[HN Gopher] VR Design Unpacked: The secret to Beat Saber's fun
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VR Design Unpacked: The secret to Beat Saber's fun
Author : stevenalowe
Score : 63 points
Date : 2025-05-02 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.roadtovr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.roadtovr.com)
| stevenalowe wrote:
| good examples of the notion of 'instructed motion' as a separable
| design element, and how this drives players' emotions
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Ha ha, the secret to Beat Saber's fun is that they didn't pay for
| the licenses to the music people make levels for, and now that
| Meta owns them, they are a very expensive target to sue.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They paid for licenses.
|
| Certain songs will get taken down if you stream them, but
| they're still licensed.
|
| https://beatsaber.com/faq.html
|
| > Our aim is to release Content ID-free songs for future OSTs
| as well. However, we cannot guarantee that Content ID will be
| disabled for paid music packs since they are owned by our
| third-party partners. We value the work of artists and respect
| their decision to keep Content ID enabled for the music they
| create.
|
| https://edm.com/features/inside-the-ambitious-quest-to-licen...
|
| > The ambitious effort to activate Daft Punk in Beat Saber took
| over two years, according to Vickie Nauman, founder of the Los
| Angeles-based consultancy and advisory firm CrossBorderWorks.
| "The collaborative effort was between Beat Saber core team,
| Warner Music in London and Daft Punk crew," Nauman tells
| EDM.com.
|
| > Nauman has worked with the title's developer, Beat Games, to
| execute the company's licensing deals since its early days as
| an independent gaming studio in Prague, a role in which she
| remained after Facebook (now Meta) acquired the studio in 2019.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Everyone I know playing beatsaber has the modded version :p
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Beat Saber and Meta aren't responsible for that.
|
| You won't get sued for that just like singing Taylor Swift
| in the shower is permissible.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I mean they are. They allow hundreds of thousands of
| players to sideload a modded APK in using their developer
| mode. This is detectable but they tacitly allow it
| because it sells a lot of copies of the game and the
| headset.
|
| And I am thankful they do!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My web browser lets me pirate music, but Mozilla doesn't
| get sued for that.
|
| There's zero liability for Beat Saber or Meta here.
| People distributing the pirated music would be liable.
| spencerflem wrote:
| MegaUpload got in some trouble for file sharing fwiw, so
| it's not impossible
| brookst wrote:
| MegaUpload was unarguably distributing content.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I know, I'm just saying that a big part of what makes
| beat saber fun (to me) is in playing fan made songs.
| Arrowmaster wrote:
| The RIAA is the biggest detriment to any music based games
| success. Either you pay lots of money for every additional
| song or most the player base are pirates.
|
| Maybe someday one will be released with Spotify, YT Music,
| and Amazon Music integrations. Advertising that you just
| need to connect your accounts and can use anything. But I'm
| sure there are a lot of people working to make sure that
| never happens.
| magusor wrote:
| I think op meant the custom songs, there are thousands of
| them, amoung which a lot are of very high quality gameplay
| wise. I've been playing beat saber since when it came out (so
| about 7 years I'd say), and while I do play an "official"
| song here and there, most of my playtime is on customs. While
| this custom content does play in their favor, they do not
| however make it trivial to access it (you have to mod your
| game, which is a bit involved on a quest headset), unlike
| some other games, so I guess a lot of buyers don't actually
| buy the game for the custom content
| mintplant wrote:
| > So if _Beat Saber_ scoring isn't about timing, then how does it
| work? The scoring system is actually based on motion. In fact,
| it's actually designed to _make you move in specific ways_ if you
| want the highest score.
|
| > The key scoring factors are how broad your swing is and how
| even your cut is through the center of the block. So _Beat Saber_
| throws these cubes at you and challenges you to swing broadly and
| precisely.
|
| _Oh._ Coming from a rhythm game background, I couldn 't figure
| out why I kept failing charts when I tried Beat Saber on my
| friend's VIVE. Now I finally understand what was happening. The
| experience was frustrating and disheartening. Maybe it wouldn't
| have been if I'd gone through the tutorial instead of picking up
| from my friend's game save?
| corytheboyd wrote:
| It's been so long I don't remember if they explain the scoring
| system fully in a tutorial... but it becomes very intuitive if
| you _flow_ the direction the blocks want you to go in, with
| liberal follow through. Also, this makes way more sense at
| higher difficulties, because the lower ones are so slow that
| flow and follow through just isn't intuitive.
|
| I'm not at all interested in high score min/max, but I do
| confidently play most "dancey" expert+ (as in, not the
| ridiculous Camellia stuff), and this is how I think about the
| game.
| jerf wrote:
| "Maybe it wouldn't have been if I'd gone through the tutorial
| instead of picking up from my friend's game save?"
|
| As far as I know this is not explained anywhere in the game
| itself. Coming from DDR I finally twigged that something was up
| when I did a full combo and realized I was still light years
| from the #1 score, and realized there must be more to it than
| that. Obvious in hindsight, but easy to miss. And I would not
| have guessed how much it wants your swing to be rather large;
| scoring [1] is 70 points for a 100 degree approach, 30 points
| for a 60 degree follow through, and 15 points based on accuracy
| in hitting the center. Nice in the sense that it creates a lot
| of headroom for high scores, but most people should not obsess
| over score too much. The swing sizes it "wants" get absurd
| pretty quickly as the boxes start coming faster.
|
| [1]: https://bsmg.wiki/ranking-guide.html#scoring
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| It is literally explained in the first five minutes of the
| turorial
|
| Or you can intuit from the score displayed after you cut each
| block
| Cieric wrote:
| To be fair the tutorial wasn't always there. And when it
| was added I had no reason to go through it. Not the parent
| though.
| jerf wrote:
| This is the tutorial I got: https://youtu.be/EJIMULOXbYI
|
| Maybe you have a different one on a different platform but
| there is no score discussion there.
|
| Intuiting things at 3 blocks a second is a challenge.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Hah I also skipped the tutorial and was lost for a while the
| first time I played.
| koolala wrote:
| Its like playing Wii Tennis without swinging your arms.
| artemonster wrote:
| In my opinion "Until you Fall" is the second best VR game after
| HL:Alyx.
| Animats wrote:
| The secret to Beat Saber is that the player's physical and
| virtual world are locked together at all times. You're standing
| on a small platform and can't go anywhere. Thus, it doesn't cause
| nausea. Or disorientation. Or falls. Even when the player is in
| very active motion.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV1sw4lfwFw
| HPsquared wrote:
| Another type of game with this characteristic is Table tennis
| simulators. Although the reduced field of view is a limitation,
| it just feels like wearing a strange helmet. Inner ear still
| matches the visual picture.
| piyh wrote:
| I've seen plenty of people try to lean on the table and fall
| over
| echelon wrote:
| I wonder if a game where you ride inside of a mecha with free
| roaming capabilities would feel more natural.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| That's the basis for a very common VR game(s) you see in VR
| arcades and such (or conventions).
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/334540/Vox_Machinae/ or
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1192900/IRON_REBELLION/
|
| Having played them, they were slightly disorienting at first
| but nowhere near as actual movement-based VR games.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Not really.
|
| Any game where your game-world movements don't match your
| real-world movements is what causes motion sickness.
|
| It's as simple as that. If you're sitting in a mech, once the
| mech moves, you're likely to get sick, because you're moving
| in the game world, but not the real world.
|
| There are ways to kind of fool your brain to make it work,
| but it's not 100%. For example, in Gorn, one of the movement
| options is to move an arm forward, then pull it back while
| holding the trigger, kind of like you're pulling the world.
| But if you alternate arms as you do it, your arms kind of
| simulate the swinging motion of walking, and that can be
| enough to drastically reduce or even eliminate the sickness.
| 9dev wrote:
| Why wouldn't the same thing apply when driving a car in RL,
| however?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| In real life, you can feel the acceleration of the car.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Because in real life you do feel the effects of bends in
| the road, acceleration, breaking, and the terrain under
| your wheels.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You feel the acceleration and braking and turning when
| you're in a real car.
| Dr4kn wrote:
| It does. When your acceleration changes you feel it and
| if you don't you might get sick. If your acceleration is
| static there are no additional forces on you
| LorenDB wrote:
| There are also efforts to create patches that provide
| neural stimuli to fool your brain into thinking you've
| moved. Reportedly Valve has looked into those in the past.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I desperately want more games like Unseen Diplomacy, where you
| walk through an infinite hallway. In real life, you're just
| walking in circles, but it doesn't feel that way in VR!
|
| I'm immune to VR motion sickness, but games without fake
| movement just feel so much more immersive!
| this_and_that wrote:
| The game "Tea for God"
| (https://www.google.com/search?q=tea+for+god&oq=tea+for+god)
| also has this strange behavior where the world curves around
| in a non-Euclidean / M.C. Escher-style fashion so that you
| feel like you're in a labyrinth, but you're actually in a
| ~8ft square in your living room.
|
| "Tea for God" and "Unseen Diplomacy" are the only games I'm
| aware of that operate in this fashion, with "realistic"
| walking movement that doubles back on itself.
| CarVac wrote:
| That what makes it _not bad_ , not what makes it good.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Huh yeah I guess I never thought of it as not a rhythm game. At
| higher difficulty it's really more of a DANCING game, if you
| think about what you're doing with your body. I think the
| observation about the scoring system backs this up too, because
| it's based on direction and speed of motion, not timing. Of
| course you need to have some timing mastery to hit the blocks,
| but the scoring is not based on it.
| divan wrote:
| Never cared about scoring in Beat Saber. To me the game stood out
| for two reasons:
|
| 1) multisensory experience - when you chop the block it's a
| music+visual+kinestetic experience (beat/flash/haptic). That
| alone was wildly satisfying and worth playing game for 2h hours.
|
| 2) simplicity of rules
|
| The first thing later was replicated in may apps/games (one I
| enjoyed a lot is FitXR). But Beat Saber nailed it so good and
| early, that it's still unbeatable :)
| jonplackett wrote:
| I just wouldn't have cared that much about getting a VR headset
| without beatsaber.
|
| And when I got bored of beatsaber, I was bored of VR.
| bitwize wrote:
| You should try Rez Infinite. Along with Beat Saber I'd say it's
| a "killer app" for VR gear.
| SkyeCA wrote:
| I got bored of Beat Saber and stopped using VR for a
| while...then I tried VRchat and developed what some would call
| an addition.
| TechPlasma wrote:
| _The Path_ will reveal itself to you as you play. There is
| usually only one and it is correct.
|
| Memorizing levels in Beatsaber isn't required to do VERY well. I
| very rarely ever play a level more than once in a session. And
| actually tend to struggle with highly repetitive "memory intense"
| sections of songs where it DOES become a rhythm game.
|
| But if you follow the blocks they will lead you to where the next
| block will be.
| caseyross wrote:
| So, building on this, we can view Beat Saber not as a music game,
| but as a *dance* game that figured out a reliable, precise way to
| track player movements.
|
| It's interesting to note that similar movement-quantizing systems
| are at the core of numerous other hit games, most notably in
| _Dance Dance Revolution_ but also to some extent _Rock Band_ and
| _Taiko no Tatsujin_.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I don't really agree with the thesis that it's about motion. I
| found myself moving less and less as I got better at beat saber.
| I didn't care at all about the scoring, and if I did, it was
| about hit percentages and combos, not slicing accuracy.
|
| It's a good game with nice UX. It is most definitely a rhythm
| game. But you could get 99% of its value prop on an arcade
| machine setup sort of thing. It doesn't need to be strapped to
| your head. It's barely VR. The fact that it's still pointed to as
| the best VR experience is proof that VR gaming is going nowhere.
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| Beat Saber's reveal trailer is still one of the best I've ever
| seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIzRbI1JUe4
|
| A tight 30 seconds of uncut gameplay that intuitively unveils the
| game mechanics as the simple track, just when it seems overly
| easy, crescendoes into the beat drop and trickier motions. The
| finishing touch is the missed note right before the hard cut to
| title.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Beat Saber is absolutely a rhythm game. It doesn't have the
| typical scoring system that is based on having an accurate
| timing, but it is far from the only one.
|
| Guitar Hero, one of the best known rhythm game doesn't score
| based on timing accuracy. You hit a note or you don't, that's
| all, ut you still have to hit that note with a certain timing.
| Same thing for Beat Saber, you hit or you don't hit the note. If
| you want a high score, which is completely optional, as may just
| be interested in pass harder and harder songs, then there are
| other mechanisms at play. Guitar Hero has star power, Beat Saber
| has motion. That it is not pure timing doesn't make them less of
| rhythm games.
|
| The article says that instead of being a rhythm game, Beat Saber
| is a "motion game" because it rewards precise and intentional
| motion. But it is the case for all rhythm games. For games about
| pushing buttons, the motion is rather basic, but take DDR for
| instance, even if it rewards timing, the key is how you move on
| the dance pad. Even if you hit the right arrows, bad movement
| will mess up your timing and drain your stamina. Even some pure
| button pushing game like, say, Jubeat is all about making the
| right movements.
|
| The reason Beat Saber used motion for scoring instead of timing
| is, I think, that the smooth motion of the VR controllers didn't
| lend itself well to it. I mean, how to even judge timing? So
| instead, it judged motion, but it is not just a "motion game"
| like, say, Just Dance (which is also considered a rhythm game
| btw).
|
| As for why is it so fun? There is no single thing. It took
| everything that worked, combined them, executed them well, and
| boom, a hit.
|
| - Rhythm games are fun, you already have motion controls, motion
| controls + rhythm is dance, dancing is fun.
|
| - Sabers just work in VR, there are plenty of VR games that
| feature some kind of sword.
|
| - It is an active game, so it attracted those who want to
| exercise.
|
| - It has an active modding community, and I thing the devs are
| smart about it. They tolerate it, without supporting it
| officially, so modders have a lot of freedom. Most of it is about
| the sharing of songs without having the right to do so after all.
|
| - It is intuitive with a good learning curve. Most people just
| need a couple of songs to get comfortable on easy/medium
| difficulty, but the skill ceiling is high. For example, there is
| no special symbol to learn, just colors and directions, and on
| easier levels, they follow naturally (ex: blocks meant to be cut
| by the left saber are on the left).
|
| - It is a VR game with no locomotion, it limits the risk of
| motion sickness.
|
| Taken individually, none of these are special, but that's the
| combination that's great.
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