Hi everyone, I'm working on a VR game on Steam called CYCOM Cybernet Combat. I was originally inspired to get into VR because of its immersive story telling potential, the ability to make a significantly heavier emotional impact on the player because you are the main character and the ability to allow people to live the life of another person and build empathy and understanding through this experience you may never get a chance to experience in real life.
I've encountered several major roadblocks to being able to fulfill this VR story telling game vision over the past year.

1. Players do not read text or listen to voices or narration in VR because they just want to move around and interact with everything
2. Ultimately, for a game to be a game, it needs a fun core game mechanic, so the player has something fun to play and replay over the course of the game, as story is interspersed between gameplay.
3. In games in general, some players do not care about the story and do not want to be forced to learn about the story.
4. To develop complete interactive story like an RPG or story game with multiple branches, it requires a lot of story writing, art design, world design, voice acting, music composition, and many resources an indie dev may not have.

Now that I've released CYCOM Cybernet Combat on Steam, and it's proven to have a fun core gameplay mechanic--fun to play and replay--I want to start exploring and experimenting with how to tell a story in VR in 2018.
Through trying out several VR games and observing test feedback, I am lead to believe the most successful way to tell a story in VR is to tell a story without words or forced scenes.

1. Convey the story through the environment design, intractable props (objects that belong to the character), character design look and feel and color, music, character animation and gameplay behavior (aggressive, passive, how they move and attack to convey personality), and occasional but impactful dialogue.
2. Utilize the fun gameplay that exists in CYCOM already
3. Allow the option to skip the story

Through your experiences as VR players and developers, what do you think is the best design approach for a developer to tell a story in VR? What are some examples of successful storytelling in VR you have enjoyed?
Please join our tester community and grab a test key! We need your feedback! Join at discord dot gg slash CgFtaNb
Thanks for your feedback! Jeremy
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Hi guys, I'm working on a VR game called CYCOM Cybernet Combat, and I just released the online multiplayer feature. A common problem for online multiplayer VR games is there's not enough users online to play with.
I've been studying successful online multiplayer VR games like Rec Room, Smashbox Arena, and VRChat, and they all have a few things in common.

1. They all have a lobby where players can spend time hanging out and not necessarily play games the entire time. Players are able to find their friends online in VR fairly easily when friends are trying to play together.
2. Rec Room has other random things for you to entertain yourself with in the lobby like take video, shoot basketballs, draw, chat with people, and interact with other things.
3. VR Chat has chatting, changing avatars, mods, and an ever expanding explorable map.

Ultimately, it seems like the underlying solution to getting more online users is give players something entertaining to do while they wait for players, so they stay online and increase the chances of other players finding them.
In CYCOM 1v1 online battle mode, I put the first player in our Infinite Mode where they battle AI enemies from our Single Player Story Mode infinitely. When a second player joins, they both get jumped into the 1v1 game. I also have a link to our discord tester community page, so they can find players and schedule matches. I plan to implement a lobby in the upcoming weeks, but hopefully this will make a decent stop-gap until then.
From your experiences as VR players and developers, what have you found to be the most successful mechanisms to promote and grow your online multiplayer community?
Thanks for the feedback! Jeremy