im/material

Im/Material Event #2: Playing in Im/material Worlds

 Virtual Encounters with Material Worlds

This event was covered by an article in the Courier, which can be accessed here.

A Summary of Event #2

The second event in the im/material network series, Playing in Im/material Worlds, was held at Abertay University on 13 May 2019. The discussion tapped into experiences of the members of the panel, who are storytellers and game designers, specifically focusing on how they engage with and represent im/material things and places in different media. Robin Sloan, Senior Lecturer in Game Design at Abertay University, moderated the discussion, and the panel was formed by Lynn Love (Lecturer in Animation and Interactive Media at Abertay University), Mona Bozdog (Experience Designer and Lecturer in Immersive Experience Design at Abertay University), Sandy Louchart (Head of Undergraduate Programmes at the School of Simulation and Visualisation at Glasgow School of Art), and Simon Meek (V&A’s Dundee’s first Designer in Residence, and founder/creative director of The Secret Experiment).

What are the current trends around immersive experience and design?

While Virtual Reality (VR) represents a tiny proportion of immersive experiences, it dominates much of the conversation around the topic, and VR is currently driven by commercialism and the ‘gimmick of the immersive.’ While there is new, good work appearing, the panel identified that many industry players are still focused on the visual aspects of immersion and improving the hardware, to the detriment of the narrative, which they see as a critical area on which to focus. Currently, VR game narratives often focus on the director’s vision. This is somewhat ironic and counterintuitive, as you cannot control everything that happens in a VR environment as precisely as in traditional digital media. While not yet a trend, perhaps, the panel emphasized that developers need to allow the player to take ownership within the narrative by ‘creating a playground’, a change that requires taking a significantly different approach to design.

While much work to date has focused on the visual, as noted above, it was pointed out that VR needs to incorporate senses beyond the visual to enhance immersion. The way that we operate our senses in VR, and how this differs from our natural operation of them in the physical world was likewise noted as an area ready for further research and development. In this vein, it was noted that in VR there is currently too much focus on and use of the ‘neck’ as the controller, operating the scope of the visual field, as opposed to full body movement as is more common in naturalistic physical world interactions. Simon Meek pointed out that he uses his neck far more in VR experiences than he does in real life, leading to a subtle breaking of immersivity. Similarly, Sandy Louchart argued that each time hand-held controllers are used in a VR experience, it breaks the immersion because the controller-based interaction significantly diverges from the majority of our experiences of interacting with our surroundings. This lack of interaction fluency, he argues, is detrimental to our ability to seamlessly engage with the narrative and experiential aspects of immersive media that should be at their core.

What do you think about the current state of immersives – is the technology limiting our ability to link the material and immaterial worlds?

Games and play already cut across the everyday material world and our imagined worlds, and operate under their own sets of rules, agreed by individuals or groups. When we are designing play spaces in immersive media, ideally we are designing forms of play that cross and mix the material and immaterial worlds in new and interesting ways. The mixing of elements is important because entirely abstracted play without material supports or hooks is difficult to sustain, and play that is based entirely within the material realm misses imaginative and creative opportunities afforded by the immersive digital. The essential design challenge is in mixing these elements and crossing these boundaries in a satisfying way

The panel argued that, while VR transports the player to new immaterial world, it currently eliminates the material world around the user entirely, rather than providing connections between the two. The next generation of VR headsets are taking the desire to link these worlds into consideration, in that they are designed to be less isolating, either by providing a view through to the material world or through supporting multi-user interaction. Within the currently available technologies, Augmented Reality (AR) offers a more social immersive experience. In AR, multiple players can be grouped around the same thing and be immersed in the same experience. However, design challenges persist. For example, the immaterial element needs to be translucent enough to actually augment the space and yet realized enough to convincingly link the digital components firmly with the material world.

How do you view the focus on the linking of the physical and digital, and what are the opportunities?

While different choices will need to be made in the context of each project, the panel argued that, broadly speaking, replication of the material isn’t necessary to create experiential links; the material and immaterial should work together through the creation of points of connection, but they don’t need to overlap. The participants will fill in the gaps with both material and immaterial elements from their own experiences. There is an inherent value in the physical; this can be seen in museums as visitors experience the past through physical artefacts. In the commercial world, this is seen as an opportunity for companies: they often use nostalgia to create products that link people with past experiences.

From a games or playful media perspective, how would you define the audience?

While the term ‘audience’ may imply a passive spectator, games and playful media shift this definition. The panel agreed that of all the terms that could be used to define an audience (player, user, spectator, etc), player was the preferred definition because it is all-encompassing. The audience is thus defined as an active agent, with scope for varying levels of activity. In playful media in the context of immersives, while different people will engage with different aspects of the immersive experience at different levels of interaction, everyone contributes as a player at some point, whether they’re participating, spectating, or co-creating.

What are the opportunities to frame and invite play in digital and physical spaces?

Game designers need to take both the active participant and the non-playing audience into account, especially when the immersive experience is set up in a gallery or museum. Much like attending a sports event, watching a player face challenges in an immersive experience is akin to watching a live performance in which the outcome is not predetermined. While many immersive experiences are designed primarily with an eye to the needs and desires of a player, and therefore focus on engaging the player, it is important to be respectful of those who are not playing and to create opportunities and mechanisms for them to participate at levels with which they are comfortable. In short, the roles and desires of a non-playing audience must also be taken into account by designers. For example, are the events of the game broadcasted to the spectators in some way so that they can be part of the immersion, or does the hardware prevent them from knowing what the player is experiencing? It becomes a more meaningful and memorable experience if both types of audiences are afforded agency in the experience.

Are we at a point of transformation or continuity?

It is currently difficult to experiment with VR because it is perceived as a commercial space, not as a struggling art-form, so funding to create truly experimental approaches is difficult to secure. The big transformations will happen when there are more instances of interactive media provided by streaming platforms, like Netflix’s Bandersnatch. Currently the equipment required is too expensive and the knowledge required too specialised for the democratisation of VR. Sandy Louchart advocated for a YouTube approach to VR, where virtual spaces created by individuals could be shared through a library. Overall, the consensus seemed to be that VR hasn’t reached its potential yet, and it won’t until these issues of isolation, restricted narratives, and democratisation of production are addressed.