#1704: “Lesbian Simulator” is an Interactive VR Narrative Masterclass Balancing Levity, Pride, & Naming of Homophobic Threats

The Voices of VR Podcast Hello, my name is Ken Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures of forms and moments of storytelling, and the feature of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com/voicesofVR. So continuing our series of looking at different experiences at Ifadaklab 2025, today's episode is with a really fun piece called Lesbian Simulator by Iris Fandermiel. So this is a really playful and interactive story. It's NVR, so your NVR, and you're choosing an embodiment of becoming a lesbian. You choose a name, and you're assigned a astrological sign, and you kind of go back and forth between discovering your identity as a lesbian, and then you are able to come out of the closet by actually using your voice and saying, "I am gay," and having these different fun, playful, interactive moments, sometimes you have good experiences coming out, sometimes it's not so good. And so it's a way of exploring the full spectrum of all the joys and pains of being a lesbian in today's culture. And so it's a really great interactive narrative piece, and I think it's really an exemplar for ways that you can use different agency, interactivity, and participation to really amplify the story that's being told. And so in this interview, we kind of go through and walk through each of the different chapters, because I want to really impact the way that interaction, dynamic gameplay mechanics really kind of amplifying different aspects of the story that's being told. And you're kind of going through a chapter-based journey through these different series of experiences. So yeah, hopefully you'll be able to have a chance to play through it. Or at some point, wants to make this available on Steam, just to address the broader gaming community. And I think there's a lot of ways that these messages are going to land through this type of interactive experience to kind of explore these deeper concepts and ideas, and also it's probably going to be a great piece for some streamers to be able to play on a stream and do a play acting. So anyway, lots of really interesting provocative and fun experiences within the context of Lesbian Simulator. So we're coming all that and more on today's episode of The Voices of VR Podcast. So this interview with Iris happened on Tuesday, November 18th, 2025, at If a Doc Lab in Amsterdam, Netherlands. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in. Hi, I'm Iris van der Milit and I'm a digital artist. I really like making VR. I studied animation films, so I'm actually from an animation background, but during my school, they bought the Oculus DK2 and they said, "We don't know how it works, but if you want to use it, you can use it." And ever since that time, I tried teaching myself to use VR as a medium and figure out VR storytelling and made a couple of projects in art school and then I graduated and I started working on my current project, Lesbian Simulator, that now six years later had its release at Ifa.club. Yeah. Nice. And maybe you can give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR. Yeah, so I actually learned VR a bit from YouTube. Actually, the first VR experience that I saw was from Jeffrey Lillimum called the Neil Pollution Furnow, which was also a very animated, virtual world of his own museum. And when I put that hat set on, I was like, "This is insane, I can, as an animator, of course, you make your own worlds, your own stories, but you also always look at them through like a screen." And all of a sudden, with that VR hat set on, I was in the world and I was like, "This is so cool. I want to learn how I can tell my stories in this virtual environment." So I started to, yeah, watch a lot more VR works at that time. There was a really cool VR studio in Bredak, called Studio Upfist, who worked a lot with also more poetic storytelling in VR. They translated poems to also an animated virtual world. And I did my internship there, which taught me a lot about, yeah, using the 360 space to communicate a story. And yeah, I just started experimenting a lot with it at school, like, "Hey, I can animate, I can make my own 3D worlds, but how can I actually carry the viewer in a world and also convey a certain emotion since it's such an immersive medium, of course." So yeah, and I just did a little trial and error, trial and error, went to a lot of exhibitions like this to, yeah, get inspired and just look very closely at what other makers are doing and try to learn from it. Yeah. Awesome. And so where did the Lesbian Simulator begin? Maybe just give a bit more context for the catalyst or the spark of inspiration for this project. Right. So, I mean, it's actually a bit of sad story because I'm a Lesbian myself. And when I came out, I was 17 and I lived in a very small village in the Netherlands. And, yeah, there were not a lot of openly gay people there. When I went to art school, I started living in a more like, I just said, "Rule, rural area." "Rule? It's hard for me." Yeah. "Rule." Yeah. And being like, Lesbian in the public space with a girlfriend and I started experiencing that not everyone agrees with my sexuality, even if it's just holding a hand in public space. So I got a lot of responses and it happened so often that it started to feel normal. And one day, I told my family about the things that I experienced, like getting groceries but also going out or even at work where people would just give me weird, a bit of like sexual harassing comments. And my family was like, "Oh, we didn't know you experienced that." Like, I thought the Netherlands was safe and you can get married here and there wasn't like no issue. And that's when I thought like, "Hey, this is interesting because the people that are close to me that also accepted my coming out are not even aware of sort of the societal issues that we have in a country that is considered safe on paper, but in reality, it's experienced very differently." So that's a bit of the conceptual start. And I was working already a lot with VR and I thought like, "Hey, this could be, it's also a bit of a cliche." But I was like, I could show people maybe what it's like to be as a lesbian and what these small forms of discrimination are in our society by putting them in a certain environment that I designed to show this specific issue that's a bit how it, yeah, it was very natural for me to pick VR because I was like, "I've been using it for quite some time now and it's so immersive and you just get a certain attention span from your viewer when using VR that I thought would fit very well with like my idea for this project." Yeah, I really enjoyed this project and I thought it took me on a really interesting journey. It was fun, light-hearted, comedic, but also playful, interactive, immersive and so maybe you could give me a sense of where you began in terms of doing the world building, the character design, you have like a whole series of different simulations that then creates an arc and a journey and so just trying to get a sense of where you begin and trying to tell a story like this. Right, I began, actually, I always sort of begin with VR sketching. I really like using Quill or Tilt Brush as my sketchbook because to me it seems very natural to sketch and play around in the medium that you want to use and of course I also have little dummy where I write little notes and little sketches but I always try to go in the drawing mode in VR as soon as I can and first I started sort of collecting for the narrative like certain elements that I wanted to talk about in the work when it comes to this discrimination so I started writing these things down so it's yeah, for me the coming out is a big thing like it's a big scary moment that you have to do so yeah the coming out is for me a big important element because it's a quite scary thing you never know how your friends, your family, whoever you come out to is going to react and it feels like it changes your life from that moment on and you can't really take it back so that was an element I wanted to have in there, I wanted to have an element that showed a specific sexual harassment that lesbians encounter a lot and also yeah being in the public space and how sort of very minor sort of things that people can say are actually very hurtful and they might not be aware of that so I started categorizing that but as I went on I was also thinking like hey I also don't want this work to be traumatizing for queer people themselves because what if I make this work and it's like hey this is what it's like to be a lesbian and then it's all like sad, miserable things and that's not fun for a queer person to see so already early on I started to realize like hey I actually also want to show the beauty of being queer and the fun parts of being queer and also like prevent it for the queer community to sort of alienate them to show like hey we're all just humans most of us fall in love we have a lot of things in common so I also wanted to put in elements that for the queer community are recognizable and for everyone that are fun so there's like a rave that you can go to and you have to flirt with girls which is difficult probably also for straight people you know not only for lesbians but also the part of exploring your sexual identity yeah there was just a lot of rooms to create this yeah sort of representation slash Easter eggs jokes for the queer community as well to make them feel seen and that I think when that balance came it's yeah I wanted to be like the end thought that you would have after this experience I wanted it to be like a happy thought and not like oh being gay is awful no it should be being gay is fun but this is also the reality so maybe we can work on this together as a community yeah yeah remember that you were in Venice at the production bridge and showing me some of the concept art and I'm just curious to hear a little bit more around like you moving from original sketches within quill or tilt brush and then what point do you start to then move to my or blender just talk a bit about your character design process right yeah I designed almost everything in quill and that took a long time and in the beginning I kind of used the characters sort of you know you want to make a quick sketch so it's like okay I just make a stick figure and give them some clothes and a little smile and I start designing the world because you want to be quick but yeah after using these characters for so long I started to sort of love them and I thought hey they look quite basic but also quite silly and I was like I want to keep it this way I like the way the sketches look and yeah I started working with a 3D modular because my 3D model skills were a little bit outdated and I was like okay there's people that can do this a lot faster than me and that leaves more time for me to design the worlds because I did all the concept art in VR which was also a lot of like pre-work for the 3D model because they never had to model from scratch but I'd say like the first one and a half year it was just me sketching in VR that I had a my first 3D modeler and I started to just give him scenes and we start to figure out like hey because yeah if you draw on quill it's like a bit messy 3D it's a lot of polygons so he just tried his best to remodel basically everything and keep it as close as the sketches that I made because I really liked yeah if you sketch in VR or even in real life like you can't ever really draw a super straight line if you don't use the straight line tool and everything started to become like a little bit wobbly and wonky as we called it also a bit like maybe sculpty and that's something I really liked it's like the handwriting but in VR instead of on a physical paper so I told my 3D model like hey whatever you do I know this probably breaks all the things you learned but everything needs to be asymmetrical and try and keep it my handwriting as much as you can and afterwards I also thought you know let's just make this a rule because it's a lesbian VR and nothing in this project should be straight that was the joke so also not the geometry yeah so there's no straight lines in that there's no straight lines everything in there is like even a little bit asymmetrical so yeah I started working with the 3D modeler eventually also an animation team and a couple of more modelers because it's a lot of worlds it's eight levels but there's also some sub levels in one level so there was a lot of modeling to do and that's just a pipeline we made like I drew everything out in quill I exported it to them gave them notes and they just remodeled the whole thing and then we put it in real engine back together but I already basically did all the level design and stage design or whatever you want to call it in quill because it's fast and easy so in a way that made it for the team a bit faster to make everything and for me it left a lot of room to really play around with how everything should look and how big it should be or small and yeah it was a lot of fun very intuitive yeah and there's there's quite a lot of like interactive components that are in this piece and I think it feels like a game and I say it's like a simulator and so but there's also like a cinematic quality of going from like scene to scene and so I'm just curious if you were like iterating on those interactions or if you were also like creating cinematics and like seeing how things were flowing or if it was more of building one thing out and then seeing how it fit together to the next stage yeah it was a bit I think the last thing I really made them as sort of separate islands the core idea actually was to make it a lot more interactive and a lot more free roaming I'd say but I quickly learned also that's a lot of extra work and when we started testing things you easily see that people can get stuck or yeah sometime even like it was quite hard to design in my opinion because you have the gamers who see everything very quickly and they move on easily by themselves but then you have the non-gamers who really need a lot of extra nudges and if they don't have them they will just stay in a scene forever sometimes so that made me well I had to rethink a little bit the approach about it and that's why I think it became a little bit more cinematic than I intended it to be just to keep this flow going because in the end I felt like well that you can live through the story is the most important part and that you can do the mini games is my second favorite part so anyway I felt a little bit sad about it because I guess I wanted to go more into that gaming department but yeah I think what I just said communicating in the story was more important and that's why some elements became a bit more cinematic yeah yeah and you start off the experience where you're able to like choose an embodiment and identity all these different choices you pick a name for yourself and also a astrological sign is assigned to you and so maybe you could go through the process of what you were trying to accomplish with giving people an embodiment and choosing their identity right yeah because I thought it's called lesbian simulator of course and I was tapping a little bit in this fjör simulator game gimmick that we see a lot of games on steam is like oh surgeon simulator or jobs simulator like I thought that was really fun but I thought well what do you need if you want to be a lesbian while you need a body and we were thinking a lot in the beginning like do you play a specific character like is it more that you step really in the eyes of someone else or of a character that's based on me for example it was like no I really want people to sort of have a little bit of autonomy as far as I can create that within this piece and with that I think yeah creating an own avatar is a big part because it's also fun I feel like I love creating avatars in games and it makes you my opinion connect a bit more to yeah the story the world because it's like this is you this is your part and now you can go with this body in this world also because it looks very cartoony yeah I wanted you to be part of that world as well so you can see your own little cartoony body and also a second important part was for me that the introduction the character creation was some sort of tutorial so it's not only creating your avatar but it's also learning a little bit how this world is going to work which is just grabbing things and touching things and speaking so I wanted to implement all interactions in the creation of this character and yeah about the horoscope parts it's a it's a typical sort of lesbian joke that we always ask like oh what is your horoscope like what's your zodiac sign and then you sort of are like oh maybe we're a good match and maybe we're not so I felt like this needs to be in here for the reference for the joke it's a part a big part of lesbian culture yeah nice thing and so I'm trying to remember the very first scene is the first scene that you choose a girlfriend or is that what's the first scene that happens after you get your embodiment you go to yeah I call it paradise because it's like a little like tropical forest it's first start with like a small introduction story that is like this sort of princess fairy tale to give you a little bit of a context of like hey yeah this is what you've been told all your life like yeah you are supposed to get a boyfriend and you're going to live your happily ever after but then you realize that you're not very interested in all these boyfriends or princes in the story to give you a bit of context and then you go into the first level where I made like three little areas that are also references to things from queer culture so which for me were very canon when I was figuring out my own sexuality which was mostly behind the PC so it was searching for a lot of representation movies so in the first scene you have to eat all these fruits and find lesbian representation but there's not a lot so you're choosing apples and sometimes it has representation other times it doesn't yeah yeah and if it is representation you get a point because you earn points for out the experience and if it's not you don't so it's yeah a little fun interaction it's you can also skip it if you want so that was a little bit of the exploring parts initially that scene was much bigger but yeah due to budget and time I could only leave three sort of mini games in there yeah and that scene you also can pick a tarot card that decides for you what your first girl crush is going to be so there's a couple of options so every time if you would play it again you could have a different girl crush and the last part is where you do the very known bus feet quiz the am I gay bus feet quiz which I heard from I mean I did it myself but a lot of people I know from the queer community just take this it's a really stupid quiz because it's like oh have you ever kissed a girl and do you like like the questions are very like obnoxious but everyone did it so I was like this has to be in here it's just yeah it's a form of representation that yeah yeah that very first scene you have like this panels that you see I don't know I don't remember if they're animated or not but they're kind of like a cartoon graphic that you are kind of panning through and then you you have these three little mini games that are that first part of like discovery of like and seeing like things that you are getting clues and seeing representation and having a resonance and getting to the point where you're discovering your identity and so what's the next scene after that as I'm trying to remember the next scene you go to a rave and this whole part still play because I actually divided the whole experience into chapters which I mean I don't really talk about it but that was sort of a design thing for me that the first couple of chapter stick place before you come out of the closet I don't know if you say that in English too but we say we come out of the closet yeah yeah that's what we say yeah and the rest happens after so yeah the first level you explore your identity and then let's be in goddess your personal guide things it's time that you start to meet some other queer people in this still sort of safe space so it's a rave with only other girls and of course she gives you the opportunity to flirt with girls and give them drinks yeah yeah you have to kind of catch a glance and then take a risk of giving them a drink and then sometimes they like you and other times they won't and then if they don't like you then you have these carabiners that are like the points and so you will lose a couple of points if they don't like you but if they do like you then you get a point yeah yeah that's true so there's a little bit of like you have to pay a bit attention indeed to their glances because they will like the more they like you the more they will actually look at you and change like they're smile if they don't like you they look a bit sad yeah yeah I found myself not always able to catch the glances and it felt a little bit random for me in terms of but I was trying to see when they did at least looked at me but it was kind of a fun recreation of going into like a like a virtual dancing with all these floating islands you walk through the doors and so there's a number of different opportunities that you can dance and it's also fun because you're kind of like just moving around and dancing and in the exhibition here you have a couple of places you have your own installation but you also have like in the VR gallery but people are up and walking around in this kind of free roaming VR and so it's very embodied in that sense and you're kind of moving around and yeah I enjoyed the great scene in dancing and taking my chances at whether or not I was going to successfully flirt or not I think a lot of people like that scene the most when I see people like they're dancing and stuff like if I ever had more time I wanted to create it a bit more difficult and need that there's more forms of interaction because now it's really simple like you give the drink to confirm and you're only hinted at glances so in another world if I had more time I would give them more things like maybe you could talk with them or dance with them like but I think for now it's fine and I think it's a lot of fun yeah nice and then at this point is that when you start to come out to the closet or yeah so after this yeah it's sort of time sort of of of course this is sort of a fast speed train through the process of being gay so like oh you figure out your identity oh you go to a rave and now it's time to come out but yeah that's the next thing that happens because yeah it's part of it and I mean for each individual this happens in a different time in their life for me it happens yeah quite early then in my teens so yeah in this scene the point that I wanted to make a bit and it's also what lesbian goddess says is that coming out is not really a one time thing so for queer people it happens almost every day if you meet someone new you always have to think of like is it safe to say it should I say that I have a boyfriend you know you always have to sort of assess the room and the situation and yeah think about what you're gonna say and so lesbian goddess makes a bit of a joke like hey we're gonna come out and yeah for lesbian this usually this happens a lot but you only have to do it three times today there's lots of different doors in this space and you have lots of different options is it predetermined that you're always gonna go to the same scenes or did you create like a more than three scenes of coming out there are six and it picks it randomly the initial idea had more than six but yeah we didn't have the budget to make them all so we left it at six because I really liked the part that it would be a little bit randomized so you could have different scenes than I do what I did think about is that yeah because a coming out can be difficult it can be not fun but it can also be really loving in some way so it really depends on who you have in front of you and what their state of mind is and what they think about queer people of course so I made sort of free sets so you have first a sort of bit of a silly coming out so it can either be in front of alien that day took up in the new Mexico I think yeah that's the first one that I got and the other scene you can get is that you have to come out in a theater stage so you have to do a room in Juliet play so you have your co-actress up in a tower and she says the first lines of the balcony scene and then you come out and she's like oh that's not your line that's really okay with it yeah so you're you're asking people to actually speak the words I am gay and it's like listening to you and being in the festival context it was an interesting experience just because I'm in the VR headset I don't know who's around and who might be walking by and over hearing me so there's a there's a bit of like safety in being in VR but also like this potential awkwardness as you come out and and people may not know what the experience is and then yeah I've heard a couple of people who've had a little bit of that experience of like people being decontextualized for what was happening in the VR experience but then afterwards sort of like having this situation but at the same time it creates this kind of tension that gives some weight to it that would be different than if I were to seeing it like the privacy of my own home it's when I'm out in public then it gives an additional like hesitation or at least you know there's other implications of what that means for people so anyway I just wanted to comment on that as an interesting dynamic and maybe you could speak a little bit of that decision to kind of have people actually speak it out yeah I mean it was exactly for the reasons you said because this was actually also the first scene I made so the first idea for this project was this scene and it really yeah of course the difficulty of this project was thinking about and designing like how can I translate the experience that I had for example as a lesbian to someone that is not queer themselves and I can never fully give that experience because it will never be the same but there are things that I can play around with and so I thought exactly like you said like hey I know a lot of people already feel a bit awkward having a VR headset on and like knowing there's a lot of people around them in an exhibition space and then I did it other experience a couple years ago where you had to speak and I also felt it myself that you're like should I like do I really have to speak so you're already sort of thinking and feeling a bit awkward that that was my experience a bit so I just remembered and I was like okay I can maybe recreate this a slight portion of this tension that the real coming out might feel like by yeah forcing you just while forcing you always have the agency to not say it of course but you won't get points so yeah I really wanted to play around with it and we made a prototype of the scene early on and tested it on a couple of people and yeah we saw it it worked yeah as I hoped it would be that people felt this sort of pressure even the people that played it that were queer themselves also still felt this sort of like oh yeah it takes me back a little bit but indeed should I say it and what will the people around me think so it's yeah it's pleased with people's brain yeah I think it manages to kind of create a simulation that is able to kind of get to the deeper truths experientially so I thought it really worked quite well so then the second set I got the older grandmother seen and she didn't take it as well no no seventy the second set you can get is either yeah I call it homophobic grandma or the homophobic parents so yeah your second coming out will always be more of a negative experience just to see like hey yeah there's also people that's yeah and especially in grandma's case it's really sad but it's actually what my grandma said and I feel like when people say this so for context grandma says like oh I accept gay people as long as they don't show it in public and it's what my grandma said and it felt a bit like okay but that actually means you don't accept this because you don't want to see it in public but my grandma didn't realize that what she said was actually really painful you know she thought she was being progressive so I thought this is such a subtle thing that we don't really talk about we always talk about the more extreme forms of discrimination as well which are also important but I felt like these yeah little conversations are also really harmful and I wanted to give them a place in the VR the parents are a bit more extreme so they will really say like hey I didn't raise you this like this and we're gonna send you to a doctor so that one is a bit more extreme but yeah there had to be room for this I think because it's a reality for a lot of people as well sadly yeah and then the third one I had some friends who were like more chill about it or they're kind of joking or it seemed like it was okay but also they were kind of joking like oh who you don't hit on me or something like that yeah this was yeah the last scene is either it's your friends so I wanted the last scene to be a bit more positive but with the friends I also wanted to make this comment that I heard a lot of friends say when I was younger of like I hope you don't have a crush on me as if any lesbian would fall in love with any girl in the world it's just a bit of a dumb comment but then I also wanted the other friends to step in and be like of course it's a bit in this extreme American Mean Girls reference because I think Mean Girls is a really fun movie so sometimes I just put references in there that just needed to be there for my own sake but I wanted it to lighten the mood as well a bit after the more heavy one and the other scene you can get there is a biblical god so he's god and he sits in a in a bathtub so he's gigantic and you're very small and it's I'm not religious myself but I grew up in a religious part at the south of the Nenerlands so I did get like religious studies when I was a kid and somehow that always stayed with me and I always thought about this like hey why because yeah a lot of people that are religious in the Nenerlands don't really agree with being queer but I thought like if god is so loving and he made people in his image why would he hate queer people then if he made them himself so god also responds in a way like first he will say like I'm gonna send you to hell and then he's like haha no just kidding why would I make like queer people and hate them like I love them and they're much more fun than straight people so it's like a really silly dialogue of countering a bit yeah this idea not to say that all people in our religious are homophobic definitely not but I thought I wanted to make a statement of like god if he's there he would love all of us yeah and then I think the next scene you start to go into like getting a girlfriend out of a vending machine and then you go on the date and you start to hold their hand and then you're sort of in public situations that then you are getting either bad looks in a restaurant or then having to be in this like enclosed space on a subway and kind of fighting off and so you're starting to get into this kind of experience of being connected romantically but then also all the other implications of being out in public and holding hands and yeah I'd look if you maybe say a few words on this more romantic face yeah so it's actually it's such a like a bit of a duality because you come out and you're like yes I did it and now I can be publicly gay and you fall in love and you just you just want to have a relationship like anyone else and then yeah you realize oh yeah well not everyone likes it if I'm gay apparently so that's why these scenes come a bit later of course because they happen if people see you in public and being openly gay so in the restaurant yeah you hold hands and people will respond to that in a bit of like an aggressive well passive aggressive way I mean they don't attack you but the restaurant grows really really big the longer you hold the hands and they will say things like oh this is a well gay bullshit is messing with our kids or like you're ruining my dinner like why are they so sexual in public and you're just holding a hand you know there's nothing sexual about that so yeah I really wanted to show that this does happen and it's ridiculous that it happens because it's really about holding hands or just existing in a public space and why our queer people not allowed to do that so yeah designing that it was more difficult of course because I wanted to highlight this but yeah like I said at the same time you're happy that you can finally be out in public and then this happens so after these scenes I didn't want to end also on these scenes you know because it would end the experience a bit sad of like oh okay as soon as you come out everyone is mad at you and you get sexually harassed in a subway that's not awesome so I wanted the last scene to be more uplifting and also show the fun aspects of being queer and also sort of the support and love of the queer community itself because that is for me what makes me actually really happy and really proud to know like I'm not the only one and together we can also make a change and that's when you go in the bright scene yeah well just to go back to the previous two scenes because I think there's a couple of points I just wanted to kind of flesh out a little bit one was that you have a mechanic in VR we're reaching out and holding the hand and then that's sort of triggering all these other negative reactions and so what was interesting is that after I did this experience and as I was walking around Amsterdam I was noticing when there was like same sucks couples that were holding hands and it gave me this perspective of like the weight of what that means whereas before I wasn't necessarily like thinking it was a big deal or big thing but it kind of put me in the shoes in a way that realized that oh actually like just this act of holding hands is a brave act that they have to potentially open themselves to being attacked and so it was interesting to go through the lesbian simulator and then have that shift my perspective as I was walking around in Amsterdam which is a very open and liberal city from the outside perceived but still there's these implications of that yeah it's actually really nice it's opened your eyes a bit like that because it's actually one of my one of my coaches on this project said it was also a queer person shit yeah like holding hands for same sex couple is a little bit of a statement even though you don't want it to be but to some people that don't agree with it it's like oh they're doing that in a public space so for me you really think about like when am I gonna hold my partner's hand and when do I let go and Amsterdam is indeed a much safer place than the places I lived before but yeah I kind of wanted to reflect that in the experience as well of having to choose also like because if you don't hold a girlfriend's hand she becomes a bit sad and she starts to give you notches of like oh I really want to hold hands and why can everyone else do it but not us so I kind of wanted to show like the stupid situation that you're in because you just want to you're on a date you want to hold this hand but if you do it there is this response but if you don't do it yeah you're a bit sad because you can't be who you want to be yeah yeah really overall in this experience I've loved how each of the interactions of each of these scenes are driving the narrative forward and so connected to the story in a way that I think really creates this embodiment and embodied experience but then is kind of amplified by how the story is then reflected back so yeah I don't know if you were like thinking around the ways that for each of these different interactions that you would have an interactive component because you have a simulator but also like the narrative component that is landing even deeper yeah it was really thinking of like what interaction could really feed this story but also yeah I mean I can't really put you in my shoes ever but how can I simulate a little bit what it might be like by using these game mechanics for example yeah the coming out but also the next scene the subway scene it's a bit more of a well I actually learned a lot from horror games for that scene particularly five nights at Freddy's which is a task juggling horror game meaning and it's not as scary as that obviously because the lesbian simulator doesn't have jump scares but I kind of want to keep you busy by having giving you like two things you have to do like close the doors of the subway and spray the demons whilst they're coming at you and saying really disgusting sexual things so just for the context they're presenting as male characters who are trying to convert these lesbians to like oh I'll be the one to convert you essentially yeah because these were responses I got a lot especially when I went out with my girlfriend it's always like yeah if you have sex with me I'll turn you straight you know like I can change your mind and it's ridiculous and we don't ask for these stupid comments and it's also something I think women in general experience like harassment but with lesbians it's sort of this extra thing of like here it's sort of their sexual dream because yeah lesbians are highly sexualized sadly and then they also feel the urge to like tell you and it's quite intimidating and I wanted to yeah make a scene about it and then also choosing an environment where I feel like it happens a lot like subways and trains are not always the nicest places for women to be so yeah I thought it was a good environment to let this thing happen yeah and as I was in that scene you have this mechanic of these kind of shadow monsters or that are kind of slowly coming at you but they're also these two buttons you have to hit and then they're coming out of the doors and so you feel like you're being threatened I never thought that I was going to like have the game end and I was going to have to like start over like it didn't have that sense but it still had this sense of pressure and anxiety that these things are coming at me I didn't want them coming at me and I had to defend myself yeah that's a bit the idea I mean it would have been fun in a way that you had to start over but I know for a festival that really doesn't work because it's also almost at the end so I thought in a way of like okay you can go game over but your girlfriend will save you before it's sort of too late also because yeah if you think about it conceptually it's also a sad statement if you would die in that scene no you you will win either way so either you defeat them or your girlfriend will defeat them and you will get points based upon how long you could fend them off basically so you can't really lose but I thought yeah it's a nicer message to end with that you can defeat these things yeah the last scene was interesting the pride scene I loved this sort of joyous and celebration and there was also a game mechanic and I was wondering afterwards of like how much am I paying attention of trying to get the points and doing this basically like shooting mechanic versus kind of like really taking it in or having because you're sort of sharing the love spreading the love but also turns it to a little bit of a shooter type of mechanic and so you're going through this parade and yeah I was wondering at the end I was like oh I wonder if I felt like I could have I found myself ended up just shooting as trying to up my score but then at the end I was like is that really what I do regret that decision of like should I've just like taken it in another way right I heard this a lot when we were testing it as well that people felt a bit like do I pay attention or do I go for the highest score I think maybe for the exhibition version it was maybe a bit too difficult as well the reason why it's a shooter game is also because originally I wanted to have it be more like a game right and I wanted to have more game elements the further you proceed and yeah because I really like interaction and I really wanted to give a very interactive story so I kind of left it in mostly for the more interactive people that game more than the most people in the exhibition space for them to also have yeah to have the satisfaction in a little bit of like it's a very interactive piece but again this was the struggle of yeah you also want to tell the story and how do I find this right balance and I think in this level yeah you have to choose a little bit I also designed that's been simulated in a way that I eventually want to put it on steam and I wanted it to be replayable and not that people will play it 10 times but maybe two or three times to figure out like how can I get all the points and how can I get all the different scenes like how can I get all the little stories that I missed the first run so it that's also a bit still in that level of like okay the first time you will never get it right because it's a lot there's a story there's a whole world that you go through but the second time you'll get better and the first time you'll be better but I also realized that in an exhibition space people only see it once so I think it's also been on my mind of like yeah should I adapt the exhibition version to make it a bit more easy so you can focus more on narrative and have the steam version be a bit more difficult there's like more gaming balancing yeah it's something I'm still thinking about yeah yeah that's a really interesting point because I think that if you look at the steam culture you know that's almost like the target audience that you would really want to have people experience it and if it's a fun game then there's sort of an interesting dynamic where they want to come back and then so yeah so I think it's the target dynamic graphic there I think really dictates that decision but I can really understand why you made that choice yeah yeah and yeah as I have to be honest like my main goal was to design it for that steam audience but of course you also want to do it to festivals and we want to bring it to museums and schools so that's why the narrative changed a bit and I also let a couple of interactions go and made it more cinematic I think it has a nice balance now but for the steam version yeah it might actually be too easy because even my brother came to play it and he's like a die-hard gamer and for him it was already quite easy to do all the targets so I was like yeah we need to think about some balancing and there was also some elements not in here yet so they will be in a later version which is collectibles because I think that's also a big steam thing and also encourages to play it again so there would be like little Pokemon-type cards things that's called celebrity crush cards that have famous lesbian people on them that would also be hidden so that could increase your score but also for a festival yeah again people are not going to play it a couple times so that's in for another round yeah Jevier Slate of lesbian crushes that are the ones that you know they're gonna be in there yeah I had a joke I already had to cut down the list because I think I had like maybe 30 people on there like for example I mean for me Lady Gaga was the biggest even though she's more of an icon for gay men for me she was my lesbian awakening but we have Chapel Roan she's mentioned already an experience and Kate Blanchett who's not queer but sort of a queer icon Billie Eilish there's a whole list of girls and we had to sort of choose like who who's gonna make it because there's only so much levels that we can put these things in right like it's not an open world game so yeah it's a tough call yeah at the end you have an opportunity to reach the end and then you you kind of take it selfie with your girlfriend and it then produces this photo that has your score that you got but also the name that you chose your astrological sign and then the sign of your girlfriend and then your girlfriend's name and then if you do it in the installation you actually get a printout of the photo I did it in the VR gallery so I didn't get a printout of it but it's a nice little artifact of the experience that people can look back on and share it and talk about it yeah I thought it would just be fun because also when we did the testing people are like oh I was sad that I had to say goodbye to my girlfriend and of course you do because you need to move on but I thought like it would be really nice if you can sort of you have something that reminds you of this experience and of your girlfriend and also with the score of course I hope people start bragging a little bit to their friends like look look at my score I did really well you know so I hope giving a ticket like that in an exhibition space would create a bit of more like a discussion about the project in a fun way yeah yeah like it's an overall I really appreciated the ways that you were using that interactivity to really augment the story and overall it felt like this real fun overall experience that also had these messages that I think really stuck with me and so it would have been some of the different reactions you've gotten so far yeah people are mostly just having a lot of fun and said they didn't expect it to be in a way that it's fun but it also teaches you about this part of reality so it's yeah learning in fun way instead of it's being like a work that would point to have your fingers like apparently some people expected that and we're surprised in a way of like oh no but I had fun and yeah it's 40 minutes but everyone comes out saying like it didn't feel like 40 minutes it felt so fast and quick and yeah then there's of course a couple of queer people that have played it who came out which really wired my heart that they were like wow I've never seen something like this before yeah there's so many references in it I felt myself like I was seen in this project so that's of course also a little bit my dream because I'm also queer and yeah I want to help in creating more queer representation in the world and I mean VR is compared to for example film and TV of course more new so there was not that much and yeah they were excited that it was also that it had this positive parts for which I was grateful because I was scared that some queer people would say like no this was too much like it was too intense but I think the balance came out pretty nicely and yeah other people even like my mom saying like wow I learned so much things about this and also my position as a straight person and a privilege that comes with that and that these people learn that they can also support the queer community and that it doesn't cost them anything so I think in a couple of ways it works as I hoped it would be and I just hope people yeah have fun experiencing it and they can take something home whatever that is yeah have you had a chance to see any of the other projects here at Duck Lab? I have seen we are dead animals so far and nothing to see here for the rest I have to still go but they were amazing I loved we are dead animals because I think it's a very unique experience because it's yeah I really like the mechanic of swimming to move around because it didn't make me motion sick at all and it's just a really crazy cool idea to have these 3D scan dead animals and you can assemble them when I read about it was like oh that sounds a bit more bit but when you go in it it was actually I was surprised it was how much fun it was and nothing to see here I really love Celine I think she's a genius creator and out on this well and yeah they just made a brilliant piece I did it at the openings so there were a lot of people also walking around that made it extra like it's a really good project and it really messed with my mind of like who's really here and who isn't yeah it was I really like seeing it yeah yeah I just ask because there's so many a variety of different really strong projects this year that I think it'll be it'll be difficult for the judges as they're going through all the different projects and they're they're so different thematically and also different ways that they're telling a story but also like the ways that the story lands but you know I think in terms of the interactive story genre of like VR and CGI driven animation the way that you're able to tell the story and how that land thematically was just a really strong so yeah but in terms of what the judges think in jury I think it's gonna be challenging for them to try to figure out how to weigh the lesbian simulator against some of these other pieces under the same sky around the Palestinian genocide that's happening there yeah there's just for me that was a story that landed a lot but you know I also really appreciated the experience that I had and must be in simulator but as a jury is going through it I think it's gonna be a difficult decision for them to try to figure it out yeah I think I think they're gonna have a tough job because I think all the creators that are here are so talented and yeah what you said the works have such a huge range and variety and new skills or new ways of storytelling visually they're also all very different and yeah themedic wise it's also like yeah for example my experience in Mirror that animals is more fun and then we have these really serious war projects and I think for the jury I don't even know how they're gonna compare all these things together yeah like the 36,000 ways was really beautiful poetic like a very short three-minute experience but also really quite powerful as well so like it was like more of a poem versus a novel or you know you kind of look at these different formats and lengths but also the power that comes with each of them so yeah anyway I just wanted to comment on that because as I think around the selection the lesbian simulator was a standout and also there's these other experiences that were moving my heart in other ways or other sort of dimensions that it's interesting just to see in the context of this field how much you can cover the variety of human experience and like I just appreciated how you're able to kind of open up these different realms of your own experience but also translate that through the medium to have unique and novel ways of having this immersive and interactive experience to explore that yeah yeah it's I think it's I want to give big compliments to everyone here because I think they all did a great job and being here is already I think the win you know that we can all show our works here and show it to also the audience and create these forms of awareness that I think we're all seeking in a way in each of these works yeah yeah awesome and finally what do you think the ultimate potential of this type of interactive and immersive storytelling might be and what am I be able to enable yeah I mean I hope I really want VR to move to a more interactive realm because I really like the interactivity of the medium and I think it helps creating this immersion more and by creating these interactive stories I feel like yeah you can touch your viewer in a certain way and give them maybe hopefully a sense of accountability for whatever the story is that you want to communicate I'm not saying that it's stronger than film but I think it just works different and you can create this certain attention span for your viewer that I think can really sink in because you experience it firsthand even though it is a simulated environment yeah I think I still really really see potential in immersive media to help change our world to a more positive place I know that sounds really cliche but I think it does yeah awesome is there anything else that's left and said that you'd like to say to the larger immersive community I just hope we keep communicating I hope we keep learning from each other I learn a lot from my peers and I think this community is so sweet and generous because everyone is sharing what they learned with each other instead of keeping it to themselves I just hope we explore a lot new more things as the technology also grows as it becomes easier as it gives us more opportunity as I said I'm an interaction nerd so I I'm curious to see what we're going to come up with in the next couple of five years when it comes to interactive storytelling but I think the the community is growing and we're doing really well every year the works just got better and better and yeah it's a fun community to be in yeah awesome well like I said I really enjoyed the lesbian simulator and yeah and I'm also really excited to see you know how this could be a type of game that would be on steam and then reach new audiences because I think it there's a there's been a challenge of a lot of immersive stories that have been relegated to just the festival circuit and small pockets of museums or cultural institutions but I do think that this is a type of experience that could live on a platform I think there's still like a very toxic environment there potential harassment I don't know if you have any like thoughts on that in terms of like yeah it just seems like it's a hostile environment yeah I'm aware of it because I'm a gamer I used to stream on twitch a lot and I had to stop because of this project I was too busy but I'm very aware of the gaming community is a very toxic world and anyway you could think of like it is too toxic we're not gonna mess around with it but I feel like this project that's the thing I want to put it out there I hope it can make a change but I'm also aware that it will probably get a lot of hate because this community is very judgmental toxic not very female friendly but I don't think that should hold me back from putting it out there because there's also I think a community that would really appreciate this work and by creating the style as it is like this very cartoony like animated worlds by using a lot of humor I hope people that like firsthand wouldn't say like oh I'm not interested in queer themetics would maybe still play the game because it looks fun and hopefully like a youtuber or a trist streamer will make a good video about it and people like oh this looks really fun I'm gonna play it and then they play it then I had my time to sort of educate them and they can then do whatever that information that they want but they at least have seen it and that's a bit of what I hope for but yeah I'm aware that there will probably also be a lot of reviews and comments on it that are not gonna be very nice yeah well it's speaking in a language of interaction and I think that it's gonna really resonate with the audiences but also I do think that actually as you mention it that this is probably a type of experience that would be very streamable and like it could be like a performance so people go through and like really play acts and role play yeah I mean that's what I hoped a bit with it that it would be easier accessible if I made it in this specific style with this storytelling I think there's room indeed for streamers to make a play through and play around with it and make their own character an idea with it so I hope it will sort of yeah have its own life on steam or whatever gaming platform through the internet community because it's also a fun community and I think through it it can reach a lot more people than only the festival circuit so I think yeah that's why I wanted to go to steam yeah yeah I think it's certainly gonna find a cult falling and it's a really compelling experience and hopefully it's gonna be able to win over some hearts and minds on this topic and we can't expect any one thing to convince everybody but I do think that it's going to help push the needle forward so yeah anyway I really enjoy the piece and thanks again for joining me here on the podcast to help break it all down yes thank you so much for having me it was a little fun that's all that we have for today and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the WSSVR podcast if you enjoyed the podcast then please do spread the word tell your friends and consider becoming a member of the patreon this is a listen support podcast so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue doing this coverage you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com/wSSVR thanks for listening