Sid Delicious
Balloon animal safety control
* Discord server for anyone who wants to help with the game, learn coding/design/other, or just cheer us on: Discord - Free voice and text chat for gamers
Just out of curiosity, who else here works in some sort of IT/tech role (or does it as a hobby or student or wants to learn for the LOLs)?
I haz idea!
I'm thinking of setting up an open source project to create a completely virtual environment/game with schools, museums/libraries, offices, shops, etc for everyone who struggles with finding/keeping work due to the social aspects (or simply struggles to find work without insane commuting distances). Like a VR version of Second Life and Ebay combined; shops/offices that traders can actually link to real businesses, schools where you can access interactive lessons/workshops, with additional areas that can be rented short term for events. Although accessible by non-VR players too.
On the business side: I attend SME networking events fairly regularly and constantly hear employers complain about the cost of running a physical office, and as an employee my biggest problem while job hunting was not having the time/money to travel to an office every day, not being able to constantly move home for each job (since the jobs generally aren't where the affordable housing is), then having to sit in open plan, noisy, hyper-social offices while trying to focus on work. VR seems to be massively underutilised in that sense. I know from past HR experience that a lot of potential candidates never apply for jobs that employers struggle to fill due to physical distance.
On the education side: I have a lot of ties to the academic world, so I want at least one virtual school within this environment with online courses, classes, lectures (I know a lot of educators who would donate time/resources to creating these bits). As well as virtual apprenticeships, since there is a huge skills drain in a lot of places and (for example) a 16 year old kid from a poor family living in a remote coastal village is cut off from physically doing an apprenticeship somewhere like London (which, for anyone who hasn't been there, is insanely expensive to live in even for those on good salaries, but is where the huge companies are generally based in the UK). It seems like it would help to level the playing field in that sense. It would also be very easy to 'gamify' the whole experience to give students more incentive to study. For example, you put the school in a fantasy setting within an RPG style environment, then reward them with points/whatever that they need to access the more recreational parts of the game.
Most importantly, VR (for me, anyway) feels far less socially invasive. You are 'there', but not there. You can turn the sound up/down at will or turn it off entirely if there is too much going on. There is far more control over the environment, while still being social (if you want to be). It also feels a bit like wearing a mask, so you don't feel you are on show as much as you would in real life. I recently helped out with a VR event at a local school and we had kids standing up giving mini speeches to their classmates who would normally have found that terrifying.
In addition, at a later stage I want to have places/events in the game linked to charities - for example, you could have a virtual 'zoo' with interactive endangered/extinct animals (I've seen something like this done before on a small scale) with loads of educational material and a link to donate to WWF at the end. VR seems perfect for things like that.
Less people commuting to work is probably great for the trees as well! So we'd basically be saving the planet at the same time!
Once it's built, things like server costs (which would be the main running expense) can come out of renting in-game offices/shops/advertising to companies plus any donations random people want to make if they want to support it. Or I could merch the hell out of it! I could set up something like Patreon (which I think still displays earnings publicly?) and a linked website with info about it. Or something similar to the non-profit Linux set up if it gets bigger. Whatever people think is more transparent.
I'd love to keep this as an ongoing project that anyone can contribute to and then use as a platform in future. I also think it would be great to have something that anyone in the aspie community who struggles to find work/people to hang out with/hobbies can get involved with without any pressure. I know there are a LOT of un/underemployed clever people here who have a range of technical or other skills that aren't getting used due to various secondary barriers the mainstream economy puts in the way - all the things people have mentioned on this forum over and over again). You could contribute as much or as little towards this as you like and use that in your CV/portfolio/whatever, or just learn design/coding/other as you go. I'm also happy to collect a bunch of study resources for any total newbies who want to learn technical skills from scratch.
I'm going to be doing this myself as a hobby project anyway (at the very very least my other company will have a virtual office there, as will those my friends/family own, since overheads cost a bomb and you can have a bigger desk and AI bot servants in VR). A few friends/family have already said they want to help, so I've got a small team to outsource some of the work. But I'd very much welcome anyone else who wants to team up! This has been something I've thought about for years, so much of it is already planned out.
I'm going to begin with the 'starting area' and tutorial bit and then get busy building a VR London City (I'm beginning with a steampunk version of Threadneedle Street and Covent Garden with a test shop and underground market, then expanding from there). If anyone is interested in jumping on board, I've set up a Discord server and will create some sort of Wiki in the next few weeks. I'm building it in UE4 with Oculus Rift (and HTC Vive).
Edit: For those who've asked... no, you don't need programming experience to get involved. Development of big games is a huge project that requires a variety of skills (a bit like making a film). For example:
... and a bunch of other stuff I likely haven't considered yet.
And the bigger it gets, the more secondary work will be needed to organise all of the above like a military operation! I've followed several dev teams in the past that were made up of just programmers, and they all failed due to lacking all the other skills needed. So coding definitely isn't a requirement.
Just out of curiosity, who else here works in some sort of IT/tech role (or does it as a hobby or student or wants to learn for the LOLs)?
I haz idea!
I'm thinking of setting up an open source project to create a completely virtual environment/game with schools, museums/libraries, offices, shops, etc for everyone who struggles with finding/keeping work due to the social aspects (or simply struggles to find work without insane commuting distances). Like a VR version of Second Life and Ebay combined; shops/offices that traders can actually link to real businesses, schools where you can access interactive lessons/workshops, with additional areas that can be rented short term for events. Although accessible by non-VR players too.
On the business side: I attend SME networking events fairly regularly and constantly hear employers complain about the cost of running a physical office, and as an employee my biggest problem while job hunting was not having the time/money to travel to an office every day, not being able to constantly move home for each job (since the jobs generally aren't where the affordable housing is), then having to sit in open plan, noisy, hyper-social offices while trying to focus on work. VR seems to be massively underutilised in that sense. I know from past HR experience that a lot of potential candidates never apply for jobs that employers struggle to fill due to physical distance.
On the education side: I have a lot of ties to the academic world, so I want at least one virtual school within this environment with online courses, classes, lectures (I know a lot of educators who would donate time/resources to creating these bits). As well as virtual apprenticeships, since there is a huge skills drain in a lot of places and (for example) a 16 year old kid from a poor family living in a remote coastal village is cut off from physically doing an apprenticeship somewhere like London (which, for anyone who hasn't been there, is insanely expensive to live in even for those on good salaries, but is where the huge companies are generally based in the UK). It seems like it would help to level the playing field in that sense. It would also be very easy to 'gamify' the whole experience to give students more incentive to study. For example, you put the school in a fantasy setting within an RPG style environment, then reward them with points/whatever that they need to access the more recreational parts of the game.
Most importantly, VR (for me, anyway) feels far less socially invasive. You are 'there', but not there. You can turn the sound up/down at will or turn it off entirely if there is too much going on. There is far more control over the environment, while still being social (if you want to be). It also feels a bit like wearing a mask, so you don't feel you are on show as much as you would in real life. I recently helped out with a VR event at a local school and we had kids standing up giving mini speeches to their classmates who would normally have found that terrifying.
In addition, at a later stage I want to have places/events in the game linked to charities - for example, you could have a virtual 'zoo' with interactive endangered/extinct animals (I've seen something like this done before on a small scale) with loads of educational material and a link to donate to WWF at the end. VR seems perfect for things like that.
Less people commuting to work is probably great for the trees as well! So we'd basically be saving the planet at the same time!
Once it's built, things like server costs (which would be the main running expense) can come out of renting in-game offices/shops/advertising to companies plus any donations random people want to make if they want to support it. Or I could merch the hell out of it! I could set up something like Patreon (which I think still displays earnings publicly?) and a linked website with info about it. Or something similar to the non-profit Linux set up if it gets bigger. Whatever people think is more transparent.
I'd love to keep this as an ongoing project that anyone can contribute to and then use as a platform in future. I also think it would be great to have something that anyone in the aspie community who struggles to find work/people to hang out with/hobbies can get involved with without any pressure. I know there are a LOT of un/underemployed clever people here who have a range of technical or other skills that aren't getting used due to various secondary barriers the mainstream economy puts in the way - all the things people have mentioned on this forum over and over again). You could contribute as much or as little towards this as you like and use that in your CV/portfolio/whatever, or just learn design/coding/other as you go. I'm also happy to collect a bunch of study resources for any total newbies who want to learn technical skills from scratch.
I'm going to be doing this myself as a hobby project anyway (at the very very least my other company will have a virtual office there, as will those my friends/family own, since overheads cost a bomb and you can have a bigger desk and AI bot servants in VR). A few friends/family have already said they want to help, so I've got a small team to outsource some of the work. But I'd very much welcome anyone else who wants to team up! This has been something I've thought about for years, so much of it is already planned out.
I'm going to begin with the 'starting area' and tutorial bit and then get busy building a VR London City (I'm beginning with a steampunk version of Threadneedle Street and Covent Garden with a test shop and underground market, then expanding from there). If anyone is interested in jumping on board, I've set up a Discord server and will create some sort of Wiki in the next few weeks. I'm building it in UE4 with Oculus Rift (and HTC Vive).
Edit: For those who've asked... no, you don't need programming experience to get involved. Development of big games is a huge project that requires a variety of skills (a bit like making a film). For example:
- Coding
- Graphic design
- Animation
- 2D illustration
- Sound/music creation
- Voice over artists
- Story boarding
- A regular website to showcase the game
- PR/marketing
- Admins to run the Discord server if a few people get involved
- Game writers (NPC dialogue, quest trees, lore, etc once I move onto the RPG game side)
- Designing/creating resources in-game
- Testers to play the game and tell me what does/doesn't work properly
- Fundraising
- Writing up non-VR educational resources (text based or videos on Youtube explaining how things work)
- Managing the game Wiki
- Mods to answer player questions
- Cheerleaders - people hanging out just to keep everyone motivated (very important job)!
... and a bunch of other stuff I likely haven't considered yet.
And the bigger it gets, the more secondary work will be needed to organise all of the above like a military operation! I've followed several dev teams in the past that were made up of just programmers, and they all failed due to lacking all the other skills needed. So coding definitely isn't a requirement.
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