, and it was pretty much the way forward for a lot of people who aren’t comfortable with controllers. This is your first hand-tracking-first game, because hand tracking was added to your previous games post release. Were there any different challenges in doing hand-tracking-only versus your previous games?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Yeah, so with hand tracking, you can do a bunch of things that you can\u2019t do as easily with controllers. So, because of your fingers, you can finally do fine movement, right? So we have lots of small switches that you pinch with just two fingers. And that was always off-limits. If you play Job Simulator, you\u2019ll see every object is a certain size, like the keyboard being large is on purpose because we couldn\u2019t track your finger. And then the other thing is like these secondary gestures that feel more natural. On a controller, we could make that sprayer work, that air sprayer where you use your thumb, and it\u2019ll work just fine. It won\u2019t feel as natural; it\u2019ll feel like pressing a button versus when you pick up that air sprayer and it has that thumb trigger, it really feels nice when you\u2019re doing hand tracking.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> Did you notice a difference between when you built it for Galaxy XR versus Quest? Was there a massive gulf in hand tracking, or was it pretty comparable to where there wasn\u2019t a lot of fine-tuning to do?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Each platform has their own take on hand tracking, and I\u2019d say in terms of technology, that Meta is the furthest along in pure hand tracking, which is what we\u2019re doing, right? So the Apple Vision Pro that we\u2019ve ported our other games to and the Galaxy XR, the main thing they focus on for hand tracking is that pinch gesture and making sure that\u2019s right. And so that works beautifully. But then we have to just put in a little more guardrails just because they\u2019re kind of new at making this. So they\u2019re getting better every day, but Meta has the deep, long experience making hand tracking, so they\u2019ve been doing it for a while. So you can just play it and feel it. Like with certain fast movements, you\u2019re going to lose tracking that you wouldn\u2019t necessarily lose on a Quest, but I imagine that\u2019s a temporary state of affairs.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot_Shift-Selection.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot_Diner.png\")
<\/p>\n
Dimensional Double Shift screenshots provided by Owlchemy Labs<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> Okay. This is also your first multiplayer game, from my understanding?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> How challenging was that? You built Job Simulator, Rick and Morty, Vacation Simulator, Cosmonious High, they’re all single-player. Just the simple act of, \u201cHey, pass me this,\u201d how complicated was that?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> I mean, we threw it all away. We used to build on the same tech, and we basically threw it all away to rebuild. When we first started what would become Dimensional Double Shift, the game director at the time was like, \u201cI don\u2019t even think we\u2019re going to get fluids in multiplayer,\u201d right? We have to start completely from scratch. That\u2019s how much we went back. And so we were able to convince him otherwise and we got fluids in the game. But it\u2019s totally different and we also violated some of the rules of multiplayer that we wanted to do, which was, \u201cHey, don\u2019t have high-fidelity interactions where you cross spaces because physics is a mess and all that.\u201d We worked really hard to figure it out. I gave a talk last GDC where I walked through how we got there and it was a lot of trial and error to get those to the fidelity where we finally felt comfortable that we could approach a multiplayer game. And now we\u2019ve done the multiplayer game, and yeah, there\u2019s all sorts of challenges and there\u2019s bugs that you never anticipated where we have this concept of authority. It’s exponentially more difficult to make the multiplayer game than the single-player game.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> What was the biggest bug you encountered that you weren’t expecting? I\u2019m sure you were expecting some roadblocks going into it.<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> The biggest bug that we\u2019ve encountered that is completely unexpected is… we have a lot of bugs where you don\u2019t see it because we catch them, but there\u2019s this concept where one player is what we call the authority. And so essentially that player is telling the other players, if there\u2019s a mismatch, they go, \u201cNo, no, no, I\u2019m the right one,\u201d right? And if the authority doesn\u2019t tell the other players like, \u201cHey, I did this,\u201d then you get these states where you\u2019ll have one person go, \u201cI see the world this way!\u201d and then everybody else will be like, \u201cUh, what are you talking about? Like nothing happened.\u201d We got very adept at finding it, but yeah, it\u2019s just one of those things you don\u2019t think about.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> Job Simulator turns 10 years old this year from its initial release. It\u2019s at 6 million downloads. It\u2019s perennially in the top 10 on Quest and on PS VR2. Where do you think that staying power came from?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> I think with Job Simulator, obviously there\u2019s like a level of “we were there early,” that kind of stuff, but I also think it meets the promise of VR. A lot of our games do that in ways that developers still struggle to meet the promise of VR. And what I mean by that is the promise of VR as in no limits on a small scale. So we have a lot of games that are really good at no limits on a big scale, right? Like even Gorilla Tag in a weird sense is like, \u201cThere\u2019s no limits if you can be the monkey, you can get there\u201d kind of thing. But on the small scale of \u201cCan I open every drawer? Can I fumble around with the items? If I do something with this, will the game block me?\u201d<\/p>\nAnd we still have the problem in VR where somebody puts a water bottle on a table and you go to reach it and you reach through it. And so it\u2019s that kind of promise. And I think the staying power, especially the staying power we\u2019ve seen from the younger generations, is that you get to be experimental. You get to play around in a space and no one\u2019s going to yell at you that you can\u2019t do that, and no one\u2019s going to yell at you that you won\u2019t. And it\u2019s like the Fisher-Price play set, but it\u2019ll actually light things on fire. And I think it\u2019s that joy of exploration and that space to experiment freely that has really pushed it. And the lack of strict goals of all things. And we see this time and time again in VR where, you know, the games that are really capital-V video games don\u2019t perform as well as the games that have a little bit more space to explore and be free and less guardrails around it.<\/p>\n
Job Simulator Screenshots provided by Owlchemy Labs<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> So I\u2019m guessing that carried all the way through to your other projects, down to Vacation, all the way through to DDS?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Actually, we took a diversion. So Cosmonious High feels very much like a video game, right? And it was not our best-performing game. I mean, it was one of our worst-performing games. And it has all these collectibles and all this story and all this stuff. And it\u2019s not a top-10 game. That\u2019s when we took a step back and looked at what worked. And one of the parts of the inception of Dimensional Double Shift is looking at what players liked was that there\u2019s no goal in the game right now. We have a million downloads and the game doesn\u2019t tell you that you have to do anything or not, and people seem to enjoy that. <\/p>\nAnd there\u2019s a big group of people that want to play and be together, but they don\u2019t want to be like, \u201cNow is the time where you pick up fifteen widgets and you give it to this person.” And especially in VR, players are very resistant to that. And I think on the Gorilla Tag-style games, that\u2019s like a wonderful example where like players are very resistant to that kind of goal setting and that boundary setting because it\u2019s like… go nuts. And they do. And you can choose to be put in the box, but you don\u2019t have to be. And so it\u2019s more of an opt-in, in the same way that our game is an opt-in.<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> So in DDS, everything is directly in front of you. You could reach everything from a seated position, just like Job Simulator, for instance. But then in other games you introduced motion. Vacation Simulator was node-based, then Cosmonious you could move around. What made you want to pull that back and just say, \u201cNo, you\u2019re going to stay in this station, everything\u2019s going to be right here in front of you\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> It\u2019s a great question. We\u2019ve come to the conclusion, after many, many years of doing this, that either your game needs to have locomotion as a core mechanic in the game, or it\u2019s better if you actually don\u2019t do it. And we have very few players complaining about that. And the point is if you look at Bone Lab or you look at the Gorilla Tag games or you look at any of these other very popular games with high motion, your position in the world and how you move and interact with it, that\u2019s important to the game. That is a key mechanic and it\u2019s worked out. <\/p>\nMovement is actually unimportant in Cosmonious High. If you look at Cosmonious High when you\u2019re moving, you\u2019re just trying to get from one place to another station, essentially. And so movement actually acts as an impediment to what you want in the game. In Job Simulator, we had all these tool switchers because we couldn\u2019t move, and when we started moving, we started reducing that. And so what increased was this liminal time that was not very fun. Because in a flat game, when you\u2019re riding your horse in Breath of the Wild, it\u2019s awesome because you get these great vistas and stuff. In VR it\u2019s like: boring, boring, I want to do something. <\/p>\n
The physicality of the space matters, and so either your game has locomotion as a core mechanic or it\u2019s better if you just remove it entirely. And we see very, very few complaints from the community. I mean, we do get the occasional \u201cCan I please walk around?\u201d thing, but a lot of our community, what they do is they actually back into a corner of their room, reset their space, and then they just run. They just run across… they just run around. But the thing is if we make you not want for locomotion, then we don\u2019t have to solve that problem, and not every game needs it. And in fact, I\u2019d argue that there\u2019s many, many games that would benefit from removing it entirely and stop worrying about it.<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> Was there ever a point where you considered DDS not being free-to-play? There\u2019s been such an industry shift towards that model for multiplayer.<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> So it was originally not free-to-play, and we were going to launch all these dimensions all at once in the game. And then it was taking a long time to make dimensions and we\u2019re like, \u201cWe do have to ship a game.\u201d We looked like geniuses because we made this choice, but what really caused us to switch was we were looking at the game and we said, \u201cIt\u2019s an $80 buy-in if we charge $20 for you and your friends to play.\u201d We\u2019re asking for $80 sight-unseen for all of you to play. And so we thought, \u201cBut if we make it free-to-play and we do one pay, everyone plays,\u201d now we\u2019re just asking for one person to pay, and it\u2019s a much more straightforward transaction where you could try it, or one friend goes, \u201cHey, I picked it up and I picked up the dimension,\u201d and you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll jump in.\u201d And given the size of the VR market, we just didn\u2019t see a path where like we could convince a lot of people like these groups of four to drop 80 bucks, especially when there were other games that didn\u2019t require that.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Screenshot_Huddle-1.png\")
Dimensional Double Shift campfire provided by Owlchemy Labs<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t talk about the state of the industry. In the last three years, over 200 companies have gone through layoffs. VR has not been immune from that. We just heard about Mighty Coconut earlier this year. Where do you sit with where the market\u2019s going from when you started over 10 years ago now?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> At Owlchemy we\u2019re an interesting case because we\u2019re part of Google, so that insulates us a bit from a lot of what\u2019s happening. VR, it\u2019s entering a downturn. So is games in general, right? And, I think some of it is that we saturated it. We built a device and then because there\u2019s really only been one player, Meta, and Meta has its own goals and some of them align with games and some of them are orthogonal to games. Given that, what you\u2019re seeing, as they realign to go, \u201cOh, we should probably make something profitable,\u201d they have to unwind a lot of choices they made. And that\u2019s causing a lot of the problem in that had we done this slowly, had we said, \u201cOkay, we\u2019re going to unwind and this is like a three-year plan,\u201d but it feels like what happened is Meta showed up and was like, \u201cYeah, let\u2019s make a profitable division tomorrow, and we\u2019re going just take an axe to everything.\u201d The Galaxy XR is wonderful, it\u2019s a great headset, but even Google will be the first to tell you it\u2019s not supposed to replace the millions of Quest 2s. It\u2019s the first headset in a line of headsets which will be coming out for Android XR. So, looking at the big picture of the industry here is like there\u2019s one major player, and when they make changes, the ripples are enormous to the rest of us.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> With that said, what excites you about it, about the future outlook that you have now? What do you see?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> We\u2019re really excited about some of the new form factors of headsets. Project Aura, which is the Google headset, so that\u2019s a collaboration between XReal and Google. That\u2019s really exciting. There\u2019s some others along that line. I think one of the big hang-ups that we\u2019ve been seeing and why we\u2019re not reaching this market saturation point is looking like a dork. We all don\u2019t care clearly because we put on the headsets, but there\u2019s a large percentage of population that really cares about that kind of look. And you have to answer the question: would you wear this in a coffee shop? And if we can start answering that with “maybe” or “yes,” that starts to swing VR and XR more in our favor. So that\u2019s really exciting to us. Ebb and flow is normal. VR is not going anywhere. There\u2019s an entire generation that lives and breathes VR. We can tell you this. I go and talk to people and they know Job Simulator. We do this “Owlchemy vacation,” and if you wear an Owlchemy shirt around the kids, they\u2019ll say something to you if they recognize it. It\u2019s pretty ubiquitous. So I\u2019m not worried that VR is going to go away, you know? It\u2019s really like: when is VR going to come back?<\/p>\nUploadVR: So do you feel like there\u2019s a full generation of kids who are growing up with this tech as just… this is part of their lives, in the same way that we grew up with Atari, Nintendo, and all that?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> A hundred percent. That\u2019s it exactly. I\u2019ve heard stories where lunchrooms divide in half on whether or not you have VR. I had a friend who had two undergrad babysitters that they alternated and both of them individually knew and had played Job Simulator.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> That’s fantastic.<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Yeah, but this is what I\u2019m saying. And then we pop up on random shows where somebody will complain about their kids or go, \u201cHe\u2019s doing a job in VR!\u201d Gen Alpha is VR native. They don\u2019t see it as novel. It\u2019s not a new tech, it\u2019s just part of their life. And every time I say this, I always get a parent who\u2019s like, \u201cOh yeah, we went and visited our cousin\u2019s house and one of the cousins was just in the headset the whole time.\u201d<\/p>\nSo some of the downturn is just us waiting for this generation to have a salary, so they stop having to ask their parents or some adult to say, \u201cGive me money so I can spend money,\u201d right? They don\u2019t need to request that money anymore. So it\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n
UploadVR:<\/strong> Coming back to DDS, do you have a cadence of how often you want to release new maps?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> We have a plan for dimensions, but we\u2019re still in early access, so there\u2019s a lot of experimenting happening with the community. We\u2019re thinking about all the things the community wants and addressing some of that. So we have the direct communication with the community and then our metrics and everything. So it\u2019s less about cadence of dimensions and more about what\u2019s going to make this game the best thing possible, right? So we have four dimensions out now. We\u2019re going to see how this one does and we\u2019re going to look at the metrics, look at all that stuff, and then see where our efforts are best spent next.<\/p>\nUploadVR:<\/strong> Okay. So you haven\u2019t figured out what the next two or three are, you\u2019re taking it one at a time?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> We do know what we would make if we\u2019re going to make another dimension. <\/p>\nUploadVR: Last question: anything else you want to tease out for the future of DDS, the future of Owlchemy, anything you’re working on that you want to talk about?<\/strong><\/p>\nAndrew Eiche:<\/strong> Owlchemy has some really cool stuff coming. We\u2019re very excited for the anniversary of Job Simulator. For Dimensional Double Shift, Sporelando is the big thing, but looking at Sporelando and beyond, we have a lot of really cool stuff in the pipe that I can\u2019t talk about. I think that the people who play the game are going to be very happy with where things are going, and I think that the people who may have been sitting on the fence or maybe they played a little bit will be really excited to come back and play with their friends. 2026 is going to be a really cool year for Owlchemy.<\/p>\n\ud83d\udca1<\/p>\n
Update: <\/strong><\/b>this article has been updated to clean up some errors in the transcription from the audio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Eiche, the ‘CEOwl’ of Owlchemy Labs covers the longevity of Job Simulator across a changing VR consumer…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":682375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[158,67,132,68,729,730],"class_list":{"0":"post-682374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-virtual-reality","8":"tag-technology","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-virtual-reality","13":"tag-vr"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116293707310538557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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