What Indie Developers Should Know Before Building a VR Game

Introduction

VR has survived more than a decade of predictions that it would either transform entertainment or disappear completely.

The reality sits somewhere between those extremes. Steam’s Hardware Survey still places VR headset usage below 2%. Meta continues to invest heavily in the ecosystem, but VR has not developed into a mass-market platform comparable to PC, console, or mobile.

That does not mean independent developers cannot succeed. It means they need a clearer audience, stronger execution, and a more realistic business model before they begin.

Joe Mares has spent more than 22 years working across games, VR, themed entertainment, education, and interactive experiences. His experience includes large companies, recognized IPs, location-based entertainment, and several independent VR projects.

In this interview, Joe discusses the real state of the VR market, where opportunities still exist, and what small teams need to do exceptionally well to have a chance.

Main Topics:

• Indie Game Development
• VR Game Design
• VR Game Production
• VR Gameplay
• Location-Based VR
• VR User Experience
• VR Business Models
• Game Development

Interview

With Joe Mares, Creator of Sinister Inn and game and VR experience designer whose work includes Riot Games, Disney Imagineering, and Jurassic World VR Expedition

Q: VR headsets are used by less than 2% of Steam players. Where can indie VR developers still find players and make money?

Which areas still have real potential: Quest games, PC VR, fitness, horror, simulation, location-based entertainment, training, branded experiences, or B2B work?

Well the players and the headsets are out there, but you both need to be more realistic and read the room, but also think outside the box. It doesn’t make any sense to make a game that costs millions of dollars, because there’s not enough of a “gamer” player base that you can recoup that money from. It’s a good thing that fun doesn’t require an expensive budget. If you give people something familiar but that they have also never seen before, you’re on the right track. We love discovering new things, so the more you can facilitate that, the better chance you have of standing out and appealing to those players that are there.

Aside from that I wou;dn’t limit myself to “gamers with headsets”. VR can be fun for everyone so designing something to be a game for a gamer is already putting you in tight constraints on an already constrained industry. Make something a wider audience can enjoy, game mechanics aren’t the only way to have fun. VR can make you feel anything about any subject matter, and make you feel like you’re right there in that world. Take advantage of that power.

Which parts of the VR market look more promising from the outside than they really are?

I don’t know if it looks promising at all. VR has had its ups and down, but I feel like if anything it’s never lived up to its potential. I don’t think VR has found its killer app yet, I’m hoping to create it if no one else does!

Q: Why do some VR games still succeed in such a small market?

What does a small team need to do especially well? Does the game need an idea that only works in VR? What makes people understand it, buy it, and continue using their headset after the first few sessions?

YES, if your game can be built and be playable without VR, DON’T PUT IT IN VR. The experience you’re working on has to NEED to be in VR. VR is an engaging platform, and if you add an engaging mechanic on top of it, you’re going to lose one of them and it becomes a waste of time and resources. 

A small team just needs to make something fun, it doesn’t need a big budget, a million features or the latest technology. You just need to be authentic to yourselves, and express something unique that appeals to you. After that you can design it to be usable, accessible, intuitive etc. Check out my book Blueprint for Fun if you need more guidance on how to make things fun.

If people can see the game in their head by one single screenshot or just by the title alone, that’s how you know you’re on to something. “Epic Fight” (sorry if that’s an actual game) doesn’t really tell me anything, but “DON’T GET FIRED” already puts an image in my head. It can resonate with me and I can almost imagine the gameplay.

That’s how you know you’re off to a good start. Also when designing, really think about how people operate in real lives. Don’t automatically map video games mechanics and controls to VR. Think about what’s the most intuitive way to do or accomplish something.

You can reach a wider audience that way. I made a VR experience that the elderly really enjoy (Sinister Inn), don’t limit yourself by what’s been done before. The audience that’s underserved will thank you.

Q: What makes a VR game harder to build than a regular game?

You can discuss controls, movement, UI, animation, performance, player comfort, different headsets, and testing.

It’s harder if you’re trying to make a video game and trying to make how you want the player to move, jump, etc. as if they were playing on a screen. That is a fight not worth fighting. It’s actually easier in general to design a VR game because VR controls are more intuitive than video game controls. There is a level of disconnect when controlling a video game.

In a video game you have to press x in order to grab something, but in VR you do what you would do in real life, or at least close to it. You also don’t have to work as hard to be engaging in VR. The user is already inside a world that you made, you just need to be consistent in regards to presence so you don’t break the immersion.

So maintaining immersion is probably the only hard part. If you grab a bottle within arms reach, everything that doesn’t look nailed down needs to be grabbable or you lose presence.

Where do new VR teams usually underestimate the time, cost, or experience they will need?

By not understanding how VR works and not working with the strengths of VR. If you’re focused on moving mechanics like running and jumping, it’s going to be tough making that fun in VR and avoiding nausea at the same time. Work with VR’s strengths, I beg of you. Contact me at harbingeroffun.com if you need more details on that.

Q: Sinister Inn brings VR into physical venues instead of relying only on people who own headsets at home. Why did you choose this model, and has it made the business easier?

Who said your house can’t be haunted? Check out sinisterinn.com to see when it’s coming to your home 🙂

Does location-based VR make it easier to reach customers and earn money? What new problems does it create around venue sales, hardware, setup, staffing, reliability, and scale?

It’s definitely a wider audience. If you focus on location based entertainment your user base grows significantly but you also have to design for a more casual audience, even people who have never done VR before. Staffing, hardware etc. is a whole different animal on its own but yes those are definite considerations, knowing what you own, what the vendor owner owns, how staffing works.

It depends on your business model. For Sinister Inn we license it out to different venues for now. We may be scaling this on our own later. We’ll see!

Q: Before an indie team spends serious money on a VR game, what should it test first?

How can the team check whether the audience, gameplay, platform, price, and business model are realistic? Luckily that’s exactly what I do when you reach me at harbingeroffun.com Aside from that it needs to resonate. Like I said before, the person needs to see it and IMMEDIATELY understand what it is, the concept, the gameplay, or just the theme needs to excite them in some way. If it doesn’t resonate, nothing you do afterward will land, at all. Then you make it engaging with your story or mechanics or environment. Then you create tension, and then you create a discovery moment that cuts that tension. You can literally make a game about checking out a book at the library, and if you have those elements it’s going to be fun.

Which signs would tell you to continue, and which would make you remove VR or stop the project?

If you don’t know what you want the user to experience, stop. If you’re “finding the fun”, stop. If you’re building before there is a design, stop.

If you have a specific moment you want the user to experience, go. If the title or concept or notion of the idea makes you laugh or lights you up, go. If this is something you know the audience has never seen before but you know people will “get it”, go. If this is something that is a truly unique, unhomogenized expression of yourself, go.

You can make it fun afterwards. Fun isn’t a nebulous concept, it’s something that can be identified and tweaked.