First Contact Entertainment Debuts ROM: Extraction
An exclusive conversation with Hess Barber and Matt Candler
VR sci-fi action shooter ROM: Extraction, for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, has just been unlocked. Described as “a fast-paced homage to the classic arcade shooter” by makers First Contact Entertainment — founded earlier this year by a team that included many Starbreeze veterans — the game “challenges players to survive against an attacking defense system while on a mission to extract a highly volatile energy matter.”
There Is Only R spoke with First Contact co-founder and president Hess Barber and chief revenue officer Matt Candler, who’s responsible for partnerships and business development. (In October, the company announced that it had raised $5 million in early-stage investment.) Barber, an ex-creative producer at Starbreeze whose team now has three years of VR experience, and Candler, previously of Skybound and Paramount Digital, described why they chose to apply their years of gaming experience to this new platform.
Barber and Candler explained that today’s release is “just scratching the surface” — intended to introduce ROM’s story, characters and environment. (Which, as you’ll find from the video below — watch in HD, they advised! — is like nothing you’ve ever seen.) They teased us with talk of their DLC (downloadable content) plan, which they promise will include a “theme-based multiplayer experience” involving “movement around a larger environment” next year. And they shed insight into what gaming VR and non-entertainment VR uses like medicine can learn from each other.
There Is Only R: What are some of the limitations on narrative in this first iteration of ROM?
Hess Barber: To experience a really good blend of narratives within the game obviously takes a lot of time. To get realistic characters and to solve the problem of blending storytelling experiences. We’re definitely working on that, so we can bring the player in and out of game play, but without taking them right out of the experience. So they don’t have to watch a screen while they wait for their game.
There’s a lot of really cool stuff we’re working on. But with ROM, we just wanted to really get this out. We wanted to show a core mechanic which we think is fun, and then introduce the world to the universe of ROM. This is just scratching the surface. It gets you in that feeling straightaway and it’ll start to introduce people to the story.
And then over the next year or so with DLC, we’re going to introduce all the real story elements. We’re going to have the player meeting characters and being in that world. But yeah, that just takes more time.
Upload praised ROM and said it meets the goals you set out. What was the process that got you to this point, based on what you and your partners learned in the pre-VR era? What were the biggest challenges?
Hess Barber: We’ve previously done two VR experiences and been working in VR for about three years. We’ve learned a lot of what feels good, what doesn’t feel good, what makes people sick, what doesn’t. A lot of the rules you just learn over time in this new industry, combined with our years of knowledge of game-making, and tricks: how to get Call Of Duty levels working at 60 frames, and now with new rules, VR has to work at 90 frames. That stuff. Hitting triple-A quality and visual quality while achieving those frameworks at the same time.
So it’s a good formula for us that’s kind of fallen into place. The VR fit really well, and we’ve taken from all our experiences together in the last few years to come up with some really basic, clever, feel-good mechanics. We came up with that within a week or so initially, and built the product around that.
In the ’90s when you began working in gaming, VR existed. But the technology wasn’t there to do what you do now. Was there a change in your mindset?
Hess Barber: Definitely. Making traditional games is definitely what we’ve known, and we saw how limited Virtual Boy was in the ’90s, but it was great to see that little spark for the future and then wait for it come.
We’d seen a bit of VR before that. It occurred to us when we were working on The Walking Dead. We weren’t particularly sold too much at that point. We’d messed around with Oculus, but of course, using a normal Xbox control with Oculus made us literally sick. For us that wasn’t the solution to VR.
We built The Walking Dead using an actual physical gun that you held in your hand that you used for the experience. That was interesting for us, because we had to do a little bit more than just the controller.
Following that, we worked on more projects in Unreal with Vive. That was what really clicked. It was like a no-brainer for us. The control system was there with the Vive. The roomscale was there, stability. It was finally at a point where we could really open up that box of crazy design ideas and incorporate things into the arc the way that we’ve always dreamed one day of doing. That was when it was like “We don’t need to do normal games anymore, we need to do VR.”
There’s still relatively low market saturation for these devices. Is there any frustration at the limits to the size of audience you can get?
Matt Candler: We’re excited about how fast it’s growing. I think it has definitely reached a tipping point with what’s happened with Sony and the PSVR. That’s a great price point, and a lot of consumers are adopting that product. So I don’t think there’s any frustration. We just really decided to keep reaching new customers and putting out great concepts.
Vive has captured a lot of developers and early VR users. Do you see the landscape changing in the near term and is it already affecting your development? How much do you think will continue to be centered on the Vive, versus PlayStation, Oculus, or new entrants like Apple?
Hess Barber: We definitely love all these different SKUs and platforms that are coming along, and the developments are just great for us in general as a software developer. We don’t want to be tied to any one platform, it just doesn’t make sense.
We did initially choose Vive because the control system was there and it was already working. Then recently we’ve seen the Oculus touch controllers come out, and we have the game coming out on Oculus using those controllers — it’s very much controller-based, which is what was making our decision on any platform.
We’re also porting the game over to PSVR right now as well, with their controllers. We’ve run into different variations of precision, and there are little differences between each one of course, which we have to adapt for. But as long as the system has at least a 180-degree field of game play with some kind of precision controller, then we want to use it, we want to work with them and we want to get the games on those systems.
You say ROM: Extraction is the first stage of what you want to do. Where do you think are the greatest opportunities to advance storytelling through gaming?
Hess Barber: We’ve been saying publicly for a long time that we can focus on narrative, and we’re going to focus on gaming. We just want to make it clear that the first version of ROM is not a full narrative combined with gaming experience; it’s straight into the game. We’re throwing people right in, and we’re letting them have fun, and we’re just introducing them to that narrative which is going to begin and evolve in many different ways.
We have a DLC progression plan, so we’re going to be telling the story through the DLC. The initial release that we have is just the first kind of, “Here you are in this world, here’s the mechanics and here’s the basic story of what’s going on.”
And then the next DLC will come along. We’re releasing the multiplayer early next year. That will not just be multiplayer, but will also open up the story so that you’ll find out more about what’s going on. After that, it’ll progress to a different location, then another location. And you’re really going to cover a whole storyline and backstory for the character.
Our next game we’re going to announce, early next year, will definitely have movement around a larger environment. It’s just a very different thing. I can’t tell you the name yet, but I can tell you it’s going to have movement in it. And it’s going to have theme-based multiplayer experience.
The actual player, the people playing, there’s a whole story to that, which we’re not even really alluding too much yet. But it’s a great opportunity for us to be able to tell the story using technology advancements as they come along, instead of setting everything now and going “Well, this is it,” out of the box, like a traditional console, where we need to have everything Day One.
We can move with the technology, we can change things. There’s so much we can do with this kind of DLC release plan. And new content for the players is always a good thing. We’ve seen that work so many times in a model which we thought was very smart for us to take on.
Besides evolving the narrative, what other advances are in store?
Hess Barber: Things like movement inside VR. We’re tackling movement, we’re looking at different ways to solve movement. We still don’t think movement is really being solved perfectly. There may not be a way to totally solve it, we don’t know, but we’re definitely working on those things.
Our next game we’re going to announce early next year will definitely have movement around a larger environment. It’s just a very different thing. I can’t tell you the name yet, but I can tell you it’s going to have movement in it. And it’s going to have theme-based multiplayer experience. That’s all we can say at this point.
It’ll be early next year, so we want people to focus on ROM right now. We want people to get into this new mechanic and really have fun with it, then be excited about the announcements coming in the world of ROM that we’re going to unravel for everybody. Because there’ll be lots of really cool stuff coming down the pipeline.
How do you see yourself in relation to other studios that are developing VR gaming? Do you feel it’s a collaborative community where you’re inspired by others, or is everybody working in their own silo?
Hess Barber: I think one of the big draws of VR right now, and for the past couple of years, is it’s been very much an open community. We definitely want to keep supporting that. We’ve worked with multiple studios, like Big Red Button, Wevr, and Grab, of course. We have great relationships with those companies — we’ll work with them in a heartbeat. We invited those guys over here, we go to their studios, and we show each other the latest stuff. I mean, that hasn’t really happened in prior game development that I’ve seen in my career.
Engines like Unreal are going to be used in medical, in real estate, and all these different things they are not really traditionally made for. For the first time, different industries are coming to gaming companies to solve problems.
But we want to just share the technology at this point, because it helps the entire industry as a whole. The Brookhaven Experiment, Steven [Bowler], he’s really great. We’re in constant contact with him. We’re sharing ideas, and talking about tech and stuff all the time, so I hope it stays like that. I know it probably won’t, it’s not going to. The big boys are going to come in at a certain point and stuff is probably going to get locked down. I hope that doesn’t happen because it’s very healthy right now to have this creativity going on. And we also share resources backward and forward, as well.
Matt Candler: Just to add to that, with ROM we’ve brought in a lot of people and let them play the game — a lot of people that are in VR — and really get that sense of “Are we going the right direction? What is your feedback? What are your thoughts? What can we do better?”
I think one of the things we’re doing collaboratively is getting a lot of those people that are in VR to experience the game and help us, and work. It’s awesome.
Hess Barber: And we do the same. Like Grab will show us something they’re working on, want our feedback on it, and just really kind of help each other out. I hope it stays like that.
When you talk about the “big boys” coming in, do you feel you’ll look back on this as a very innocent time?
Hess Barber: Definitely, definitely.
Matt Candler: Yeah.
Hess Barber: You look at those old movies and read the books. I’m not comparing us to Microsoft, but they started out in their garages. It’s very much a garage time. We’re lucky enough to get some really good investment because of the excitement in VR, but it’s a nice garage that we’re sitting in right now.
Matt Candler: On the hardware side we’re definitely seeing the big boys come in. Valve, Facebook-Oculus, you’re definitely seeing people lining up there. Development-wise, it’s still that partnership and collaboration that’s occurring.
Hess Barber: And the interesting thing is that the hardware guys are very, very supportive now. Chet [Faliszek] from Valve is just amazing with us. He’ll help us, talk to us, give us insight, give us advice. And we’re getting that full round from everybody, ACC, HTC, Unreal, Oculus. It’s just a really great healthy and nurturing environment right now.
How heavy a lift was it to get the investment that you’re getting now, to get to the next level?
Hess Barber: Well, I think we’re in a unique position where we’ve worked on a couple of titles already, so for the first time ever really it made us hot. We hadn’t experienced that before, so it was very interesting to be in that position, where in the past, traditionally we’re going and pitching. You’re trying to convince people why you’re the best, why you have a great team, why they should invest in you.
We want to just share the technology at this point, because it helps the entire industry as a whole. We’re sharing ideas, and talking about tech and stuff all the time. I hope it stays like that. It’s just a really great healthy and nurturing environment right now.
This time it’s like, “Well, we’ve seen what you’ve done, how can we invest in you? What’s the way it’s going to work?” It was definitely a different conversation, and just very unique with the timing and the experience.
There are very aggressive VR market forecasts out there, well beyond gaming and entertainment. You have Digi-Capital saying that VR and AR are going to be a $120 billion industry by 2020. That’s pretty soon. What things have to happen now and next year for those forecasts to be remotely in the ballpark? Do you see a huge upward curve for VR?
Matt Candler: Our plan is just to keep making quality content and getting people to consume it, to use it. As many people as possible.
When you talk about 2020, I think we need to talk about some of the challenges we do see. A lot of people say, “Well, how do you make money in VR?” That’s a very valid question. I think we’re starting to see a few teams turn some good sales numbers up on Steam, and more markets are going to open up. It’s so hard to project what’s going to happen, how we get to 2020. Is it going to be location-based? Is it going to be advertising? Is it going to be niche sports? The key thing is to stay nimble and keep a mandate to put out the highest quality content.
A year from now, 2017 — are we on the cusp of an explosion, looking at your overall industry?
Hess Barber: Definitely.
Matt Candler: Yeah, I think we believe that absolutely. That’s why we’re here. And talking about the numbers on the units, and starting to look at the number of consumers. Steam announced they’re adding a thousand new VR customers a day. So I think we’re definitely on a high velocity train to see this business explode. Not just in games, but across a bunch of different media — whether it’s an operating system, or a retail situation, or real estate or medical. There’s so many ways people will experience content.
Do you keep an eye on technological advances in branches of VR outside of gaming — for example, medical technology?
Matt Candler: We keep an eye on it from a content pipeline, because one of the hurdles is what’s the most efficient way to create content for these devices? So, for real estate, how are you going to get all of that data? Who’s going to host that data, who’s going to own that data? All those things that exist in that market right now.
You look at medical for the same reason we’re looking at storytelling: how do we create convincing digital personas that will help us tell the story and make it as believable as possible?
Hess Barber: I think there’s one magic link that ties all these things together, and explains why gaming is kind of leading the way on this — game engines. Engines like Unreal are going to be used in medical, in real estate, and all these different things they are not traditionally made for. They’re made for games, right?
But it offers a solution to all these different industries that they haven’t had before. The only other solution is live video, but we all know that 3D VR video is very expensive to do in very high fidelity. It’s a massive process and it’s not quite there with the clarity and resolution — you just cannot match the gaming right now in VR. That’s the main thing that’s linking it together, and that’s why we’re in that unique spot for the first time where different industries are coming to us. They’re coming to gaming companies to solve the problems for them.
Matt Candler: The problems we’re solving are interactivity, gamification, user experience — all the things we’ve been training in for 20 years now. How to make it fun, how to keep people engaged, how to look at analytics. Those are all the disciplines that game developers have learned. They’re now applicable to all these markets.
