Can the problem of bullying in the virtual world be stopped before it gets bad? Patrick Harris of Minority Media (Papo and Yo) opened his cautionary presentation during Game Developers Conference 2016’s virtual reality series with a warning: His talk, on the potential for — and overwhelming effects of — harassment in socially minded VR spaces, could get uncomfortable.
Although “viewer discretion" was advised, Harris warned the audience that he wasn’t going to shy away from the harsh realities of harassment over the next half hour. The cyberbullying he detailed was both familiar and foreign to much of his listeners, however, making it all the more fascinating — and, in a way, frightening.
Harris is a lead game designer at the studio, which is now working on multiplayer VR experiences. Similar to typical online games (he often referenced Dota 2 and Call of Duty), players in massively multiplayer online VR releases will likely be the target of harassment at some point during play, he explained. But what isn’t quite apparent yet is the form that harassment will take with this technology, which encourages total immersion and players having presence within the virtual environment.
It turns out that, according to Harris, harassment is "way, way, way worse" in VR. "It is intense, it is visceral it triggers your fight or flight response," he warned, his tone becoming more grave.
"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin"
In VR, a player can do much more than send a death threat over text. Minority Media developed a multiplayer prototype to understand what harassment looks like with VR technology, and found players can abuse the presence afforded by virtual reality to get right up in the faces of others.
"They can lean in and touch your chest and groin and it’s really scary," Harris said. As part of his experiment to figure out the depths of VR harassment, the designer played his MMO prototype with an unsuspecting woman. Their gameplay session was shown to the audience with a short video that left the room in stunned, dismayed silence.
He described the shame he felt as he pushed the game’s immersive capabilities to their limits, making obscene gestures with a "phallic" object, invading his fellow player’s personal space and ultimately trying to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible — with great success. All of this was shown to the audience, too, as the video cut between the woman’s palpable discomfort and Harris’ increasingly disturbing victimizing tactics.
Afterward, Harris apologized profusely for the way he acted during the game session — he was so stricken by how real the experience felt, he said, that he immediately felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. Even worse, according to the woman he played against — and harassed in the name of research — it was "a damaging experience."
"if we’re not going to change it, who the fuck is?"
Yet Harris sought to do more than instill fear into the audience, thanks to his detailed descriptions of the discomfort he caused and felt as a faux VR abuser. Although he admitted that there was likely no one great method for protecting players from every possible instance of virtual harassment, he suggested several gameplay mechanics for creating precautions and punitive measures for damaging behaviors within VR. These include creating opt-out "personal boundary lines" which turn opponents invisible once crossed, improved report systems and saving replays of offending incidents.
But in a field that’s still untested, none of these ideas are safe bets just yet. Just how severe and affecting harassment can be with technology that requires true presence within the game world remains to be seen.
It will be up to Harris and his fellow pioneering VR developers to figure out how to curtail the problem before it reaches its worst potential, he said.
"We’re the ones with the power to change it," he told the crowd with increasing volume. To end his talk, he shouted:
"If we’re not going to change it, who the fuck is?"

Step onto the desert planet yourself If you ever get a chance to check it out, your visit to a virtual reality Star Wars in its current form will be all too brief.
The Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine demo runs for maybe seven minutes in its entirety, and only a brief moment within that time is actual gameplay.
The demo opens with the familiar burst of music so familiar to anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie, and then comes the text crawl, marching off into the star-filled distance until it finally disappears.
Next you see Tatooine and then, finally, you’re there, standing by a landing pad next to a clutter of boxes and storage bins in an alien desert.
The Millennium Falcon swoops down, and after a bit of banter and a quick repair or two, R2-D2 hands over your lightsaber. The controls are precise, but smoothed out to prevent the jitter some might deliver with an unsteady hand. I was able to perform tight figure eights in the air with the tip of the lightsaber and tiny, nearly invisible circles with controlled wrist movement.
While the virtual weapon obviously lacks the heft of a physical object, I was surprised at how real it felt in the experience. It’s been a while, but I spent my high school and college years learning and teaching fencing. This weapon behaved like it should when it came to tip control.
It did feel ever so slightly behind the faster of my real-world wrist movements, but not enough to throw me out of the experience.
After a few seconds of adjusting, my place sort of under the Millennium Falcon was attacked by a swarm of stormtroopers, and Han Solo asked me, over an intercom, to protect R2.
I spent the next minute or so swatting red lasers out of the air, trying my best to both protect the droid and also angle the laser blasts back at the approaching troopers.
I found using the tip of the lightsaber was easier and more efficient than trying to, essentially, parry the blasts with the edge of the weapon.
It was fantastic fun, but over way too quickly for the buildup. I was also surprised to find that a few times I bumped the wall with my controller.
Later, the person demoing the game for me said that the typical virtual wall that pops up to warn a player that they’re about to hit something was turned off for the demo because the developers thought it took away from the experience.

Check out the video above to see the entire demo, and me awkwardly swatting my way through it.

We just wanted to talk to camels. Moon Hunters is one of those games that feels incredibly vast, while also very small.
It’s a point-and-click RPG from Kitfox Games, where you play a legendary hero trying to figure out what happened to the moon. You see, the moon was supposed to rise for your village’s First Moon Feast but instead she was a no-show. As a respected hero, you’re sent out to find her.
That basic premise is the same with every playthrough, as is the villain: sun cult leader Mardokh. But in between, any number of things can happen. The procedurally generated encounters and locations of Moon Hunters hint at a huge world full of opportunities.
In practice, it can be a little frustrating. The gameplay is limited to three in-game days, which are marked by your camping after clearing an area. So while I often discovered really interesting opportunities (cave full of blood!) I wasn’t always able to pursue them. In every playthrough I was told that I could find someone who could teach me to talk to animals. I only broached that possibility in my fifth playthrough, but wasn’t able to pursue it fully before my three days were up and I had to fight Mardokh.
It reminded Griffin and me a little bit of The Yawhg, and a little bit of Road Not Taken. One thing you definitely can’t miss: the gorgeous art and music. I’m not the kind of person who goes wild for pixel art, but this game is an exception for me. Watch the video to see what I mean! It also showcases the game’s environments, fast-paced combat, and the camel that I still can’t talk to.
Moon Hunters is available on Steam for PC. You can play with up to four players, locally and online.

Die over and over again in real life Game designer Eric Lang shared plans for “a simple but highly deep and interactive card game" based on Bloodborne — From Software’s brutally difficult, and hugely popular, 2015 PS4 exclusive — on Twitter today. Here’s his tweet, along with an image of the box:

For those who follow me and have gotten to know my silly codenames for games-in-progress, this is Project Dream. pic.twitter.com/fqoKqJwCQx
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

Lang is no stranger to tabletop adaptations of video games, having created XCOM The Board Game in 2014. Lang is also responsible for games in the Warhammer, Game of Thrones and even Star Wars universes — as evidenced by his impressive CV — so licensed adaptations are familiar ground.

Bloodborne is indeed licensed. It is a simple but highly deep and interactive card game. From @CMONGames. No minis! But sweet components.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

The game will be based on Bloodborne’s procedurally generated (and therefore, in theory, infinitely replayable) Chalice Dungeons which our review of the game describes as:
… stuffed with treasures to find and unique bosses to fight. Players will see things in these sections of the game that they won’t see elsewhere — though the Chalice Dungeon bosses simply don’t compare in spectacle to Bloodborne’s other big bad enemies. Still, they’re fun to explore and if you manage to build a particularly interesting or challenging dungeon, you can share it with other players and explore it together.

Bloodborne is a card game based on the Chalice dungeon runs, where players compete to kill monsters and take their blood. But don’t die!
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

Bloodborne: risk management with a bit of groupthink, inventory management/upgrades and tactical play in an intense 30 minute card game.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

My goal with Bloodborne was to channel the intensity and frustration of the video game into a contest between players. Lots of death.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

That definitely sounds like Bloodborne. If tabletop card games are your thing — and From Software’s brand of video game most definitely isn’t — don’t despair! Lang admits his design expertise didn’t extend to cruising through the streets of Yharnam unscathed:

Yes, I played it on Playstation. And yes, I sucked horribly at it.
— Eric Lang (@eric_lang) March 16, 2016

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I was aware that Salt and Sanctuary would be a 2D incarnation of the Souls games — think Castlevania, not Slashy Souls — but after playing a few hours of the final game on PlayStation 4, I was not prepared for how punishing an adaptation it really was. Sure, it’s got Souls-like mechanics, like resource loss upon death and hugely customizable characters. But what’s more impressive is how it has adapted the moments that the Souls games can deliver: Like, for instance, the delight of having a game trick you into running to your death through a field of spike traps.
You can watch Justin and I play through a bit of Salt and Sanctuary, including a genuinely upsetting boss fight, in the Overview video posted above.

Will be released as a book first Director Michael Mann is bringing a group of writers together to write a prequel novel and film adaptation to his 1995 movie, Heat.
According to Deadline, Mann is launching a book publishing company with the goal to adapt each title that comes through for either film or television. The director will reportedly scour his own archive of films to look for potential ideas, but his highest priority remains bringing the Heat prequel to fruition.
Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, Heat followed a gang of bank robbers trying to evade police upon realizing they accidentally left a clue at the location of their most recent heist. The prequel will reportedly focus on the “formative" years of each major character.
Mann is currently working on securing writers for both fiction and non-fiction projects. Once his writers are onboard, work can start on the prequel but there’s no estimated release date at this time.

Here’s a rundown of what the small box does and doesn’t do Sony has kept mum on the capabilities of PlayStation VR’s processing unit to this point, but the company finally provided some details on the box during a presentation today at the 2016 Game Developers Conference.
“It is not extra GPU power CPU power," said Chris Norden, senior staff engineer at Sony. "It is certainly not a PlayStation 4 expansion unit or upgrade."
Norden added, "Actually, it’s not really accessible to the developer in any way," noting that "the PlayStation 4 is perfectly capable of 120 Hz."

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The making of PlayStation VR

Sony’s been so secretive about the box, which is officially called the "processor unit," that we weren’t even allowed to take photos of it as recently as December. The company provided the dimensions of the box yesterday, following the announcement of the PlayStation VR price and release window: The processor unit is about the size of four CD jewel cases stacked together.
So what does the processor unit do? A slide in Norden’s presentation explained that the box handles processing of object-based 3D audio, and displays the "social screen," which is Sony’s term for the second screen that you may use with PlayStation VR. (The box allows the PS4 to simultaneously output an image to the headset and, say, a television.) The processor unit unwarps the headset image so it can be displayed on a normal screen, and that process drops the resolution somewhat for the social screen.
The processor unit can use the social screen in both mirroring mode and in a separate mode, according to Norden. And the box also handles the display of the PS4 interface when the PlayStation VR headset is being used in cinematic mode.
We’ll have more from Norden’s talk soon.
Developing …

MICKEY LOOK OUT FOR THAT TRUCK MICKEY NO Hipster Whale will release a new Crossy Road game starring Disney characters “soon" for mobile devices, the developer announced today.Disney Crossy Road will feature more than 100 Disney and Pixar characters. As in the original Crossy Road, players will attempt to guide characters to safety in "endless Frogger"-style gameplay. Check out the teaser trailer above to see Mickey Mouse attempt the challenge. For more on the original Crossy Road, which has been downloaded more than 120 million times since its launch, check out our feature.

Shadow Complex is perhaps best known as the game that took “Metroidvania" from ghoulish portmanteau to actual genre. If you missed it the first time around (and when it was remastered for PC last year), it’s now available on Xbox One for $14.99.
Besides the obvious visual upgrades, Shadow Complex Remastered features new melee takedowns and challenges. The subset of players who don’t have access to Chair’s side-scrolling classic gets even smaller this May when the game comes to PlayStation 4 and Steam.

It’s a new way to create video games and other types of entertainment Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice developer Ninja Theory debuted a new trailer during the 2016 Game Developers Conference for the game formerly known as just Hellblade, and the two-minute video is about more than just the titular character.
Senua, the protagonist of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, is a Celtic warrior left traumatized after a Viking invasion. She develops psychosis as a result of the attack, and hears voices in her head; Hellblade seeks to explore mental health issues through the character.
Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory’s chief creative officer, presented the trailer during Epic Games’ “State of Unreal" talk at GDC 2016 today. In the middle of the trailer, a picture-in-picture window popped up to reveal that it wasn’t a trailer at all — Senua’s facial animations in the video were being generated from a live performance on stage by actress Melina Juergens, which was being captured in real time and streamed into Unreal Engine 4.
Ninja Theory and Epic Games worked with Cubic Motion, a facial animation and computer vision firm that has contributed technology to games like The Order: 1886, Until Dawn and Ryse: Son of Rome, on the demo. The facial rig was built by a company called 3Lateral and "optimized for real-time performance," said Cubic Motion in a press release.
"The robustness and quality we showed today is the result of serious technical breakthroughs that will transform production," said Dr. Gareth Edwards, CEO of Cubic Motion. "We’ve seen a few groups try this kind of thing before with more primitive technology, but we’ve never seen a system reach the kind of level required to make it a genuine alternative to offline production for facial animation."
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is in development on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC, and is set for release later this year. For a behind-the-scenes look at the real-time capture in action, check out the developer diary from Ninja Theory below. You can see the final product in the trailer above.