Critical Encounters with Immersive Storytelling

Immersive Stories From Technological Determinism Towards Narrative Determinism, 2024

This article is part of the issue “The Many Dimensions of Us: Harnessing Immersive Technologies to Communicate the Complexity of Human Experiences” edited by Nicholas David Bowman (Syracuse University), Dan Pacheco (Syracuse University), T. Makana Chock (Syracuse University), and Lyndsay Michalik Gratch (Syracuse University), fully open access at https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.i455 Abstract Following the wave of immersive production that occurred between 2015 and 2018, and in the face of new virtual, augmented, and mixed‐reality devices, this article discusses the need to move from a technology‐ or device‐focused perspective in the analysis and use of immersive technology towards a story‐focused or story‐first perspective. It starts with a technological perspective, contextualising the evolution of immersive technologies and their interpretation from a technological determinism point of view. Secondly, the ecological perspective provides an integrative reading of the technique, its use, and its experience, based on the concept of the environment. Finally, and after acknowledging previous research on the effects of immersive media on the audience, the article considers the narrative elements that are reinforced by immersive technologies in journalism and nonfiction, based on the qualitative analysis of projects. The article highlights narrative resources associated with the social character of the story, the spatio‐temporal framework, and the emotional impact. It suggests a shift towards “narrative determinism,” which would allow us to analyse and employ immersive resources in terms of their contribution to storytelling and to overcome the limitations of perspectives that are highly dependent on specific platforms or technologies. Keywords immersive storytelling; immersive technology; journalism; narrative; virtual reality

2013

Narrative game designer, or simply narrative designer, is a role in contemporary computer game development. The narrative designer is responsible for designing the player’s experience of a game’s fictional world. This study delves into the practice of narrative design from the perspective of embodied presence. In comparison with books, movies and other media, the medium of computer games excels in offering the media user the feeling of being a physically present participant in the fictional world. When exploiting the merits of embodied presence, narrative designers are challenged to express fictional worlds without disrupting this feeling of “being-there”. Close-ups, flashbacks, ellipses and other narrative devices–common to other audio-visual media–cannot be employed to the same extent. This study reconceptualises and apposes the notions of presence and narrative by critically expanding on Presence Theory, phenomenological media theory and narratology. Drawing from insights and practices in game, film, performance, architecture and literature studies, the study subsequently proposes alternative narrative devices, more compatible with the interactive and spatial nature of computer games, enabling designers to express fictional worlds while maintaining the player’s feeling of embodied presence.

The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality, 2013

Virtual worlds are enabling experiences that were not previously available through other media. One such experience is the potential to have a sense of inhabiting the simu- lated spaces they offer, not just through the use of the player’s imaginative faculty, but also through the cybernetic circuit between player and machine. This phenomenon has been described by the terms “presence” and “immersion.” Although the two terms are used in various fields and have been discussed for three decades, there seems to be a lack of consensus as to what either of them actually refers to (Ermi and Mayra 2005; King and Krzywinska 2006; Tamborini and Skalski 2006; Brown and Cairns 2004; Jennett et al. 2008). The term “immersion” is particularly problematic because it is used so widely when discussing experiential facets of anything from digital games to painting (Grau 2003), literature (Nell 1988), and cinema (Bazin 1967). Nevertheless the phenomenon these two terms have been enlisted to describe is crucial to our understanding of the relationship between user and virtual world, as it represents one end of a continuum of intensity of involvement with virtual worlds and addresses the very notion of being in the context of such simulated environments. In this chapter I claim that the confusion and apprehension surrounding the use of these two terms is based on a number of challenges they pose to a clear understand- ing of the phenomenon they have been employed to describe. The chapter takes digital games as the most popular and experientially powerful forms of virtual worlds and thus uses them as its primary exemplar. The radical stance taken here will be to claim that this confusion arises because neither metaphor adequately describes the relationship between player and game. Both assume a unidirectional dive of human subjectivity into a containing vessel, a split between the physical “here” and the virtual “there” that is overcome temporarily when the phenomenon is experienced.

Advances in Media, Entertainment, and the Arts, 2020

This chapter examines the evolution of trends in the arts, storytelling, and immersive media, along with the emerging awareness, expansion, and deliberate application of social impact entertainment (SIE). The author discusses how the ideas and concepts of transmedia, convergence, and storyworld-building have now expanded beyond academic theory into more organic commercial and artistic applications. The focus is on how this approach relates to extending intellectual properties and stories into immersive media platforms and beyond. Additionally, the author presents several case studies and examples of emerging arts and media formats to support what we might expect to experience in the near future.

In: Amyris Fernandez/Olli Leino/Hanna Wirman (Hg.): Extending Experiences. Structure, Analysis and Design of Computer Game Player Experience. Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press 2008. S. 29-43. , 2008

Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies, 2016

The term Immersion is used widely in professional discourse and industry publications within the UK/US TV and film industries, not only as a self-evident aim of Transmedia and VR content, but also as an achievable goal. Unlike games industries, TV and cinema have traditionally taken the notion of Suspension of Disbelief (SoD) as relatively self-evident, and Immersion appears as its logical extension. Beginning with Holland's (1967) psychoanalytical approach to SoD as removal of the 'desire to act' function by 'framing' texts away from reality, this paper suggests that by including the 'frame' within the experience in Transmedia and VR, SoD is not achievable and therefore any attempts to approach Immersion in this way will fail. The paper argues that Immersion in such experiences is possible, if approached in the sense that Salen & Zimmerman (2004) suggest, where the actual act of involvement becomes the immersive experience, and not the displacement of sense and story. PAPER. All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the […] mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality. François Dominic Laramée; 'Immersion' Broadcasters are planning to take viewers beyond traditional flat-screen viewing and tell stories in increasingly immersive ways in 2016. Alex Farber; 'Broadcast Magazine'. January 2016 We were interested in how we could make short-form drama more immersive and ideally help us to reach younger audiences. We wanted to up the levels of interaction, but not distract people from the story. Robin Moore; BBC Head of Innovation. May 2016 In the last decade, a new lexicon of terminology and ideas that have previously been more generally associated with the computing and games industries, has been seen with increasing frequency in the discourse and industry publications of the UK and US television and film industries. In TV alone, programme-makers are now content-producers and programmes are asset-brands; multiplatform and multi-touchpoint in nature, and based around UX design concepts with developmental analytics, IP/API workflows and '3G' commissioning just some of the ongoing computing-inspired hot-topics in the industry. In terms of contemporary content, one term stands out as becoming synonymous with film and TV industries' efforts to offer new audience-pleasing experiences, and also as a byproduct, synonymous with the technology being trialed to produce these experiences, such as Transmediatechnologies and Virtual Reality. This term is Immersion. This paper argues that immersion within Transmedia and Virtual Reality experiences is a misleading concept, in need of interrogation and classification, and moreover that it is not possible to achieve, if the definition of immersion is taken to be similar to Laramée's quote above. This is to do with it being-in this form-the logical extension of the idea of suspension of disbelief, itself a term regularly treated as being somewhat self-evident in traditional television and film experiences. However, the paper also argues that immersion in Transmedia and VR content is possible, if approached in the sense that Salen & Zimmerman (2004) suggest, where the actual act of involvement becomes the immersive experience, rather than the displacement of sense and story.

Ambiances. International Journalof Sensory Environment, Architecture and Urban Space, 2020

This article proposes to shift the scholarly focus from the conceptually, terminologically, and methodologically fuzzy notion of “immersion” to the concept of “immersivity,” and thus from a discussion of experiences to an analysis of the productive forces that enable such experiences (aesthetic and otherwise). Using case studies from theme parks, film, and immersive theatre to video games and immersive educational spaces, we argue that immersivity is a distinct term that denotes an inherent quality of objects in general and of mediated, delineated, real and virtual spaces in particular. We assume that in all of these examples, spatial qualities and modes interact in particular ways to facilitate immersion. Elucidating these interactions requires discussing examples from different disciplinary contexts. It is precisely through this interdisciplinary approach that we take a first step towards understanding immersivity, as we pinpoint cross-disciplinary congruences wherever possible. The article thus offers the starting point for a transdisciplinary, qualitative, experimental, and analytical model of immersivity. Following a theoretical introduction to the topic of immersion, we will first conceptualize our interdisciplinary understanding of immersion and immersivity and then launch into a transdisciplinary dialogue about examples of immersive spaces.

2 billion acquisition of start-up company Oculus and its virtual reality (VR) head mounted headset-technology Rift, the intricate dynamics between media platforms and how they affect the mechanics of everyday life are about to change drastically.

2021

This introduction to the monographic section on "VR Storytelling" aims to outline some of the principal transformations that VR is imparting to audiovisual language and experience, with a particular focus on the impact of these innovations on storytelling. The essays of the section span a variety of theoretical approaches and backgrounds, argumentative styles and case studies (e.g. documentaries, games, art), but all of them share a similar rhetorical attitude: underscoring the potential and novelty of VR but, at the same time, identifying a series of remediations and limitations. In particular, they will show that most of the contemporary discourses on VR need to be reframed critically in order to reflect more objectively on complex notions and dynamics such as screen, interactivity, immersion, presence, embodiment, illusion and empathy.