By Daniel DiLallo
Special to YNOT

The hottest new storytelling avenues for brands today are Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). More AR than VR mainly because everyone has a phone and can instantly interact with your brand, but VR is going to come on big this year.

Your approach in utilizing this new media is critical. The reason a lot of companies are not seeing a return yet is because, candidly, their designs are awful! I mean, how many 360 videos do you think a limited audience is going to watch or care about? If you think a user is going to want to take time out of their day to watch a 360 video on more of the same content everyone else is putting out, you are completely missing out on an amazing marketing opportunity and wasting your money.

Just because a technology is new and exciting doesn’t mean you should jump right in and start developing with it. You have to really think about the design, especially for AR. With VR, you can get away with some things because it’s so immersive and companies have been able to see some success with poor experiences. But that is fading fast. Your brand must be very creative with this technology. You are dealing today with tech-savvy customers who expect polished content. The user experience needs to be well thought out and understood. Constantly examine and don’t hesitate to ask how your users are interacting with your design to learn whether you can make that interaction smoother and more exciting.

You have a very hot trending technology at your fingertips with limitless design possibilities and very few maps on where to take it. The solution: Sit down with your design team and really look at what is out there now and what could be. Get your team together and have a two-hour brainstorming session. You’ll probably walk away from that session with three great design ideas. Next, prototype these ideas. Very basic prototyping is easy these days with unity and UE4 and much more. I have been contacted by multiple AR companies looking to do prototypes for free in hopes of getting my business. You can do the same.

Be Sure You Have a Strong Internal Creative Director

I think every brand should have an internal creative director. He or she should be showing what to do in this category. Top creative directors know their stuff inside and out. A well-rounded creative director knows engineering, art, design, testing, publishing, user experience, UI, marketing, tools, pipelines and all the new technology on the horizon that can impact your company and industry. The best ones know how to take full advantage of these resources to give you a competitive edge. These guys are monsters when it comes to content development and direction.

A well-rounded creative director is like a great fighter. He or she trains every day in all areas so they can make decisions and know exactly how those designs/decisions impact each discipline of your team and your bottom line. Some directors can also build the applications for you. That’s how good they are.

So, job one: find a creative director. It’s worth noting that 80 percent of all marketing being absorbed is video, and that percentage is climbing. Creative directors have a full knowledge of storytelling methods and tools. That includes all types of video: 2D, 3D, 180, 360, volumetric, etc. They should be able to tell you when to use which one, what device/platform you can choose to display that content on and how those devices differ in ways the user interacts with the content. For example, you can create your video so that users can interact with it on a VR headset, or you can make your content interactive with the world and display it as overlays on a smartphone for an AR app. What it all comes down to is the content and how it is presented to the user. A top creative director will know how.

We are ALL still learning what makes a great experience for the user in VR

Those of us who have been in this space for a long time have learned by now what doesn’t make a good experience. But to move forward, use AR now, if you haven’t already. Get with your creative team today and learn how to take advantage of this technology on smart phones. Even if it’s a little Snapchat-like picture filter, just learn how to use this technology because it’s here today and it’s going to stick around. Glasses are coming folks! Hands-free and Heads-up are real movements. Smart phones are already an old technology, and future devices are being developed to replace them.

Using AR designs now can help you take advantage of this tech today on smart phones, but they will really come into play when smart glasses begin to take over the market in the next five years. Also, VR is big for the adult industry right now. Very few are taking any risks and everyone is playing it safe with 360 video content. VR is fully over gamers right now!

There is a huge window of opportunity for an adult company with the audacity (and checkbook) to go interactive and really capture all these gamers’ attention and their money. They are willing to pay for some truly creative experiences. Adult companies that are racing to do 360 videos will lose as the gamers aren’t interested in them. You can, however, be a leader on the interactive side, which is going to kill it for the adult industry.

Wrap Up: 5 Tips on Building a Great VR Game/Experience

Avoid camera movement! Moving the camera causes motion sickness. Don’t do that, but if you must, make sure you know the methods/ways on how to get away with it.

Frame rate is more important than ever in VR. You must keep your Framerate to 60fps or higher. There are lots of reasons for this.

Immersion/presence is #1. What makes a good VR experience incredible is the phenomenon of immersion. You want your users to believe they are in the world you’ve created.

Give viewers reasons to look around, but control their focus. New players will not initially look around. If you want them to do so, you have to lead them with your design choices. You must seamlessly and cleverly lead them to focus on what you want, which increases user immersion.

Interactivity adds to presence. Letting the user interact with your story/experience like they would be able to do in real life is a great way to help they forget that they are in your creation and immerses them in your story.

—

Daniel DiLallo is a former Activision game developer now known as an adult industry pioneer in VR and AR. He is the creative director for 3x Studios, which achieved prominence with its work on blockbuster games including Transformers, Guitar Hero and Spider Man. 3x Studios works exclusively with Vivid Entertainment toward the common goal of redefining what adult entertainment can be. To see their work, visit VividVirtual.com. DiLallo welcomes readers’ questions and may be reached at dan@3xstudios.com.