Knowing the player

When making VR games right now it's very important to know who your audience is, probably more important that it would be for a console because the number of consumers is much lower. However, at the same time, indie developers will be the ones who become fully invested in VR first since many big companies don't want to invest millions of dollars into technology that they can't make a profit from yet. Right now is the best time to develop for VR. Something that I learned from Virtual Reality Insider by Sky Nite is the validated learning method. This method breaks down the best way for VR developers to develop a successful game. the steps are:

1. Specify a goal

2. Specify what reaching that goal entails  

3. Act to achieve the goal

4. Analyze a metric, are you closer to your goal?

5. Improve and try again

This is a very straight forward method which provides a lot of maneuverability since the game essentially is made to be what the consumer asked for. Something that I will start applying to my own work is assumption testing. Assumption testing is when you test something that you predict is going to happen such as players loving 0 gravity. If you test this and it turns out that players hate 0 gravity than you change that element, by doing this you save a lot of time and money. Sometimes it's hard to remember that you're making the game for the player and not yourself. I think that most important take away from Virtual Reality Insider by Sky Nite is that the consumer is your most powerful tool to make a successful game.