Four days ago, an old friend of mine, Jeffrey Rassas, showed me some office space he had available almost exactly across the street from where he and I had worked together nearly 15 years earlier. It’s only been about two weeks since he and I started discussing a business opportunity that would see him getting seriously involved with my new project – building a Virtual Reality environment.

Within hours of seeing the space, I grabbed two guys who were the most likely to join me in building a virtual world: redacted (center) and Brinn Aaron (left); that’s me, John Wise, on the right. We got together and took a drive to Ikea to order the pieces we’d need for our desks, and then we headed over to my place to order the computers. The desks arrived on the 24th, and the computer parts on the 25th. Now, here on April 26th, we are ready to start work. Timefire LLC is born.

Soon, I will leave for my first Game Developers Conference, better known simply as GDC. It’s held annually in San Francisco, California, which I’ll be road-tripping my way up to on a 1,532-mile (2,482km) adventure. I’m writing this blog entry as a two-part story to get some of the planning details, expectations, and sense of excitement leading into this out of the way. This way, my next post will focus on the event itself.

GDC is the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event; their description not mine. How do they know it’s pro’s only? Probably because of the expense to attend, this isn’t cheap. Exposition floor tickets alone are $195 each, while a full pass will cost you between $1,475 and $2,100, depending on when you register. Add transportation, food, and hotels, and soon, a small developer will approach close to $1000 in costs for even a minimal attendance option – per person!

Last summer, I started considering a trip to GDC. Earlier in the year, it had been impossible for us not to see the announcements coming from the conference regarding Oculus and the “Infiltrator” demo showcasing Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). So I went over to the GDC site, but prices and options to purchase were not posted yet. Then, in September or October, the information went live, and for a brief moment, I had the opportunity to buy admission to the Independent Games Summit (IGS) for only $695. I also read on the internet that first-time attendees shouldn’t worry about the full conference and summits, that just visiting was enough, even overwhelming. While I progressed in my own development regarding my VR project, I finally returned to the registration page. The IGS passes were sold out, which settled what part of the event I’d be attending. The lesson here is to plan well in advance, better than six months out if you are thinking of going. Read everything you can about other people’s experiences and start saving money.

So, what’s the attraction to someone just getting started in the game industry? This is our Superbowl, our World Cup, it is the Olympics and the Oscars all rolled into one giant geek fest celebrating the developers who are changing how we see and interact with our world. Gaming is not just some teen sitting in isolation killing zombies; it is an evolving phenomenon that alters humanity’s relationship to education, entertainment, social interactions, medicine, work, war, and soon how we travel. The companies that are presenting workshops or have booth space often hold off on making major product announcements leading up to GDC because they know the world is listening during this event. It is in large part these announcements and demonstrations that played a role in my decision to attend.

The first and foremost among those hoped-for announcements will be from Epic or maybe Oculus. When the doors open, I suppose I’ll have to flip a coin to decide whose booth I’ll bolt to first. Both companies are likely to make some major announcements, so large that, in retrospect, this will be one of those defining moments in history that we as a society look back to the events of this week to recognize this was when we first learned the world was changing in such a dramatic fashion.

For about ten years, Epic has been working on its next-generation game authoring engine. There is no guarantee that it is ready yet to make a public appearance, but signs that Epic may be about to unleash this super-charged tool are many. Over the past seven months, Epic has rolled out five videos that have allowed us to see the software and has put on display its User Interface. Their booth space, in comparison to the previous year, is huge. At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Vegas, they allowed Nvidia to run a UE4 demo and prepared a special presentation for the guys at Oculus to showcase their Crystal Cove prototype, which Valve was also enthusiastically supporting. With Sony and Avegant breathing down Oculus’s neck in the race to reach the consumer market with VR, it would appear to me that it is in Epic’s own interest as an early supporter of the technology to help push out what could be the premiere VR authoring environment.

Then we have Oculus themselves, who have an amazing amount of floor space reserved at GDC, three separate booths, as a matter of fact, on two floors. Previous statements have said they would be ready with a consumer model when they figure out positional tracking; well, that’s exactly what they were showing in early January at CES. Another 60 days have passed, and I’m certain they have not slowed down on refining how their technology works. If they were to announce Dev Kit 2 (DK2) at GDC, my guess is they would give themselves enough lead time to prepare the units but maybe a bit of extra time to figure into things if they knew certain elements were about to find their way into a DK2 so that they can tempt us with an announcement that new units for developers will ship within a relatively short time after GDC. They are certainly not going to GDC with 3,000 square feet of space to simply show us what we have all already seen. I expect something HUGE!

Next up in importance is yet another encounter with Allegorithmic. Just this past week, they released to the general public a beta version of Substance Painter on the Steam Early Access program operated by Valve. Last month, they sent out invites to those who might be interested in attending a Substance User Group meeting to be held during GDC; I wasted no time on RSVP’ing my answer, which in turn is forcing me to leave a day early. I am looking forward to learning about plans going forward regarding Painter and what they have in mind for how Substance Designer is to be improved upon.

Marmoset will be present, but Toolbag 2.0 was recently released, so I think they’ll be there mostly to meet with their user base to get feedback and let some lucky few know what they have in mind for future versions. Speaking of software on the horizon, Quixel has a booth, and there is no way they are there only to show their current version of nDo2, which is having problems operating with Photoshop CC for a number of users. I’m pretty certain we’ll see a new version of nDo, dDo, and their new Megascan service.

These are just the major areas of interest I’m at GDC for. There’s also Simplygon, Nvidia, Valve, Speedtree, Perforce, the Belgian Trade Commission, and dozens of other vendors we are yet to discover that has me thrilled about the prospect of being on hand for this amazing conference.

Then there are the parties.

Tuesday, after our user group meeting, I’ll head down the street to the NativeX Party. While I’m not a Corona Labs user, I am interested in learning all I can about mobile gaming, and with NativeX cosponsoring the party, I might learn something more about mobile ads. Hey, I’m new to GDC and can’t turn away from any opportunity to learn and be entertained.

Come Wednesday night I have two parties to attend; first up, I’ll head to the Novela Bar for a party sponsored by Kontagent+PlayHaven and VentureBeat. I’m starting to see a theme here that after we’ve hung out all day with the developers of the tools we work with, the guys who handle the all-important “after-the-game-has-been-released” job are there to talk to us. From here, I’ll walk over to AT&T Park – home of the San Francisco Giants, for a giant party hosted by YetiZen. A couple of live acts will be performing, tournament video gaming will run all night, and people on the VIP list will be able to test drive a new Ferrari.

Thursday following GDC, an event is taking place at Swissexsf titled “Spatial Storytelling: Augmented and Virtual Realities,” where we are promised an evening of immersive games and installations incorporating virtual and augmented reality. Some of the participants are Disney, Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, OuterBody Labs, Apelab, and BandFuse. Sadly, the festivities are planned to stop at 10:00 p.m.

Finally, on Friday, the last day of the conference is a party hosted by 8bitSF and Pow Pow Pow called Band Saga LIVE. It will be over at the DNA Lounge with a bunch of bands, including Metroid Metal and An0va performing. I’m still waiting to see if Kiip responds to my RSVP to attend their party on Wednesday night. This will be tight as I’m sure that a “Things wrapped in bacon” party is going to be a popular one. And it seems the most difficult party to get into is Notch’s .party( ). Last year, this inventor of Minecraft had Skrillex play his party; this year, Nero, Kill The Noise, and Feed Me are scheduled to perform. The event seems to have filled minutes after it was made available. There’s always next year.

Creating content for virtual reality when your aspirations are set high can be a daunting task. In order to move beyond the low-poly small bitmap textured environments that have come to typify video game art for the past couple of decades, the small indie team must focus on mastering a wide number of tools. The principles of this creativity are the same as they are for Triple-A titles, but instead of 300 people creating the world, you might only be one or two.

Since this past summer, a lot has changed as the game industry undergoes an amazing evolutionary convulsion. What stands out is the fact that hardware, software, and competition from the indies are at a critical stage of altering the business model and show no sign of letting up. The convergence of GPU rendering power, high-quality mobile display tech (the backbone of the VR headset), procedural and physically based textures, the Steam network, and various other platforms for content distribution, along with the myriad advancements in general PC hardware such as inexpensive ram and fast SSD’s that allow us to run Blender, Unreal, Substance Designer, Photoshop, and DayZ all simultaneously are giving the individual an incredible amount of leverage.

With this power and opportunity, I’m facing steep learning curves every single day. At first, I struggled with simply learning how to make seamless textures. Then, the long, slow arch of learning UV unwrapping showed up like Godzilla to crush my ideas that I would just throw these materials on my meshes. Because I’m looking to bring these skills to work with Unreal Development Kit (UDK), I was only focused on low-poly meshes. I had no game-creating experience, and so as I understood things, I needed to be super conservative with the geometry and size of materials.

Then Epic started teasing more details regarding the much anticipated Unreal Engine 4 and I started dreaming that it must be around the corner. Maybe I should build things with the idea that I’d migrate my work when Epic finally made the update from UDK to whatever they would end up calling the consumer version of UE4. Just as I was making this transition, I learned about Allegorithmic’s Substance Designer and their Database of over 700 procedural textures, and a new jumble of highly technical stuff was thrown at me. As quickly as I was adapting to this new paradigm of working with textures and materials, Allegorithmic added Physically Based Rendering (PBR) to the mix. I’d seen hints of this in one of the UE4 demos, so this just solidified the fact that this was going to be something important. Sure enough, here comes Marmoset with Toolbag 2.0 and a heavy emphasis on PBR, too. Better bone up on what this will bring to the workflow.

If that wasn’t enough, David Green with LilChips continued to offer me updates to his still alpha landscape-building software called Terresculptor, so I had to investigate those changes, too. An email pops into my mailbox from Allegorithmic inviting me to Los Angeles for a sneak peek into Substance Painter; I can’t resist. The first version is primitive, too primitive to work with, but great to steal a glimpse into what those guys have in mind. Luckily, I couldn’t deep dive into Painter yet and instead held my focus on other tasks while this software matured, but I now know that 3D painting is certainly going to be another tool in helping me achieve the kind of results that were exclusive to the Triple-A guys.

By late December, I was fully immersed in the process of building high-poly models, learning about retopology, and that auto-unwrapping UVs was not going to cut it. Displacement maps in modeling techniques looked appealing, and from what I was seeing from Surface Mimic, these maps that were being used in Substance Painter performed great in Blender and my sculpting tool of choice, 3D-Coat.

The problem was I was not making a lot of progress in building my world; all I was doing was learning all the time. With the New Year came a date on the calendar I needed to tend to: Steam Dev Days hosted by Valve. With a large portion of the Seattle-based conference focused on VR, I thought it might be worth the expense to learn more about this platform I was so fascinated with developing. As I wrote in a previous article, Gabe Newell made it possible for me to get a peek into their VR headset, where instantly I knew that not only was I on the right path, but this was going to be more epic than I imagined back when I first put on the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 1.

From Palmer Luckey, Joe Ludwig, Michael Abrash, and the rest of the people who were talking about VR during those days in the Pacific Northwest, it was made abundantly clear that large-scale environments weren’t ready for prime time yet. I didn’t want to acknowledge this because my hope was Nvidia would rectify poor frame rates with their new Maxwell line of GPUs, but slowly, I’ve given in to the idea that I would have to shelve part of the world for a time and find a different focus. Luckily, I found a compromise that would temporarily push my earlier efforts to the side while I focus on a “corner” that will allow for a tighter focus on the intimate instead of the massive.

Riding on the elation of what I’d seen in Seattle, I thought it was time to write an email – to Epic. Within 24 hours of that missive, I learned that I would be on the next cycle when new devs are brought on. I don’t think I could have been any more dumbfounded than I was at that moment. In about a week, I was downloading my own personalized (for security purposes?) version of UE4 (not its code name, but I’m not authorized to speak ‘its’ name :).

It has now been a couple of weeks since my head was spun around its axis, and things are starting to normalize if that is really possible. I’m again making progress in the creative department, but weaving all of this together is a gargantuan task. In three weeks, I’ll leave for San Francisco to make my first visit to GDC (the Game Developers Conference), where I’ll likely once again be overwhelmed by the rapid evolution that is occurring in this industry. None of this is a complaint; on the contrary, I’m too astonished right now to see any of this work as a burden. I stand humbled by the gravity of what is coming and am excited to see what is to be shared in the near future.

• NOTE: For historical accuracy, I need to point out that the context of this blog entry from 2014 was changed from a “WE” to an “I” perspective as the person who’d been collaborating with me from that time became hostile to the point I felt it best to remove references to him. At times, I’ll reference him as “Redacted.”

Complacency breeds stagnation; it makes us wonder what to do instead of forcing us to do it.

Conflict throws us into action. We must run from or fight what is confronting us, but what we cannot do is stand still, for if we do, it will be at our own peril.

In the former situation, we will sit passively and entertain ourselves to death, while the latter forces us into a warlike stance.

When poised to go into battle, we scour our minds for solutions; what are the paths that lay before us?

This then begs the question, when given the relative ease of life in the 1st world, where do we find this conflict?

Most waste this resource in the mental masturbation of arguing with one’s self and then pulling in inconsequential nonsense to occupy a mind that requires daily gymnastics to remain plastic and ready for action. The problem herein is that the drivel many people allow in has no relevance to their own lives; it is fodder for complacency brought on by the inane.

So where do we find the kind of internal conflict that allows our creativity to build our own intellectual Trojan Horse that helps liberate us from complacency? We manifest it in desire and disappointment. When I was a young man, my conflict came from my inability to find the relationship I felt I needed. During that time, I was a voracious reader – didn’t have anyone to date, so what else was I to do? Those words I read stewed in my mind, and I continued reading to find answers, but there were none; there was just more conflict. With the fire of the mind blazing like a forest fire in its quest for knowledge and companionship, I started making stuff, digital stuff.

I was a child of the emergent personal computer revolution, just as words painted pictures in my mind; having the computer make pictures using its processing capability seemed a natural progression, and so I embarked on dabbling with digital arts in the mid-1980s. All of the reading, studying, and cultural exploration of my early 20s had produced a great curiosity; I had a million questions. It was here that I discovered, as so many others have over the course of their lives, that the mind abhors a vacuum devoid of answers, and given enough inputs, it will soon start to disgorge its contents by producing something that explains things to the curious mind. Soon, I was shooting videos and making record cover art with the wealth of knowledge I was refining.

And here begins the problem: success in one’s endeavors delivers like-minded others and validates the knowledge that produced the fruits of our labor by imbuing us with the currency of achievement: money. Time to get happy and lazy and the start of getting older.

But I don’t want to get old, nor do I want to be in teenage soul-ripping conflict either.

So how do we balance that yin and yang of two hemispheres of self and manage them so that they might remain a healthy self-governing police force of our cognitive maturity? We break the rules, our own rules. To make this simpler, we step out of our own habits.

I did not suggest we break laws; as a matter of fact, I would like to reiterate we break our rules. What are those rules? Maybe they were the knowledge that we should exercise and the realization that obesity is killing us, so we break out of routine and find a path to tackling our complacency with our diet and lack of running around. Or maybe we have been taking something for granted and have our reality shaken by a dramatic change in our situation that rattles our complacency and forces us to race against stagnation to fix ourselves.

In my case, I recently reignited my creative engine by dousing gasoline on a healthy bed of embers. While maybe nothing is easily pinpointed as being the sole flashpoint of having sparked that conflict, what helped me was a binge into guilt. I’ve not played games in a seriously long time; I’ve been too busy traveling and writing and maybe being complacent in that.

You see, I thought hours of mindless entertainment was a kind of complacency I couldn’t afford. Once something becomes normal and routine we tend to fall into a kind of mindless existence, so for me to fall into playing over 100 hours of a game at the exclusion of my “healthy” routine, I started falling into some extreme guilt. I didn’t realize it at first, but I was breaking my rules.

In a crescendo of regrets, I had to justify my losing face in playing the game to excess, and my mind started racing for answers. I had to find a path on this battlefield to conquer my conflict. What I had going for me was that I was in the process of creating a virtual environment, which might in itself be considered a game. I had recently attended Steam Dev Days and returned with a brain full of ideas regarding the valuable strategic lessons learned from Valve and their experiences in how gaming is evolving. I was inspired by the game I was lost in, too. Just as I’m cresting and about to cross this rubicon, my creative mind is rescued by my conflicting mind, and I find an important answer to a vexing monetization question regarding the VR environment I am working on.

A huge problem has been solved, but at what expense? The conflict alienated my relationships because for 12 hours a day I cast my normal to the side and appeared to be lost. I suppose I could have stayed in my new complacency, but fortunately for me, my brain enjoys a good round of gymnastics, even when thrown to the mat. I bounced up, feeling invigorated to tackle the hard issues of how to implement my genius. Oh yeah, did I tell you I like flirting with self-delusional ideas of grandeur, too?

Flew up to Seattle, Washington, a few days ago to attend the Steam Dev Days event hosted by Valve. I was desperate to go as it appeared there was going to be an emphasis on Virtual Reality, so I reached out and requested an invite code, and much to my surprise, I was sent one. Being the over-enthusiastic zealot I am when I focus my attention on something I’m interested in, getting to listen in on Valve’s ideas of where VR is heading fits my needs to satisfy and even amplify my already off-the-chart curiosity. I visited the Convention Center the night before to find out just where I needed to be the next morning. I arrived Wednesday morning while they were finishing setting up the hall and our catered hot breakfast. I was trying to be polite when the guys who created Black Mesa for Counter-Strike strode in and sat where I “was” going to sit. We had about a two-hour wait before things got underway. As it turned out, I sat at the end of the center row; little did I know that this would work out PERFECTLY. Gabe Newell, the founder of Valve, was the first speaker.

As Gabe finished speaking, I was not one of the lucky people who were able to ask him a question. Not a problem, I saw an opportunity. I got out of my seat, and as he made his way out of the hall through the seated crowd of 2000 attendees, I followed him. Once in the hallway, I asked my question. As we walked along and he answered, he asked if we could sit down a moment and continue. Wow, I’m kinda blown away by now. After a short while, he asked if I had the chance to see their implementation of VR, “Nope.” He got up and said, “Come on.” At the end of the hallway is the man behind the curtain, seriously. Gabe asks Atman Binstock, a Senior Engineer who’s been working on Valve’s VR project if he can get me in. There are a limited number of spots open to demo this prototype headset during these two days, and they are already reserved for the likes of people from Rockstar, Ubisoft, Intel, etc. Atman says he can offer me an abbreviated demo. I am indebted to Gabe, but I’m not even sure in my excitement if I offered him my profound thanks.

Now, I, too, am behind the curtain and in the magic room. The walls are covered with “Fiducial Markers” – they are what the camera on the headset I’ll put on will see so positional tracking is maintained. For the Oculus Rift demo at CES the week before in Las Vegas, the guys turned the concept around and covered the headset with markers where a camera on the wall kept track of the users’ head movements; that prototype system was called Crystal Cove.

This is Valve’s prototype VR headset I had the opportunity to put on. There are no words to describe the next series of events and impressions except to try and sincerely say that Virtual Reality is going to CHANGE EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING!!! Valve and Oculus call it “Presence” – when any idea that you are in something artificial fades away, and you are transported into this “other” place. I stood among cubes, simple cubes stretching off into the distance all around me. I could have been in Tron; it was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I was standing in a giant cube with the Yahoo home page on the six sides of the cube; this was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. You should know where this is going. Until amazement gave way to epiphany and a near-religious experience – I was in the universe of CDAK. This environment that buckled my knees and brought me to tears is a tiny 4k program that originated out of the demoscene. Back in the nascent days of the personal computer industry, “crackers” would create small demos that usually preceded a game they cracked – very common back when I owned a Commodore 64 and then my Amiga. My breath was taken away; I seriously had to gasp at how beautiful the universe was. At this moment, if there had been any uncertainty, I was convinced that VR was going to steamroll humanity. Exploring intricacy and beauty, which is impossible to realize in our physical world, is what’s going to make this ubiquitous. By this time, I don’t know what to say to Atman as I remove the headset; I’m stunned. Telling anyone what this was or how it felt will never compare to how the individual is going to find their worldview permanently altered from just one encounter with VR – assuming it isn’t going to be in an environment shooting people.

I emerge back into the real world. Gabe is gone. On the other side of the curtain, I’m introduced to Tom Forsyth, who now works with Oculus but has been with Valve. On his right in this photo is Atman Binstock, who does work with Valve. I’m tongue-tied. I want to ask a question, but my mind is reeling. I concede defeat in that my thoughts are not to easily be unscrambled, and I say bye, though I want to go back in, and I head back to the conference floor. I walk away with a smile that will have me looking like an idiot for the next three days.

Now, I have to focus on the other reason I’m here in Seattle: learning from Valve. When Gabe Newell gave his introductory talk, he said he was only going to focus on two things: the most important two things Valve sees for the future are Open Platforms and Virtual Reality. With that in mind, the people here to talk with us are spilling their corporate guts about what’s working and how things have changed. They point out the economic benefits of in-game trade and commerce, of how they can no longer make all the content, and the user wants an active role in creating UGC – User Generated Content. Two examples are how they were surprised when users made more than 20,000 skins that were being traded in Counter-Strike, but that didn’t prepare them for what happened in Portal. Users created more than 318,000 maps, a feat Valve would never have been able to do on their own. We hear over and over about openness, that we must evolve and learn, and that economic connectivity between developers and gamers is strategically absolutely important. After some amazing talks about the success of Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, and Dota2, it was time for me to attend the afternoon sessions. Talks about Music in Games, Collaborative Coworking, and Steam’s Early Access program were the sessions I chose; I would have liked to attend all the sessions, though.

At the end of the sessions was a get-together in the main hall with DJ and drinks. There was also the matter of a giveaway that was part of our swag bag. At the start of the conference, attendees were handed a bag of goodies and a t-shirt. In that bag was a prototype Steam Controller, a notebook, a pen, some stickers, and, of course, the really cool Steam Dev Days canvas bag it all came in. But we were also given a card that was to be turned in this evening. Before I collected my free gift, I ran into Alexis Khouri and Jeremie Noguer of Allegorithmic. I had just met these two guys the month before in Los Angeles when their CEO was over from France to make the official announcement of their new software called Substance Painter. They told me of something totally cool coming to Substance Designer 4.1, but I can’t say anything yet except that it’s going to be really cool.

Btw the card we were given earlier in the day to be traded at the evening social event was this i4770-based Gigabyte-built Steam Box called Brix Pro. While I was happy to hear about this and receive my very own, nothing was overshadowing my experience in Valve’s VR room. If it hadn’t been for all the great content of the sessions and how open Valve was with how content is being sold, I could have easily gone home at around 10:30 on this first day. You can be sure, though, that this mini powerhouse of a computer had me giddy as a kid this swag bag didn’t disappoint.

The next day, we heard talks in the main room about ARG – Alternative Reality Games. What I was waiting for, though, were the afternoon sessions, as there was a big focus on VR. There was so much interest that the room this was supposed to be held in was expanded to handle 700 participants. Michael Abrash gave a great talk about how close we are to commercial virtual reality. Instead of me describing it, you should just go to his slide show and read about it yourself – click here.

We also listened to Joe Ludwig, who talked about VR and Steam; check out his presentation – click here.

Palmer Luckey was here with his crew from Oculus, including CEO Brendan Iribe, co-founder Nate Mitchell, and Tom Forsyth. Palmer was coming off a successful couple of weeks that saw the company raise $75 million with Andreessen Horowitz and demonstrate the Crystal Cove at CES in Vegas. Palmer leaped on stage and dove into an hour of material that was compressed into a 30-minute presentation.

After the individual talks, the guys sat down to answer questions from the audience. From left to right are Joe Ludwig of Valve, Devin Reimer of Owlchemy, Palmer Luckey of Oculus, and Michael Abrash from Valve. The conversation lasted about an hour, after which we broke for a catered dinner in the main room, along with more music and drink.

As I was leaving I ran into Palmer, not the first time, that was at Siggraph just this past July. I said hello and took the blurryest selfie ever, hence the small black-and-white version I’m posting. Over the two days here, I was able to see that an older generation and decades of digital advancements had given the opportunity to a young 20-year-old guy to change the world. The people who will make the content that drives that advancement are twenty and thirty-somethings who are harnessing complexity and are still able to learn new tricks and hopefully bend with an entertainment industry that is about to go through the greatest contortions it has ever faced. Get ready, world; you ain’t seen nothing yet.