Chapter 352: Motion Capture Studio
There were so many plot holes in this story that Chen Mo didn’t even know where to start complaining. In short, about halfway through the plot, he had already roughly guessed the game’s predictable nature and deduced the ending.
Based on the usual formula, this horror game’s routine was just like a domestic horror movie, summed up in one sentence: “The mentally ill have wild imaginations, and the simple-minded find joy in foolishness.”
Chen Mo couldn’t help but feel a wave of disappointment. How could a horror game of this caliber bring true enjoyment to players? How could it give their spirits a proper baptism?
For players who didn’t like horror games, they simply wouldn’t play it. But for those who did, *Mansion of Terror* was practically an insult to their intelligence.
It was time to let horror game players experience what a real horror game was all about!
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Regarding VR games, Chen Mo had already gained some experience from making *Minecraft*. The usual process was to first create a PC version, then improve the game’s quality and resource volume before porting it to the VR platform.
However, making a horror game like *Outlast* was completely different from a block-building game like *Minecraft* in terms of resource requirements. Chen Mo now faced two serious issues.
First, how to ensure players’ physical and mental health through in-game settings, preventing them from being scared into illness while playing.
Second, how to better portray the characters’ facial expressions and movements in the game, making it more realistic.
The immersion in the original *Outlast* was incredibly well done. Many players on PC didn’t dare play it alone, often screaming in terror and needing a long break after each level. If ported to VR, this immersion would only multiply, making the experience even more thrilling but also far more frightening.
Without proper safety measures, players who were originally healthy might end up scared sick.
Fortunately, some foreign horror games already had corresponding settings. For example, using the VR gaming pod to monitor players’ vital signs and health status in real time, automatically disconnecting when fear levels exceeded a certain threshold, or initially allowing only sober-mode experiences, with full immersive mode and higher difficulties unlocked only after completing the game once.
These settings weren’t particularly technically challenging, just a bit tedious to implement.
As for character expressions and movements, Chen Mo’s current skill level in this area was already quite high, thanks to consuming so many action skill books. Ordinary character movements, like climbing, jumping, and attacking, could be rendered very realistically.
However, perfecting facial expressions through manual adjustments was extremely difficult. Even if possible, it was a thankless task. When characters spoke, their expressions, lip movements, and dialogue had to match perfectly. Doing all expressions by hand would be inefficient and exhausting for Chen Mo.
Most lazy domestic game companies wouldn’t bother with facial expressions or lip sync at all, or they’d just create a generic “talking” animation and call it done.
But in VR games, facial expressions and lip sync were essential. Without them, close-up observations would feel incredibly fake.
When major studios produced first-person perspective blockbusters, the common approach was motion capture. This was also the method many Western AAA studios used in Chen Mo’s previous life.
Motion capture involved hiring real actors to perform the characters’ lines and actions. Trackers were placed on key points of the actors’ bodies and faces, precisely recording their movements and converting them into motion data for the game’s character models.
This technology first appeared in films like *Avatar*, *Pirates of the Caribbean*, and *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* in Chen Mo’s previous life, and later quickly spread to the gaming industry.
In this parallel world, this technology was already widely used in gaming. Some domestic giants, like Imperial Dynasty Interactive and Zen Interactive, already had their own motion capture studios.
Chen Mo also planned to set up his own motion capture studio, because *Outlast* wouldn’t be the only game he’d use this technology for. He’d be making more first-person perspective games in different genres, and this studio would have plenty of uses.
Moreover, making *Outlast* had one advantage: it required few actors.
Since it was a horror game, aside from tumor-covered patients, there were only fully armed soldiers. Most characters didn’t show their faces, didn’t speak, and had little expression. They just screamed and charged at the protagonist in bizarre, creepy poses.
The only characters with expressions were the priest, the scissorman, and a few others. Their facial expressions were extremely twisted, so actors didn’t need to perform perfectly. As long as it was terrifying enough, it worked. If needed, manual adjustments could be made later without affecting the game’s quality.
If he wanted to make a game like *GTA 5*, just finding actors alone would exhaust Chen Mo to death.
Regarding the motion capture studio, Chen Mo briefly mentioned it to Zhou Hanyu, asking him to investigate and also coordinate with Guo Feng from Radiant Aurora Studio to see if there were any reliable foreign actors available domestically.
In fact, there was already a pool of foreign actors in China. Finding them would take some effort, but it was doable.
Occasionally, domestic companies made games set in foreign settings, so these actors had some market demand. Their schedules were often full, doing cameos in films and TV shows, dubbing for overseas versions of domestic games, and earning decent money.
Fortunately, *Outlast* didn’t require much dubbing. One or two fluent English-speaking male actors could handle most of it. Of course, some special sounds would need post-processing.
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The motion capture studio required a fair amount of space, but it didn’t need to be near the experience store. So Chen Mo rented an extra floor in the same office building as Radiant Aurora Studio to serve as the motion capture studio, making it easier to produce game CG as well.
Zhou Hanyu posted some job listings online and hired a few people with relevant experience. The studio was initially set up.
A full set of motion capture equipment was quite expensive, around 10 million yuan, including a complete system and professional motion capture cameras. Chen Mo bought it without hesitation, knowing he’d need it sooner or later.
Once everything was arranged, it was about time to announce the next game to the project team members.