oasis
|
switching the gamer roles
close
tools & methods
Unity
Gravity Sketch
Twitch
Oculus
collaboration with
ArtCenter Immersion Lab
the team
Sina Grebrodt
Amanda Wallgren
background
This project grew out of four workshop sessions exploring VR, Unity, and photogrammetry. My teammate Sina and I became interested in the tension between solitude and social interaction in virtual spaces, and wanted to see what would happen if we handed control of a VR experience to people who weren't wearing the headset at all.
outcome
Oasis flips the usual gamer roles: the person in the headset becomes a passive observer, while people watching and participating via Twitch become the active players through steering game objects across trigger zones using the chat. The more the Twitch community participates, the more the world grows; without their input, it fades away.
my role
I co-created the concept with my project partner Sina, sharing coding responsibilities and alternating between scene-building and testing in Unity.

02/03

Twitch plays Oasis

Switching the roles of the classic gamer vs. the participant

Twitch viewers steer floating game objects across trigger zones by creatively "misusing" the platform's comment field, typing emotes to shape the scene together in real time. The more they engage, the more the fantastical desert grows; without their input, it fades. The result flips who has agency: the crowd outside the VR headset directs the experience, while the person wearing it can only watch.

VR participant's view

Twitch participants view

The project misuses Twitch’s commenting feature to interact with the ecosystem and VR-inhabitant.

Viewers steer floating game objects across trigger zones.

Moving outside of the playing area
causes a drought...

When plants grow tall enough birds appear...

After spending a long time in the scene the area floods...

03/03

exploration

Developing key-interactions

We started with one question: how could VR, typically a solitary medium,  become something social? It began with a simple interaction in Unity: cubes that grew and shrank as objects passed through trigger zones. Once that worked, we connected it to Twitch, assigning each cube directional commands so viewers could control them from the chat.

Cubes growing

Cubes growing and shrinking

Connecting Twitch chat control

Designing a fantastical desert

Seeing the cubes grow and shrink, we envisioned an ecosystem of fantastical-looking plants growing in an otherwise unpopulated desert. This became the inspiration for the aesthetics of the project. We modeled the final assets in Gravity Sketch and brought them into Unity, playing around with color and light, until we found the right visual. We also swapped the directional controls for Twitch's own emotes, to make the interaction feel native to the platform.

We envisioned an ecosystem of plants growing in an otherwise unpopulated desert.

Testing the concept with others

Once the project was up and running, we invited people to experience the scene, testing how intuitive the Twitch controls felt and how the experience read inside the headset.
Testing showed us how much timing and feedback matter with Twitch commands, given the slight delay and confirmed that the VR participant naturally fell into the passive, observational role we'd been aiming for.

Retrospective & Learnings

Working with VR and writing code was completely new for both me and my project partner, as was designing for full-scale, 1:1 experiences. This shift required a new mindset and workflow, and much of the process was trial and error. We developed a way of working where one of us stayed in VR while the other implemented changes in Unity, allowing us to give real-time feedback without constantly switching in and out of the headset. I quickly realized how valuable this collaborative setup was, doing this alone would’ve taken much longer.

If I'd continued this project, two things interest me most. First, testing with remote participants instead of everyone in one room, introducing a layer of complexity (latency, coordination, context). Secondly how Oasis might evolve over time, not as something needing constant interaction, but a space people drift in and out of, sometimes empty, sometimes full, depending on the moment.

Huge appreciation to my project partner Sina <3
‍

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© Amanda Wallgren 2026

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