Transcript

Jonathan Jennings (00:53)
hi, I’m Jonathan Jennings. I’m a software engineer and game designer. I’ve been working on games for the past 14 years. I specialize in VR and I just love to create things.

Aaron Nemoyten (01:04)
so I was just looking through your LinkedIn to like, see if I missed anything that would have been good for, you know, interview notes. And I realized how busy you have been. Like you’ve been working, you’ve been freelancing, you’ve been volunteering, you’ve been making your own project, intergalactic bar fight.

Jonathan Jennings (01:15)
Hahaha.

Aaron Nemoyten (01:23)
So to me, like we’ve talked before in the games industry gathering meetups, and I’ve always thought of you as like, wow, this guy is the most enthusiastic person about VR that I know. like genuinely enthusiastic, not just, this is cool because it’s new or because you could make money or whatever. It’s like you genuinely care about it as a form of of games, interactive entertainment.

whatever you want to call it. I’m curious in the time that you’ve been really, you know, intensely heads down in this area, how do you feel like it’s evolved and changed and how do you feel about where we’re at now?

Jonathan Jennings (02:02)
Man, that’s a great question. Yeah, think VR is kind of crazy. so, you know, part of the reason I’m so passionate about it is because it kind of came out of left field in my career. Like I was working on mobile games. And then at the time around 2015, 2016, like VR interest started to increase and kind of the goal for a lot of the game companies was just to get somebody who could work on games and like, we’ll teach you the VR stuff later. But if you just work on games, that’s enough.

And so I kind of just took that opportunity to lean into VR and just fell in love with what it could mean in terms of like immersion and I think there’s like an intimacy with VR that I really love. Like you can really feel like the sense of scale of something. You can have these really, you know, touching moments like and I’m in love with like all sorts of like extended reality like technology, but I think VR is the first one that spoke to me.

Really like we have the opportunity to put people in these virtual worlds and I really value that And so really like seeing how it’s evolved has been kind of crazy like I started out with a Google Cardboard and like doing a Ghostbusters game and so It was like it was just a neat little side project to make some money at the time And then like now I work at Owlchemy Labs, which like most popularly known for job simulator and it’s

I think going from Google Cardboard was just like basically we’re gonna stuff your phone into a headset and pretend that’s VR versus like at Owlchemy we have a really detailed systems about like we’re working on a hand-tracked VR app and so how does it feel to grab things? How does it feel to poke at something in VR? We put so much work into how things sound audio-wise and what is a meaningful interaction, right? What is a…

pinch versus a slap versus a poke. Like it’s just so really, I think I enjoy how, again, intimate, like it is kind of diving into how people, really how people play and interact with our experiences. And the fact that VR has gotten to this point. Like I remember, you know, when I started out, the way to play VR was to have your friend bring his monster PC to

wherever you are, and then go through and fiddle with drivers and stuff for the PC for an hour, and then hopefully for 45 minutes everything would remain stable before it’d break and he’d have to go in and fix everything again. And so now we have the Quest and standalone headsets, we’re starting to get into the augmented reality glasses and stuff, are starting to kind of, that’s gonna be a new dimension.

of how to include like extended reality tech. And it’s crazy to me like now starting VR is as simple as pushing a button, putting a headset on and just diving in. Still a lot of work for some people, but it’s such a seamless experience to the VR industry that I came into. So yeah, it’s gotten easier, it’s gotten simpler. And I think the experiences have gotten more complex and engaging. And so it.

I think that’s the trajectory you hope any kind of tech kind of moves towards.

Aaron Nemoyten (05:26)
It’s funny to hear that now with the hindsight of, you know, I’ve always paid attention to the startup space and investing and the buzz and…

VR was definitely an area that got over invested very, very quickly. Cause I think people either, it was some combination of they didn’t understand how big of a leap this was for most people to go from no VR to VR and how jarring it is and experience and how far we had to go to, to create an experience that was more palatable. And also,

thinking that the technology would get better and cheaper and faster at a different speed than it actually did, right? Cause it’s, we’re talking now 10 years since you started and people were investing in VR. Like it was already here in 2016 or 2017 or 2018. So, it’s nice to hear that, that from your perspective as someone who knows a lot about it, that it’s really getting there, but it’s also, it’s funny to me as someone that follows that stuff that like,

Jonathan Jennings (06:22)
Alright.

Aaron Nemoyten (06:36)
Okay, it took about three or four times as long than the money expected. And in the meantime, what happened was a lot of VR studios got formed. A lot of game companies invested in VR and they sort of just went, okay, we tried it. It didn’t make us a billion dollars. So we give up and we’re done for now. And it’s really cool that you get to be at Owlchemy Labs, which I think is like the probably the biggest best funded VR studio in the industry.

And it’s at Google, which doesn’t usually support things like that long term. But I imagine that compared to a lot of other stuff that Google’s doing, like, you know, it’s like nothing for them. So you can kind of like skate by and not get noticed as like wasting anybody’s money. How does it feel to be at Owlchemy after spending so much time working in VR? Like, do you feel like you’ve made it or is it just like another job? You’re just sort of plugging along doing what you’ve always done.

Jonathan Jennings (07:30)
you

Yeah, for me, working at Owlchemy is a dream job, right? the job simulator was one of first three VR games I ever played. And so, like, these games that Owlchemy makes kind of formulated what I thought VR games could be and, like, the scope of them. And so to help, like, work at a company that kind of pushes that vision and hopefully influences a whole new generation of VR developers is awesome. And, yeah, I think, like, would I say I made it? Like, I think…

the artist, the creative in me doesn’t ever wanna embrace that, cause it feels like a too good to be true thing, or I don’t wanna feel like this is gonna be the good old days part of my life, or this is my peak, so to speak. But I couldn’t be more fulfilled or satisfied with what I work on every day. And then it’s a huge difference than a lot of the companies I worked at before, where I think the conversations were a lot of times like,

who, how do we position this to be profitable and valuable to people? And I think, first of all, Owlchemy is kind of like the front runner for a lot of VR tech. I think Google kind of relies on us to like be their consultant perspective on how to move things forward in that space. But yeah, more, yeah, I think it’s just a…

It feels really good to be at a company that doesn’t necessarily have to worry about proving its value all the time. And, you know, it’s also the biggest game company I’ve worked at. like, it’s so cool to like work on something where people are like hungry for like the next project that you’re working on. I’ve never worked at a studio where like people were waiting for the games we work on. And so it’s awesome to be at a studio where that’s the case, where people are like, I want more Owlchemy games.

It’s so awesome to hear from the really passionate, excited VR fans.

Aaron Nemoyten (09:33)
That’s really cool. think one of the things I want to get to in your notes that you sent to me, so for people listening to the podcast, I have a document that I send to anyone that’s going to come on the podcast that’s like, what are the things you’re interested in talking about? And one of the things you mentioned is that you’re concerned that games are often too much striving for cinematic experiences.

And that that sort of leaves behind the thing that makes games games and makes them great. And I agree about this, which is the interactivity. I think it’s cool that you’re a part of Owlchemy Labs and the other things you’ve done that are on the VR side of trying to do what VR does best instead of trying to make VR.

do what other stuff does best. And It’s really funny that you’re saying that Owlchemy Labs is at the forefront of innovation here from the perspective of like, if I was a game industry person 10 years ago and I was looking at these games that are bright and colorful and goofy and like blocky.

And I would think like, what are you talking about? How is this at the forefront of anything? But you’ve had this game that you worked on for a long time called Galactic Bar Fight that is that kind of thing. So I feel like you must have known the entire time that what makes VR great isn’t necessarily looking realistic. And what makes it immersive isn’t necessarily about looking realistic. It’s just about making it like feel good. Can you talk about that?

Jonathan Jennings (11:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And so like I am, I’m a 90s baby. I gotta put that out there. And so like the games I really love and the games I really like to make are really fast paced, actiony, big sound effects, explosions, poor 16 bit particles all over the place style games. And so one of the games that really inspired me for Galactic Bar Fight was Smash TV. One of my…

Aaron Nemoyten (11:39)
wow.

Jonathan Jennings (11:39)
all-time favorite games.

Aaron Nemoyten (11:41)
Yeah.

Jonathan Jennings (11:42)
I just love the pacing of it. I think the purpose of that was almost in a way to kind of translate that fast-paced action-packed grab the nearest thing you can and like shoot whatever you see in front of you type gameplay was like taking that kind of concept from old arcade games. And I think that’s like, you know, I think when you talk about peak

games that do interactivity really well. think you can’t really beat arcade games. Arcade games are fighting games, I would say, are like, you you are, the story is you as the player. Like that is, that is the experience.

I got accepted into the Oculus Launchpad program which is kind of like an incubator.

to allow people to work on their projects. I ended up working on two projects because I’m overly ambitious and I have a problem with doing too many things at once. And so I worked on both a hip hop VR rhythm game called Super Sonic Rhyme Chamber, which was cool and it won a grant. But Galactic Bar Fight was also like my baby. I kind of went into it expecting to work on, but getting a chance to work with awesome people on a cool project. Like I couldn’t really say no to that either.

And so just kind of worked on a prototype for it for I think about nine months.

used as many like asset store assets as I could. I wrote all the systems. So it was really just a labor of love. And then nine months later, I think Oculus was for the first time allowing, I think they had a program called the App Lab. So you could just like upload your game to the App Lab and kind of.

see things, it was kind of like an early green light. So just a way to kind of share a game and just see if there’s even any interest. And like, I would have been happy if 50 people would have downloaded it, I would have been like ecstatic. Like just the fact that anybody in the world, I made this little thing all by myself and people even cared. That would have been amazing. But within the first week I had over 300 downloads and I think after, man, I don’t even remember. I think after the first three months, like it was…

I think we were at 3,000 and so it was just awesome to like work on this thing and have people like checking it out and like people doing YouTube videos which like that was terrifying because it’s like well people are actually sharing their opinion about this thing I made and so I had to learn how to take criticism which like that’s something I’m better at now but at the time that was was new for me. Yeah and so it was just really awesome to make this thing that

People could play with it. And I think the whole purpose of Galactic Bar Fight, I just wanted people to be able to be an action hero, like in an old 80s movie. just, in my pitch, wrote people would be able to flip over tables and duck behind

the whole point was just to give people this kind of environment where they could just play as an action hero and just kind of go crazy, saving the world and really just explore this canvas of being a hero that was kind of unrestricted and the goal was just to shoot until you can’t shoot anymore and the timer runs out.

Aaron Nemoyten (14:41)
That sounds awesome.

So you’ve got a bunch of experience in volunteering and in education. You’ve been at Black and Gaming for nearly five years, director of education. I’m curious.

what have you learned about what works as advice or like, what are the things that are helpful for younger people that are trying to get into games?

Jonathan Jennings (15:03)
when it comes to teens I think I’ve really learned the best way to kind of approach them is like I think I try to lean on like

the value of their imaginations. Like I’m a big believer, like to me the best game design tool is like a pen and paper, like or a pencil and paper. If you can draw an idea or write ideas down, like love seeing people’s notebooks filled to the brim with all sorts of crazy ideas, even if those don’t get out, like it’s just like the thought and brainstorming exercise is really important. And so I definitely try to encourage…

you know, any kid or teenager that’s like interested in game development to like, just like lean into your imagination.

Aaron Nemoyten (16:33)
Okay, this is a bit of a swerve back into the technical territory, but you’ve been working on VR specifically in Unity for the whole time that you’ve been working on VR. And so I’m sort of wondering how has that experience changed over time from it being this like frontier brand new thing that was probably pretty hacked into Unity to now being, you know, something that’s more well established. And especially now that Unity has gone through a bunch of like management upheaval and changes.

What’s the experience of actually developing in VR like now compared to how it started?

Jonathan Jennings (17:08)
Yeah, it’s a different world. I used to be on the Unity forums often, especially when I had my first major VR gig. And sometimes it’s funny, there were times I was talking to future coworkers and had no clue, but we all had questions about like, yeah. But maybe SDK isn’t doing something that it’s supposed to do.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:28)
That’s awesome.

Jonathan Jennings (17:35)
I guess starting on VR, right at first it was like, Unity can do VR stuff, but you have to use an external package. And then there’s like all the back and forth of like making sure it actually worked.

Then doing test builds which like that was nightmarish. so I make sure that like it actually shows up the way it’s supposed to in VR It’s like making sure that it’s like tracking your head and then tracking the controllers Just it was pretty painful And like no matter what the device was I think the easiest ones were like the Google Cardboards because like again, it’s it’s a phone stuffed into a headset. It’s like

basically just a glorified mobile game that has some basic gyro tracking to follow your head or hands or whatever. And so but I think over time seeing Unity increased Unity support, Unity’s internal integrations, there just happened to be actual regular updates.

for like platforms and stuff over time.

It was kind of like you just took whatever VR solution you had at the time and that’s what you had to work with. And so there’s a lot more variety, the tools are a lot more stable. it’s nice to not have to fight my machines as often. Game development, we all have to fight our computers at some point, it’s just a part of living. But that happens a lot less now than it did in…

the beginning where sometimes I’d spend three days just trying to get like our app to like our builds to work correctly. Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten (19:13)
So you mentioned that the game that inspired you to love games was Super Mario 3. And I imagine you’re probably not the only one that is that game is just such an astounding leap forward in game design. I think that is very much that very much matches with your.

mention elsewhere that you prefer sort of interactivity to cinematics

Do you feel like that level of kind of design elegance has been achieved in any VR game? Cause I’ll say I’m not super familiar with VR. I’ve heard of the outlier hits I know about Beat Saber, right? But I don’t have a VR headset and it’s a pretty big investment in terms of like getting it set up and deciding you’re gonna do it. yeah, do you feel like we figured that sort of elegance and design stuff out in VR or do you feel like

It’s still the frontier and we’re still finding it.

Jonathan Jennings (20:09)
think we’re still finding it so I’ve been in VR 10 years and so like almost since the beginning and I think back to like, where just like the knowledge that like, you shouldn’t move the head, like you shouldn’t move the camera when somebody has a headset on cause it makes them nauseous. that.

that kind of like really basic knowledge. Like there’s like an epiphany where everybody’s like, don’t shift the camera around. That feels unnatural. It’s like turbulence in a plane type thing, right? And so, you know, considering like, think VR has come so much further, like, you know, the Vader immortals, the Beat Sabers, the, you know, we’re working on dimensional double shift at Owlchemy Labs. And so even our hand track,

Our hand tracking VR, that was even going controllerless in VR, that was not a popular decision, but we wanted to push hand tracking for VR and people have really gravitated towards it. And so I think we are still very much in the early phase of we’re figuring out what it feels good to use in VR, what are good and satisfying interactions in VR.

I look forward to our Mario World moment, like our Super Mario Bros. 3 moment. I think that’d be awesome. I think it requires just a bigger understanding of like, you know, the full scope of VR. And I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve seen so many people have videos about half like Alex. And it sounds like that might be as close as we’ve gotten to the equivalent of a Super Mario Bros. 3 moment.

I know people like talk about the graphics and physics of that game. I’ve seen people do full physics lectures in Half-Life Alex, which is just crazy that you could do that kind of stuff. And so, no, we haven’t gotten there. I’m super optimistic. I’ve heard lots of people say that we’re still very much in the Atari era of VR games, and I think I’d agree. So I’m super curious about what our Nintendo revolution…

Like what’s the must-have Super Mario game of VR? I think you could argue Beat Saber had like a whole moment, like it was really popular in the pop culture. But again, I think if we’re in the Atari era, that’s almost our Pac-Man. I think that Beat Saber is probably more equivalent to Pac-Man than Mario, right? And so, super excited to kind of see what the future is and what that game that really melds all those systems is, for sure.

Aaron Nemoyten (22:46)
think it’s really funny to think that the penalty for doing something wrong in VR is so much bigger than the penalty for doing something wrong in any other game, right? If I’m sitting in front of my computer and I’m playing a game and something weird happens, I’m like, that was weird. If I’m in VR, I could fall over. I could run into a wall. I could puke. the penalty is very high for doing something wrong.

Jonathan Jennings (23:06)
Yeah. Very much.

Yeah. I was testing a melee weapons in Galactic Bar Fight and I was trying to like figure out the right, like what’s the right force to like swing your arm, to swing the sword and have like a satisfying like slice interaction. Managed to cut myself because I ran my hand against like a plastic Tupperware bin a little too hard. And so I managed to give myself a nice little cut. And so yeah, I think.

Definitely like again, it kind of goes back to like I actually really enjoy that intimacy. Like I think in Galactic Barfight I eventually got to that point I was like, so if my grandma who at the time like she was like 75 years old. I was like, if she played this, how hard would I want her to realistically swing her arm in order to have a satisfying sword swing interaction? And I think using that kind of like baseline helped me figure out what the right amount of force was. But

But it’s like lots of considerations like that. And like you said, like you can make people sick in VR and that’s like a lot of people and that can be the kind of thing that like turns somebody off VR for like the next five years if they are sick. So yeah, it can be a lot of pressure and a big challenge to.

understand the full implications of how you can affect people in VR.

Aaron Nemoyten (24:26)
So you wrote that you love to write documentation, poems, cheesy VO lines, ads, flyers. You mentioned writing your brother’s best man speech for his wedding. So this is sort of a fun thing to be into. So can you tell me about that? also I will say, I know for a fact that you are a big fan of dumb jokes and I appreciate that.

So what is it there? Tell me about that.

Jonathan Jennings (24:53)
Thank

Yeah,

I’m I’m I just I think I’ve always been kind of fascinated about the power of words, right? I think Growing up I was a big like Shel Silverstein and dr. Seuss fan, right? like so growing up I’d read those books over and over and even like the worlds that like and that Shel Silverstein and dr. Seuss painted with their words even with like just a few sentences always kind of captured me and so

I kind of fell in love with just the act of like writing and expressing my thoughts really, really young. I remember like, used to love like writing my mom poems on Mother’s Day type stuff. I used to like love like making flyers for like my church, like just like advertising, whether it was like, hey, come down to the church or a food bank’s happening or, you know, my grandparents ran a church. So like, they’re having an anniversary service and like.

and making that kind of stuff. When it comes to documentation, just love, I think I like to pride myself and it’s gonna sound like I’m putting myself down. I don’t mean it that way. I think I’m the dumbest programmer you’ll ever meet. Like the dumbest good programmer you’ll ever meet. And I like that because like, I think I have a way of communicating with people on a level that everybody understands. And I can like drink and really,

Complex things and then simplify the language so that it’s attainable and understandable for everybody And so yeah, I think like words just there’s such an incredible impact like you can capture people and you can teach people and you can inform people and can make people laugh Like I just think words are such a beautiful art form. And so Yeah, I think like my love of words is just always been like a part of me. And so

That’s where kind of that love of just expression in general comes from.

Aaron Nemoyten (26:57)
I love that. I was always a huge fan of Dr. Seuss growing up. And then I, you know, maybe fortunately or unfortunately, read all of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books in middle school. And that did possible irreparable harm to my ability to express myself in small sentences. Because those are books full of run on sentences where the joke is like embedded in the structure of the sentence. But

Jonathan Jennings (27:17)
hahahaha

Aaron Nemoyten (27:26)
Yeah, I love that stuff too. I love using language. I think it’s interesting the way you talk about sort of digesting and re-explaining programming concepts, because first of all, I think the idea that you have to be twice as clever to read code as you do to write it, I think that’s absolutely true. And what that means is that you should never

write code at your maximum level of cleverness. Because when you go back later, it’s going to be so much extra effort to figure out what you were doing. And also I have this theory that if someone cannot explain a concept simply, they probably don’t actually understand it. And I think this might be a little soapboxy, but you know, going back a few years,

when there were a lot of people talking about crypto all the time, there were a lot of people talking about it in a way that made it clear that they did not understand it, but they wanted it to sound like they did. And that is kind of the worst possible place to be in because you’re in that situation where everybody’s BSing and nobody wants to call it out. And yeah, I love the idea that like being able to just restate something simply is in.

Jonathan Jennings (28:27)
You

Aaron Nemoyten (28:46)
incredibly useful and important. And if you can’t do that, there’s a problem.

Jonathan Jennings (28:50)
Yeah, absolutely. And for what it’s worth, I’m in total agreement with you. Like I think I can tell right away if somebody understands what they’re talking about, because if you can’t explain it in simple terms, then like you’re probably just regurgitating what you heard, and like, sure, there’s like some value in that, I guess. But communication is much more about impact.

And I’d prefer to impact somebody with like, you know, simplified words or explanations versus, you know, getting too heady, getting too verbose. it’s, it’s just, I, I think I’ve always, I, I hate when people’s eyes glaze over when I talk to them. Like I think that feels like an offense. Like, well, and I don’t blame them for it, right? Like if you’re talking about something someone doesn’t understand and then like they check out, like that’s.

That to me as a communicator, that means I failed somewhere. And unfortunately, I know a lot of programmers who are like that. And so I think something I’ve always really valued was like being able to not fall into that trap or at least being able to like break it down in such a way that it’s like, know, A, B and C are important. You should concern yourself with

Aaron Nemoyten (30:03)
Jonathan Jennings, thank you so much for being a guest on Make Games Drink Coffee. It has been a blast talking to you.

Jonathan Jennings (30:09)
Yeah, thank you so much, Aaron. I’m happy that I could be here with