By Official GDC - _TXT8966, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47589467
I think we should all just stop and take a minute to recognize that this is how every cyberpunk scenario starts.
Usually it involves clones and datajacks instead of shitposting and memes though.
“Being virtually killed by virtual laser in virtual space is just as effective as the real thing, because you are as dead as you think you are.”
The dream of the 80s might finally be coming true. Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming, well, a reality. Recently I’ve had a chance to play with some VR tech (but nowhere near as much as many other people have) and I’ve been contemplating how VR could be used in campaigns.
I’m going to start with the obvious drawback. The tech just isn’t common yet. There’s cheap (and not so great) solutions like Google Cardboard but most of the commercial devices are going to run you $1,000+ and that’s without even considering the computer you need to run it. In the next 5-10 years I imagine you’ll see it becoming more and more common but for the mean time this will just be for the early adopters.
Luckily the tech used to create VR experiences isn’t too expensive and pseudo-VR experiences (like YouTube’s 360° videos) exist. Using a 360° or software to stitch together traditional video is becoming more and more affordable and SDKs mean that programming VR isn’t outside the real of possibility for many who already have experience. Hopefully this means that experiments into VR can already be worked into existing projects.
From Touchstone Research. Click through for the full infographic.
Tell a story. That’s as close to dogma as there is in the non-profit world. The narrative is one of the key tools of campaigning but it’s one that doesn’t work in VR. Or at least it doesn’t work in the way we normally think of. VR is about showing and not telling. That may be a hallmark of any good writing but with VR it is taken to the extreme.
In an excellent Medium post Mike Woods, takes on the role of VR in story telling.
And this brings us to the elephant in the room with the current notion of VR Storytelling. Storytelling is a RETROSPECTIVE thing. It always has been. People didn’t sit around the campfire telling stories in the timeframes that they actually occurred. And i’m not aware of realtime books. Linear narrative mechanisms have evolved to break down the constraints of time and emotive viewpoint.
He goes on to argue:
Fictional or genre based narrative stories aren’t always afforded the luxury of a voiceover. Many of my VR projects have started earnestly as VR ‘stories’, but ultimately descended into something akin to voyeuristic explorations, full of audio or action cues designed to attract your attention to one part of the world, so that we can deliver something we feel is key. This is problematic to say the least. And always brings up the most frustrating of questions. What’s the point of doing this in VR? Wouldn’t this be better served in 16:9?
Max Planck director of Oculus Story Studio seems to agree.
VR is by its very nature real time and absent of what we would traditionally think of as a director. There’s no effective way to control the viewer’s gaze so we can’t control the story. That means that the traditional story structures fall down.
That means that VR is experiential. While you can tell a story, in the broad sense, you can’t tell a narrative (or at least we haven’t figured it out yet). That may sound like a roadblock but I don’t think it is. It just means that VR is a tool that’s different from what we’re used to and we need to find the right applications for it. If you play to VR’s strengths then that means putting the viewer in the scenario. This would work best when you want to elicit a certain emotional response. Situations where words, or even traditional video, may not convey the degree of feeling that you want.
Empathy is the ability understand how other people feel and this is no doubt amplified when you experience what they experience.
If VR is experiential rather than narrative then what are some examples of how this can be done? I’ve gathered a small list of examples where people are on the right track:
All of these examples show one of the biggest strengths of VR: removing the problem from the realm of the abstract. It’s one thing to intellectually know how these problems affect people but it’s an entirely other experience to be placed, even virtually, in that situation and see it for yourself.
While thinking about this article I’ve had a number of other applications pop in my head:
There’s a big future out there for VR and the non-profit world will be able to capitalize on it with a little thought and effort.
A lot of ink has been spilled about the alt-right this election season. As Trump's star is rising so too is that of the alt-right, an obscure (relatively speaking) political movement that found a home on websites like 4chan and Reddit. This hodge-podge of technocratic, racist, authoritarians have, scarily enough, gotten themselves a foothold on legitimacy over the past few months.
Vox has by far the the most nuanced look at the philosophy behind the movement that I've seen so far.
“But win or lose, Trump has shown that overt contempt for racial equality, naked tribalistic appeals to white racial solidarity, and vaguely authoritarian rhetoric can add up to a very successful campaign, at least within the Republican Party. That gives the alt-right new relevance, and helps convince its members that America might be ready for their ideas.
It also opens the door for a more sophisticated future candidate, one reared on alt-right arguments rather than stumbling into them the way Trump has. Such a candidate could effectively whip up an alt-right base of support, but potentially use it more intelligently and effectively than Trump. If this sounds fantastical, it’s worth remembering that open white supremacists like Strom Thurmond and James Eastland were serving in the US Senate 40, 30, even 20 years ago. Our current period without avowed white nationalists in power, backed by an organized constituency of the same, is the exception, not the norm.
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Image courtesy of Meredith Bell (bit.ly/birthday-cake-candles), used under a Creative Commons license
Twenty-five years ago today the Internet as we know it emerged from the birth canal that is Tim-Berners Lee brain. Well, actually, the first webpage was created the year before but it was August 23, 1991 when it became available to the public.
