NYU Game Center Lecture Series Presents Matt Boch

The NYU Game Center is excited to welcome faculty member Matt Boch to the latest installment of the Lecture Series. In addition to his work at the Game Center, Matt Boch is currently the lead designer on Harmonix upcoming Rock Band VR. Join us on November 17th for a deep dive into the process of bringing Rock Band into VR. Developers have spared no processing power in search of immersive “presence”, that white whale of VR. However, our experience in working on Rock Band VR shows that the immersive flowstate induced by action gameplay can actually inhibit “presence”; how can a player feel present in the moment if they’re hyper-focused on responding to visually-oriented, millisecond-sensitive gameplay challenges originally designed for flat screens? Thus far, most VR experiences have avoided this paradox by eschewing mechanical depth, but we believe there are other options. This talk provides a framework for evaluating the tradeoffs between mechanical depth & presence while discussing how we reinvented the classic Rock Band franchise in order to resolve this implicit tension in VR by utilizing other sensory channels and somatic cognitive processes.