<aside> 👋 **Happy Thursday and welcome to today's AMA with @Peter who have generously agreed to spend the next hour with us answering questions about Metanaut's open roles and more!
Peter, thank you for being here and sharing your insights with the Work With Indies community!**
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: Hit me with your hardest questions. My body & mind is ready! 💪🧠💪
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: Hi everyone! I'm Peter Kao, CEO & Creative Director at Metanaut (website / twitter).
I co-founded our VR studio in 2015 and we've been developing VR/AR games ever since (6+ years now)! We're a small award-winning team focused on creating friendly, well-designed experiences that we hope brings joy and positivity to the world.
When I'm not wearing my VR headset, I like to scuba dive. I'm a certified rescue diver with over 250 dives under my belt. In my past life, I was also a digital nomad. Living off of my 65-liter backpack + laptop, I traveled the world for 3 years while working on my start-up (a different company than Metanaut). Nowadays, I like chilling with my cat and garden!
</aside>
Metanaut - Explore the Metaverse - A Virtual Reality Studio
<aside> 🌚 Hi Peter! Thanks for being with us today. Love how VR mechanics were used in Gadgeteer. Does your studio work with VR narrative designers, and if so, how do you integrate them into your workflow? - Helen
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: We've had several conversations with different VR narrative designers for our Rube Goldberg machine game, Gadgeteer, and our next project, WONDER.
For Gadgeteer, we wanted there to be a story element to the puzzle campaign but ended up scratching out the idea unfortunately due to time constraints. We hope our next project will have more narrative elements to it though.
</aside>
<aside> 🌚 Glad you could be here! I was CPO of a Virtual Reality company in my previous years, and I've now taken up teaching. I'm just wondering what your favorite VR headset is and what you see as the 'main' one that will be used in floor shows / conferences and company meetings to demonstrate products? - PuffPirate
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: My favorite headset would have to be the Quest 1/2. It pushed the boundaries of VR tech and made it much more accessible for everyone. Oculus Link, Airlink, inside-out tracking, ergonomic controllers with great grip buttons, light hardware are my favorite features about it.
I think it's definitely the way to go if you want to showcase something on the road/company meetings.
</aside>
<aside> 🌚 Not VR specific, but do you have any advice in terms of first steps or general tips for someone trying to take the plunge from a totally different industry (nonprofit/higher ed. fundraising in my case)? Thanks! - Semner
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: I'm a part-time instructor at the Vancouver Film School teaching VR/AR design so I get that question a lot!
It really depends on what area of development you want to focus on. Design-wise, my unconventional advice is to study Industrial Design. 3D objects in VR have signifiers & affordances that are similar to objects in the real world. Because VR is so new, we're all still trying to figure it out so why not look at areas of knowledge that have been around for 100+ years for inspiration!
</aside>
<aside> 🌚 Related question, advice, and tips for someone interested in jumping from traditional games' development to VR development? Thanks 🤝 - ImMatureTony
</aside>
<aside> 🌝 Peter: Quest is taking up a huge market share and so it's important for anybody wanting to remain or get into the industry to pay attention to it. The Quest is a mobile device and so it's not going to be nearly as powerful as a PC. My advice is to look at mobile games development and focus on using Unity as a way to jump into the VR industry because optimization is really important in VR!
</aside>
<aside> 💡 Editor's Note: Great insight here from Peter, who is deeply entrenched in VR, on the influence of Quest and its mobile-friendly tech specs on your choices for a game engine and overall hardware accessibility.
</aside>