Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Furthermore, the design of your meeting space must recognize your audience's desire to remain con-
nected to their entire social network while they attend your presentation, especially if they are blogging or
text reporting through Twitter or some other live report. Also, if given the opportunity to run a local chat
in text while the audio/voice chat presentation is running, the audience will be commenting simultaneously,
illing up a visual chat channel somewhere on the screen.
So, how do you focus the audience's attention, direct their cameras to collect the appropriate visual narra-
tive, and allow them to connect with their networks in a meaningful supportive way? Three words deine the
solution: presence, affordance, and participation.
9.1.1 p
resenCe
Right now, you are probably logged in to at least one social site such as Facebook or Google+. Usually in the
chat box menus, there is an indicator that shows your presence there as well as your current ability or desire
to receive contact from others. This is a baseline virtual presence. From there, it ramps up, through tweets,
Facebook “likes,” blogs, and websites to the most important presence of all. This is known as stage presence
to some, charisma or personal magnetism to others. Stage presence is a combination of direct eye contact,
physical domination of the surrounding space (and this is not always directly related to your size), and the
sonority of the speaking voice. Without a stage presence, the speaker's message will be lost, no matter how
compelling the speaker's information is.
How do you support stage presence in a virtual meeting? There are several tools to utilize, but consider the
visual irst. We are visually oriented creatures, so the image of your speaker will be of paramount importance.
Remember, when the speaker looks into a camera, or webcam, he or she makes direct eye contact with who-
ever is watching. In this way, the speaker can make direct eye contact with the entire audience simultaneously.
The background behind the speaker should not be distracting or compete with the skin tones, and if possible,
it should be slightly out of focus. The lighting on the face should be comfortably bright and consistent over the
whole face. The speaker should not look trapped in the frame, so make sure the camera is far enough away
to have a little visual space above the speaker's head. You should also consider the emotional quality of your
background design and how that enhances the speaker's presence. Does it make the speaker look beautiful or
nondescript, important or insigniicant, competent or merely functional? If you are putting the speaker on a big
screen inside a virtual world, how is that screen presented to the audience? Giving the audiences an attachable
HUD (Heads-up Display) object containing streaming video of the real person speaking on camera while the
person's avatar speaks in a virtual world makes for a desktop full of compelling visuals, and the device allows
your audience to arrange the screen elements to their own speciic preference.
If your speaker is using an avatar, does that avatar represent the speaker in a way that supports his or her
message? If your speaker is using a nonhuman avatar, does your audience understand that avatar's symbolic
form or why the speaker chose to be a nonhuman manifestation in the virtual space?
Now, consider the audio. Make sure the microphones work well and are adjusted far enough away from
the speaker's mouth so he or she does not pop “
p
's” or you hear breathing. The sound of a human voice, pro-
duced clearly in a virtual space, immediately pulls the observer into the environment. When ampliied and
projected, a voice with a strong resonant sound can powerfully inluence the experience of the audience. All
of these elements, great and small, add up to creating a strong memorable presence in a virtual environment.
9.1.2 a
ffordanCe
In the physical world, affordance is the perceived and implied use of an object, or 3D space, usually indi-
cated by its design or markings [4,5]. For instance, if you set up a half ring of chairs in a room surrounding
