How to Build Co-Located MR Games for Quest
Steven Linton is the founder of Fantail Games, a studio dedicated to creating immersive experiences that bring people together in the same physical space. With over 40 game credits across Disney, Universal, EA, and Hasbro, Steven has worked across design, coding, production, and sales… but his true passion lies in redefining social gaming through mixed reality.
His latest project, Game Night, is a multiplayer MR experience with no UI, no menus, and where your body is the controller. In this interview, Steven shares what is the real magic behind co-located MR experiences and the biggest challenges of designing for MR (and how to solve them).
Before getting into the interview, I wanted to quickly introduce you to today’s sponsor Gracia AI. Gracia AI is the only app that allows you to experience Gaussian Splatting volumetric videos on a standalone headset, either in VR or MR.
It is a truly impressive experience and I recommend you to try it out right now on your Quest or PC-powered headset.
Interview with Steven Linton
When did you start experimenting with co-located Mixed Reality?
Steven Linton: Back in 2002, I was in a research lab in Christchurch working with Mark Billinghurst, and we were using 320x200 resolution headsets with webcams taped to the front. Super low-tech by today’s standards, but at the time, cutting-edge. We were working with AR markers to locate players, and I built an augmented reality version of Worms. That experience stuck with me. Even though the hardware wasn’t ready for mainstream adoption, I knew that playing together in the same space was the real magic of MR. For years, I was waiting for the right hardware. HoloLens, Magic Leap, Quest 2… they all had limitations: small FOV, high cost, lack of multiplayer support. But then Quest 3 arrived, and I finally saw the potential for MR to reach real people. That’s when I knew it was time to start Fantail Games.
So the Quest 3 was the trigger for you to jump fully into MR?
Steven Linton: 100%. It was the first headset that made MR feel truly playable at scale. The moment I saw that multiple people could be in the same room, see each other, and move around freely, I was sold. It’s not just about better hardware, it’s about unlocking new types of gameplay. With co-located MR, you’re no longer just playing a video game, you’re playing something that feels more like a board game or a sport.
Co-located MR is magical when well implemented, but isn’t it an even riskier bet than standard MR for a small studio?
Steven Linton: Oh, absolutely. We’re taking a huge risk. Many studios are adding MR as a bonus feature to existing games, while we’ve gone all-in on co-located multiplayer as the core experience. That means if you don’t have two or more headsets, you can’t play our game at all. Business-wise, that’s a tough sell because the market for households with multiple headsets is still small. That said, we’ve seen firsthand how powerful the experience is during playtesting. When people play Game Night, they get it instantly. It’s not just fun, it’s something completely new. That’s what makes the gamble worth it.
What’s the current state of Meta’s SDKs for building co-located MR games?
Steven Linton: Meta is improving fast. If you’re building in Unity, they’ve introduced Building Blocks, which makes adding things like pass-through, hand tracking, and co-located multiplayer much easier. But it’s still not perfect and the last 20% of development is where all the real work happens. Meta updates the SDK every month, which is both good and bad. Good because new features are constantly added, bad because things break all the time. We’ve had to rewrite entire features because Meta changed how hand tracking works. It’s a moving target, but the direction is positive.
What are the biggest challenges in designing for co-located MR?
Steven Linton: The biggest one? Every player’s room is different. You can’t assume there will be a big open space, or even a table to place objects on. We wanted Game Night to feel like a board game, but that meant figuring out how to detect and position the board correctly in every environment, which took us a full month just to get right.
Then there’s player movement. Some people have huge rooms, others are crammed into tiny apartments. We had to design games that work in both extremes. And then there’s safety. People get so immersed that they forget they’re wearing a headset. In one of our games, players were diving across the room to hit a shared object, which was awesome and really dangerous at the same time. We had to redesign parts of the game to make sure people wouldn’t crash into walls or furniture.
How important was playtesting in getting the game right?
Steven Linton: Playtesting was everything. If you try to build an MR game based on assumptions from flat-screen or VR game design, you’re doomed. None of those rules apply anymore.
We took a rapid iteration approach with a development cycle of one to two weeks. If something wasn’t working, we ripped it out and tried something new.
For example, one of our games involved water rising in the room, and players had to grab fish and put them in a boat. At first, the water level rose over time but this forced older players to keep bending down, which hurt their backs. So we fixed the water height and then kids under 10 couldn’t reach the fish anymore. Ultimately we had to add dynamic height adjustments just to make sure everyone could comfortably play.
What advice would you give to developers considering co-located MR?
Steven Linton: Do it! But only if you have the resources.
- If you’re a solo developer, I’d be cautious—it requires networking, multiplayer programming, and way more testing than a single-player experience.
- If you have a small team, make sure you start simple—focus on one core mechanic and playtest it like crazy.
- Use Meta’s Building Blocks, but expect to spend a lot of time fixing edge cases.
And most importantly: Make sure it actually works in the real world. Fancy game mechanics don’t matter if players can’t instantly understand what to do.
That’s it for today, and don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter and refer it to a friend if you find this interesting
Check out the full Video interview here
See you next week