There are simple pleasures to be had in retail jobs. Being able to sort a shelf in seconds or tossing a can of beans to a co-worker down the aisle like a ninja, it’s the little things that can make a day go quicker. Now that VR gaming is starting to pick up, there’s an opportunity to escape the everyday for something fantastic, something out of this world, or something silly that commentates on the world of working a dull job. Job Simulator may seem like a silly throwaway game that one might show grandma to convince her that VR is cool, but for one player it became about optimisation and reaching greatness!
Speedrunning almost always adds interesting layers to a game, no matter what that game might be. We’ve seen it applied to Wii Sports Golf and even the adventure game Return to Zork, but this is one of the first VR speedruns to really show the potential of taking that approach to the VR world.
Recently, a ridiculous run was posted on the leaderboards and being initially drawn in due to it being a VR run, we tossed out some questions to the runner to see what makes Job Simulator a viable speedgame. Luckily, ipie4fun was willing to let us pick his brain.
For starters, we had to know why Job Simulator?
“About a year ago, I was watching someone do a Let's Play of Job Simulator on YouTube, and I saw on the suggested videos bar a speedrun of the Office Worker level in 7 minutes and 35 seconds,” said ipie4fun. “I thought that speedrunning Job SImulator could be a fun and interesting thing to do, and decided then that I wanted to run the game. However, at the time I only had a sub-par laptop and not too much money saved up. However, slowly but surely I saved up and bought parts for a better PC and a Vive, and since about November have been running the game.”
Getting into a VR as a speedrun though, has a slew of new challenges that usually don’t come up in other speedgames.
“Job Simulator, and quite frankly all VR games are different from games outside of VR because, while you do still need to really know the game, practice, and build up the muscle memory to run the game, it's a lot more physical than other types of games. Instead of sitting down and playing on a keyboard and mouse or a controller, you are standing up and constantly flailing your arms everywhere trying to do things fast. Of course it's more than just flailing your arms, for you have to be very precise on your movements to be able to get the best times.”
What typically looks like a lot of flailing around, turns into insane routing and memory for each step. There are also little tricks due to it being a physics-based environment, like weighing down the soap dispenser to wash the dishes faster or tossing an item from one hand to the other.
“VR is also unique because one of the biggest limiting factors to how fast you can complete the game is your physical ability to grab, move, throw, jump, and everything else quickly. This makes running the games much more challenging, and making big time-losing mistakes in long runs even more punishing, because not only are you losing seconds or even potentially a WR, but it makes you more tired when trying over and over to get that perfect run.”
Energy and stamina certainly come into play at high levels of VR gaming. We saw this being discussed by a couple pro VR esports players during the VR Challenger League.
There are also some applications for literal out of bounds tricks with games on the HTC Vive, due to how how the device maps the play space.
“The room that you play in also has a lot to do with how fast you can complete some parts of VR games. In a lot of VR games, there are some skips or a few time saves that can only be done with either a larger room size or by stepping "out of bound" (outside of where you set your play-space as). This means that some people can actually get slightly better times just because there room is bigger.”
Putting together a VR speedrun has a lot of preparation to consider, especially for games on the Vive. Making sure the play area is adequate is one part of the equation, as well as having the right equipment to even play, but there are a whole bunch of tools that are needed to record or stream a run properly, which comes with another set of challenges.
“When trying to record VR speedruns, there are quite a bit of hurdles to overcome. In my experience from trying to record runs of Job Simulator, the first hurdle was making sure the audio was going through the VR headset. Every time I want to do a VR run, I have to set the VR headset as the default speaker and microphone BEFORE opening OBS and the game itself.”
“Next is worrying about the timer. While it is okay and acceptable to time your runs afterwards, I like to have a timer running during recordings and runs. However, traditionally you cannot see anything on your monitor in VR without lifting up your headset, which is not something you want to have to do in a run. Because of this I have starting using a program called OVRdrop to be able to view my timer over one of my controllers whenever I turn it upside down.”
Some of these third-party solutions still need a bit of work.
“However, OVRdrop itself is kind of a pain to use, and sometimes doesn't quite work how you want it, and it usually takes quite a bit of fiddling with settings to make it ‘perfect.’ Then comes setting OBS so that everything is shown properly and audios are balanced, though this only needs to be done once.”
Even something as simple a starting the timer can be a bit of chore when doing a VR speedrun.
“In Job SImulator, you are supposed to start time when you pull the lever in the museum to start a job. While timers such as LiveSplit can be easily started with on key press, the keyboard is usually out of bounds on one side of the room, while the lever to start the levels that is considered as the point in which to start timing, is in the middle of the room, making it impossible to start the timer at the same time as pulling the lever, since you can't reach both the keyboard and the lever."
“I have found that if I put a delay on the timer, I can get into position to pull the lever to start the run when the timer starts. This is why if you watch one of my runs, I start the timer at -10 seconds, so I can put my headset on, grab my controller, adjust the headset if needed, and, by using OVRdrop to watch my timer, pull the lever at the same time the timer reaches zero and even once you have done all of those things, sometimes your computer or OBS just decides it doesn't want to corporate, and, without lagging the VR experience, records at a frame rate of about 3 frames a second on the run you get a new world record.” Apparently this has happened to ipie4fun at least once or twice.
Being skilled at Job Simulator has improved his part-time job a little bit, which could be appealing for those looking to increase their skills through something more fun.
“Really the only things that I've noticed I've become more efficient at is a few small things at my part-time fast-food job such as making drinks and most chores I do around the house. I've noticed that since I've started running Job Simulator, I have been doing these things faster (though not always as precise) than before. I have even started tossing things from hand to hand, sometimes flipping them in mid-air, and even tossing some more delicate items just to do things a little faster.”
“My hand spacial awareness has also improved. In Job Simulator, you have to reach for, pick up, move, and even toss (with relative accuracy) object while not looking that them. This requires a great deal of spacial awareness, especially since you don't have the sense of feeling/touch to aid you in know whether or not you are currently touching or holding something.”
“Along with spacial awareness, I have found that my ability to multitask has improved to an extent. While I still have trouble focusing on a task and carrying out a conversation at the same time, doing two different task with my hands has become much easier due to running Job Simulator. In Job Simulator, the are multiple instances where you have to do a task with one hand (for example, pour soda into a relatively small target) while doing a completely different task with the other (for example, switch an old potato battery for a new battery). Doing things like this require both good spacial awareness as well as good multitasking.”
Maybe one day, people could actually train for their jobs via a game like Job Simulator. Hopefully the the cheeky humor would stay in place. That would definitely be better than those boring 80s VHS tapes that are often shown on the first day of the job.
Being of the small group of players running VR games, we asked ipie4fun if he would recommend learning a VR speedrun.
“I would recommend VR speedrunning if you have a VR headset and want to get into speedrunning or are already speedrunning. While very different than traditional speedrunning, it has a special uniqueness to it that I feel makes it enjoyable. In traditional speedrunning you are sitting down in one place for hours on end trying to time button presses and master joystick or mouse movements to get the best time, and it becomes very monotonous very quickly.”
“However in VR, you are constantly moving around, always fully immersed in the game. While running VR games does come down to doing the same things over and over until you get the perfect run, because of the 3D, the immersion, the physical aspect and how it feels like you are right there inside the game, because you are right there inside the game, it's always exhilarating.”
VR gaming continues to be a wild frontier, not just for the developers, but also players like ipie4fun. To a player with more traditional taste, some of these VR games can take on a whole new form when adding in the speedrun component. Now that speedrunners are starting to pick up VR games, it will be interesting to see if design elements are added for those players. An in-game timing option would do wonders and might bring more runners to those games.
For those looking for a community on VR speedrunning, ipie4fun recommended that those interested should look into the Virtual Reality Speedrunning Discord channel.
Anyone wanting to see ipie4fun in action, should check out his Twitch channel.
