n spite of all the hype-train madness that VR has brought upon the gaming scene, the potential there is genuinely exciting, and nothing proves that more than the indie title Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes. One of the lead members of the development team, Ben Kane, of Steel Crate Games, took to the stage to discuss the approach they took with the game, and why the asymmetrical cooperation elements of it transcend the concept of simply playing a game itself.
Ben Kane goes all the way back to the beginning, when they first worked with VR tech at what was just another game jam, and an experience he had where he saw the sight of someone having a blast from simply watching their friend wearing and playing with the VR goggles on site.
This sight of this inspired the team to test out a gameplay design that would apply this very dynamic; brainstorming their famous bomb defusing cooperative mechanic. Taking the asymmetrical approach was a different challenge Ben cites, as even as sound as the theory was, realizing it into to a real-world application of the concept was still very challenging.
The team wanted to emphasize the importance of VR, and the memorability it gave to the experience, and defining the roles that each player had within the game distinctively.
The appeal of the theme, and its communicative dynamic is what the team attributes to be the highlight of their success, and what pushed them to polish the concept as much as they did. Recognizing that the demographics was not only extended to the likes of parents and their children (who especially enjoyed their demo time), but individuals who aren't even particularly keen on games, let alone playing them communicatively—it became more like a trust exercise than it did a game.
Mr. Kane explained that the work that it took to foster this sort agency between players was to present a problem within a static format, pointing out the manual specifically, writing it out in dense text that's deliberately obtuse, and making it bound to trip up players in the process. Doing so was a subtle to tactic that was designed to gently force the people who played KT&NE out of a comfort zone of literary deluge of traditional game direction—pushing them into a situation where in order to be successful, their rapport would need to become more intimate.
Steel Crate Games claimed that the performance of this approach was backed up by mechanics that’re specifically aimed at making the pace of the game more erratic. Like multi-tasking challenges that require various sequences of priority for example, or subconsciously filtering the visuals of the game with the right colors and sounds that're especially engineered to trigger the natural stress inducers of both players.
This sort of setup helps steer the conversation towards player strategy, and not designer intent according to Ben—making it to where players aren't trying to break down the design of the title at a meta level of fundamentals, but are instead engaging upon the diegetic flow of the game, taking something away with each success or failure by learning a new piece of knowledge that’ll improve their ability at decision making just a little bit more than last time.
The glue that keeps that keeps this flow of gameplay consistent are the entirely unambiguous rules of Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes; Ben explains that giving any sort of player freedom to wonder away from this process can lead to players misinterpreting choices, and making it difficult for their teamwork to be conclusive as a result.
The developer then gave an example to elaborate; with a play session where players were given a stack of wires on a bomb, and the instruction were to simply "cut the second wire." Witnessing this session undetected, Ben discovered that the players had questioned the priority of the "second" wire when planning the cut, discussing whether it was the second one from the top, or the second one from the bottom of the stack. After he noticed this predicament a few more times with different players, he had set it upon himself to make the instructions as fool-proof as possible.
In addition to the black and white nature of the manual’s instructions, he also claimed that the game also generates rule data of off procedural play, examining the state of the puzzle of the bomb in every gameplay session, and calculating what fact remained empirically true, through a unique index of data that recognizes the simple property of something like "cut the first wire."
The precedence that the rules of KT&NE makes it to where the flow of play and conversation is consistent as it can be, and advancing through always, regardless of all potential bomb states of puzzles.
The ebb and flow of these rules in effect generate a deal of progress that dynamically changes/responds to different players as a result, generating a real sense of player trust that fostered continual play.
Since its launch, Keep Talking & Nobody Explodes has not only entered into the hands of players, but employers who have claimed to use it in their employee interviews, counselors who deploy it as a trust exercise for their clients, and more—it goes to show that playing a game with your friends doesn’t always mean that everyone needs to be in front of a screen with a controller in their hands.