Inclusive Play: Designing VR Worlds Where Everyone Belongs
At Owlchemy Labs, we don’t believe in “edge cases”—we believe in people. Designing VR experiences where everyone can see themselves, interact comfortably, and just have a dang good time is not a bonus feature. It’s our baseline.
That’s why Dimensional Double Shift wasn’t just built to be wildly weird and delightfully chaotic—it was built with inclusion hardcoded into the core. From avatars that reflect real-world variety to systems that consider neurodiverse needs, our devs ask a simple question before every major decision: Who else does this need to work for?
Building Worlds That Look Like Us All
Too many virtual spaces still assume a narrow norm—often defaulting to one body type, one skin tone, one voice. We said no thanks to that.
In Dimensional Double Shift, our avatar system supports a spectrum of skin tones, hairstyles, mobility aids, and other unique ways of showing off who you truly are at heart—not because it’s trendy, but because identity shouldn’t be a menu with two items. That, and we’re always looking for ways to further improve that experience.
“We gave the Avatar a huge glow-up from its initial inception in Vacation Simulator - in an experience that's as social focused as DDS, it was hugely important to us to fully flesh out our avatar experience and offerings,” shares Carrie, Owlchemy Labs’ Art Director. She continues adding, “Gradients Everywhere! Adding the ability for a player to add gradients to hair in DDS allows folks to add nuance to natural hair, reflect their IRL hair dye escapades, and allow folks with greying hair to accurately reflect themselves. We also added a ton of new colors and gradients to the player HMD, considering how the HMD is the main focal point on our Avatars, allowing for players to have much more freedom to express themselves (whether it be true to life, something that speaks to their inner selves, and everything in-between)!”
Colored hair just makes things more fun, you know? But hair glow ups aren’t the only thing players can enjoy. Carrie also shares a little more about VR hands. You know VR hands. “Hands also got a huge glow up from the chunky cartoon gloves from Job Sim - with hands being key for hand-interaction, we made sure these look great and can mirror the nuances of your IRL human meat hands with nail, ring, and glove customization.”
Owlchemy also worked with Google and other consultants to make sure we represented various cultural identities, skin tones and patterning, and disabilities accurately within our Avatar customization, accounting for the full spectrum of the human experience for our players.
As always, we keep an ear out for player feedback on how well the avatar customization works for them, what they would like to see, and plan to add further options to the mix as we develop DDS more.”
VR is an interesting gaming platform because there is that secondary reality of playing with your whole being. It’s cool to be able to share a part of our authentic selves in things like character creator, something Senior Lead Art Manager Jordon B. shares a little more insight about:
“Oftentimes visual aspects such as depigmentation and hyper pigmentation, birthmarks, and pattern hair loss are given very limited options of representation for players (if they're included at all): it feels common to open a character creator in a game and be presented with singular options intended to account for broad categories that ultimately feel impersonal.
A unified goal in mind, it was a chance to explore deeper levels of personal representation. Jordon continues, “Our art team's goal was to support a greater capacity for personal representation than we were used to seeing, and to give players an amount of options that better reflects the nuance and variety experienced amongst individuals who consider those aspects part of their visual identity. For example, if a player has vitiligo and wants their DDS avatar to represent that aspect of their identity we want them to have the same breadth of variety in that space that we offer to players expressing themselves in other categories such as hairstyle: players can choose from multiple pigmentation patterns and locations, and select precise coloration so that the end result feels accurate and unique to them.”
Four Avatars just enjoying the good company and toasty fired up marshmellows!
Why Representation in VR Actually Does Change the World
Spatial computing has the potential to rewrite how we connect—but only if the people building these tools do so intentionally. Representation isn’t just about who can play—it’s about who feels seen in the world once they do.
When a player recognizes themselves in a mirror—prosthetic limb, vitiligo, curly hair, low-vision options and all—it isn’t cosmetic. It’s immersive empathy.
“Focusing on representation drives innovation in games; it pushes creators to better consider and construct more impactful stories, and it affords better self-expression/self-identity for all players,” adds Product Director Matt H. He continues, saying, “All of this together drives an in-game culture, at baseline, of acceptance and belonging!” A sense of belonging for our players? Never a bad thing!
We’ve also heard from players about the impact these choices made have on our community, providing a space where they can freely express themselves when taking on dimensional shifts with fellow ‘co-workers’. “From very early on in Owlchemy's history we wanted to make sure that VR was inclusive from the onset,” says CEOwl Andrew E. when talking about the level of customization available across all Owlchemy Labs games. “We strove to make sure our avatars could represent everyone in all the diverse ways that make them individuals.”
“Our ideal avatars would not require anyone compromise on making their hair curls and cut look just right. Every skin tone should look gorgeous in headset.”
Looking and feeling like the best you is important to us, and that’s a goal we continue to strive for. “We were able to accomplish many of these goals and are pushing even further,” Andrew adds. Even the simplest of inclusions seemed to generate the joy we were looking for, customizations like gettin’ those nails done. “In DDS we added nails to our customization. I was skeptical that people would care,” Andrew admits, “and I'm happy to see I couldn't be more wrong!”
Accessibility Features That Go Beyond Compliance
Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. Owlchemy’s approach to accessibility in DDS goes deeper than checklists. Think:
High-contrast mode that doesn’t sacrifice style
Locomotion systems that let players sit, stand, teleport, or wiggle weirdly
Optional cognitive load reduction settings (because overstimulation ≠ fun)
Owlchemy’s head of accessibility, Jazmin C., adds, “This is why playtesting with disabled gamers is a priority for us. We want to hear from different perspectives. No single person can represent the entire experience of a disability. Each person navigates their life uniquely, and many people have multiple disabilities. We want to hear everyone's thoughts and feedback because the perspectives will be incredibly diverse!”
We're also invested in making VR comfortable—both physically and emotionally. From subtitled dialogue to spatialized sound that respects hearing differences, we build for humans, not hardware. Regarding that level of comfort, Jazmin adds, “A good point to this is the ability to change volume levels for different audio types in the game.”
“For example, a player with ADHD may prefer having music and environmental audio low so that spoken audio can be heard clearly, and those are adjustable in the menu. There are also players who don't need to adjust those settings at all.”
“There are also autistic players who experience overstimulation with all of the audio playing, and without volume sliders, they would not play. This occurred during early playtesting before we had sliders in the menu. Not everyone who is autistic has those same feelings, where they wouldn't play if they couldn't customize. There are different levels of comfort and for some, they are necessities.”
The more options, the better the game experience is.”
Designing Inclusive UX for Spatial Computing
In 2D interfaces, we talk a lot about accessibility overlays and ARIA tags. In VR, we need a new language—and fast.
Our internal framework for inclusive UX in VR includes:
Predictable Interactions: Clear feedback loops and redundant cues
Custom Control Mapping: Because hands don’t work the same way for everyone
Intentional Environment Design: Layouts that welcome neurodivergent minds, not confuse them
We’re also working to normalize rest spaces, consent-based interactions, and customizable comfort zones. Because even in alternate dimensions, boundaries matter.
If you’re interested in learning more about spatial awareness in VR and in Owlchemy games, stay tuned for a future blog post exploring this area development and the unique challenges that are faced with a gaming arena that involves spaces of all sizes.
Survivin’ the Hexas heat is no joke, but it is better with friends.
Hardware Conversations That Need to Happen
We can’t do it alone—and we’re not trying to. Owlchemy continues to advocate for hardware changes with platform partners to help make inclusive development easier upstream. Think device-level support for:
Eye tracking that works for users with atypical gaze patterns
Expanded controller options for non-traditional grip styles
Built-in captioning support across all apps
“We hear about these challenges frequently in playtests,” says Jazmin. “Our participants tell us about their friends or family members that they don't recommend XR to because the hardware isn't accommodating of their needs. We are doing our best to make our games as accessible as possible, but there's only so much we can do when the hardware limits us on innovating further.”
The Future We’re Designing Toward
VR, as a medium, aspires to create a space that encourages and allows us all to leave our biases to the real world. Creating experiences designed for inclusive play isn't about perfection -- but it also requires intent.
At Owlchemy, that intent manifests in our persistence, humility and service to our community, and listening as often as possible. This roots us in the humanity behind the decisions we make with our games, and is informed by our passion for the medium and reverence for our players.
We love VR because we believe it's the cultural frontier of our time, and one we're pioneering together as players and developers. As VR adoption continues to grow, so does the breadth and diversity of its players. With growth comes opportunity, but also responsibilities -- mindfulness with how we carefully grow our games, balance in supporting and empowering our Owls to create platform-defining stuff, and attentiveness at all times to the evolving needs of our players.
“Mindfulness is the engine of intent towards forging the frontiers of VR today into ones where all players can feel welcome, included, and accommodated,” Product Director Matthew H. proudly shares. “As we continue to evolve DDS (and more!) with you tomorrow, next month, and well into the future, we do so with unwavering commitment to placing our players front and center at every step. We are excited, and honored, to be able to take this journey with you!”
““As part of our mission of VR for Everyone we will continue to push accessibility and representation base functionality of our games!” ”
Owlchemy isn’t done—we’re just getting started. And if you’re a player, designer, educator, policymaker, or fellow space-time custodian: we hope you’ll join us.