“Outer Waste VR” for Taddug Media     Released Summer of 2021
Product Owner, Lead Designer, Production Manager & Technical Director

• Game Studio title in Virtual Reality developed in conjunction with my research on manual interaction, room-scale movement, and multi-player interaction
• Focus on two-player competitive to cooperative modes — allowing for user choice along a spectrum rather than distinct indicators or repercussions
• Accepted to juried showcase at Pax East 2021

Outer Waste VR carries on my work with Anchorage as far as mechanics and motivation. The intention of forwarding story was best explored as a single-player game with a focus on a feeling of isolation within a manifested location (your mental state trapping you within itself, if you will).

But with Outer Waste, I wanted to continue exploring the physicality of the mechanic of searching in room-scale, but I also had a desire to investigate a new challenge. I _love_ multiplayer cooperative games. My passion for designing them and inventing exciting if slightly uncanny scenarios is very real. So in Outer Waste, I knew I wanted to explore this two person, online coop experience in VR and rely on a unique but limited form of communication. Yes, there are many positives to being able to use voice communication during online games, but it can also be toxic or inequitable or simply take you out of the immersion.

I value an objective related to expressing oneself — aka centered on communicating your wants. Sometimes that struggle helps us to take time to think about the details of the how and why we communicate the way we do, rather than just assuming if we raise our voice, all will be clear.

As such, in Outer Waste, you work with a partner and you must communicate via selected options to then relay the desired target object for your partner to locate. For the sake of player buy-in, I wanted to create a shared motive for success and a theme that fit the less serious, more quirky feel of this game as opposed to Anchorage. I did not come up with the theme, my students did — but I absolutely love it! You and your partner are in outer space, working together in a bit of a hellish capitalist limbo to try to save up for a better salvage ship so you can make more money! The dark humor is wonderful in my opinion!

My evaluation of success — would I continue playing this game: absolutely!!!!

Rough cut with audio details: