Social Animals: Werewolves Within and the Virtual Tabletop

all right hello welcome to vrdc 2016 uh my name is Justin achil I am the lead social systems designer at redstorm entertainment and today I'd like to talk to you a little bit about werewolves within uh which is our VR social deduction game title that's due out at the very beginning of December so December 6th really looking forward to that and uh real quick agenda here first thing we'll be covering is coming up with a definition of social VR I know it's a pretty hot term but I want to give you a little bit of grounding in in what I mean when I say it second we designed werewolves within to specifically be for a social VR experience so we'll go into some of the systems that we built for that then we'll go into some of the Practical results that came out of our user testing and finally we'll finish with some takeaways first obviously starting with

a definition of uh social VR this is a kilon 16 it happens twice a year at my house a couple of us get together we all come over we bring board games card games you're all invited most of you are invited um please bring a bring a drink to share bring a side dish uh but the idea here is that we all get together we all play games together and so building on that idea in a review of the Oculus Toy Box demo that came out uh last year year Popular Science said virtual reality can potentially connect people around the world and let them inhabit the same immersive digital world most more closely replicating actually being together in real life so again that idea of like ailon where you're all coming next year uh we're all going to be together here in this virtual space and then uh another quote here that I think is particularly relevant consumer VR that can induce presence marks a phase change in the relationship between humans Computing and information and I

predict that VR will be the most social medium ever uh Michael abrash who's the uh Chief scientist at Oculus said that at Carnegie melon University a couple years ago and really we want to trade on uh that prediction on that idea of being able to share that space just like we are here but virtually so that kind of gives us a good definition to work to move forward with social VR is a virtual world in which the sense of presence is enhanced when shared with other actual individuals and I want to call attention to that word actual because we're not using social VR in this case to indicate AI Bots and PCs actual individuals like you like me like everyone else in this room you're going to know that they're actually a person so with that in mind we'll talk about werewolves within and how it was specifically designed for social VR we're not going to touch a whole lot of gameplay uh we're going to focus on the interaction between the players uh a quick intro intruction to

the game uh in the village of gallon one or more of the players are werewolves here around the table and the towns folk players are trying to figure out who the werewolves are uh the werewolves know each other's identity uh the town's folk don't and uh everybody uh gains information over the course of play so how you use this information the game revolves around sharing that information what you hide uh what you share and the amount of trust that you're building with the other players obviously if you're trying to find the werewolf and there's a secret werewolf or more uh in the group you're going to not want to trust someone so let's see it in practice here I'm not the gossip and I just saw you it's toally Xavier it's totally xavor how's tot no I think it may be Garrett Garrett is talking all this good good I'm I'm that's why I say prove it do you

know how do I know I can see it because yeah you see but it's also it could be true or it could be false we're all picking everybody pick Jacob he's a wolf I'm a he's yeah I'm 110% sure I'm 110% sure 125 we all know it's Andre oh my gosh it's Jacob what's even matter we're all going to die anyway oh no oh what are yall doing oh God I told what does it matter we're all going to die uh but that shows you a little bit the players going to be in the firstperson perspective they're seating around a circle the players are gaining some sort of information and at the end they cast a vote for who they want to eliminate the gameplay itself is an inherent ly social activity uh building

the game itself started out with creating the experience of being together uh sharing a space and then layering the gameplay components on top of that social framework uh so it's happening in a space that was built to be together in the first place the game isn't secondary but the built is the game is built on top of this social foundation and so you're going to see that a lot you're going to see it in the box art you're going to see it in the concept art here where all the characters are together uh it's reinforced in the setting where you're all sharing a village of in Gallow or you're around the campfire or you're in the castle together uh it's in the lobby state of the game so there's no choose a server sort of situation you'll be put into a room and before the game happens you're actually still sitting around that circle with the other players so you're seeing their avatars move in real time it's all happening together from the get-go uh the game itself emerged from a prototype uh we had built a uh kind of secret Heist prototype where the players were discussing who among them is going to backstab stab the group as

they go in to steal something and this really proved for us this uh sense of of of togetherness of presence of the other players made a Believer out of me at the very least I was a VR skeptic to begin with and the moment I put on the hmd and I played that initial prototype it made a Believer out of me because I knew that that other person was there going back to that quote earlier about the Oculus Toy Box demo when you see that other person there playing with the toys or throwing the things around the environment you know that that's another person you know that that's not a logic tree you know that that's an individual and so our initial meeting uh with HQ when we were pitching the game we played it with them they got in and we backstabbed each other and committed some treacheries and we had the debrief meeting around the campfire we stayed in VR around the campfire in the game to continue the meeting after the Prototype gameplay session and that to me was was very much a proof of HQ believed in us and had that same kind of come to it moment where they realized that oh we are in the same space this is better than conducting this this call via

Skype the gaml itself is also an inherently social Endeavor it's an idea or the gameplay revolves around solving this information disparity there are some secrets that need to be revealed there are pieces of information that need to be revealed and everybody has some amount of information but no player has exactly the right amount of information to solve the puzzle so here the idea that sharing information and getting you to trust me is very important it makes the game much more of a social deduction is just in telling the truth and wants me to vote with him or is just in lying and trying to get me to vote for someone else that breaks it away from purely a logical deduction sort of situation it's not like clue where oh I didn't know I killed Professor Plum you know it's something where I know that I'm the werewolf and I'm trying to divert attention away from myself uh so uh it's also important that the game provides you a structured autonomy here if you're familiar with uh self-determination Theory or the pens

model of games uh you'll be familiar with the idea of autonomy here we give you the objective find the werewolf but we don't tell you how to do it do you want to do it by talking to other players do you want to do it by gesturing that you think another player is suspicious do you want to do it by building a coalition against somebody uh are you going to try to shift attention to someone who uh probably isn't the werewolf but you know you've got some other motive how you accomplish it is up to you but that idea that here's what we want to do serves as the kind of Icebreaker in the social space to get us talking if you just put us in a room and say talk requires a lot of valtion on our part somebody's got to take that initial risk right uh but here where talk among yourselves share what you know find the werewolves then we have something we can start moving on right away it's also built on the player using intuitive familiar movements the players move their avatars by performing things that they're going to do in the real

world so for example here we've got players leaning over next to one another to whisper um in this case this creates a private VoIP Channel where only these two players will be able to hear each other uh all the rest of us around the table will only hear and the players Perform This by literally leaning over left or right to the other to the player next to them so if I tell you you control yourself by leaning to lean that's fairly intuitive right you know how to lean you can also stand up to perform a monologue the way this works is the player stands and all of the rest of the players VoIP is turned off so I'm up here commanding uh that you listen to me all of the rest of you can't speak uh we did find out through uh testing that we needed to put a timer on that otherwise a player would kind of run run away with it uh so you can do this for 10 seconds uh but again uh we're reading the tracking position of the hmd so to stand up you stand up so all of these are are intuitive they're familiar they don't require a complex series of

commands they're not nestled in menus you don't have to dig them up uh the players can also use very expressive emotes here for example pointing is on the right trigger you can also do another variety of emotes that are bound to the d-pad uh on the uh controller that ships with uh the uh in this case we've been testing on the Oculus but obviously it'll work on the PlayStation uh VR as well and also on the HTC Vive uh but once you know where those controls are they're easy to go back to again they're not buried in menus you don't have to open some subset of functions you just do them and uh so seeing these movements performed at the user's will as opposed to them coming automatically as a result of logic tree they really let you know that that's another person when I point at you it's because Justin is choosing to point as opposed to 30 seconds into the game logic dictates this character points this goes back to another something that Michael abash said in that same presentation at Carnegie melon uh he was describing sharing a social space in VR and his pH was all of the sudden it was

a person seeing that you know that that that head that had moved up from the ground and started moving around as the person placed the AMD AMD or hmd on their head and was turning around to look at things that conveyed the ever elusive sense of presence that VR thrives on and trades on and really depends on some other systems that we've got in play uh are eye magnetism this goes a huge way for us in fighting uh The Uncanny Valley when characters look at one another the eyes are automatically drawn too I'm looking at you I don't know why I singled you out it's just convenient for me so uh but now our eyes are are looking together as opposed to me looking slightly over your shoulder and you feeling that okay this is kind of a bot here that's not that's not looking at me um and also when players look at one another we duck the audio for anyone who's not those two players so when I'm looking at you you know that I want to focus on you and I'm hearing you at 100% everyone else is duck to some lesser level uh so these are these are I simple ways of non-verbal communication

communicating that you have my attention uh we also use an EST a fairly elaborate lip sync process um the we read the microphone input and we detect the phones of the words that you're speaking and uh we translate those in real time to the player's faces so when you see my mouth moving you know that I'm one of the character speaking and uh in a lot of cases you're not seeing this in models or you're not seeing it done in real time they just have a simple movement but here when you see the character speaking when you see them gesturing you know that this is someone who wants my attention who's saying something that I potentially need to hear speaking about those gestures body language itself conveys a huge amount of uh communication detail uh we what we do is we analyze the intensity of what you're saying the your speech coming into the mic and if you're speaking fairly calmly you'll perform some automated uh what we're calling minor gestures here in the yellow box where your hands will move fairly simp simply but when you're really agitated and

you're frustrated and why won't you vote for this werewolf your hands start to move in this greater sense of area here that we have in the major gestures area so the intensity the volume with which you're speaking helps us translate that into gestures that make the Avatar seem more alive and then as well we've confin confined the emotes to a higher plane kind of a stack above where those gestures are happening so at this point you know that I'm consciously choosing to point at you or I'm consciously choosing to say you should make me me the ring leader the seating arrangement as well plays on some long-standing sociological knowledge all of the seating arrangement in werewolves within uh is circular and there's a reason for this a circle doesn't have a head or a foot it doesn't impart any sense of leadership right so leaders can absolutely emerge over the course of a match because a charismatic person is going to steer the way or a very forceful person is going to make himself heard or herself heard uh but

there is no implied this is the person you have to listen to in a circular table uh as well uh for each match we Shuffle the position of the players so you're not always stuck sitting next to this guy and you know how he's going to play because we Shuffle you every time it's always that there there's one more category of difference there between each session some players just don't like to whisper you know but next game you'll be put next to a player who may be more receptive to your whispering players are also spaced and I think this is a really important part the players are also spaced with enough distance between them that they can't grief one another it's not possible for me to lean in and put my hands in front of your face um and all of the gestures all of the emotes that we have put in play as well uh those are pre-recorded those are established those are defined so we don't have any lwd gestures in there as well um in making sure that players are comfortable making sure that we're not challenging anybody's uh boundaries of comfort or appropriateness we didn't want people to be able to uh harass one another or to be able to make

each make one another feel like something inappropriate is happening the stylized avatars I'm sure you've seen as well the characters heads are pretty big um their facial features are pretty big eyes are big the mouths are big because we want you to be able to see when the players are are speaking uh the hands are large they move emphatically um and all of this is uh kind of helping us because it's an avatar and not a an exact representation of you proper it helps the player feel a little more comfortable it reduces some of the anxiety of sharing the social space the players don't feel necessarily like they're on display uh I'll go I'm going to give you a quote here from a uh journalist who reviewed our game a little bit she said that werewolves within strips away the game's inbred anxieties and morphs it into something still social but I dare say more fun it's a digital mask to hide behind making your deception a little bit more simple and your fellows hunt a lot harder so here's the example of uh this

particular Journal journalist has played actual physical around the table werewolf and she doesn't like it it makes her feel uncomfortable it makes her feel like when she lies she blushes it's easy to catch her but here there's a level of remove that not only hides her physical cues but kind of brings her out of her shell you know inclines her to be less withdrawn it's not me who's playing this I'm the Moore I'm not the one who's on display here it's this wacky character in this kind of comical town uh there's also another Point here that I want to bring up from uh Oculus connect a couple weeks ago uh Ben poer at The Verge saw the Facebook demonstration there and said adding hands and facial expressions makes virtual reality a much more intimate medium uh and we've definitely seen that here the players really feel like they are sharing a space with actual people they're not just kind of looking for The Logical deduction you know they're not following this this path like I said of clue where they're going to get the answer they feel like they're sharing a space they need to build trust and if

they don't have that intimacy with another player if they don't have that trust they're going to have a hard time convincing those other players that what they think is true even if I know the answer there is one role who finds out without fail who a werewolf is but now if I'm that character and I am unable to convince you all all of you please vote for the werewolf he's right here if you don't trust me I'm not going to get that vote I I appreciate you being the werewolf thanks for that [Laughter] so that's all great Theory it's all great uh to kind of have that grounding there but let's uh take a look a little at it in practice uh we have our user research lab in North Carolina uh at redstorm entertainment headquarters we also have a user research lab in Paris at Ubisoft headquarters and so the data you're going to see here coordinates uh those two uh two separate sessions there we have more data from the uh us lab um but we did want to compare with other users as well first of all is appreciation of the avatars we saw

overall that players really appreciated kind of going back to that point that that uh the journalist brought up about being able to represent oneself in the Avatar we also noticed that when the players didn't know each other's names when they were you know XYZ or seat five or whatever they would refer to each other by the Avatar's characteristics you saw one with a bushy beard sometimes you're the really hairy guy or there's a character who's wearing an eye patch and they would call him one eye so these distinguishing characteristics that are built into the avatar don't quite feel like you're being mocked because it's not you you know if you're calling me uh you know the really bushy hairy guy well that's because the Avatar is hairy Justin's not embarrassed it's this poor uh blacksmith who is stuck in this town full of werewolves and for some reason refuses to move away uh yeah this goes back to that point about having the digital mask to hide behind the victory conditions uh in terms of the game play itself we found that the werewolves win just over half the time so remember that the werewolves are the uh uninformed or or they're the

informed minority the towns folk are the uninformed majority they're winning a little bit less and uh that feels good to us that was our design intent going into it uh because we didn't want the players who felt like they were outnumbered to want to drop session in fact they win a few more so you're you're kind of encouraged to stick in that way uh and then there's the Deviant role as well the Deviant is a solo role the werewolves win if the towns folk don't manage to eliminate one of them the towns folk win if they do manage to eliminate werewolves and the Deviant just wants an end to it all the Deviant wins if everyone votes and eliminates the Deviant so it's a really difficult role to play to convince everyone that you're the werewolf or you deserve to die but you're not really the werewolf because you're the Deviant but he operates is kind of a spoiler uh and that role is really difficult to win with and so we found that uh in terms of offering game rewards things like achievements or trophies uh for the PlayStation uh that that particular role being so difficult we offered a little more uh Point reward uh for that

one overall appreciation of the game started out pretty strong we were pretty happy with this but then uh after the course uh and this this is our appreciation over the course of three games over the course of six games uh we had players who were kind of on the fence actually decide no no they they they really like it more than they had initially thought they did and so here we've observed that as the players familiarity with the game grew so did their appreciation of it um and that stands to reason as well that the more the felt that they had mastered the game uh the more that they felt that they were able to uh influence things to uh their own desires they they liked it more they felt like they had a greater sense of getting better at it so we can see that over time uh that increased as well the whisper usage uh so overall players we we saw kind of had to warm up to using The Whispers uh whispers are a great way to share private information uh I am the gossip and I think that this player over here is the werewolf but then requires a little give back back from that other player a little bit a

little bit of trust and we see that trust building over time there are some risks to Whispering in the game if you whisper with a werewolf the werewolf will sniff you and find out what role you are so there's always some some danger to Whispering with people uh but that kind of we saw players willing to take that risk because it allowed them to kind of build coalitions interestingly the US players whispered a lot more uh over the course of play than the French players did the French players uh initially were introduced to the feature tried it out a little bit but then I don't know maybe the French are afraid of werewolves or something um so they either a an entirely guess people or they are we just unable to perceive what masters of Secrets they are the game actions that I mentioned before uh using the emotes to point or to indicate myself or to express uh frustration or to uh kind of cross your arms and be sort of surly why are people doing this um we saw that players thought they were fun a little bit less

useful um the monologue feature that ability to stand up and turn off all of the other VoIP for the other players we found that players found that about equally fun and useful um and Whispering as well Whispering I think is interesting um because players found it more useful than fun but still roughly on par so uh specifically that came out of the feedback we saw a nine players out of the 24 in this one particular test players thought the emotes were fun but they felt that they served served no strategic purpose and that was interesting to me that nine different players chose that particular phrase that they were forming strategies in their head and uh while this you know social feature was kind of fun to do they were always still kind of conniving they were still thinking about what's my next step here it was less about the sharing the social space and more about using the social tools to convince others of what I'm trying to achieve also going back to that whispering column Whispering is used to communicate privately but it's inherently useful and so it's interesting to me to see it considered

roughly as fun as it is useful and I think probably some of that comes in just the enjoyment that feeling of power of having a secret that the things you and I are talking about they don't know about which lets me feel and you feel a little bit elevated specifically going into the individual emotes we had four emotes available at the time of the uh testing we had pointing at others so a very direct Point whoever you look at you point at so it's very useful uh non-verbally to indicate what particular individual we have this guy so you know who should be elevated to the position of ring leader this guy my vote should count double we have the exasperated and we have the cross arms emotes so pointing at others obviously was perceived very very well by players and they also considered it pretty fun this guy as well uh a good way to indicate do something for me and then they fell off a little bit here in the crossing arms and exasperated because they didn't indicate who I think that's what I'm taking away from

this uh so I was able to point to myself or point over there so these were good ways to communicate non-verbally directly and the other ones were more expressive they were more comical they were more used for punctuation than they were to indicate you know if I'm a player who doesn't speak much I can still be effective in the game by indicating I think the werewolf is over here so with all of that data in mind uh with all of those observations that we've had what were the takeaways the first I think is that social VR is very foundational uh you can't just throw some social elements in there you can't just say and we'll put guilds in there or you can't just add a chat uh you can't expect those sorts of secondary treatments to be very effective for truly social VR the interactions between the users have to be supported at the platform level uh the game or the activity or whatever your building is layered on top of that idea of shared space when we all get together at my house to play games or to have this work conversation we are first

and foremost at my house we're interacting with one another we're sitting around the table we are there together to play games to talk about work whatever that idea of being together is Paramount in Social VR presence builds relatedness between players here I think you want to reduce the barriers to participation uh whether you're building a game or an application uh performing the actions in your game or application should be easy familiar intuitive if you want players to lean just track them leaning they're going to do it anyway uh engage users by allowing them to relate to other people and remember these are other obvious actual people these these aren't Bots and uh they're sharing the virtual world with those people but you also want to allow the user ways to uh you want them to to close off channels of communication or if they feel threatened you want to allow them to opt out of interactions with players uh for example in werewolves within if uh I choose to mute a player that will also turn off the animations for them so even if even

though I can't hear them my attention won't be drawn back to them their negative influence on me will be turned off entirely and finally uh the activity providing the impetus uh to use the application or the game uh it's the Icebreaker right the that that that idea of uh structured autonomy we're going to go here to find the werewolf we're going to go here to edit a Wiki we're going to go here to share create a document uh the structured autonomy gives a framework for what the players or the users are going to be communicating about and so without this activity in place without this Common Ground without this this item to pursue together you relying a lot more on the players valtion to say notice me take notice of me if you're giving me the activity to do it that's my opportunity to step in and say of course I'm the werewolf or no no I'm definitely not the werewolf as opposed to hey all we're together now let's talk about whatever it is that intrigues us so that uh is pretty much my conclusion today uh I want to thank you

for being here if you have any questions for me I'm happy to entertain those uh we can do that either I don't know what kind of time we're looking at I feel like I sort of blazed through that uh oh no I'm right on time um so feel free to come up and ask me questions or if we still have a minute or two left we don't know someone wants to step up to the mic here we have any questions for me hey I had a question about um our most of so is the is the social aspect designed to be played with strangers over the Internet or how uh how do you find people to play with and did you experiment with that for someone like me who uh ends up going to a lot of shows and playing a lot of demos and uh playing with a lot of random people I'm perfectly comfortable with it uh but we assume that most players are probably going to be playing with their friends um and in fact on a variety of services like for example if you're playing on the PlayStation VR your PSN friends that you

already have will be pushed to the top of the queue so you can say oh I want to join Justin or I want to invite him to a game um so we assume that most people will probably want to be playing with some number of friends uh I didn't go too much into it in the uh the data uh but we did a couple of different tests there um the first test was groups of people and players who did not know one another at all and then for the second test we had multiple people in each session who did go into the game knowing each other beforehand and having pre reestablished relationships and we found that uh almost there was almost a perfect accordance there of they were more willing upfront to chat to whisper to perform these things that other players had to slowly warm up to um but really we uh look at this as an opportunity to you can play the game with as few as five people or up to eight people and we will uh randomize any empty seats you have that you want filled additionally uh so we figure that this is also a good place for you and two or three of your friends to start a session and bring a couple of random

people in and hopefully make friends with them over the course of play there um you can play a private session it doesn't have to be open to the public or you can play a completely public uh randomized session um so we're offering players basically the opportunity to do whatever they feel most comfortable [Music] with that you know that there was social awareness and not being able to make people feel uncomfortable you de with the aspect ofing other people sure uh we definitely want this to be part of it starts at like literally a fundamental level of it's a cartoony sort of town and the characters are kind of comical so there isn't a lot of Gore there isn't a lot of you know physical threat actually communicated in the environment itself so the sort of light-hearted approach itself kind of steers players more toward that comical or light-hearted disposition anyway um

we also have some social features whereby uh if you own the room that's that's the game is taking place in you can kick out anyone that you don't want in it um if the players uh if they don't know who owns the room or if it's randomly matchmade players can initiate a kick vote so if you're obviously cursing threaten me being awful being whatever uh I can initiate a kick vote and with enough other players in agreement there uh we can push you out of the room um thereby you won't be able to make it back into that room um also we have the opportunity for players to uh mute other players so if I just don't want to hear you but I don't have the uh the votes to get you out of the room but I just don't want to play with you anymore uh I can turn off your VoIP and uh that will also uh prevent your animations from being played from my perspective um so I can still vote for you you are still a presence there in the game but you're unable to be as hostile to me personally uh and we found that this actually tested fairly well because there are are in many cases players who don't want to run the risk

of oh Justin's being a real jerk let's kick him out they'll take a path of least resistance and just isolate that player from being able to interact with them and that other player won't necessarily even know that they've been punished you know we don't want to have this uh kind of negative Karma um system uh because that can often backfire be used against players who aren't actually being disruptive instead if you're being a real bother I can just isolate you and not be affected by you at all other questions uh okay that's actually a great question and uh it kind of dovetails into this one of the reasons that we aren't supporting the touch controllers is the fact that we don't want players to have that full free motion of hands we don't want them doing their own lwd gestures um and so uh the game pad really sits very comfortably in your hands and becomes very secondary most of the actions you're taking are done by uh looking around or uh you know

we'll press a button to open your book uh the book contains information in the game so you're actually turning your head to look at this sort of diagetic UI um whenever you want to select something you look at it and then just confirm with a button um so everything is basically one click away we make some pretty good use of the GamePad controllers and uh it never becomes primary you never you know have to wrestle with the controller it's always just kind of One Tap uh it doesn't care where it is spatially again we're only reading the player's head and position wrap it up I'm told to wrap it up here so uh but uh yeah it's it's it's feels very very natural very comfortable uh so thank you for coming uh and attending hearing me talk uh I'll be up here to answer any other other questions you have thank [Applause] you