Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Of UDEN, the VOID, and the Coffee House Six

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 3, 2015

UDEN_Sep2015Last night’s UDEN (Utah Digital Entertainment Network) meeting was held at a place called “Church and State,” a non-profit “business incubator” that offers office space to small businesses inside what was once a historic church building build in the 1890s. As the last time I attended, it was a very entrepreneurial-focused meeting consisting of announcements, a keynote address, several three minute “Hive Ignite” talks introducing some of the people involved in the various digital & entertainment industries in the state, and then a networking session until they kicked us out of the building.

The keynote was presented by founders of The Void, which was pretty dang exciting on its own. I’m still cautiously optimistic, although as one of the local indie game developers mentioned later that evening, their spiel sounded a bit like an “excite potential investors and get more funding” kind of thing. Having come from a background in electronics, he was quite skeptical of their plans, but I was a little more optimistic, taking the assumption that this was their grand vision, but their actual release will have to be more of a “stage one” compromise. But we’ll see. During one discussion I mentioned their (temporarily) “back-burnered” theme park and accidentally referred to it as “Nevermore” instead of “Evermore.” Nice Freudian slip.

What they presented was pretty incredible (granted, both meanings of the word). But if they can pull this off, they’ll be breaking ground on the first of their VOID Entertainment Centers (VECs) in October, and will be ready for audiences next summer. They’re using a combination of hot new technology – which can be more powerful than normal consumer-level products because they don’t have to fit them in the consumer price range – and plain ol’ fashioned stage magic. Curtis Hickman, the head of content development, is among other things a professional magician. They have some practical effects designed to “argue for veracity” and trick the mind into buying into the illusion presented by the goggles, headset, and haptic feedback. The plan is for the centers to have 8 “stages” each (on two floors) about 60 feet in diameter each, with somewhat fixed physical “sets” (walls and practical effects) that can be disguised through VR to be a cave in one experience, and an alien space ship in another, etc.

UDEN_VOID_Presentation_640The experiences are intended to be 20 minutes long (although they also used 30 minutes… maybe 10 minutes of preparation & debriefing?), with experiences optimized for 6-8 people at a time. So at peak capacity, they’ll be pushing a little under 200 people per hour through the stages.

Some further-off plans include having actors for more interactive content, and motion-based two-person “simulation pods” for another kind of VR. Their plans include mixing up the sim pods with the experiences in the main stages. They mentioned the possibility of a “mecha battle” with some players piloting giant robots through the virtual battlefield while others – on the stage – stayed on the ground as infantry or something.

There were some interesting discussions about how to handle traditional gameplay elements in their events. Traditional videogaming seems like a natural fit, but in practice may not work so well in their virtual worlds.  Things like HUDs, respawning, and “ghosting” of other players didn’t work quite so well, and safety (not to mention preventing equipment damage) is paramount. They mentioned trying to change distances so one step was actually 3x the distance traversed to make things seem bigger / faster, and they said it worked out pretty well.

They are planning on centers throughout the world, with new content every quarter, and intend to even work with indies on providing content. And they plan on keeping their headquarters here in Utah.

I want to believe. I’ve read and talked to enough people who’ve tried it out who have verified that this stuff all works really, really well at the prototype stage and they’ve felt it has huge potential. So… maybe. I’m crossing my fingers.

The Hive Ignite addresses were given by representatives from Utah GOED (Governor’s Office of Economic Development,), Spy Hop, MURA Interactive, and Schaffer Studios – a nice cross section of government, nonprofit, game development, and film development. I’m sure that mix was deliberate.

Finally, there was the meet & greet. I got to talk a little more with Curtis Hickman about The VOID’s plans, AJ Dimick from the University of Utah Entertainment Arts & Engineering program, and several others. That’s the fun and weird part of this – tons of discussions, introductions, and ideas going around the room at high-speed and it was different for everyone.

PostUDENCoffeeGroup640Towards the end, six of us indie game devs got into a fun discussion that we didn’t want to stop even when they kicked us out of the building at the end of the night. So we found a coffee shop across the street that was open for another couple of hours, and just continued talking and swapping war stories there.

Then when THAT closed, we ended up taking the discussion outside onto the sidewalk for another 45 minutes. I watched four police cars go by us and turn near us during the time. Actually, I’m not entirely positive it wasn’t the same one. Six geeks WELL out of our teens hanging out on a street corner in downtown Salt Lake City in the middle of the night? Yeah, we’re trouble. I’m sure they were just looking out for our safety.

And people say we introvert gamer types don’t like to be social. BULL. We just need the right type of social interactions and then we have trouble shutting up. (Although I really don’t consider myself that much of an introvert…)

All-in-all… I had a blast. I left energized, excited, and really thinking about what I can do to push Rampant Games to the next level. So it was a pretty productive night, too.


Filed Under: Events - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



  • Ayrik said,

    Great write-up! It was a blast!

  • vazor said,

    Thanks for the article! Sad I missed out after but I had to take some people home.

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