decommissioned: social gameplay for vr
Meta, formerly Facebook enlisted Gravity Jack as a strategic partner to help them develop the future of social gameplay leveraging virtual reality technology. Giving Gravity Jack full creative control over the concept, our team conceptualized and developed a multiplayer (up to 8 live players at once!) VR game that takes place on a space station on Mars. Amongst the players, there is a traitor(s) who is trying to delay the necessary evacuation of Mars by sabotaging group missions within the space station. After a timed mission, the players meet back at headquarters to discuss and ultimately vote on who they think the traitor is. If all the players can identify and agree on the traitor the game ends If not, the players must go back out on a new mission — giving the traitor more time to sabotage the station.
Gravity Jack developed this for the Oculus Quest VR headset and incorporated realistic avatars and hand-tracking functionality into the gameplay. Aside from coding alongside the Meta developers, what made this project truly unique is that Gravity Jack used the Unity platform to create an open-sourced code base that encourages other developers to reference, pull snippets from, or even add to for their own projects.
Client
META
Platforms
Oculus VR Headset
SERVICES
Virtual Reality
Immersive gaming experiences leveraging Oculus Quest, Vive, and others!
Oculus
Custom 3D & animation for any Oculus headset
Unity
Unleash tons of creative tools for interactive experiences
Game Development
End-to-end gaming solutions that follow the latest trends and best practices
3D Development
Realistic 3D artwork that can be viewed from any angle.
Custom Software
Code development specific to the project’s needs
THE GRAVITY JACK PROCESS
Meta’s ‘Decommissioned’ VR experience is the gold standard of Gravity Jack’s full-cycle development services. There wasn’t one aspect of the project that Gravity Jack didn’t take point on. The concept, gameplay mechanics, branding, 3D assets, and a dynamic code base developed specifically for Meta’s Oculus VR headset were all established and executed by our team.
TIMELINE STAGES
USER STORIES
A process of identifying and organizing content.
WIREFRAMES
Planning the rough layout and structure of the site’s pages.
UI DESIGN
Applying the styles to the wireframes to achieve the final design.
DEVELOPMENT
Building the website with modern coding techniques.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Identifying and fixing any bugs in the code on multiple devices and screen sizes.
LAUNCH
Setting up your site on a hosting service or packaging up the code and handing it over to you!
THE PITCH & PROJECT KICK-OFF
The Meta team came to Gravity Jack and submitted a request for a proposal with just a few simple requirements.
1. A multiplayer social deduction VR game
2. An open code base for their Oculus VR headsets
3. Must leverage their newly released avatar SDK
The rest was up to us. With those parameters in mind, Gravity Jack quickly got to work by ideating and conceptualizing several different gaming experiences. Ideas ranged from the ancient pyramids of Egypt to an underground subway setting. No details were spared as we established key elements such as character roles and gameplay mechanics for each concept.
In the end, we pitched our favorite experience that was eventually named ‘Decommissioned’ — a game taking place in the future where a group of scientists are in the process of establishing a colony for life on Mars. During this process, a mole is trying to sabotage the entire operation in an attempt to escape the planet and get back to Earth. The other scientists must work together in carrying out a variety of tasks before it’s too late. If they don’t, the colony will be destroyed and they will have to evacuate the planet.
During the gameplay, the mole is working amongst them and deliberately sabotaging the assigned tasks. At the end of each round, the players must get together and talk about accomplishing their tasks in an effort to identify the mole amongst them. If the mole is not identified, another round of tasks will be assigned to the players in hopes the mole will slip up. However, a timer is running and the scientists must identify the mole in a hurry before they are officially decommissioned!
Meta quickly got back to Gravity Jack and informed us that our vision for this project was just what they had in mind when they sent out the request for a proposal and that we were the perfect team to execute the VR experience. In fact, they were so excited about this project that members of the Meta team jumped in to be a part of the development process and worked alongside Gravity Jack.
A kick-off call was scheduled and our teams began to map out all of the required elements of getting such a large project over the finish line. Direct lines of communication through Slack, Workplace, Jira, and Bitbucket were immediately opened and our teams got to work staying in contact on a daily basis.
- A hazy environment that mimics smoke coming from a Moriarty’s pipe — a character in the Sandman series.
- Snowfall animations which brought to the life the vampiric apocalypse of Impact Winter from the book.
- Butterflies flying all around the sand sculpture of the character Morpheus.
While the sand sculptures created by Civic and Audible were a site to see by themselves at Comic-Con, Gravity Jack was ecstatic to develop these custom Instagram filters to take their experience over the top!
CASE STUDY VIDEO
As a premier developer for Meta, the making of this project required several dynamic aspects — most notably providing a code base that will be the standard for Meta developers worldwide. Watch our case study video to see how the entire project came together from beginning to end.
GAMEPLAY Flowcharts
Gravity Jack took the details presented in the proposal and took them even further after the project kicked off. We established key details such as defining individual character roles and creating additional gameplay tasks. Every action and consequence within the game was identified prior to any development.
User Story Flowcharts
A detailed and comprehensive flowchart to guide the development of the project.
Market Research and picking a name
While a social deduction game would be a fairly new concept when it comes to virtual reality, Gravity Jack still took the time to do market research across all gaming platforms that are space themed. This market research helped us not only name the game but also helped our team decide on things such as art direction and gameplay interactions in order to distinguish ourselves from others.
Naming Services
Working towards an identity for your brand, product, or service.
Design Exploration
As the gameplay storyline evolved, so did the design for the game. Above are several elements we explored before landing on a final logo.
Style Guide
Guidelines that others can follow and recognize
Colors and Typography
Since the experience takes place in the future and in space, it was important that we chose fonts and colors that best matched that theme and ensured it was consistent throughout the gaming experience.
Standardized Font
Ensure that there is a text standardization throughout the entire experience
Final Logo Set
The visual process started by sketching out rough ideas for the logo, experimenting with different typography and imagery. With several iterations mocked up, we organized and presented digital versions of the logo to the client and received for first impressions
Logo Design
Establish a look customers recognize
CONTROL ROOM
HABITATION
Moodboards
While we wanted the space theme to remain consistent throughout the entirety of the game, we also wanted every room to have its distinguished look and feel. To accomplish we created a series of mood boards to arrange materials that best represented the project’s style.
Environments
Replicate an existing environment or develop a custom one
CONCEPT ART
Since we used the META Avatar SDK, our concept art served as pre-production sketches of the environments and their features that helped guide design and development as the project progressed.
Client Feedback
All logos, designs, and art are first submitted to client for feedback and approval
FINAL CONCEPT ART
With the concept art approved by the Meta team, we began making executive decisions on all of the large and small components that went into every environment within the game.
Characters & Environments
Customize who and what goes into a 3D environment
3D DEVELOPMENT
Developed on the Unity platform Decommissioned featured dynamic hand-tracking functionality that enabled users to interact with any given 3D element within the VR environment. In-game voting, gameplay, and adjusting the game controls all relied on interactions with the 3D elements.
Animations
Movements that bring 3D to life
Gameplay Screenshots
A few of our favorite screenshots from the final game.
See it in action!
Meta’s ‘Decommissioned’ VR experience is the gold standard of Gravity Jack’s full-cycle development services. There wasn’t one aspect of the project that Gravity Jack didn’t take point on. The concept, gameplay mechanics, branding, 3D assets, and a dynamic code base developed specifically for Meta’s Oculus VR headset were all established and executed by our team.
The Goal
Meta came to Gravity Jack seeking a multiplayer social deduction VR game with an open code base for their Oculus VR headsets that also leveraged their avatar SDK
Gravity Jack’s Solution
A multiplayer VR game that takes place on a space station located on Mars. Players must work together to identify the mole sabotaging the entire game before they are forced to leave the planet.
The Result
A dynamic VR game that features the Oculus Quest headset and incorporates realistic avatars mixed with hand-tracking functionality into the gameplay — which can be played by up to 8 players at once.
