Fireside Chat | State of Matterless #14
Jason continues to refine the Mood System, and we are busy onbarding new team members. Drop into our Discord to talk to our growing group of adventurers!
Mood Meters
Mood meters can be improved!
A couple of goals we want to achieve with mood meters:
Filling up the meter should always be a good thing. We toyed with the idea that some animals like to have a low meter based on personality, but it's way more clear if your stated goal as a player is always to fill the meters. Then at a glance, you have a clear understanding of how you are doing. The meters don’t drop all the way to 0% when you are absent from the game. Why?
The first reason is that companions have no agency of their own. Pets have certain capacities to take care of themselves, at least partially.
The second reason is that it really sucks to open the app after an absence and see that everything is on fire! Real-life happens, and we don’t want to be so punishing if you are unable to open the app for a few days. The meters should help to convey personality.
Each meter has a Minimum value and a maximum value. If your meter goes from -25 to 75, then by default (zero) it would be 25% full. If your meter goes from -10 to 90, then your default mood would be 10%. When determining overall mood, it’s the percentages that are what’s important.
A meter with a high maximum value means that it takes more work to get your companion's mood to full. A meter with a high minimum value means that your companion will be in a worse mood if you are away. Each mood can be of different importance to different companions.
This represents the meter's proportion of the overall mood. By giving each meter these three variables, we can see how personality traits might come into play: LOVE
— Affectionate: Increases Maximum meter. If high, your animals crave affection so it takes a lot more petting to reach full mood.
— Needy: Increases Minimum meter. If high means your animal gets more upset when it hasn’t been pet.
— High Maintenance: Increases meter weight. If high, Love is important to your companion’s mood, for good or bad.
— Jason, product owner
New Arrivals
This week we are saying hello to some new team members: Kevin, the art director, Xennia, our new HR manager, Patrick, the Marketing Lead, and Kerwin, our new full time community manager. Here is hy decided to join us:
Kevin, Art Direction
I decided to join Matterless for two main reasons. It was essential to join a team with a specific demand for high-quality, cutting-edge processes and creativity. This mentality is to go beyond the limits, to think outside the box. I especially loved the Solarpunk aspect of the lore, because I love our planet, and have always dreamed of doing more.
When Matterless presented me with their vision on what we could do for our world, I immediately resonated with that. I spoke to Damir and Charlie who are so passionate about what they are doing. They inspired me so profoundly that I refused all the offers to focus only on Matterless. I am so happy to participate in this adventure that can change the vision of the world!
Xennia, HR
Matterless Studios are doing groundbreaking work. I saw how they plan to use shared AR, and 3D hand reconstruction to interact with objects in the material world. It feels like magic. More than that, as an animal lover and an HR professional who mostly deals with people, I have noticed the care the team has for animals, and each other. I think Matterless will lead the AR industry in a more humane direction, and I've found the right home for me.
Patrick, Marketing Lead
For the last couple of years, I've managed global influencer and digital media campaigns for Chinese clients like Xiaomi, Skyworth, and Oppo at Asia’s largest PR and digital marketing firm. Living in Asia for almost a decade, I've seen first hand how advanced technology has been changing our lives. After seven years in China, I believe AR and XR are going to create a tectonic shift in the way we interact with matterless objects. I love anything tabletop, and I'm especially excited to see how shared AR will improve tabletop gameplay.
Kerwin
I’m a lifelong gamer and after almost a decade of working in the mobile games industry in Southeast Asia it was a change of pace to see what Matterless is doing with Augmented Reality. It's a rare opportunity to be a part of something technologically revolutionary! The weaving together of narrative, AR worldbuilding, an incredibly open-minded team driving it all, and a community of like-minded enthusiasts is something I’m delighted to be a part of.
Professionally, my skills reside in content production and social media management, with an emphasis on engaging communities with content that involves them in our shared journey. Outside of work, I’m a self-taught musician and write, produce, record, mix and master my own music.
Looking forward to talking to you on our socials!
Fireside Chat
Matterless is growing at a fast pace, and for that reason we had our first remote Fireside Chat, or what we internally call the Soul Hour. It was organized to address our core values, tell the story of how Matterless came to be, and make sure everyone feels included and knows how to move forward. We outlined exactly what it means to be a startup, how to work well as a remote group, and how to remind ourselves of our mission.
Firstly, we are an intersubjectivity company. Intersubjectivity is a core human need, the need for your perception of reality to be validated by other people. We want so badly to have our perceptions being shared with other people — if our eyes and ears don’t perceive the same thing, there is no sensory congruence: we become uncomfortable, and sense being isolated. Our thesis is that reality is that which is intersubjective: it feels bad to see or hear something other people don’t see. As our design principle, we want to create a new type of human behavior, employing AR in a never before seen way.
For some of us, this requires a change of perspective from being an indie developer, or a seasoned big game studio employee. For others, it is the fact you can always fight for ideas you believe in. We see it as not building a game: we're building a state of consciousness. We NEED to build something that is inherently communal. We want to be an oxytocin company, not a dopamine company. If we set out to do this, we need to shoot high.
That's all for this week, stay tuned for the release 0.4 build very soon!
—Damir, CCO
