Topf: I don’t remember many numbers off the top of my head. GamesBeat: How well did Monument Valley do as far as the number of people who played it? Topf: It’s tourism to places that don’t exist. GamesBeat: There’s a sort of virtual tourism appeal in this. These places are exotic, but not in the most obvious way you’d think of. There’s a dream in VR about going somewhere you’ve never been before. We didn’t want to put people in cities or any other places they’d likely been in before. There’s a definite timelessness to the types of places we wanted to put people in. There are a few locations in Scotland and other fringe parts of Britain that inspired a lot of the visuals and landscapes, although this is a little more fantastical. It looks a little like Stonehenge, but not quite, and other things I feel like I’ve seen before. GamesBeat: The art direction reminds me of a lot of iconic images. It’s more about sending a message about what VR can be. Then they have a good experience and VR has more of a chance to be accepted. If someone says, “I want to play a shooter in VR,” before people put that on and have a terrible experience we want to show them a different version of what VR can be. We’re seeing a lot of games that turn people off. It gives the market the best possible chance of going somewhere. ![]() ![]() It was more a case of, this is a new market and we have a chance to define some things, answer some new questions. We’re doing very well for the market that’s out there. Do you feel like this is something you have to do to learn in anticipation of that time? But it seems like it will eventually be a big market. GamesBeat: How do you approach the financial side? You can’t make a lot of money in this market yet. But in a market that’s still new, you’re cutting off half of your audience by saying, “Okay, if you’re motion sensitive, don’t play our game.” We wanted to be able to say, “Want to try VR? Here’s VR.” Some people do get used to VR with controllers and things like that. But I think this is the best way to do it. Movement is always a strange thing to do in VR. GamesBeat: You go from point to point, so you get around the problem of people getting sick from the movement. It’s one of those things that we-We had a moment where we thought, “Yeah, this is very much like Myst.” Tonally there are some similarities, like letting the player move at their own speed. GamesBeat: It has a Myst-like feel to it. Does this feel good? Does this feel comfortable? How do you make buttons work? How do you make movement and interactions work? That’s what made the decisions at any moment for us. We wanted to work out the native language of VR. What interactions feel good?Ī lot of interactions are taken from other games and ported over to VR, but they don’t feel very good. We had some ideas about moods and concepts, and then it was a case of taking VR and looking at what works best. At the time there weren’t that many great experiences on tablets. We had an idea of mood, and we wanted something that would fit perfectly on a tablet. Topf: The way we approached Monument Valley was not by coming up with a story. GamesBeat: What were you thinking as you made the decisions around what it should be? GamesBeat: How long did you work on this? ![]() But we’re pleased with how people are receiving it. We’re notorious for taking things slowly and waiting to let the game decide what it wants to be next. Topf: It’s a Gear VR exclusive for the time being. ![]() GamesBeat: Where is this headed? Is it on Gear VR and then something else? Of course, there’s the updates to Monument Valley as well. Topf: It’s our first full release since then, yes. GamesBeat: Is this the first thing you’ve done since Monument Valley? Most of the production was only about three people, and then toward the end we ramped up the full 11 of us. GamesBeat: How many people are in the studio? It’s important to us that people can get through it and feel like they’ve completed something rather than burn out. A lot of games out there try and go a bit longer and end up not being finished. Jonathan Topf: We wanted the length to be about 40 minutes so people could play the whole thing. GamesBeat: How long is the experience you’ve created?
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