Ubisoft’s newest virtual reality game, Space Junkies, will launch for the Windows MR, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift on March 26th. GameByte had an exclusive preview of the game at Ubisoft’s British headquarters in Guildford and a long conversation with Adrian Lacey, a producer who led a team of 22 developers to make Space Junkies. Lacey buzzes with energy, likes to express himself using his whole body and talks at a hundred miles a minute, so he had plenty to say and it’s easy to see why he’s right for developing fast-paced shooter entertainment.
What is Space Junkies?
Space Junkies inserts you into a spherical arena with one or three other players. You can play a 1×1 duel, a 2×2 competition or have a free-for-all. You can play as one of a handful of characters – human astronauts with space suits or alien figures with exo-skeletons and the game environment is littered with useful weapons such as laser guns, pump-action shotguns, slingshots and more. The physical sensation of using two handed weapons such as pump-action guns with Oculus controllers is incredibly satisfying. I learn that the word for this sensation is haptics and that it’s something Lacey’s team focused on because it’s these small details that make VR so rewarding for gamers.
Half a dozen space-themed spherical maps are included with the game, with interiors such as a frozen space station which has lots of corridors and ice structures that explode. Exterior planet surfaces have rock formations and plant life that you can hide in. One is map is a cemetery for giant robots.
Should I play Space Junkies on PC or Playstation?
Balancing the game so that it works on different hardware with different types of handset has been a technical challenge. As Lacey says, the PS4 is six years old now so trying to fit the latest VR into it is sometimes like trying to cram a Ferrari into a Mini. The game is designed to have free motion, so you’re not just shooting at things that are directly in front of you. They could come from over your head, behind you, from any angle and you want to be able to move around them in combat. You can experience this with a PC and Oculus Rift but the PS4 is more limited. You’re a bit more constrained to fixed positions in the way you move your shield and weapon. On the flipside, Lacey says, actions like reloading weapons are quicker on Playstation VR. The game also encourages two-handed aim and yet accessibility demanded that it should work even for those of us who are still using a DualShock 4 controller (the standard PS4 pad) and have not yet shelled out for VR controllers that come in two pieces. If you’re using a DualShock pad then you’ll be using the V pad and two sticks to direct your play.
Frame rate is another difference. On the OR, Space Junkies is running at 90 frames per second, on a PS4 the fps is 60. To put that in context, your PC monitor could be refreshing at a rate of only about 60 fps, while your eyes are capable of processing much more than that. Faster, more dynamic games benefit from higher fps. They look smoother and more natural and in VR a higher fps means less motion sickness.
Building Space Junkies
Because VR is still very much at the beginning of its life, developers don’t already know everything about how gamers want to use it. That means that improving games isn’t just a matter of adding more content, tweaking the mechanics or waiting for technology to become more powerful. It also means that developers need gamers to play VR games because the gamers are teaching them how they want to use VR. It’s a back-and-forth process where gamers’ physical behaviour and real, outside-the-development-studio gameplay inform games designers about what they need and what they are trying to do. Then developers respond to that in their design and development processes, resulting in products with new mechanics and features that in turn help to shape gamer behaviour.
One important aspect of this is that games that were originally developed for play on an old-fashioned 2D screen and later ported to VR are never going to realise the potential of that technology in the same way as a game that was built for VR and within VR, like Space Junkies. Lacey explains to me exactly what that means. “A lot of games are developed for a TV screen,” he says, meaning that there’s a natural fit between the monitor that the developer is working on and the monitor that the gamer will eventually play on. “The problem then [when it comes to developing a VR game] is that I’m working on a normal monitor and not in that virtual space. So we developed some editing software, within the engine itself, for the level designers in our office. So we work in VR, they build models and build a map that they can look at in that VR space, they get that sense of scale and size. So that’s a difference between our game and a lot of other people’s because they build in a 2D environment and then it doesn’t work. So having developers work in that virtual space is a shift, going forward.”
The greatest improvements that you aren’t going to notice
It’s a strange thing to highlight as a positive of an entertainment experience that it doesn’t make you feel sick. But when VR is in its infancy and most gamers are not very experienced with VR, the combination can result in nausea. Reducing that has been a big priority for Ubisoft and there are many ways to tackle it that also happen to result in a better, all-round gaming experience.
Aside from a fast and stable frame rate, one thing that’s going to help is the way that your avatar moves around in the game. If you’ve played VR games before you might know that what they often want you to do is point at where you want to go and the game will teleport you to the right place. This is obviously a bit unnatural and can contribute to motion sickness. In contrast, Space Junkies has full navigation. Motion sickness is also reduced by the fact that you have a whole body in this game, you aren’t just a pair of disembodied hands. That helps your brain to feel more comfortable as well as providing more realistic, satisfying gameplay.
It’s a more social way to interact
The whole-body, free motion experience provided by Space Junkies, along with the spherical map, gives social interaction with players a much more immediate and intimate flavour. Often in multi-player games we hide behind our screens, we become keyboard warriors, there can be quite a toxic environment as strangers hurl abuse at each other. In Space Junkies, there’s a powerful sensation of being physically present in a real, 3D space with other players. You’re much more conscious of other participants as real people and not advanced NPCs. Lacey says that when he let gamers play-test Space Junkies, he found that people were much nicer to each other than they might have been on another platform. “Someone swearing or kicking off, it’s not there,” he says. “Some of the other games I’ve worked on, you get that really fast but in VR people are really helpful even when somebody’s not very good.” There are probably a lot of ways to explain that, but one could be that whenever there’s new technology, users feel a sense of being pioneers. People want to meet each other and show each other what to do as they collectively advance into the future. Lacey notices the way they use free motion to communicate with each other. “We’ve been beta testing, playing with consumers and they are chatting away, gesticulating, ‘can I show you something, come with me, look at this gun’. Being able to go no, yes, passing an object. It’s the little things that make the social interaction immense. It’s a relationship which is completely different to the normal contextual commands in another type of game.”
Arcade-style play
Space Junkies is a game that happens in short sessions, a 2×2 competition could last 15 or 20 minutes. This is not a game that’s going to soak up a whole evening unless you particularly want it to. Interestingly, this connects to the game’s quick loading time in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. Space Junkies is quick to load, it takes less than 3 seconds. At first, I didn’t quite appreciate the advantage of this apart from the fact that obviously, as consumers, we all want our wishes and desires to be fulfilled with minimum waiting around. This is when Lacey reminds me that with most of the non-VR games that I already play, there’s not just annoying loading time but also interminable updates. You have carved out a bit of time for gaming, you’re all excited to play your favourite game, then there’s an update or a patch and you could be waiting 90 minutes to be allowed in. In the midst of a busy work week, that much waiting around can be fatal to my gaming opportunities. So here’s something that loads immediately and that I can play while I’m waiting for another game to get itself ready.
If you’re the type of gamer who loves to sink hours into a game, there’s something for you too. Lacey assures me that there are 300 hours of gameplay if you measure that out in terms of unlockable content such as different weapons. “That’s the depth that we can give to players,” he says. At the same time, he agrees that those short bursts of competitive gameplay are the real focus of Space Junkies and after a generous 2 hours on site at Ubisoft, I can see that that is the case, I feel like we’re starting to run out of things to do in the game, although we’re certainly not running out of things to talk about. Don’t try to play this in the way that you would play a game that wants you to spend 10 years of your life with it. Think of it as 15 minutes of intensive, fast-paced action where you compete with your friends.
You can play in arcades – no need to buy hardware!
DNA VR in London is already advertising Space Junkies on its website and there are VR gaming arcades all over the UK now. Lacey says that Space Junkies is already in about 100 VR arcades worldwide because Ubisoft did a soft launch in December to get gamers to try out the game before the final version went live, enabling Ubisoft to get some early feedback.
What else should I know if I want to play at home?
Space Junkies will retail at about 40 Euros or a very reasonable £35 and it’s a complete game, meaning that you won’t have to purchase extra DLC to get going. Gamers will be happy to know that no separate payment is required to access loot boxes. They are there, but to get your hands on them, you just need to play. It’s a cross-platform game so you can play with your friends even if you’re using different hardware to access it.
Love Space games? Check out our list of the 6 best Space Games of all time.