This post is part of an ongoing series about writing, storytelling, and critique in VR, in partnership with Galatea, a writing and narrative design management tool for immersive stories.
Storytelling in VR: the elusive holy grail. Everyone is trying to discover the “way to go”— that project or handbook that comes along and instantly enlightens us all on how to tell stories in this wonderful medium they way they’re meant to be told.
What if I told you we already know how to do it? It’s a little complicated and it takes some time to wrap your head around, but it’s already something we encounter and participate in every day: architecture.
After all, isn’t architecture really about embodying narratives? Isn’t architecture about spatial scripts and about getting people to act according to cues and narratives? People are silent in libraries; people stand close together in concerts, and people dance in clubs. It’s off-script to dance in a library. It’s off-script to read at a concert.
I’ll be referencing “Post-Architecture” later, so I’ll establish what it is here: it’s the Metamodern design philosophy that is not about designing space in itself, but about designing people through space. In Post-Architecture, space is the story, and you are the (narrative) design. In other words, it’s a design theory for VR.
Next Nature Habitat VR – A Case Study
Next Nature Habitat VR had its North American premiere at this year’s SXSW, where it fared surprisingly well, set against the backdrop of the bigger VR exhibits present at the festival. The reason for its relative success—according to many of its visitors—was its mode of communication.
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Source: VRScout