As part of Devcom 2017, PJ Esteves, Studio Director at Playsnak, gave a talk about why prototyping for VR games 'sucks'.

"Right now, the economics of Virtual Reality states that you have to be smart with everything you produce," he said, explaining that developers need to develop quickly to make sure they have a viable product before the market moves on.

Thankfully, Esteves notes that the VR community has a culture of sharing, allowing them to get feedback from other developers and studios to help them make progress.

What makes prototyping so bad, according to Esteves, is that you need to work really hard to find the 'nuggets' of fun within the prototypes that can then lead to a full experience.

Embrace Chaos

To make prototyping better, he suggests developers, "Embrace chaos" and try as many things as possible, while also accepting failure and having fun in the process.

He also recommended, "Finding your box" and making sure you define certain design rules early on, such as ensuring the game runs at 90 frames per second.

On a slightly controversial note, Esteves recommended a '70/30' approach, where 70% of a game is recognisable and 30% is innovative. This helps to pitch a prototype to publishers and demonstrate to them where the value of a game may be.