reading minds. In a similar investigation experience to L.A. Noire with the personal connection like in Her Story, the player is in a room with the suspects after the crime. They player is seated, people come to the player or the player can go into their mind from a distance and see things from their perspective, getting snippets of where they were during the crime or what they were doing. There’re benefits to both of these methods of investigation and the player needs to decide which one to use but has to account for time, the killer is out there and could strike again. Using the information gleaned from mind reading as well as the face to face questioning the player has to figure out what happened and solve the mystery. By making the teleporting a core part of the story players stay immersed and aren’t reminded every time they want to move that they’re in a VR headset and can’t move.
By making the teleporting a core part of the story players stay immersed and aren’t reminded every time they want to move that they’re in a VR headset and can’t move. They are able to lose themselves in the experience and this new mode of interacting solves the constraint of dealing with the motion sickness caused by VR.
Stephan Reilly 