Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 16.6
Screen grab from Second Life showing the First World War Poetry Digital Archive, Frideswide region.
A complex recreation of the trenches used in WW1 exhibits poetry written by the soldiers of that war. This area relates
the experience of a mustard gas attack in sound, landscape, and visual text particles.
with audio recordings of the same material. You experience both diegesis (the narrative telling of a story) and
mimesis (the showing or enacting of a story) simultaneously in this virtual environment.
Spatial structure and temporal structure can become subjective in virtual environments, and that will
inluence the progression of narrative. One primary example of this is called
phasing
. In World of Warcraft
and other MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), the server holding the game con-
tent will selectively reveal (or phase) the content visible to a player depending on the quests the player has
achieved [2]. When a group of players is colocated and communicating, differences in what each one will
see in the environment can lead to confusion. The World of Warcraft server puts a “phased” icon near the
player's name card, but the group involved in a conversation or quest together may forget these differences
in the heat of battle.
If you decide to ponder this phenomenon, ask yourself these questions: How does the verbal/visual
language of my virtual environment create its own linguistic relativity? For instance, does it support the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that semantic structures will inluence the observer's perception of the world? And
if so, how does that shift my understanding of a world, inluence my social connections within the virtual
world, and impact my personal narrative? [3].
That is probably enough theory for now. You can revisit these concepts after you learn about how cameras,
their positions, and framing relate to narrative. Knowing how to set up a camera shot to support your chosen
style of narrative is critical to the success of your machinima.
