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Adaptive
Narratives
For Immersive
Spaces
In this chapter, we explore the concept of immersive spaces, investigating how the
lessons of immersive physical spaces can influence the design of immersive digital
worlds; VR, AR and XR are mere trans-dimensional portals into the digital metaverse.
Through examples and case studies, I explore existing work in this area before
focusing more deeply on future methods for the creation of immersive narrative.
55
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David John Tree MA FHEA
David is a Research Fellow and Technical Director of the Games and Visual
Effects Research Lab at the University of Hertfordshire. He was initially trained
as an Animator before gaining a Master’s Degree in Games Art. He is currently
undertaking a PhD in Creative Arts where he is investigating the application of
author-driven computational narratives for immersive spaces. More recently he
has worked on the Interreg North Sea Region Project, Create Converge, where
he leads the development of immersive content prototypes in collaboration
with subject specialists ranging from choreographers to quantum physicists to
encourage interdisciplinary adoption of the technology.
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 56
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
VR, AR AND XR ARE MERE
TRANSDIMENSIONAL PORTALS
INTO THE DIGITAL METAVERSE.
For the first part of this chapter, we explore immersive spaces,
before later exploring how these immersive spaces are being
imbued with narrative elements and eventually investigating
the future of integrated adaptive story worlds.
Immersion
Although originating from the act of physical submersion, the
term immersion has developed to describe the act of becoming
engulfed by a place or a thing, encapsulating the sensorium of the
visitor transporting them to a time, a place, or even another world.
More recently, the term Immersion has become synonymous with
eXtended Reality XR including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality
and Mixed Reality. These virtual worlds are accessed through
the use of head-mounted displays, CAVEs and dome projection.
However, beyond the sterile digital world of the bit and the byte,
immersive spaces can be found in art installations, theme parks
and even in manicured country estates.
These immersive physical spaces enable designers to create
worlds which encapsulate and overwhelm the senses placing the
visitor at the mercy of the designer’s story world. Through the
sensory stimulation of the visitor, an unquestionable reality is
constructed, whether real or synthetic, suspending their disbelief
and enabling true immersion.
Frequenters of immersive spaces are ascribed many different
labels. For clarity and consistency throughout this chapter I use
visitor in place of player, interactor, or viewer. The concept of a
visitor supports the notion of immersive spaces being a place
rather than merely a box or piece of software and thus allowing a
greater understanding of what it means to be an immersive space.
The words immersion and presence are often used inter-
changeably as they are closely related, however, the differential
is that while the visitor can be immersed sensorially in the space,
the feeling of presence or existing within a world is somewhat
different. The feeling of presence predominates around the idea
of agency, as without the world pushing back, how the visitor can
know it is there, is questionable.
THE CONCEPT OF A VISITOR
SUPPORTS THE NOTION OF
IMMERSIVE SPACES BEING A
PLACE RATHER THAN MERELY
A BOX OR PIECE OF SOFTWARE.
Agency
Agency is broadly the ability to elicit control upon a world.
However, often agency is misconstrued as the necessity for the
visitor to have free will within the world as we have a true presence
in the real world and yet do not have free will to act without
consequence. Although more often used to analyse interaction
with digital systems, we use agency here as a lens on immersive
physical spaces.
In this chapter, agency is categorised into the following stake-
holders:
Player / Visitor
Author / Architect
System / Nature
At extremes of agency where one stakeholder has too much
control over the action of the world, other stakeholders release
their control, destroying immersion. As a direct consequence of
this, the objective is to create a balance of the visitor’s ability to
impact on their experience while maintaining authorial control to
express their idea or concept and the system maintains the rules
of the world.
1 For more information on Painshill park, one of the finest examples of landscape architecture visit Painshill park, Cobham, surrey,
England - www.painshill.co.uk/
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 57
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
2 The Wizarding world of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort A brief introduction to the park - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfjuBaWTLO4
www.universalorlando.com/webcontent/en/us/universal-orlando-resort/the-wizarding-world-of-harry-potter/hub
3 Artist Random International homepage and video of the Rain room experience.https://www.random-international.com/rain-room-2012
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 58
Real world immersive spaces
The grand gardens of stately homes are credited with the
conception of landscape architecture in the mid-1700s1 and can
be considered some of the earliest examples of virtual spaces,
as without the influence of humans, they would not have existed.
Landscape architect Hon. Charles Hamilton created a series of
microcosms immersing visitors in the cultures he visited while on
the grand tour.
Although seemingly natural, these landscapes were achieved
through spatial manipulation, strategic placement of planting and
pathways and the redirection of nearby rivers. Using carefully
constructed paths, Hamilton succeeds in guiding the visitor’s
gaze to his designed vistas, framing Foleys and transporting the
visitor to an immersive oasis.
Further adding to the illusion, a curious fashion in the 18th century
was the introduction of paid hermits, often a man hired by the
landowner to inhabit a hermitage or folly constructed as part of
a grand landscaping scheme. The hermit’s job required the post
holder to grow their beard, wear a costume, remain unwashed and
of course, inhabit the provided hermitage. Beyond this ornamental
purpose, the hermit in the garden could be considered an early
form of what game designers would call a non-playing character,
populating the virtual world.
Our second real-world case study of an immersive space is that
of the theme park. These parks are a mutation of the amusement
park, combining rides and attractions with thematic design to
create a recreational space where visitors can fully immerse
themselves in an imaginary world.
The key locations and sets are replicated and populated with
actors playing famous roles; furthering the sensory encapsulation
with the addition of thematic food and drink. An example of
such a park is “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter” at Universal
Orlando Resort2. Upon arrival, the visitors exchange real-world
money into ‘Wizard’ money for use in the themed shops and
stands of Diagon Alley. Park staff dressed in costume and the
necessary infrastructure of the parks are garbed consistently in
the story world of the characters with themed food stands.
Integrated into the themed spaces are the rides and roller coasters
themed to replicate experiences within the films allowing for park
designers to guide visitors through environments.
Theme parks achieve one of the highest levels of immersion
possible within the real world as they enable access to visual,
auditory, olfactory, touch and taste providing a full sensory
experience creating a real feeling of being immersed in the world
only broken by the presence of other visitors.
THEME PARKS ACHIEVE ONE
OF THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF
IMMERSION POSSIBLE WITHIN
THE REAL WORLD.
In 2012 Random International presented the immersive Rain
Room at the Barbican Gallery3. Through a complicated system of
valves motion detection software and much water, this immersive
experience is anything but immersive as the visitor remains
perfectly dry. The sensory immersion, however, stimulates a real
sense of being in a rainstorm, providing the visitor with the sight,
smell and sound of fresh rain.
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
RANDOM INTERNATIONAL, Rain Room, 2012. Exhibited at
The Curve, Barbican, London. Courtesy of The Maxine and
Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art. Photography by RANDOM
INTERNATIONAL
2 The Wizarding world of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort A brief introduction to the park - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfjuBaWTLO4
www.universalorlando.com/webcontent/en/us/universal-orlando-resort/the-wizarding-world-of-harry-potter/hub
3 Artist Random International homepage and video of the Rain room experience.https://www.random-international.com/rain-room-2012
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 59
The removal of the touch stimuli, in this case, is the curiosity as
this is a physical world experience that simulates the experience
of being in a virtual world. Although this space does not have a
narrative what it does, it demonstrates how even with the removal
of a sense, immersion is still achieved.
Features of immersive spaces
Following on from studying these examples, we can extract the
following elements integral to immersive spaces:
Common to both the landscape and theme park example are
the creation of landscapes which control the visitor’s viewpoint
and movement through space. Control over movement can be
commanded either implicitly such as in the garden with the use of
slopes, paths or gaps in planting or more explicitly with the use
of mazes, labyrinths and other spatial structures as found in
theme parks and shopping malls. Although the methods differ, the
objective is consistently in order to coerce the visitor to experience
elements in the designed order or time frame. The key is whether
using implicit or explicit manipulation, it should be designed in
such a way as to avoid the visitor becoming aware that they are
being manipulated.
The second feature necessary to immersive spaces is
continuity, where the props, characters, currency, soundscape
all synchronously support the world being created. Best
exemplified in physical form by theme parks. Key here is not to
permit any alien elements which could remind the visitor that they
are not really in the story world. Leading to the adage of game
design of ‘do not let them see the edge of the world’. To create the
feeling of immersion it is not only the replacement of stimulus to
the sensorium but also the continuity with which it is replaced,
consider a haunted house without the synchronicity of the sound,
lighting and olfactory effects the immersive effect would be
significantly diminished. Therefore, instead of seeing the senses
independently, we should instead consider them to be a layered
construct, with the order of influence sight, sound, touch, smell,
taste.
As initiated by the hermits in the garden, populating worlds with
characters serves multiple purposes, not only do they add much-
needed background action and through inhabitation make the
world feel alive but they also provide an opportunity for the author
to express the nuances of the narrative. This is not to say that the
story world must be inhabited for as much as characters add life to
a world, should the opposite effect be desired then an absence of
characters is as telling as their presence. However, for more effect
should the author wish to create a feeling of eerie desolation then
the past inhabitation of characters is needed to encourage the
visitor to ask the question of ‘what happened here?’.
Through the introduction of provenance, the author provides the
visitor with a contextual lens from which to view the world and
so what happened before can become as important as what is
happening now. This lived in aesthetic is one that is increasingly
used to provide an imaginary world with a feeling of presence, in
the garden example this history is expressed in the ruined gothic
folly which was constructed in its ruined state, this is also the case
in the mock Tudor street of the theme park.
THE AUTHOR PROVIDES THE
VISITOR WITH A CONTEXTUAL
LENS FROM WHICH TO VIEW
THE WORLD AND SO WHAT
HAPPENED BEFORE CAN
BECOME AS IMPORTANT AS
WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW.
For the final element of immersion, we refer back to the initial
definition, to immerse the senses. In an ideal world, the visitor
would be able to see, hear, smell, touch and taste the immersive
world and until Brain-Computer Interfaces become sufficiently
developed will be far more achievable within the physical space.
However, the good news is that for an immersive experience, we
do not necessarily need all senses only that the senses provide a
congruous result. Current approaches focus on sensory continuity
between, sight, proprioception and sound, which provide enough
sensory input to achieve the feeling of being somewhere so long
as the visitor does not reach out and touch the world. Referring to
the art installation presented previously, when the sense of touch
is removed, we can see where breaking this continuity generates
an otherworldly feeling.
Challenges of immersive digital
worlds
When designing immersive digital worlds content creators should
be careful not to fall into pre-existing tropes of game design,
although most XR experiences are build atop game middleware
the visual and interactive language of immersive worlds differs.
To help avoid these pitfalls, we now consider the areas to be
avoided when designing immersive experiences.
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 60
A common trope used to inject a backstory or provide narrative
elements within gameplay is that of the pre-rendered or on-track
cinematic, where a visitor’s control is deprived, and they are forced
to watch a pre-choreographed piece which explains a vital element
of the story. Now I am not making the argument for removing
these narrative elements entirely. Instead, I am suggesting that
consideration must be paid to how they are presented to the
visitor who is wearing a Head Mounted Display HMD. If the
developer disables the viewer's ability to control the camera
viewpoint, this removal of visitor location Agency may lead to
cybersickness, which in turn leads to a less enjoyable experience.
Instead, we should design worlds where the visitor can still move
around while the cinematic elements play.
WE SHOULD DESIGN WORLDS
WHERE THE VISITOR CAN STILL
MOVE AROUND WHILE THE
CINEMATIC ELEMENTS PLAY.
Translocation within the game world as with all elements should
consider the rules of the world, the use of teleportation within
VR experiences has become a common method for moving
the visitor around the world while avoiding sensory dysphasia;
however, these systems should be used in a sensitive nature to
the world’s narrative. If the world includes magic systems, then a
magical translocation would be more immersive than a high-tech
transporter which would be more appropriate to the science fiction
genre.
Earlier we alluded to the concept of visitor Agency being an
essential component of immersion. Further exploring this, visitor
Agency can be broken down into a causal Agency where the
actions of the visitor have reactions in the world and location
Agency where the visitor has control over their viewpoint. In
general, location Agency should not be limited other than through
the use of appropriate world devices. For example, designers
might place a locked door in the path of the visitor or create a
window to frame an intended viewpoint but at no point should we
disable the gyroscopic control of the HMD to force a particular
perspective, but rather use physiological methods to control the
user's viewpoint.
Key to the visitor’s immersion within the world is the use of
logical and consistent rules, without consistency, the visitor does
not know how to behave or the possible effect of their actions.
The effect of inconsistency would be the inability to develop a
technique to overcome the game, negatively impacting on their
causal Agency.
While the focus of this chapter is not on the technical aspects
of XR production, it is essential to note that in addition to the
considerations of designing a seamless, immersive experience
the designer must consider the following technical obligations: to
ensure comfortable latency between the virtual and the real world
the frame rate of the immersive experience should be handled
carefully ensuring a consistently high rate.
Moreover, for the avoidance of breaking the immersion rule of
seeing the edge of the world the configuration of collisions on
objects should be done carefully and avoid the possibility of
intersection with the visitor. Both these challenges pertain to the
disconnect between the perceived virtual body and the physical
body.
Designing immersive worlds
Now that we have discussed the prerequisites of immersion and
explained the possible pitfalls, I suggest the following workflow
for designing these spaces. Remember here that we are trying
to achieve a combination of game level interaction with in-depth
narratives. This technique is built upon the techniques for
designing story worlds for tabletop roleplaying games such as
“Dungeons and Dragons”. The purpose is to build a sufficiently
detailed story world that the game could ask any question of it and
have a logical and consistent response.
The advantage of taking a two-phase approach to these immersive
spaces is that during the world-building phase we design the
landscapes, factions and rules of the world which provides a solid
foundation for the generation of game-world specific narratives,
whether through automation or manual creation. This level of
continuity that imbued into the world ensures that when
experiencing these worlds, the visitor never ‘sees the cracks’ and
receives an experience which transports them from the mundane
to the fantastical.
THE VISITOR NEVER ‘SEES
THE CRACKS’ AND RECEIVES
AN EXPERIENCE WHICH
TRANSPORTS THEM FROM THE
MUNDANE TO THE FANTASTICAL.
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 61
The three main elements of creating the story world are Rules,
Races and External Forces. These can be aligned to the differing
Agency levels discussed previously:
Rules, External Forces – System Agency
Races, External Forces – Authorial Agency
The Rules are the structure for applying system Agency on the
actors of the world, these are fundamental and define traits of
our world such as this world has gravity, the world has a bright
star that provides light for half of a cycle, and there is liquid water.
Weather changes the world at differing intervals and can make
the outside world inhospitable.
The aces, provide for interest, diversity and create contrast in
the world. These might be aliens and humans, or they may be
characters from different nations, the important thing is that
the races have traits that differ to provide a point of exploration
for our visitor. In traditional fantasy games, there might be the
erudite elven races, thuggish orcs and the humans stuck in
between. A point of note here is that the development of the
race’s element is the most extensive element of this process
and developing a detailed race profile here with history and traits
will lead to a better developed adaptive story later on.
The role of External Forces is an oft-contested area; is there a
necessity for deities in the story world? The reason I include them
here is although it is not necessary to have an external forces layer
to the world it adds both a mechanic for controlling the pacing of
the game and can act as a catalyst for change if the story world
gets stuck in mediocrity.
Interactive storytelling
Screen-based storytelling has long been dominated by linear
story telling, whether film or television, predominantly due to the
non-interactive nature of screen-based media. A linear approach
also applies to the medium of video games as until recently the
capacity of interactive systems have required the game worlds
and characters to follow a pre-determined series of events, due to
the limitations of the systems driving these experiences.
The advantages of these linear forms of storytelling are the finite
authorial control over how the story is conveyed to the audience.
Especially in film and television the director has control of both
the actors, the world, and the viewpoint in which we view it. With
the introduction of 3D video game technology, the director loses
control over the viewport, although they might be able to control
the world and the Non-Playing Characters.
This, however, leaves little room for the visitor of our immersive
digital spaces to have any meaningful causal effect over the world
and although some games have attempted to apply systems of
affinity where players actions change the way in that the game
world reacts they are still relatively high-level systems with little
impact on the greater narrative. Often employing tropes such
as the escort mission where the visitor is required to protect or
follow a pre-programmed Non Playing Character around the game
world to lead the visitor to the next plot point. However, these
introduce a new opportunity to fracture the immersion, what If the
escorted character dies? The game over screen appears the visitor
is transported back to before they died with a note of “try again!”.
Breaking our presence as it defies the game world rules in that if
someone is dead, they would generally remain so, but the system
would argue that it needs that character alive to fulfil a later plot
point. What if instead of sending us back to the beginning of the
mission the game just proverbially shrugged its shoulders and
continued, replacing the character with a new one to fulfil the plot
or eradicating that branch.
Through designing the game world, the Rules, Races and External
Forces, we can then begin to consider what stories the author
wants to tell, and which actors need to be involved in that story.
To enable these narratives to take form within open worlds the
story events should be considered more like a convergence of
characters, external forces and a catalyst, to take an example
from the Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Sam
are instructed to meet Gandalf at the Prancing Pony inn. The
story would have ended when Gandalf did not arrive if not
for Strider’s intervention in saving them and redirecting the
hobbits to Rivendell. Previously we mentioned taking care when
manipulating players, in this case, explicit manipulation was in
keeping with the storyworld and expressed not only the vulnerable
nature of the hobbits but established Strider as a friend and
protector, therefore maintaining presence. As this interaction was
in keeping with the story, the presence of the hobbits within the
world would not have broken.
With the detailed storyworld to fall back upon, it is possible to
extrapolate the external forces at play, with the final stage of
generating the critical plot points in the story world. These plot
events need not be in specific locations so long as the criteria of
all necessary actors being in the local and the necessary external
forces being in play. At this point in the process, a world has
been designed, the rules, races and external forces are specified,
and the major story events have been developed, which leaves
us at the final point of how to add the interactive element to the
story while maintaining presence. As indicated in the previous
section traditionally these would be created manually with
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 62
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
careful consideration paid to the techniques for generating and
converging plotlines and characters. However, this is less than
ideal when we consider the visitor's Agency. So how do we solve
this, obviously it would not be possible for an author to sit waiting
for each visitor to interact with the world to re-write the story.
Alternatively, would it? Although current approaches focus on
the manual creation of each story element, fields in artificial
intelligence design are becoming increasingly relevant not as sole
generators but instead as assistants in mixed-initiative design.
These AI systems might soon fill the gaps between story events
plotted by the human author, allowing the story to be told as
intended, at the resolution needed while maintaining the balance
of Agency necessary to allow visitors to feel truly present in an
immersive world.
AI SYSTEMS MIGHT SOON FILL
THE GAPS BETWEEN STORY
EVENTS PLOTTED BY THE
HUMAN AUTHOR.
Mixed-initiative design
To build a world on one's own would be more than a lifetime’s work
if to only create a quick snapshot on the level of the macroscopic.
Developments of mixed-initiative systems for the generation
of three-dimensional visual content are already profoundly
understood through the field of Procedural content generation.
However, the area of adaptive story creation for immersive spaces
is a nouveau field of exploration which promises to imbue these
visually rich environments with the necessary meta-narratives to
fulfil the visitor's lust for presence.
Central to the success of long-form narrative content inside
the immersive media space is the creation and maintenance of
presence in the virtual world. The prominent starting place for
adaptive storytelling is to build upon the games engines as they
operate in the same 3D world and encounter some of the same
challenges. However, a new language for this medium is needed
as the tropes and techniques of directing players are incompatible
with the requirements of presence.
A NEW LANGUAGE FOR THIS
MEDIUM IS NEEDED AS THE
TROPES AND TECHNIQUES
OF DIRECTING PLAYERS ARE
INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE
REQUIREMENTS OF PRESENCE.
The field of computational narratives has been the preserve of
computer scientists since the early 1970s, seeing significant
improvements in recent years with the increasing availability of
suitably powerful desktop computer hardware and readily available
of cloud computing services. The objective of computational
narratives is to gain a greater conceptual understanding of
narratives, imbuing computers with a narrative intelligence to
enable better human-computer interaction. Humans are naturally
creatures of narrative, passing information on through stories,
tales and limericks, computers do not yet possess this ability to
express information in a consistent narrative.
Computational Narrative research is divided into two distinct
areas, that of narrative analysis which seeks to extract the
narrative from the text and build a model of understanding and
Generative Narrative systems which create new stories based
on human-generated narrative models. Although combining
these areas is being investigated, there Is currently no end to end
solution which can analyse a series of texts and then generate a
new text that is unidentifiable from the style of the original.
To create congruent story worlds which maintain presence and
immersion regardless of the action of the player computational
narratives will become central to the generation of adaptive story
worlds – allowing for the combined Agency of decision making
with effective reaction from the story world.
4 Wilkinson, S. and Mercuriali, S.: ‘AND THE BIRDS FELL FROM THE SKY’ 2010
Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen 63
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
Framing the world
Once the world has been designed and the story written, the
next step is to consider the framing. When going swimming, one
does not jump straight into cold water. Instead, lowering oneself
into the pool gently, testing the water and gradually exchanging
environments from our surrounding of air to being submerged.
Experience creators have begun exploring how the transitional
space between the physical and the virtual can change the
framing of the experience. An example of one such creator is
Brighton based artist Simon Wilkinson of Circa69 who is exploring
how the creation of a real-world lead up to his virtual experiences
can blur the lines between the physical and the virtual.
An example is of a piece named ‘And The Birds Fell From The
Sky’4 which focussed on the return to the physical world. The
virtual element of the experience involves a Faruk clown character
pursuing the visitor, following the visitor around with their
eventual escape. After visiting the immersive space through the
VR headset, audience members are then secretly marked by the
assisting team before saying their goodbyes. Unaware of these
surreptitious tags the audience members return to the real world
thinking the experience is over, however unaware that actors
dressed in the same clown costume have been placed throughout
the local vicinity to continue to follow those tagged. The piece
intended to blur the lines between the virtual and the physical,
encouraging the visitors to question whether they ever left the
experience.
THE PIECE INTENDED TO BLUR
THE LINES BETWEEN THE
VIRTUAL AND THE PHYSICAL,
ENCOURAGING THE VISITORS
TO QUESTION WHETHER THEY
EVER LEFT THE EXPERIENCE.
The History Of
Interactive Storytelling
Regardless of the prevalence of linear storytelling in mainstream
media, progress has been made by experimental creators who
have been utilising increasingly powerful computer systems to
produce immersive storytelling experiences. From the forerunner
to modern-day Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games
MMORPGs) the Multi-User Dungeon games of the mid-1970s
which provided the first glimpses into a computer-based
exploration space where the player could explore a world, solving
quests and discovering the narrative as the game progressed.
In parallel to these digital developments, Steve Jackson and Ian
Livingstone produced a series of gamebooks entitled Fighting
Fantasy5, combining the game mechanics of tabletop roleplay
with a narrative. Presenting the resultant text in the literary
form and allowing the reader to make decisions along the way
using numbered paragraphs and a character sheet to store the
necessary variables.
Initial explorations of the late 1990s into the area of interactive
fiction include that of the hypertext which utilised the new
technology of interlinked webpages to enable a fluid interaction
between the reader and the text. As internet speeds increased,
the enrichment of web-based media allowed even more
exceptional immersive experiences to be created.
In 2018 Netflix Originals produced the interactive film entitled
Bandersnatch6 as part of its dark futurism series Black mirror.
Set in the 1980s, we follow a young protagonist on the path to
becoming a game developer, inspired by a fictional book, not unlike
the gamebooks discussed earlier. This protagonist goes through
a series of events where the viewer can decide for him what to do
next; interestingly in the meta sense, the protagonist does become
aware of their controlled nature which breaks down the fourth
wall creating an unexpected feeling of responsibility in the viewer.
64
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– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
Photo by Joe Murray
And The Birds Fell From The Sky 2010
The creators of Bandersnatch chose to ensure that the viewer
explored every permutation of the storyline by using a game style
checkpoint, where when the visitor chose to travel down the wrong
path the story would come to an alternative ending and then send
the visitor back to the point of decision. This technique, although
ensuring the visitor sees the whole story does reduce the causal
Agency, as the actions of the visitor do not lead to significant
consequences.
Although a great deal of development is being undertaken in
the procedural generation of world elements including meshes,
textures, and the placement thereof, existing approaches still
require a large amount of intervention from human operators to
fill all the details of the world. An example is that of Red Dead
Redemption 27, required the recording of over 10,000 individual
audio clips to fulfil the narrative requirements.
The future
The Games and Visual effects Research Lab G+VERL at the
University of Hertfordshire is currently researching the generation
of computational narratives for use within immersive spaces. This
research will provide us with a look at new ways to represent and
synthesise congruent immersive story worlds while ensuring that
human authors maintain authorial Agency over the world.
5 Jackson, S. and Livingstone, I.: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (1982).
Available at: www.amazon.co.uk/Warlock-Firetop-Mountain-Fighting-Gamebook/dp/1840463872/ref=oosr (Accessed: 25 May 2018)
6 Slade, D.: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, 2018 Netix
7 ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’, 2018 Rockstar Games
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Filmby Aarhus / VIA Film & Transmedia / Create Converge
– European Union North Sea Region VB programme
Storytelling Beyond The Screen
DAVID JOHN TREE
ADAPTIVE NARRATIVES FOR IMMERSIVE SPACES
