#1825: 「Spymaster」— 時間を操るステルス＆アクションVRアドベンチャー

The Voices of VR Podcast. VR. So this is a really brilliant VR game that allows you to sort of rewind time and go forwards and backwards in time and kind of go into these different virtual simulations as a spy and kind of run through a scenario where you have to collaborate with yourself to be able to get through these different scenes and these different scenarios for training. So really a brilliant game and one of the best games I've played in a long time and just had a lot of fun playing through each of them. It actually has been fully released now, so definitely recommend checking it out,

because it's just a really fun mechanic, and I know Interspace VR has been doing lots of different cutting-edge interactive games and stories and narratives, and so, yeah, this is just a real pleasure to play through. So, again, this is sort of the center of gravity of, like, fire air, so a lot of the agency interactivity. It's a very fun game, a very fun core game loop mechanic where you're able to kind of look at your watch and rewind time and move forward in time and then the error element is a lot of this kind of more strategy and kind of exploration of possibility space there's so many different ways for how you're going to get through one of these levels and so it's kind of up to you to to decide how you're going to play through this whole game and so you can explore one possibility space rewind it and explore another possibility space but by the end of it you're going to have to get through the scene before the time runs out but also all these kind of additional things in order to get the secret photo or to, you know, not kill anyone or to do these, like do a high five with yourself. And so there's all these kind of additional things that you can do to have this kind of

replayability factor. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Richard happened on Sunday, September 6th, 2026 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. I'm Richard Turcot, the executive producer and general manager of InnerSpace Studio. We've been in VR for 12 years now, developing games, but also immersive installations and experiences. So we have both these activities at the studio because our main goal is to explore what we can do with this medium in terms of balancing the storytelling and the interaction in the project. Great, and maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space Yeah, my background is mostly from cinema but I've worked a few years on promoting cultural policies in heritage, in contemporary art and then I joined Inner Space in 2019

because I wanted particularly to explore this new language, the medium allowed and after many years in cinema, it was a great opportunity to discover another way of telling stories. Nice, and you just mentioned that Interspace VR has had a VR project here at Venice for the last six out of seven years, and so you're back here again in the best-of selection with Spymaster. So maybe you could describe what is Spymaster. Spy Master is an adventure game Mixing Fuzzle solving But also action components Such are parkour features And the story Is based on Spy adventure Inspired by Ocean Eleven And James Bond Like films So we wanted to Have this mood The gameplay was really fitting This topic Knowing the gameplay came first, so we explored what kind of storytelling we could deploy around this gameplay.

And after a few tries, we ended up organizing a spy mission by embodying several agents on the field and recording our action to coordinate these agents. Okay. Yeah, I really love this piece. The core mechanic is just super fun. It's very enjoyable, and I think it works particularly well within virtual reality. And so I saw in the description that there was some animatics, or this was kind of developed internally, just to record embodied animations. And maybe just give a bit of a context for where did this core game mechanic of being able to rewind time and embody different characters to collaborate with each other, where did that mechanic sort of begin? At the start of this, it's our third game, Fisherman's Tale 2, for which we had developed this recording tool to prepare the animations of the cutscene of the game. And while trying this tool, we found out so funny to be able to record your own movement and to try to coordinate different characters in a scene.

and this really inspired the gameplay of Spy Master. It's just based on tests that were not intended for that initially. And there was mention of the last Clockwinder, which I think has a similar mechanic, but this is something that you had developed before then, but more of it as a tool for production for the cinematic cutscenes rather than as a game per se. And so maybe you just talk a bit about the last Clockwinder and how there might be some similarities in some of those different mechanics. Yeah, we can also quote Unloop, which is a game that works with the recording mechanic. So, yes, it was not new per se to explore this kind of mechanic and use it for gameplay. But what is really specific in Spymaster is the way it is used as part, a fully part of a storytelling approach and uh yeah i would both went together to build a whole

story with this spy mission so yeah so yeah it's like a cassette which is like in some ways this in this world you are a spy and you're going on these missions and you have to coordinate with other people but it's really dangerous in a way that you can't just go out and do it you have to have a simulation where you can try it again and again. So in the logic of the actual experience, you're doing a virtual simulation, which allows you to sort of rewind time in a way that you could get it just right. And so, yeah, maybe just set the context for this story world that once you had developed this time travel type of mechanic, what's this world exist in and who are the major players and what's the overall story that you wanted to tell? So the world is very similar to what we are experiencing nowadays in reality, because it's a world made of global surveillance with a big dictator, a robot who wants to use this global surveillance to control everybody's

minds and is desperately trying to take control on this device called the cassette, who has been invented by another scientist, another corporation. So the villain, Protus, is always trying to kidnap this other scientist who has developed the technology, because it will help him achieve what's called the human algorithm, a way to control every people on Earth. So that's the main framework of the stories. And we are the operator of the cassette. The The player is hired by one of the last or maybe the last independent spy company, which will help the inventor of the cassette not being caught and will try to stop all the action protests is doing to achieve his goal. So it's traveling, as in the spy movies, traveling in different parts of the world to make different missions.

There's one in Venice, and so that's a big meta to be here with the game. One in the Arctic, one in the Arizona desert, and we change locations according to the big tropes you have in the spy movies. And each mission, of course, is much more complicated as you move on into the game. And most of the missions are with two agents that you have to coordinate, and the last mission will be with the three agents to coordinate to end the game. Nice. Well, I know that Interspace VR has always been interested in immersive storytelling and more cinematic ways of using the medium to tell stories. And I think it's over time the market has wanted more and more games and the meta I know for a while was funding these narrative-driven games, but then they in some ways kind of pulled the rug out from that effort and stop funding those projects, and then the ones that were even funded, they didn't really promote all that much.

And so the whole market's in this kind of weird space where there are still games that are being developed, but I'm just curious to hear some reflections from you in terms of if InterSpace is still ultimately more interested in the storytelling aspect, or if it's also like needing by the needs and desires to survive for the market to do the games first, and then to also add in the more cinematic storytelling as a supplement to something that has, well, for me, when I played the game, the core mechanic was so compelling that I had so much fun playing it. I wanted to play all the different stuff, but I was more interested in the gameplay elements than I was in the narrative elements, which I thought was interesting because usually I might be a little bit less interested in that. But I felt like there was enough connection of the story to what's happening in reality that it also was helping me to go forward. But yeah, the gameplay on itself, on its own, was enough for me to be super compelled by it. But just curious to hear some reflections on Interspace, on this demands in the market for having those games and how you've had it to maybe adapt over time.

Well, it's difficult to adapt because the market has really shifted these two past years. with a lot of core gamers living, especially the Meta platform, the Quest platform, while young players, teenagers were doing more and more free-to-plays, and Meta was more and more promoting these kind of games, and also all the Horizon social stuff. So doing a premium game in this context was not an evidence. We made, let's say, a few changes compared to our other games. we lightened a bit the narrative compared to our previous games and really focused on the gameplay and the gameplay features. And also that's why we introduced action features, these parkour features in the game, to have more action proposed to the player and a little less narrative. Also leaving the end open. As many missions as we want could be added to the game if it works well. So we managed to, let's say, move the needle a little compared to our previous game.

But it was impossible to do a game that was fitting the, let's say, social, free-to-play components that are mainstream now on the platform. Our target and our audience is still the segment of the 25, 35 plus. So a more mature audience of gamers than what we find currently on the platform. But we had started the project with the first proof of concept in 2023. At some point, we gathered an interesting budget through grants, and we decided to move on and go until the end. And we still hope that the market can shift again. We have noticed that our game have a long lifetime on the platform, this kind of games. So if I'm thinking about our first game, A Fisherman's Tale, that has been released in 2019. There are still pretty nice sales on this game seven years after, so showing that our games age well.

And so we're hoping on the long run that Spymaster will find its audience and, yeah, maybe grow as the time passes. But what's important for us is, of course, the market. We have to make a studio survive, and it's always a struggle to make that. But we don't accept too much compromising with the market, especially when you have a market that shifts every six months. So at one point, what's the point regarding the time it takes to develop some projects? What's the point in trying to adapt to things that will change in six months? So we made some changes. We tried to balance the different ingredients of Spymaster differently than our previous game. but we still stand on what we want to do and do high-level premium games as an indie studio and give to the players that love this kind of games, this kind of proposal. Sometimes they are struggling to find more and more on the platforms.

Yeah, and in terms of the structure of the piece, you can choose different missions to go on. And there also a little bit more training types of experiences that are a little bit more abstracted and not fully developed in terms of the world building aspect of it But at the end there was this like hey coming soon there might be this like other mission and so and also narratively it seemed to be as i remember again i this is a piece that i was more focused on the gameplay but it just kind of felt like it sort of hangs like it doesn't feel like it came to a conclusion or so my memory of it is a little bit of like okay we got the beginning of a story but like how's this end so it felt like oh is this early access or like so i'm just trying to get a sense of like Is this released? Is it early access? Do you hope to kind of finish the narrative? Are there more missions that are coming or what's going on with the kind of overall piece? Yeah, it was an early access. We released the game in early access the 15th May and the full launch will happen in a few weeks now.

So the exact date still to be fixed. But it was important for us as the game was pretty difficult to balance, to gather feedback from the press, from the influencers, from the players during this phase of early access. Also take time to polish some of the features. And, yeah, for sure there will be an end. For the full launch, we will have three more missions. Two are prequel or sequels of current missions. One is the final missions with the three agents you have to coordinate. And, of course, we have set up in the storytelling. So, yeah, there will be more for now. It really depends. As for now, you were speaking about the small missions. There are two main reasons for these small missions. First of all, we are introducing progressively new features, and we didn't want to make them feel as you make a tutorial before each level. So it was also a way for the players to enjoy discovering the new features

and not having a proper tutorial being still in action through these small missions. and it's also a way to make more gameplay time in the game. If you just do the whole campaign without doing this mission, you have around three and a half hours of gameplay time in the full game. If you do this mission but also complete the objectives you have in each scene by redoing your recording to refine your actions, some players have reached six to seven hours of gameplay in the end. And so, yeah, it was a way also to offer more gameplay to the players. Yeah, I ended up playing through all of the different things, and I think I ended up at around five and a half hours or so. And there's also, like, little bonus missions of, like, complete this under a certain amount of time, but also there's, like, little extra things that you can go do. But maybe it's worth describing the core mechanic of the piece in terms of there's two main types of missions.

One is more stealth mission where you're trying to go in and out and not be detected. So more like spy-like. And then the other is more action-oriented, action-adventure, having two different types of weapons, someone with a long-range weapon, someone with a short-range weapon. You know, the mission is such that you have to go into this world, and usually you can't just go with a single player and do everything you need to do by yourself because there's certain points that you need to collaborate, which means that you kind of have to iterate in terms of like record up to a certain point and that once you reach a certain point then you can look at your watch and kind of rewind time and so there's a bit of a balance of trying to do as much as you can as fastly as you can and then progress as these two players are cooperating with each other and so just curious to hear a little bit around how do you design this kind of co-op gameplay where you're kind of playing with the clone of yourself that's kind of mediated through time? Yeah. From the beginning, the goal was to give the different characters different abilities

that can be combined during the gameplay. That's why you have different weapons depending on different characters and the robot character of our team being able to hack stuff for the more action and combat character, shooting, fighting, and so on. So, yeah, that was a very difficult balance to achieve because there were different elements, the embodiment, the recording, the different abilities of the characters, and we have done a lot of playtests to find the right balance. I think we have done one playtest per week until we reached the good balance, and also, as I was saying, using the early access to have the feedback of the players to refine this balance. And for the secondary objective we put in the scene, we know you could do the scene without completing the secondary objective, but we were also hoping that the players enjoy a component of role play by achieving this objective and refining their performance

in the coordination of the different agents. Because one of the particularities of the game is that at the end of the mission, when you have done all the recorded, you have a replay under the form of a cutscene of the mission you have done. So there is, for example, the possibilities for the two characters you have embodied successively to do high-fives between them and, yeah, role-play the scene and do actions that are not, let's say, mandatory to achieve the level, but that are important if you want to refine it and have, in the end, some kind of cinematic cutscene that is the accomplished missions for us because previously it's, as you said, we do a simulation but see the final scene as it is executed a bit like in these Ocean Eleven films when they describe first how the plan will move on and in the end you have the complete mission. So there are these two levels of simulation and seeing the complete mission as a cinematic after you've done it.

yeah it's an interesting balance for a game like this in the sense of like you you want people to be fully immersed in the flow state however there are also the ability to rewind to do it again and get it perfect and so there's this kind of like redo mentality where oftentimes in games you really don't want to be thinking too much or like get too perfectionistic about it but this is kind of a game where you have to balance that to like either you get it good enough because some of the different scenes you have to complete it underneath a certain amount of time which means that you kind of have to hit all the beats at a certain timing but also like if you're shooting you only have so many bullets and you don't want to like waste bullets and so I found myself like in the Venice scene playing it a little bit too long in terms of like getting things just right but you know I think I was exploring the mechanics of the game and then also found myself getting a little bit overly perfectionistic and like let's just get it good enough and assume that i'll have enough bullets at the end or you know i'll be able to not really make this time under a certain amount

of time but that's okay because it's you know i want to move on and play other things but it's i found that in my own way of playing this game this tension between that perfectionism versus like getting it good enough to be able to progress and so i'd love to hear any reflections on you know this as a core tension that's explored within a game like this well we wanted to let as much freedom as possible to the players. They can, well, you can achieve a level by redoing and redoing and redoing the recording without too much thinking. But you can also be yourself as a player in a planification mode and really think of your strategy to achieve the level, to keep a maximum bullets for later. And you can also take different routes in the level to achieve your goal. So there's a part of agency we wanted to introduce. It's not that much, but it's also a possibility to have different itineraries. Some are more relevant than the others, but it can also add some challenge if you take the most difficult route to achieve.

So, yeah, it's really the big thinking we had for the design is how we can balance the fact that, well, the scene is what it is, and you have to achieve it in completing a certain amount of tasks. But if you want more agency or if you want to balance differently the action and the reflection about how to achieve the scene, you have some margins to do that. Yeah, and I think it's probably worth mentioning that in that planning phase that there is a briefing that you get in terms of a tabletop model version of the space you're about to go into and that you are clicking through and getting instructions for what are the objectives that you have to try to achieve. And sometimes, like in the casino scene, there's certain mechanics that, you know, I find myself like having to go back and do because like I didn't have like enough key cards to like actually, you know, get to the end. And so I had to like, all right, and now I got to go back and do it all again. So there's some strategy and puzzling that you have to solve. Sometimes you can only figure out that puzzle by actually doing it and iterating.

But sometimes you could potentially, like, there's a mechanic to be able to move around the tabletop space and to really investigate where all the different enemies and all the different, like, special bonus things are. But kind of plan it out before you go. I was more of like, let's do it live and see what happens. And maybe I'll look at that again if I need to figure out where the secret document is or whatnot. But for the most part, I was getting an overview of what I needed to do. but then more going in and iterating and trying to doing a run through as far as I could and then sort of rewinding back to a certain point and then having an edit point where sometimes I would throw up my hands to be like, okay, that's when I'm going to edit. And I've completed this task and now I'm going to like, because you're kind of zooming back and forth. And so you have a way of kind of communicating with yourself in a way by how you're moving your body to be an edit point for you to kind of re-embody at that point. because you can do a run-through, but the mechanic is that you can re-embody yourself up to any point that you had recorded up to that point.

So it's kind of an interesting way where you're recording actions up to a certain point, but then continuing in. So, yeah, I guess you've kind of created a briefing overview where people can potentially plan that out, but there's certain aspects that you may have to just actually do it live. So, yeah, I'd just love to hear a little bit more around the way that you're trying to explain people what they're even trying to do within the course of each of these levels. Yeah, as you say, the tabletop scene is really important because you see all the elements. And this was a great challenge for us to design and to make clear on this model overview where the different obstacles that you would meet and the different directions you could take. And of course, I think you can do all the scene without even thinking and just by trying and trying, embodying the characters and do action. But at some point you have to stop and do a little thinking and try to analyze because there are some limits in trying to achieve just by trying again and again.

So just to say that we had a previous version of the game that was much more puzzle oriented. and the action component was not as present as it is now in this final version. Well, the first start of the project was the reconstitution of crime scene before we went into spy, and we rapidly noticed that players were spending most of the time thinking about how to do and not acting, which in VR is a big problem, because that should be the opposite balance to reach. That's why we went more into this mission and live action thing than the puzzling of reconstituting a crime scene that has happened before you arrive on the scene. So, yeah, it's, well, it has been so many elements to balance. And that's why also, as I was saying, we did a lot of playtests and it took us a lot of time to design and find the right balance.

We think now we're ready for the full launch because we have learned a lot this past month about how the players act in the game and what they are looking for. We think we've hit the target for most of the objectives we had given to ourselves. Now the game is pretty well balanced, but yeah, everybody sees things differently and people will like more or less some of the features and the way to execute them. but that's how a game goes. Yeah, and I know that in some games they have really sophisticated, light-baked worlds that then things that are not light-baked have a different color that are clear that you can interact with them. But in this world, it's not necessarily always clear what's interactable or not once you're immersed into the world. But within the preview world, as you get an overview, you kind of are highlighting the stuff that you can interact with in a way that if you look closely, you can get a sense of things that may be important clues for how to solve

puzzles because otherwise, you know, you want to kind of avoid the situation where people are going around and spamming. Can I interact with this? Can I interact with that? So there's a bit of like I discovered at a certain point for some of the puzzles that there are additional clues in that overview scene to see what is highlighted in blue is something that you can actually potentially use within the context of achieving the goals that you're trying to do. But as you were saying, There are also many elements in the scene that you can have in the overview and you will have to test and you will have to fail It impossible to reach a level without having a bit of exploration and accepting to fail because you haven't seen in the levels some interactive items you will have to use and they were not on the tabletop view, the overview of the scene before. So it's always back and forth between trying, testing, and going back to the overview. The overview is mostly the high-level approach,

and you have another level that you have to experience in the scene itself to reach the goal. I'm curious to hear you elaborate a little bit on the different types of genre and modes, where on one hand there are some of the missions that are more stealth-based, and so you're trying to avoid being detected where you're destroying security cameras and just trying to avoid being seen. And then some of the other modes where they're more action-adventure where you have to kill different robots and enemies and disable them temporarily. And so, yeah, just curious to hear around the evolution of the development of both the stealth mode but also the action-adventure modes and how you see them differently. In fact, for sure there's a different balance in the different levels between the stealth mode and the action mode. Some levels are a little more stealth-oriented, the others a little more action-oriented. But you have all the components in each level because these components are really connected to the specific abilities of each character you have to embody.

For example, the mulligan character is much more used for stealth, while the tick character is much more used for parkour, shooting. And the Oscar character, the robot, much more for discipling cameras, hacking stuff on the way to free the passage for the other agents. So you always have these components, just that they are balanced differently regarding the level and the use of characters you make. Great, and what's some of the feedback that you've gotten so far on the game? Great, we were really happy from the early access release We had great feedback from the press, from influencers, and also from the players The feedback we had were, let's say bad feedback, were mostly on the polishing of certain features such as grabbing stuff or climbing on some interactions that were less intuitive than others.

But regarding the gameplay and the storytelling and the balance these both components achieved in the end, we had very good feedback globally. Yeah, and I noticed that sometimes if I were pausing with the two characters close to each other and trying to restart that. One time I accidentally clicked the wrong character and had erased everything that I had done up to that point. So there was a little bit of, like, a frustration of, I would also probably be annoyed if you added, like, a confirmation window of, like, do you really want to, like, have this person? It would have been one instance where I would have been happy to have had that confirmation. It wasn't that big of a deal. The levels are not that long. They're, like, you know, two to three minutes or so. But it was just kind of like lesson learned to be extra clear as to which person I'm embodying. Because there is like a progression bar that is there that is telling you that you're going into this character. But yeah, that was one of the things that at least I had run into. Yeah, there were many areas which needed polishing.

And also avoiding a lot of false positives. Like embodying the wrong agent or erasing what you have done by mistake. so this is what we we worked on this past month also a lot of problems we had to solve with paradox with the recording system for example what happens if you stop your recording when one agent is launching a key card to the other and the key card stays in the air so how we solve this kind of thing when you get back into the scene is the key card in the hand of the character that sends it or is it still in the air and so how we program that for the movement to be kept in the in the memory of of the build to arrive to the other players so yeah the the recording system was really difficult to tackle because of that because the fact that you can stop an action whenever you want led to a lot of problems we had to solve to refine the system yeah i noticed that wasn't really

necessarily recording velocity or vector information so if i were flying to the air if i were to restart it i would just kind of drop as if i had no momentum or from the previous moment so it sounds like that you're addressing that a little bit though in terms of like trying to record some of that because i would try to at least be static and not be in motion or have anything moving because i noticed that if there were things that had velocity then all that momentum and velocity would be gone stopping at a point but you're saying that you solve that problem Well, yeah, we kind of find solutions that are not ideal because there are still blockers for that, especially when blocker is that it's really heavy in terms of data to make this system work. That also explains why the artistic direction went into something more stylized than our previous game. We really had to make choices to balance the whole thing and give a maximum of memory of the headset to the gameplay,

for the gameplay to work as we were adding features and correcting things and solving this kind of paradox. So, yeah, it was a global choice between all the components of the game to balance. And, yeah, you were speaking about some of the feedback. Some of the players and press really enjoyed the artistic direction for his really stylized approach, especially the characters because I think with the environment we tried to do something really really polished and as beautiful as possible and with the lights and with the textures and so on. But yeah, some of the players were a little disappointed by the result in terms of visual and some have found that it was absolutely consistent with the world we created. So, yeah, it really depends on the feeling of each person playing the game. But, yeah, there have been some choices, hard choices on the VFX, for example,

and how to balance that. Everything that was really code heavy and make the game too heavy to run on a standalone headset was really a struggle to balance during the whole development. Yeah, and I saw that, was it being featured in one of the summer showcases or one of the showcases? Or at least I saw a really lot of positive press about it, at least getting a lot of strong reactions from the people that are... There's not a lot of outlets that are out there that are reviewing games still, but at least us all from at least Upload VR had a very positive reaction to it. Yeah, and Wolf in VR, we were really happy with what he has done in terms of reviewing the game and playing it, and two videos for the two parts of the game. So, yes, some of the press and influencers really went into it and loved playing it, and that was really nice to see. especially as we self-published the game and we didn't have a lot of money to put into marketing and communication.

And that's a bit of a problem because, as I was saying, our core audience is an audience that does not discover the games directly through the platform, but you have to reach him via the social network and the press for them to take their headset back from the shelf and want to play this kind of game. So communication was really an issue for us but while self-funding the game, then self-publishing it, we had to make a choice. We could have sacrificed more things on development to do more marketing But, yeah, you know how the artist and the team of the studio can be. They always want to achieve the best product in the end. So it was a bit of a fight, an internal fight, to see where the balance should be put. And I think it was in favor of doing the best game possible and hoping that here tomorrow will also work

work and that some of the present influencers we really yeah we really want to help us in promoting the game in the end yeah it's certainly one of the most fun actually the most fun game that I've played in years and I don't play a lot of stuff I typically see stuff at Venice and maybe I'll pop in and out of different stuff but yeah it's just really quite compelling so I think it is the type of piece that could have people take their headset out of the closet and play through the game because Because, yeah, like I said, I spent about five and a half hours through what was there already and the final launch. What's your target for how long you want to have for the final launch in terms of total playthrough time? As I was saying, I think the target is around four to five hours of gameplay, just doing the critical path. And maybe two, two and a half hours more if you complete all the secondary objectives and do the small missions in between. Great. And so what's next? You said it's imminent, or at least sometime soon, maybe not specific,

but what order of length should we expect a full release coming here soon? The release will probably happen in October. We're just setting up the last things. We had to avoid the MetaConnect period because we have been supported by our store managers at Meta to highlight the game on the platform a little bit more. So, yeah, October seemed a good target, and we will be approaching the end of the year, but didn't want to be also in conflict with big games that will be announced for sure for Christmas and so on. So, yeah, releasing in October is the highest probability now. Okay. And there's also, you know, generally in the industry, things are ending, new things are beginning. There seems to be a lot of emphasis on more smart glasses approach, like the X-Real Aura glasses that they look great for watching cinematic content, but there's no real controllers to be able to do more of the sophisticated gameplay than something like Spymaster.

and then also even when looking at some of the different portaled nature, it's kind of like the difference between watching a movie in a movie theater versus watching a movie on your phone. It feels just a little bit more small and occluded when it comes to some of the smart glasses and a little more limited field of view, not as fully immersive as the VR. And so there's a bit of like the legacy of VR that's had the controllers and video game driven, but the whole industry seems to be moving in this direction that is more hand-tracked, smart glasses-based. At least that's what some of the biggest new headsets that are coming out are kind of going in that more cinematic direction. And so just curious to hear how Interspace VR is going to start to navigate that, given that so many of the games that you've developed so far are very much controller-based. Yeah, but I think for the headsets, Some players in the industry will really go back to also premium games with controllers at some point

because the core gamers is such an important audience. And also these core gamers are the ones who have the money to buy games. So it's great at some point to have some teenagers playing free-to-play on the platform. But in the end, it brings less money to the platform than the core gamers do. So I think for the, let's say, regular assets compared to glasses or lighter devices, much more targeting entertainment than gaming, these kind of games with controller will really have a future. The big players are also, well, they are changing strategy a lot because everybody is looking for the good recipe in the end. and the platform owners and hardware providers do so. So, yeah, again, like Spymaster, we have tried doing it with hand tracking, but the features were too complex at some point. And I was speaking about so many false positives we already had with the recording system.

And if you added hand tracking on top, it was really awful to solve all these problems. But we don't regret that because I'm not sure of the added value this game would have if we had used hand tracking. It still is a premium game, single player. So just adding hand tracking to say, okay, we try to go a little more in line with the market which needs hand tracking games This was not really an answer to that because the other components being single player and doing a premium game will still be the same in the end But regarding to how we position ourselves as a studio with the new devices the lighter headsets mixed reality headsets and the AR glasses, we are currently developing a prototype of a mixed reality game that will probably end almost as a demo on future glasses that will be released.

I can't say more for now, but we are really working on that. We have made tests with some of the glasses and with a game that doesn't need VR native gameplay. We're really thinking about this new market, having a mixed reality version for the, let's say, regular headsets. all the new headsets that will be released in the future, especially Meta and Pico, who are working on lighter, let's say, headsets. And also having AR proposal with the same game, MR-based game for the glasses. And some of the glasses we have tried have amazing performances that really allows to port some mixed reality games on this device, on these glasses. But also we are exploring multi-platform, especially with this mixed reality game that can also fit flat screens. And so it's part of our strategy we have discussed during Gamescom last week

with publishers and platforms, and noticed that some were heavily interested in mixed reality version, some were really interested in a flat version of the project, and some, mostly publishers, were really interested in both because it opens the market wider for them. So, yeah, we're really trying to open and to access these new markets. But at first, it's the opportunity of the game that led us to this. We had this great proposal in terms of gameplay. It was fitting mixed reality, so we jumped in it. And progressively, we thought about what kind of other markets we could reach. doesn't mean that, as I say, we're adapting to the market, but some of the projects, as Pymaster, it was not possible to adapt to a different market, so we stuck to the initial intent of the game, so really depending on the project. And more widely for the studio,

as we also do experiences and have a long experience in location-based experiences, we are also developing different projects for the location based market we are discussing with platforms such as Xcurio or XROM for this kind of project less cultural than what we did previously with the museum and art center but we have this experience of storytelling and crossing our experience in gaming with the location based sector and being able to bring some gameplay that could feed a broader audience of all ages into the location-based project is really a challenge we want to tackle because we think what we have done these past 12 years is really important now to be exploited and to find a way to cross our two main activities to expand the studio in new markets. Nice. I know talking to some representatives from Experio,

they were saying they have been doing a lot of more guided tour type of experiences, but they're very much interested in adding more interactivity and gameplay, so it seems to be some of the stuff that you're working on to do that. And are there going to be also narrative components in these games, or are they going to be more game-like experiences? So it will be more experiences, so narrative experiences, both with interaction components. And when we say gameplay, there are many components to take into account because the gameplay must be easy to be handled by any generation because it's not a segment such as video games with experts doing the interactivity. So it has to be easy. You have to develop some fail-safe because you are in a format or you have to, for the business model, to be in 30 or 40 minutes for the time of the experience. So if one people doesn't reach in achieving an interaction, you have to move on in the story.

What we try to bring now in this kind of location-based experiences is much more our expertise in fictional storytelling. So getting rid a bit of the experience based on heritage stuff where you follow a guide who explains to you what is happening around. And we really want to tackle fiction. So now at the moment we are developing a middle-scale project which is a sci-fi thriller. So the storytelling will be absolutely fictional. There's not one guide telling you what to do, but it comes from different sources and different characters that are around you in the same adventure than you are. So this is really what we would like to bring on the market. Not sure the market is already mature for that, but going into the, let's say, the interactive movie, movie, per se, being in 360 and living an adventure as you were the main character

of a sci-fi movie with suspense, with risk with something that can happen to you if things don't go well this is really what we have always dreamt about since the creation of the studio so yeah, hope it will fit the market but we want to to do this try and we have always making bets. Sometimes there were good bets, sometimes less good. But yeah, that's really the DNA of our studio to try to innovate on each piece we develop and bring something more for the future audience in this market. Awesome, yeah. Can't wait to see that. And William Irecchio, one of the co-founders of MIT Open Doc Lab, I said that documentary has always been the leading form of new emerging technology, so a lot of the LBE has been more cultural heritage, more documentary-oriented rather than fiction-based.

So, yeah, super excited to see where you take this more fiction thriller, sci-fi thriller type of experiences. So, yeah, I guess as we wrap up, I'd love to hear what you think the ultimate potential of VR, immersive storytelling and interactivity might be and what it might be able to enable. I think that one of the greatest objectives all the sector has to achieve is bringing the broad audience into the headset but for that it's not only the technology when I discuss with many venues of location-based experiences they say to you that well the medium isn't that important to them what's important is what's the product you sell to the audience and what is the marketing you can do around. For them, it's not different proposing the audience to wear a headset or proposing the audience to go in a cinema, theater and see a film. What is the content? This is what they expect to promote.

And of course, the VR medium offers new possibilities of experiencing a piece. And as I was saying, the balance between interaction and storytelling and really feeling that you are the main actor and the main character of the piece, really being involved by the character who guides us into the adventure is really the thing important to us. We want the spectator at the end of the experience to really believe in the character. We told him or her they were embodying during the piece. So this is really the thing that is important. and seeing the people at the end of the experience who have believed who they were in terms of the character you wanted them to be. Great. And is there anything else that's left inside that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community? Any final thoughts? Well, I think the immersive community is growing year after year,

and I'm so happy to see all the diversity of the pieces you can have in this sector. I'm a bit disappointed to see that distribution, except in the format like XORIO and XROM, is not strong enough, especially for more artistic pieces. And we have to evangelize a lot of partners, venues to these pieces, but also to work more on this missing link, which is distribution. And I think the more we are and the more this sector expands, the more it will become a real issue to share in the sector. But what I'm amazed to see is how many creators coming from the different art fields, jumping into immersive and discovering this new language and how, yeah, talentuous they can be in expressing their feelings. I just regret in many pieces I see, especially in the festival, that interaction is a bit underestimated into the pieces we see.

It can be location-based, but also experiences. And you see the 360 is still alive and strong, and there are great pieces in 360. But I would really like the creators to think more about the potential of the interactions. and what you can really do with that. This needs also an expertise. It's pretty difficult to achieve when you do your first piece and to think about all these possibilities. But that's a bit why studios like ours are really happy always to discuss with artists, with authors at the very beginning of the project. No commitment involved, but just to give feedback and help the creators to think more about what interaction could be in their piece and what it could bring to their piece. So, yeah, I think interaction is one of the key, and we don't have to forget that this medium is not just to watch movies on big screen, as some of the hardware providers would like to promote this entertainment stuff.

But when you're creating an art piece, you have to consider the interaction at its right level and with its right importance, because it's the core of the medium. Awesome. Well, Spymaster is one of the best VR games I've played in years. I highly recommend folks go check it out and especially look towards October or in the fall time frame for the full release and play the full game. But you can get quite a satisfying experience up to this point, even in early access. And so, yeah, very excited to see where you take it all in the future, especially all this kind of sci-fi thriller, things that are happening within the LBE space and moving in from the documentary into more fiction. Sci-fi thriller sounds like a great genre. Love sci-fi. So, yeah, very curious to see where you take it all here in the future. And thanks so much for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down. Fingers crossed for the future. It has been, yeah, two tough years, and I think it's not over because of the market and things moving so fast. But, yeah, we really do our best to move on and try to propose to the audience the best projects we can do.

and thank you for your congratulations on the project. The team really appreciated when I forwarded your feeling to them. And it's always great to... It gives courage because when you're struggling, we're in Venice here, so that's beautiful. You do the red carpet and you say, okay, we might be dead tomorrow because the things are so hard to achieve. So these are these great moments of sharing with the community that help a lot and having positive feedbacks from the people that matters in the sector is always something really important and encouraging for small teams like ours. Awesome. It's great to hear. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And I just want to say that I'm really trying to live into the transformation economy, meaning I want to give away all this information for free,

make it publicly accessible for not only you but the entire community. And if you find value in that, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon. I'm on this journey of trying to reach my 1,000 true fans, and if I have just $5 a month from that 1,000, I'll be in a much more solid and stable financial position. So really need your help to be able to get to that point. So if you enjoy what I'm doing here at the Voices of VR podcast, then please do consider supporting me at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening. Thank you.