Schell Games

[{"content":{"text":" This post was originally published on Made with Unity on November 30, 2015. It is no longer available there, and has been preserved below: "},"id":"78344eee-dc54-43ab-a17a-543395a22993","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/KFsIILRbdV7XsKcT"],"src":"","alt":"","caption":"","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"96c0961e-7e54-4da4-911c-20bcd990c807","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" Hello Agent. This is no ordinary car. It comes equipped with lasers, a ticking timebomb, and more than a few secret weapons and anti-theft devices. All you have to do is steal it and drive it off of the airplane. "},"id":"c37c3cd9-0627-4243-9b54-69ae9a24bb61","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"","url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/VEupai0aDXo","video":[],"poster":[],"caption":"","autoplay":"false","muted":"true","loop":"false","controls":"true","preload":""},"id":"651739bf-ef56-44c4-833e-84c6ce3c0f26","isHidden":false,"type":"videoBlock"},{"content":{"text":" And so begins I Expect You To Die , a super spy game originally made for the Oculus Rift. In this game, you are an elite agent battling the evil Dr. Zor. Using your wits, cunning and very few resources, you must complete your mission and live to fight another day. This virtual reality game is brought to you by Schell Games , a (then) 100 (now 150) person game studio run by Jesse Schell , a VR pioneer who has been working in the medium in some capacity since the early nineties. So grab a martini and sit back to learn why we made this game and some of the challenges we faced in the process. "},"id":"203dda6a-ddac-40e1-bc04-871251a2a340","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" Getting Sick Isn\u2019t Fun. Go Figure! ","customid":""},"id":"c7e6c650-cdfa-43aa-a2f8-6028a191dc9f","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/0v6scbhic9u5xc96"],"src":"","alt":"Photo of an early VR protoype of a rollercoaster game that caused motion sickness","caption":"A roller coaster prototype that made us all sick","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"1f5bddb0-b407-44f6-88aa-406648e229e3","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" After a bit of experimentation, we came to the conclusion that people won\u2019t enjoy VR experiences that make them feel sick. Makes sense! We found that we could eliminate motion sickness almost entirely with a high enough frame-rate and by limiting motion. We found a few tricks for moving the player around that reduced sickness. For instance, linear motion makes people much less sick than acceleration does. Rotating the horizon makes almost everyone sick, so don\u2019t do that! But nothing works quite as well as simply letting the player stay still. "},"id":"a4a66bf3-2a9a-4100-a72d-802f4aba999d","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" Embracing the Constraints ","customid":""},"id":"e1ca3cdb-018e-4fd9-90fd-f379221b7c0c","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"text":" We weren\u2019t initially thrilled with this limitation. We wanted to make an experience where the player would feel cool and powerful. That seemed at odds with keeping the player still at all times. Then one of us came up with it: \u201cThat happens all the time to Batman or James Bond. They\u2019re tied up and they have to outwit some kind of deathtrap\u2026 just like that scene in Goldfinger where the guy says, \u2018I expect you to die!\u2019\u201d "},"id":"7583d175-100a-4d63-9c58-03e9da90d202","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/dptb4iwqdpmdlrke"],"src":"","alt":"IEYTD concept art showing a briefcase detailing your secret mission in an office environment","caption":"","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"ef459eda-3a56-4dcd-bdd2-0db5b0e22d80","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" Right away we knew that we wanted to go with an early 60s spy fiction theme. Our first attempt at this game made it very explicit that the player was immobilized either by being tied up, or injected with a neurotoxin, or some such thing. We had the player trapped in a room with a bomb while being mocked by an arch-villain type of character. Incidentally, we later discovered that players didn\u2019t seem to want or need any explanation about why they couldn\u2019t move, so we dropped the immobilization thing, since it was a bit contrived anyway. "},"id":"be5f683a-9066-4034-bf9c-996f0e08b891","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" Affordance and Why It Matters ","customid":""},"id":"72a0842e-a426-4b05-94ad-1e4c09e258f9","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"text":" We learned a few things from the first version of our puzzle. The most important lesson was that object affordance is critical in making the player feel present. According to Wikipedia : An affordance is a relation between an object or an environment and an organism that, through a collection of stimuli, affords the opportunity for that organism to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling. "},"id":"94a422ec-8308-43f0-b69a-270ef5744cab","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/e2bb9qrr3mox9upk"],"src":"","alt":"Player attempting to use a knife as a screwdriver in IEYTD","caption":"\u201cI wonder\u2026\u201d","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"5201dc37-3152-4d07-8612-011101f5760b","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" Basically, if there\u2019s an object in the room with you, it has to behave the way you expect it to. If you hit a glass with a hammer and the glass bounces around the room, you know you\u2019re playing a game. Every time your player has to explain something away as \u201cbecause it\u2019s a game,\u201d you\u2019ve pulled them out of the experience just a bit. Every time that happens, immersion is broken and your experience is a little less good. Similarly, objects in your experience should never appear to be there because they\u2019re part of the game. Here\u2019s an example. "},"id":"7b27b5b7-b131-4f6b-adeb-ffc16323cd4d","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" There\u2019s Something Weird About This Room ","customid":""},"id":"a63c22ae-3a79-4ef5-8184-7d706b2fb7db","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"text":" Our first puzzle had a trap door in the floor of the room which, when opened, revealed water. Now, you\u2019ve been in a room or two in your time, and we have too. We\u2019ve never been in a room that had a door in the floor that opened to water. That\u2019s just not a thing. So when players encounter it, they\u2019re forced to think \u201cthat must be part of the puzzle.\u201d "},"id":"d948169b-d9dd-4632-8b0e-9af251f52b7c","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/3ghs4ithxsohkwf2"],"src":"","alt":"","caption":"Our first puzzle, a room with a bomb","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"402c4430-7b45-40e5-a51b-b761bc8d549a","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" They\u2019re not thinking like a spy anymore, they\u2019re thinking like a player playing a game. That\u2019s not what we want. In the first mission of IEYTD , we were much more careful to only place things in the scene that would logically belong in the scene. We also tried really hard to make all of the objects behave in ways that wouldn\u2019t defy our players\u2019 expectations. When we couldn\u2019t, we found some other object to place in the scene. "},"id":"36cab160-490f-42a1-8965-897a8393f8a9","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" Watch and Learn ","customid":""},"id":"b2de960e-f1b1-49b9-bddf-8727d72ca63a","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"text":" How did we know what our players would expect? Basically, we watched people play the game\u2026a lot. We set up a table at a mall near our office and had shoppers try it. We had people play it on laptops in airports and coffee shops. We took the game to Unite, Oculus Connect, and IndieCade and watched countless people play it. All the while, we made changes to the game objects so they\u2019d behave the way people expected them to. We made sure that most players could do what they wanted to do in our experience. In the end, we had a game that we were proud of, and that people generally seemed to enjoy. "},"id":"2ccfa618-906a-472d-ac2a-87b81743149b","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"level":"h2","text":" But wait\u2026There\u2019s more! ","customid":""},"id":"fd31910e-f9ae-4c6b-b0ab-1862f860fe5d","isHidden":false,"type":"headingBlock"},{"content":{"text":" Back when we started working on I Expect You To Die , we were very unsure about what the future would be for controls inside VR. We went with a mouse-based control scheme, which made sense at the time. That\u2019s not where this story ends though. "},"id":"03a2d368-8de1-47cf-96f9-ddd6e336d7da","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"},{"content":{"location":"kirby","image":["file:\/\/bzsxoqztpb7cca5x"],"src":"","alt":"","caption":"What do we love? Hands!","link":"","ratio":"","crop":"false"},"id":"896dc5b6-8011-4472-b989-e532226d1646","isHidden":false,"type":"imageBlock"},{"content":{"text":" When this blog was originally posted in 2015, the team was working on a new full version of I Expect You To Die with hand controls and with a few new puzzle levels to go along with the revamped car level. We've detailed all of the challenges with hand controls here for you to read , as well. Since then, this game has gone on to a full, multi-platform release, gaining acclaim throughout the video game community and spawning two sequels. \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2013 If you were wondering who wrote this post, it\u2019s me\u2026Mike Traficante. When I wrote this, I was a Senior Engineer at Schell Games and Project Director of the I Expect You To Die demo on Oculus Share. Now, I'm project lead on Gorilla Tag at Another Axiom. "},"id":"5b72a0b1-3aae-4e3d-9ab9-418f56fef3c1","isHidden":false,"type":"textBlock"}]

Secrets of a Super Spy VR Game: The Making of ‘I Expect You To Die’

September 16, 2025 · insights

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