Devine: “Everyday adventure will define a generation”

Magic Leap chief game wizard (his words) and industry vetran, Graeme Devine, kicked off the Evolve:Brighton conference this morning with a keynote on mixed reality and the future of development.

The Evolve:Brighton track, which is part of the Develop:Brighton conference focuses on the future of game development and its many mediums, one of which is mixed reality. Devine shared what Magic Leap did in order to better understand the technology.

Devine stated that there are only three ways at present that developers are paid, or can make money, by producing mixed reality products. Those three were experiences for retail and consumers (shopping malls, theme parks, etc), industry (like stocktaking and inventory automation) and medical practice. Games were quite far from this trio.

The company, after early tests which he admitted amounted to some rather basic augmented reality, decided that the would hold an internal pitchfest. Over 200 ideas were submitted and the company went through a judging process which involved the following:

A five mile test, in which you had to ask yourself, if you forgot an item (like a smartphone), would you go back and get it if you were only five miles away from where you left it. The toothbrush test, which asks would you return to the app. The Halo test indicating if you would buy a system specifically to play that app. There were also ideas such as innovation, how well the idea would interact with reality in its devices like audio, world meshing and control schemes.

The final point was if the company, Magic Leap, would learn anything from developing an app. This has led Devine to believe, following the ideas that the secret to MR is ‘everyday adventure’.

At the end of his talk he stated that the everyday, things that an MR app would enable you to do like converse with an avatar, or several avatars within a small space, using actual objects in real life to manipulate the game world, is what will be the killer app for the medium. "Everyday adventure will define a generation," he concluded.

The Develop Conference is on at the Hilton Brighton Metropole from 11th-13th July. We’ll bring you select stories of note here on Develop and update any posts when videos of talks become available.