Skills Needed to Create a Serious VR Game with a Game Engine

If you’re planning to create a serious game or educationalexperience in virtual reality, you’ll need to learn a few basic developmentskills using a game engine (aka game development software program). You can useseveral different game engines to create VR experiences, and the two mostpopular by far are Unity and Unreal Engine. (UnrealEngine 4, or UE4, is the most recent version available as of this writing.) AppGameKit VR is another good one,albeit less popular. This article will focus on Unity and UE4.

Unity tends to be favored by most VR game developers, and 91percent of Microsoft HoloLens mixed reality and augmented reality experiencesare made with Unity. However, UE4 does offer one distinct advantage: Non-programmerscan use it. Perhaps Unity’s biggest advantage over UE4 is the extensive libraryof great tutorials it offers to help you learn, as well as the availability oflots of user-generated tutorials. However, both are very powerful (and free!)programs that are more than sufficient to help you design and develop even themost complex and visually stunning serious games.

Both Unity and the first version of Unreal Engine wereoriginally developed to create traditional 2-D games, but both have evolvedsubstantially over the years, making it as easy as selecting 3-D (i.e., VR) asan option to begin creating a VR game. That’s not to say that making VR gamesis easy, just that switching modes from 2-D to 3-D is easy. In fact, developinggames for VR is incredibly complex. If you’re planning to develop your ownserious games, you and your team will need to learn and employ several criticalskills, as described below.

Basic familiarity with a VR game engine software

While several additionalenginesare available for developing VR games, most VR game developers use Unity orUE4. These programs are powerful and complex, meaning that there’s a lot tolearn and manage, including:

• The virtual environment in which the gameplaywill take place
• Light source and direction
• Camera angles and direction
• Applying the laws of physics to your world
• Avatars and characters
• Locomotion
• Interaction with objects
• Communication
• Menus
• Scoring
• Levels
• Layers
• Textures
• Colors
• Sound effects
• Music
• Timelines
• The code editor
• Organizing all your assets (e.g., the objects,code, folders, etc., you used to create the game)
• And much, much more

It’s not like Photoshop, where you just open a photo fileand start applying filters and cropping. None of these features is impossibleto learn, but it can be overwhelming the first time you open up the game engineand start poking around. 

If you haven’t used a game engine before, I strongly suggestyou start by completing the basic tutorials in videos like these.

Note: You’ll needa very fast and powerful gaming computer to run a game engine and build a VRexperience. We’ll delve into the specifics of what you’ll need (e.g., graphicscards, processors, RAM, monitors, etc.) in a later article.

Proficiency in an object-oriented programming language

Whether you personally write any of the code or not, thegame engines create games using an object-oriented programming language.Without getting into the weeds too much here, object-oriented programminglanguages allow game engines (and game developers using the game engines) toeasily organize and manipulate thousands of different objects as needed.Objects contain data (aka attributes) and code (aka methods). These objects caninteract with one another. In very simple terms for a game, that means a handcan throw a rock, the rock can hit a window, and the window can break.

If you’re going to use Unity, then you’ll need to learn theobject-oriented programming language C# (pronounced “see sharp”). You don’tnecessarily need to learn how to code in C# from the outset, but at the veryleast, you’ll need to know the basics of how the language works so you can copycode from code libraries, paste it into your game’s code editor, and tweak itto your needs. Realistically, you’ll eventually need to learn C# reasonablywell in order to troubleshoot bugs until the code and the game work as desired.

Some Unity developers use JavaScript instead of C# (orpossibly even Boo or other scripting languages), but C# has tools and abilitiesavailable in Unity that the other languages do not, so it’s probably best tojust learn C# and stick with it.

In UE4, you technically don’t need to learn to code in orderto create basic games. Instead, you can use Blueprints, which is a visual scripting system that is based on C++ (pronounced “see plus plus”). Thecool thing about Blueprints is that game designers need not know how to code inorder to use it, because it’s entirely a visual interface. If you are a skilledprogrammer, or if you hire one, then you can use C++ to create more advancedvisual scripting systems that non-programmers can then use to make moreadvanced or more custom games. If this is your first attempt at creating a VRgame, then stick with Blueprints for now. It’ll make your life a lot easier.

The ability to make (or buy) game assets

While familiarity with game engines and object-orientedprogramming languages (or Blueprints) is required to create the basics of agame, you’re going to need lots of assets to put in the game. Assets are theenvironments, props, characters/avatars, vehicles, sprites (i.e., wanderingnon-player characters that make the virtual world seem more realistic), music,sound effects, textures (e.g., smoke, water, and lighting effects), etc., thatyou’ll use in your game.

You could design all your own assets, and some large gamedevelopment companies probably do, but that takes a lot of time and skill. Youcould hire or partner up with talented VR game designers. You could contractdesigners to create each asset you need. Fortunately, there’s a much easiersolution. You can easily buy all the assets you need in the Unity Asset Store, in the Unreal Engine Marketplace,or from one of the hundreds of third-party marketplaces and asset designcompanies that are just a Google search away. You may not be able to find theexact design of spaceship, character, or sound effect you had in mind, but you’llalmost always find something that’s close enough and 1,000 times moreaffordable than many other options.

VR game-building expertise

VR game design is so new that there are no set rules—or notmany, anyway. It’s a great time to be creative and experiment. Would you likeseven fast-paced levels in your game? Great! Make seven levels. Would youprefer one meandering level while giving players the ability to hear each ofthe game characters’ thoughts? Great! Do that instead. You’re creating a wholeuniverse with each VR game and experiment. Get crazy and add in whateverelements you want.

Even assuming that you buy all the assets your game willuse, and even assuming you already know C# or plan to use Unreal Engine, youstill need expertise to use the assets well. For example, what good is yoursnazzy new avatar that you just bought if you can’t make it move, talk, orinteract with the virtual world? In addition to the many assets you’ll need,you’re also going to need VR developers and coders with specific skill sets—including,but not limited to:

• Game design and gameplay 
• Level design
• Animation
• Sound effects and music

In addition to these technical skills, you’ll also needexperts in:

• Voice acting
• Storytelling
• 3-D art (see above for the various assets you’llneed)
• Marketing and sales (even if you plan to just stickyour game on Steam, you’ll stillneed to generate excitement about it, hit the trade-show circuit, etc.)

Don’t forget to include your content experts in the developmentprocess, too. The calculus, art history, or physics teachers (or whatever it isyou’re teaching with this game) are integral to every step in the gamedevelopment process. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the game developers canjust make the game and you can add in the educational content later, becauseneither the gameplay nor the lessons will make any sense. The developers andgame designers must continually work with and learn from the content experts inorder to make a great game, and the content experts will need to learn a lotabout game design and development as well.

It’s possible you could learn and do everything yourself. Orperhaps you’ll do it all with a small team of two to three people. Sometalented, ambitious, and frugal indie game-development companies certainly havepulled that off. However, consider that the biggest video games cost tens tohundreds of millions of dollars to develop. Even the smallest indie game-developmentcompanies typically employ teams of at least 10 – 20 highly skilled (thoughoften underpaid) developers and designers to build any given game.

Further, assuming you do already have all the skillsnecessary to build an entire game from start to finish, if you’re doing it allyourself, it’ll take you months or years to finish even if you’re workingfull-time on it, and who can afford to do that? You can limit the length of thegame, the intricacy of the detail, the size of the virtual world, the number oflevels, and the complexity of the gameplay, but still, creating a new game byyourself is an enormous and daunting task. You’ll build a better game, finishthe game more quickly, and have more fun if you build a small but talented teamto help you.

The good news is that you don’t need to employ all thesepeople full-time. You can often contract the people you need for anywhere froma few hours to a few months at a time, until their portion of the work is done.

If you’re somehow still determined to build it all yourself,from conceiving the game and drawing out storyboards all the way to releasingand marketing updated versions, then begin by reading the books on game designand game theory below. Actually, you should read these books regardless.

• The Art ofGame Design: A Book of Lenses, second edition, by Jesse Schell
• Level Up!The Guide to Great Video Game Design, second edition, by Scott Rogers
• GameDesign Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, thirdedition, by Tracy Fullerton
• Rules ofPlay: Game Design Fundamentals, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
• A Theoryof Fun for Game Design, second edition, by Raph Koster
• TheGamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-Based Methods and Strategies forTraining and Education, by Karl M. Kapp

That last one is especially important for anyone creatingserious games, as it focuses on designing games in an educational setting. Youcan also read the supplemental book, TheGamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook: Ideas into Practice, byKapp, Lucas Blair, and Rich Mesch, for methods and examples to put the conceptsinto practice.

Once you’ve read all those books, then you can startlearning the individual skill sets discussed above.

A willingness to use existing content 

Perhaps you’re now feeling overwhelmed, like you’ve bittenoff more than you can chew given your limited expertise, time, and budget. Fairenough. Fortunately, you don’t have to create all your own educational content.Several companies are already creating educational content and serious games inVR. For example, Google Expeditionscreates educational field trips in VR for Cardboard. Eon creates educational content usingboth AR and VR. Engage,created by Immersive VR Educationand HTC Vive, is a virtual space for teachers and students to interact andcommunicate; Immersive VR Education has created several educational VRexperiences as well. Here’s a list of dozens of educational VR experiences and development companies.Perhaps you could even partner with one of these companies to create customexperiences using existing or new content.

Admittedly, this isn’t quite the same as creating your ownserious game that will change the world (or your industry, your business, yourschool). Until you do create your own amazing educational games, look aroundand use what others have already created to get you and your students startedright away.

Summary

Whether or not you find existing games that fit your needs,you should absolutely start learning and playing around with the game enginesnow. Accelerate your learning by readingblogs and listening to podcasts about VR and games,getting involved in the local VR and gaming communities, attending local VR andgaming meetups, and touring VR game development studios.

VR game development is unquestionably complex andchallenging, but it’s not rocket science. You (yes, even you) can learn it.Plenty of people have learned to create VR games and experiences, starting withnothing more than a desire to learn and the chutzpah to start buildingsomething cool. So download a game engine, start watching some tutorials, and getstarted already!

As always, in the comments below, tell us what game engineyou like best and why, as well as what serious game you’re working on.