Virtual Reality Narratives
Description
This monograph delves into recent evolutions in virtual reality (VR) storytelling, focusing on entertainment-based works created or launched since 2020. Through various case studies, it showcases the increasing diversity and sophistication of recent narrative-based projects. Moving past the initial hype associated with the latest wave of VR, a number of innovative and affective works combining documentary-based or fictional storytelling with game mechanics, live theatre and other elements, have appeared at festivals or on distribution platforms in recent years. These interdisciplinary works have much to tell us about the future of VR storytelling but have yet to receive sustained analysis. This book aims to correct that.
Dooley argues that VR, as an interactive medium that places the user inside a storyworld in a visible or invisible virtual body, offers narratives that incorporate the user's body as a storytelling tool. This fosters user-centred stories that unfold in three-dimensional space. Adopting phenomenological and formal analysis methodologies, the monograph examines case studies through their approaches to narrative, style, and interactive devices. Key concepts that are explored include agency, direct address, environmental and spatial storytelling, embodiment and presence. By providing a much-needed analysis of works through a variety of theoretical lenses, the book illustrates how recent VR storytelling fosters powerfully transformative experiences.
Reviews / Votes
"With Virtual Reality Narratives, Kath Dooley consolidates her status as a leading scholar and practitioner in the field of VR storytelling. Incorporating up-to-date case studies, the book effectively demonstrates how advances in VR technologies have led to uniquely interactive and embodied narrative forms. Dooley explores entertainment-based VR as a medium that alternates between the intimately personalised and the confrontational and participative, with valuable attention paid to what this means for users' agency and their bodies." (Dr Jennifer O'Meara, Associate Professor in Film Studies, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland)
"Virtual Reality Narratives brings a welcome boost to the study of VR storytelling with thorough analyses and strong readings of well-selected case studies. With expert application to the still-new terrain of VR storytelling, Dooley blends familiar story elements such as plot and game mechanics against a wide range of topics bespoke to the VR environment from body affects to environmental storytelling to user customisation and more. A comprehensive study of the subject and very much recommended!" (Professor Jenna Ng, Subject Head of Creative Technologies and Professor of Digital Media and Culture, University of York, USA)
"This book provides an excellent and comprehensive overview of contemporary Virtual Reality entertainment-based experiences internationally. Readers that are new to immersive media and VR will receive sound insights through well-chosen case studies. Simultaneously Virtual Reality Narratives: Embodied Encounters in Space is a great and inspirational resource for students and scholars alike who are interested in exploring narrative, interactive digital narrative (IDN), game and/or theatre theory in relation to embodiment and Virtual Reality more broadly." (Max Schleser, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia)
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Person
Associate Professor Kath Dooley is a writer/director and academic based at the University of South Australia. Kath is author of Cinematic Virtual Reality: A Critical Study of 21st Century Approaches and Practices (2021) and co-editor of Screenwriting for Virtual Reality: Story Space and Experience (2024). Her research interests include embodiment in the context of screen media, virtual reality and screenwriting, women's screen industry practice, and diversity in the screen industries.
Content
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: A Body in the Story: Exploring Body Representation, Presence and Embodiment in Virtual Reality Narratives.- Chapter 3: Virtual Reality Narration: Listening to and re-living stories through first-person testimony.- Chapter 4: Exploring Environmental Storytelling Techniques in Expressive, Virtual Reality Documentary.- Chapter 5: Time, Space and the Body in The Under Presents (2019), a Multiplayer VR Game.- Chapter 6: Between storytelling and storyliving: user customisation of VR narratives.- Chapter 7: Virtual Reality Narratives Live Online: Immersive Theatre in VRChat Worlds.- Chapter 8: Conclusion: Virtual Reality Narratives as Embodied Encounters in Space.