The Architecture of Interactive Storytelling
Stories in Virtual Spaces

first draft v 24/07/00
								by Michael Nitsche
								word count: 11.510

Contents

Introduction							p 3

Space in VR – Space in Reality – Space in Film	p 4

The drama in the space - How do space and 
narrative affect each other?				p 7

The drama in the creature - How do inhabitants 
and narrative affect each other?				p 16

The drama and the user - What is the user’s 
position in the story world?					p 21

Conclusion and outlook					p 26

Bibliography							p 28

Introduction

The rise of Information Technology has a massive impact on various levels of our society. One of these levels is architecture.

The digital evolution is changing future architecture, including urban concepts, housing and the design process itself. On the “hardware side” computers melt with buildings. Audio-visual recognition systems are implanted in “intelligent rooms” where “the computer is drawn out into the world of the people” (Brooks, 1997 p.1) and into architectural structures. “Increasingly, computers will meld seamlessly into the fabric of buildings and buildings themselves will become computers-the outcome of a long evolution.” (Mitchell, 1995 )

On the “software side” big computer networks will change the way we work, communicate, relax, shop, learn … live (Mitchell, 1995, Friedrichs, 1996, Mitchell, 1999). 

This, in return, will change the way that offices, meeting spaces, recreation areas, shops, and universities will be built. The Darwin College library, where these words are typed into a computer at this moment in July 2000 already mirrors this development as it is not built around books (like the new British Library with its symbolic cube of books in the centre) but around four computer rooms.

This paper deals not with the effects of this change in the “real”, solid world. Instead, it addresses the new opportunities that open up for the design of purely digital spaces, spaces that have no representation in the solid world. Such spaces have their own specifics and qualities founded in their digital nature.
One fundamental difference between solid and virtual architecture is their different origin. While solid architecture changes existing space, virtual environments are dematerialised creations of data with no physical existence. 
Virtual architecture does not change a space - it creates an imaginary new space. A virtual world, or VR world denotes any computer-generated three dimensional spatial structure that can be “visited” by a human user.

The creation of this new space needs a designer. At its heart it is still an original spatial construction and, therefore, needs a virtual architect / designer.

In this respect, this text bears a resemblance to Novak’s concept of “liquid architecture” (Novak, 1996). Novak is using computer-generated images to widen the space for architectural design.

Architecture arises from excess over need, the extra effort added over and above the satisfaction of the limited requirements that establish the excuse for the effort involved in any complex construction. If interactivity and connectivity characterize the new technologies, what must be learned is how to provide interactivities and connectivities that provide excess over need. (Novak, 1996)

The dematerialisation of virtual architecture allows the designer to build the form independently of physical need, but follow different patterns - like complex algorithms (some of Novak’s work) or music (as mentioned in Campbell, 1996).

[would be very nice to have one or two example pictures here get from]

No matter whether one follows the rules of math or the musical traditions - if the virtual world is not shaped in a way that makes it understandable and accessible for its human visitor it “would exist as sculpture in its own universe” (Campbell referring to Novak in: Campbell, 1996). A sculpture like this would shrink the human being to a mere onlooker always outside the architectural structure. To draw visitors inside, the architectural structure has to use an accessible pattern as its design criterion. 

This paper will address the pattern of storytelling as a criterion for shaping virtual spaces. Storytelling offers very old and elaborate techniques for the structure of different elements towards a meaningful whole. 

Telling a story includes creating context out of content and it is this integration of a viewpoint and the process of interpretation that most clearly shows the difference between the concept of “liquid architecture” and “digital storytelling”. The former concentrates on the creation of new spaces - the later relies on a interpretation of the space to fill it with a meaning. 
While a designer following the idea of liquid architecture reaches out to develop new architectural universes, a storyteller is searching for a viewpoint, an interpretation of something that is meaningful in our lives to be represented within these universes.

The task of this paper, then, is to describe possible approaches to how spatial structure and narrative structure affect each other. I will outline two different concepts and address the position of the visitor, the user, inside these worlds before I close with a prospect on future developments.

From summer 1999 to summer 2000 I was the lead designer on a joint research project between the National Film and Television School, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and the Cambridge University Moving Image Studio. At the Sony development studio Cambridge we developed a running demo for an interactive narrative three-dimensional work for the Sony Playstation, a console “box” which allows players to plug in to a TV set and play an interactive game using the screen. 
Most of my examples and references will be drawn from this research project, which was the practical experiment where I tested my theories about the relationship of narrative and drama to spatiality in interactive digital environments.

Space in VR  - Space in Reality - Space in Film

Creating new virtual space purely from knowledge instead of nature encapsulates some important qualities in itself. This space has no history, no social context, no native inhabitants, no limitation in terms of height, depth, or width, and it does not exist in a natural environment. Most physical constraints are of no importance to virtual spaces, especially as the interaction with them does not have to be limited by physical restrictions. In some worlds the visitors can fly (for example in: Blaxxun’s Cybertown), change shape (in most worlds including, Avaterra’s Vzones), and walk through walls (for example: OnLive worlds). Virtual Reality does not depend on Newton or Einstein - at least not in terms of content. 

But what is still evident is an “inside”. This “inside” is defined by two elements: exclusion of an “outside” and inclusion in a defined environment. 

Inside - Outside

You cannot go to the world wide web as the web itself is “nowhere in particular but everywhere at once” (Mitchell, 1995). Instead, you still have to log in. This process defines the outside of virtual spaces. There are people who have “access” and more people who don’t. The same can be said about other offline virtual worlds such as Sony Playstation games, or PC titles. Those who do not possess the necessary hard- and software cannot log in, so must stay outside. Even within virtual spaces there are restricted access zones where only few people are allowed to enter, such as private chat rooms, individual homes owned by the users, or hidden extras in the game world.

Once you are inside the virtual world this world appears to be a defined space. It offers the user the ability “to focus on one meaningful, coherent VE [ = Virtual Environment] stimulus set” (Witmer/Singer 1998 p. 226). 
The user achieves a presence in the virtual world. The quality criteria and terms of measurement of this presence is a point of debate (Slater, 1999 argues with Witmer/Singer about their questionnaire designed to measure it). 
It is this presence in the virtual environment that can cause the feeling of disorientation when you switch off the computer and “return” to the “outside” real world. And it is the immersion in the virtual world that enhances this presence and creates the impression of a definite and closed space. This paper picks up the presence-discussion only in regard to the “closed space” characteristic of a virtual environment.

Inside a virtual environment - whether it is a single player game like Sony Playstation’s MediEvil or an online world like their Everquest - the user will receive the impression of a defined, coherent, and closed space. One can move and look everywhere in this space. Although such virtual places have boundaries they are generally accessible within defined limitations.

Film space

Other fictional narratives like films, radio plays, or books might invoke a comparable feeling of immersion, but the main difference between synthetic digital 3D spaces and these media is, that those traditional media create the space in the individual imagination of the audience. A novel’s space, for example, comes to life only in each reader’s fantasy and may manifest in each fantasy differently. In virtual worlds different users can enter exactly the same spatial structure. The space itself can be distributed - “architecture has become transmissible” (Novak, 1996).

The flexibility of VR space allows it to function in a comparable narrative way to film space. It can dramatise the event through artificial lighting, special sound design, visual effects, and change of the space itself. In this regard VR can appropriately be envisioned as a stage or a film set and this paper will refer to possible ways to do this. But there is an important difference between a film set and a VR world.

Film sets are not coherent and closed spaces. The cinematic space becomes alive only through the perception of the audience once the movie is edited and the audience unconsciously constructs the space of the cinematic action. But if this audience were to step into the architectural space of the film set and take control over the camera they would see a modern film studio at the point where the set design ends. The space would have no coherence, the illusion would be broken. 

VR worlds allow exactly this step into the architectural space including a free navigation inside it without breaking the coherence of the narrative space, the “meaningful, coherent (…) stimulus set” (Witmer/Singer 1998). 

Real space

It is here that VR worlds bear a close resemblance to solid architectural space. Both can be experienced as a place in its own right independent of an extra imaginative process like re-construction of the place via understanding the editing process of a film or the literary twists of a novel. Both the solid architecture’s and the virtual world’s space are confined and structured that the exploration of the environment can be left to the visitor / user. To a visitor VR spaces seem to be as solid and closed as real architecture. This is why Computer Added Design walkthroughs through non-existent buildings are useful.

But in VR the impression of a coherent, probably closed space is artificially generated. Virtual worlds have a representational quality, but can vary this option in order to enhance the dramatic impact of the narrative. 
A seemingly coherent space can include, in fact, various spatially illogical twists and alterations that belie this coherence but use it to deliver story elements to the user. This feature will be discussed in the chapter “Editing space” below.

Narrative VR

Narrative VR worlds attempt to take the best of the two worlds of real space and dramatised film space and combine them into something new. 

Witmer/Singer used several measurements to define the level of presence in VR worlds. Among them are “anticipation of events”, “consistency of the multimodal information”, which are qualities of basic cinematic storytelling (e.g. Howard/Mabley, 1993 p. 74f) leading to one possible reward of successful storytelling: the “meaningfulness of [the] experience” (Witmer/Singer 1998 p. 229).

Narrative VR worlds as they are discussed in this paper tell stories and awaken emotional responses to these stories within a space that is accessible comparable to a solid architectural environment. But as the definition of this space is much more flexible than solid, “real” architecture, there are new criteria needed to construct narrative VR worlds.

In the way that architecture has utilized the physical attributes of man to measure the dimensions of buildings, it is perhaps fitting to look towards the various gauges of human emotion for a model in the creation of immaterial, digital environments. (Lin, 1997) 

The approach this paper takes is that basic storytelling delivers this chance to create worlds with emotional impact by combining (cinematic) story structure with architectural structure through the flexibility of digital media. 

I will sketch two probable strategies for combining VR space with narrative. One will include the narrative elements within the spatial structure; the other will discuss the concept of leaving the space almost content-free but implementing the drama through “dramatic creatures” that inhabit this place and deliver a dramatic experience to the user.

The drama in the space
How do space and narrative affect each other?

One of the major parallels between solid and virtual architecture is that both enable interactive accessible movement through space. The question of how this movement is structured becomes essentially important. 

I argue that moving through the virtual space and exploring it is the digital counterpart to “getting lost” in a book or immersed in a film. One follows the VR world’s narrative by spatial movement in a virtual architecture. The is user the USS Enterprise on her way through a “story space” (Michael Joyce) universe, or Ulysses crossing an “ocean of streams of story” (Weinbren referring to Rushdie; Weinbren, 1995). 
The physical form of this movement differs between solid and liquid architecture. Instead of kinesthic movement, the physical actions are “ergodic participation” (Aarseth, 1997). Nevertheless, both forms are experienced as movements through space.

Cognitive map

Movement in architectural structures - whether they are solid or virtual - depends heavily on the creation of a cognitive map of this structure. During the progress of orientation inside a VR environment one builds up a mental map of the place, just as one does during a walk through a real city or any kind of solid structure.

Without the constraints of the physical world, the participant is left with few cues of how to explore and understand the virtual realm. Wayfinding, the dynamic process of using our spatial ability and navigational awareness of an environment to reach a desired destination (Satalich 7), is accomplished by the development of and reference to a cognitive map. A cognitive map is the means by which information about the relative location and attributes of one’s environment is acquired, coded, stored, recalled, and decoded. (Campbell, 1996)

Some early experiments comparing orientation within VR worlds with orientation inside solid structures revealed problems in the creation of a cognitive map in VR. There was less precision in the measurement of distance and less precise orientation (Henry, 1992). This was mainly due to the lack of kinesthetic feedback - the real body does not move the way the virtual one does - and inferior graphical representation. Other disadvantages were unfamiliarity with the interface and the time it took users to become familiar with the VR (Satalich, 1995).

However, there are also strong arguments for the value and strength of cognitive maps in VR. 
While there is still a lack of physical body-movement, the graphical representation is improving at an exponential rate. As the space is represented better and better, its intrinsic structures become more and more recognisable, which enables the use of distinct locations such as landmarks to enhance the construction of a cognitive map in VR (Elvins/Nadeau/Kirsh, 1997). The better the visual representation of such a virtual landmark, the easier it can be seen, recognised, memorised, remembered, and finally put in the context of a growing cognitive map of the virtual world.

Furthermore, the virtual architecture I am referring to in this paper does not have to relate in any way to a space in reality - as it had to in the studies of Henry and Satalich, who were concerned with simulations not fictions. In fiction, the orientation only needs to function within the VR world. The measurements do not have to precise though they have to be coherent. This is also true for cinematic space. Hitchcock’s way to show his hero’s acrophobia in Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958, USA) does not follow physical human perception but consists of a camera trick. It interprets the perception and changes its spatial presentation in order to dramatise it.

Finally, the wide-spread acceptance of 3D game environments such as Quake opened the field of virtual architecture to an immense audience and established a common interface. Instead of heavy and expensive head-mounted displays and motion tracking systems, most VR experiences today use modern graphic cards in recent PCs with keyboard and mouse as input devices. 
Having recognised this spreading acceptance and the new graphical standards, the Quake engine has found its way into architectural representation as well as academic research. The research project “Exploiting the Internet” (1998-2000) at the Martin Centre (department of architecture University of Cambridge) the model of the to-be-build Cambridge Microsoft lab was created as a Quake world and it could be downloaded from the Internet. This way different architects and participants could explore the architectural structure like a computer game.

On the grounds of Quake’s wide spread acceptance I argue that the best interface is not the least obtrusive, but the one that is the easiest to accept. Game consoles, for example, use extremely simple interfaces but offer a wide range of virtual worlds - while much VR research is looking for the least obtrusive input device (e.g. in a CAVE) but offer access only to very few people. These approaches do not contradict each other but the practical advantages and actual success of the former is evident.

Story map

A narrative virtual world combines the spatially defined cognitive map of the environment by means of a narrative. The result is a “story map”. This story map is not only defined by the spatial structure but also by various conditions such as time, user activities, appearance, and randomness. The narrative in this case combines the spatial cognitive map with story content. 

I argue that this combination strengthens both: the spatial cognitive map as well as the immersion into the story. 

For example, a spatial landmark in a narrative world - like a fortress tower - can be filled with a classic narrative element like a princess trapped in the upper storey. Whether the player steers the princess upstairs who has to make her way down through the interior, or the travelling knight who has to search the exterior virtual world in order to find the lost key to the tower’s entrance, the landmark structure of the tower will grow in its importance. It becomes a goal, an obstacle, a point of interest instead of a mere point for orientation as it might be in a simulation or a real landscape.

Structuring the narrative interest is a typical storytelling technique - structuring the space is the architectural way of controlling this interest through spatial design. In co-ordinating the virtual story map the designer has to connect certain narrative elements to certain places. Individual places have to be arranged in the virtual landscape in such a way as to enhance the user’s exploration of the narrative. Exploring space and narrative melt together. The map of the space includes the twists and paths of the storyline that add up to a coherent narrative universe.

But does every narrative element suit every location?

Genus loci

The “genus loci” of a real place is connected to its character as well as its spatial shape and its position in the surrounding systems. The term describes a place’s spiritual identity  - if one accepts the notion of such a thing - founded in its specific qualities. 

But no living being ever died in a VR world, no living being was ever born in a VR world, one cannot dig for water to drink, or plant a tree to harvest fruit from, one cannot starve in VR. And only digital beings can be buried in digital cemeteries (e.g. Tamagotchis at http://www.mirskyland.com/tamagot/tamagot6.htm). This world’s presence depends on the availability of the server, the game console, the home computer. It is a mediated world.

The history of computer generated virtual worlds is only just beginning, social connections are forming rapidly but predominantly seem to focus on the community level (Rheingold, 1993), not on a spatial one. 

Nevertheless, virtual worlds can have a “genus loci” and, in fact, a number of these worlds do have exactly that. 
One basic necessity for that is a high level of immersion, which is closely connected to technical features such as the interface, the graphical representation, and the audio quality. The elaborated audio-visual worlds of titles such as Unreal, Spyro, or The Resident’s Bad Day on the Midway offer these features and there is no doubt that more current and upcoming titles will fine-tune lights, sounds, graphics, and movements to an astonishing extent. The “genus loci” of spaces like these is enhanced through multiple visits to the same place. Each time the player reaches the same position in the spatial cognitive map and gets reminded of the events that have happened here before - on the level of the narrative exploration. The spiritual quality of such a space evolves from the whole virtual world and its diversity. Furthermore, virtual worlds can differentiate between each other. The result is a fine-tuning of each individual world that in the end invokes the same archetypal patterns that we use to define a “spiritual entity”.

Maybe more interesting is that even very simple VR representations still transport certified qualities attached to their space. “The logic of immediacy is also at work in non-immersive digital graphics” (Bolter, 1997). 
A VR experiment at the Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta logged acrophobics in a very simple virtual world where they would travel upwards with an elevator. 

The experiment works; the acrophobics are almost as afraid in this virtual space as they are in the real world. They are frightened even though this is not a very realistic scene, even though the shapes are very simple, the colors are artificially bright, and there is no sense of atmosphere. (Bolter 1997a)

The quality of the space depends on the qualities of the people who enter it. VR worlds lack the very strong connection the solid architecture offers in this respect, as the solid structures are built into the real world and do interact with our daily real life. 
Nevertheless, virtual worlds still evoke comparable  “almost as” strong feelings. If they are focusing these emotions, that is.

While the focusing during the Georgia Tech experiment was implemented via the selection of participants in the test, narrative spaces will focus by using storytelling techniques inside their story maps. Depending on what is implement where in the story world, one can structure, time, activate and resolve the emotional impact of events within the world.

Creating story worlds

During the research of the Common Tales project conducted 1999-2000 at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe we generated virtual spaces that included various narrative details such as camera positions, conditional access, sound elements, pre-scripted scenes, limitation of interactive access, movement patterns, traps and rewards etc. in the virtual architecture. 
In order to implement these features the programmers developed a basic scripting language, a Director Script, that works on its own level above the original code written in C. 

[maybe a list of commands from this director script?]

The digital polygon structure of the Common Tales environment looks similar to an architectural CAD model - its internal infrastructure, though, solely relates to the story conditions of the narrative. 
Instead of any reference to realistic human needs in a solid architectural structure - such as water supply, electricity, natural light, weather conditions, or public transportation systems - Common Tales’ VR focuses on dramatising its own ingredients towards a narrative experience for the user. 
Steam jets are activated and hiss at the characters to complicate their progress, dangerous routes are constructed in order to dramatise the exploration of the space to its full extend, earthquake-like rumbling and appropriate sound design indicate the overall danger and a sense of “time is running out” as the scene sketched here happens in the engine room of a sinking ship.

[pictures here]

Common Tales optimises the dramatisation of space as it uses two main heroes. The user can switch between them and participate in their ongoing storyline. This draws a lot attention to the story between both heroes - to the space between them.
Accordingly a lot of the Director Script’s commands refer to this space. Camera viewpoints can be activated that either include both character (and whatever else that had to be included), or automatically generate a countershot from one character to the other, or jump to a close-up as a reaction shot to the actions of the other character. In addition, some character behaviour was implemented, like a “follow the other character” command or a “go to a certain position” command. As the main conflict in Common Tales is driven by its two characters the narrative and visually represented space between them grew in importance. That is why we included a “reaction” feature between both of them.

If one character gets hurt during the adventures in the engine room shown above, the other one will ask about his/her condition. In addition to the verbal reaction we implemented a camera feature. If one character got hit a random algorithm caused a cut to a camera view from the hurt character towards the save one. 
Both elements, the verbal response and the camera cut, connect the heroes through the space between them and express their relationship to each other. This relation is the narrative backbone of Common Tales.

Another example is the initial puzzle of the engine room section. In order to solve this puzzle the player has to switch between the characters and navigate both of them through the virtual space - one at a time. Thus users have to generate a cognitive map of the space for the character they are controlling at one moment, but they also have to keep in mind where they left the second character. The space between both heroes is a flexible part of the user’s cognitive map of the virtual world. 
As this distance between the heroes changes constantly, the cognitive map varies all the time. Landmarks - such as the main hatch through which the heroes have to enter the central room in this structure - get dramatised in their emotional importance as landmarks between the heroes. 
The first task for the user is to overcome a blocked hatch by using them in logical teamwork. Once this puzzle is solved, one character will descend into the central room and the other one will stay upstairs. The player cannot switch between them at this moment.
Thus, the threshold of the hatch has turned into a separating landmark between the heroes and the hero left upstairs will have to pass it later on to rescue the character who went down first.

[possible: some screenshots of the mentioned countershot and compare them with typical stills from films? E.g. T2 when Arnie has to be let down into the lava]

Introducing thresholds, borderlines, and obstacles to overcome between the characters in order to show their individual and relationship’s development through the mastering of the obstacle is a simple but effective narrative technique.

[could be more specific here to Campbell, Vogler & Co - which could be stretched to a sub-article about dramatisation of landmarks; Campbell uses the metaphors of threshold, cave, descend and rise for storytelling effects]

Here, a narrative gets established as well as a visual connection between the characters through the space between them, while the user explores the surrounding space with either of them. Exploration of space and story were closely connected.

Edit space

Common Tales also uses the feature of the seemingly “closed” VR space as discussed above. Different spaces in Common Tales could be connected to each other via “Warp Zones”. Once a character, steered by the user, enters such a zone, he/she may be said to be teleported to another zone. The user does not realise this teleportation but only the change of the location. 

[pictures of the sewerage level??]

If the character walks through a Warp Zone, his co-ordinates inside the virtual world change immensely. The player does not notice this Warp effect, but experiences a coherent action. For example, stepping through a door might teleport a character into a far distant room, but the player will experience and assume that the room the character entered is just behind this door. Film editing connects different scenes together in a comparable way. For example, if a person passes through a door and the camera picks this person up on the other side, the audience connects both sides together into one space and interprets the movement of the person as a coherent walk. But during both shots the camera position did change, the lighting had to be re-arranged, the second room might be in a different TV studio, and there might have been hours, days, or even weeks between the day the first camera shot the person entering the door and the recording of the person leaving the door on the other side.
The main difference between cinematic editing and “editing space” is the element of time. The cut, the teleportation, between two spaces in VR is a immediate one. There is no post-production but instant graphical picture-generation. The user directs this unfolding picture-generation with the decision where to go inside the spatial structure. 
While in VR this kind of editing is unconsciously controlled by the user, films have special editors to arrange the pictures in a specific way. Both narrative media create seemingly closed and coherent spaces but use very different technologies to do so.
In films as well as in VR worlds this sense of closure can be used to add narrative elements.

The main setting of the Common Tales world is in the modern “real” world, but it has a magical twist to it. The basic premise is that fictional characters as they are invented in stories come to life in the real world. I tried to express this duality of fiction living inside reality in one part of the virtual world. 

As a metaphor for their fictional origin, the library is the centre for the fictional beings. I decided to use the Warp Zone capacity to illustrate this quality of this special place. Both opposing doors of the virtual library would lead into the same room and again towards opposing doors. This architectural impossibility was not recognised consciously by most of the users but nevertheless it added to the magical, real-but-also-fiction character of the space. 

[detail of the connection as a pencil sketch?]

Another way to dramatise what seems to be a closed and logic space by exactly breaking this closure and logic used Warp Zones not for the main player characters but for a computer controlled enemy.

Within a confined and closed space certain trigger zones were placed that would teleport a computer controlled enemy character to various locations within the space. Thus, the route of this character inside the confined space would never be a logical or coherent one. As this enemy character is armed and chasing the user controlled hero character, the user has constantly to anticipate where the enemy could be. By making this anticipation spatially impossible I broke the closure of the place and added an element of insecurity and surprise. 
The original intention was to create a feeling of suspense like in classic horror-films but although we had some freedom in the camera work we could not, within the parameters of the project, implement a camera operation that would cover these very specific demands. 

Viewing VR space

Virtual Reality has no natural point of view.

Virtual worlds have to be generated and so do the viewpoints inside them. These views are camera perspectives that have to be implemented in the virtual architecture. Thus, the designer not only creates the spaces but also its perception. Just like the world, this perception does not have to follow natural human physics. Instead, this designed viewpoint is very comparable to the cinematic use of cameras and editing (Drucker/Zeltzer, 1995; Nitsche, 1997; or “guided” interaction in Galyean, 1995). “Designing for the little screen on the desktop has the most in common with designing for the Big Screen (directing theatrical films).” (Ted Nelson in: Laurel, 1990 p. 243)

This leads to a cinema-like perception of digital worlds through the user.

These filmic ways of seeing are having an influence on how we construct and use such digital technologies as virtual reality and computer games. In other words, our understanding of these virtual environments is defined in part by our long experience with film. (Bolter, 1997a)

There is one fundamental difference: the virtual camera has more technical freedom than a real film camera (Drucker, 1994). But a greater freedom does not automatically mean that these technically available camera angles and positions are of any use within the VR. In order to tell a believable and stringent story, the camera has to generate understandable and accessible pictures for the user. These pictures have to relate to cinematic visual principles, such as the basic triangle principle (Noma/Okada in Magnenat Thalmann/Thalmann, 1992). 

But in movies the camera often dives into the interior world of the character and describes this characters inner feelings as a defined picture inculding framing, editing, filtering, lighting, special effects … on the cinema's screen so the audience gets closer to this interior of the character. Games historically went the other way: they throw outside elements on a character represented on the screen and the camera is used to mirror this exterior confrontation.

It is very difficult to find the balance between the linear directed camera work in a film and the non-linear, spatial camera narrative in a VR world (see for example Galyean, 1995 or the struggle of game desinger like Mike Backes in Martinez, 1995). That is why although their technical freedom is much bigger, most virtual worlds have very simplistic camera work. First person experiences such as “Quake”, “Unreal”, or typical head-mounted display VR worlds (e.g. Galyean’s “Dogmatic” see: Galyean, 1995) or strategic titles using an isometric graphic view like “Warcraft” or “Command and Conquer” offer even only one single point of view. Other titles, like more advanced three dimensional strategic games (e.g. “Ground Control”) offer the ability to move the camera around freely. But a directed point of view, as seen in films and on television, is rarely implemented successfully – although attempts are constantly made (e.g. “Metal Gear Solid” or “Silent Hill”). It is a field of still growing opportunities and with some – but slow progress. 

One can define two main reasons for the slowness in this development. 
One is technical, as the generation of a complicated camera movement in relation to the user’s interaction still requires a lot of processing power.
The other reason is the orientation of the user. As stated above, the immersion into a virtual world depends on easy access. Most users get spatially disorientated by a camera that works as a narrative device instead of a mere presentation tool of the action inside the world. 

But if one regards the concept of the story map as a mixture between spatial orientation – which might get weakened by cinematic camera presentation – and narrative orientation – which will get enhanced by elaborated camera work, then the implementation of better structured camera viewpoints is achievable. 

The easing in of film business skills won’t happen with visual effects (…) It will happen instead with the use of narrative and cinematography. (Steve Nesbitt  in: EDGE, August 1999)

A camera position defined by the story map, nevertheless, would differ from typical cinematic camera work.

Addressing this problem, Common Tales offered a “groupcamera” that would keep a definable list of objects and characters in view. 
A camera can be set at any given point in the virtual environment, that would include, for example, both main heroes and a landmark object. This enables camera views that still guarantee the player’s orientation, as one can relate to the virtual landmark, as well as a certain cinematic freedom, as the position of the camera would be free available to the designer. 
As the lead designer of Common Tales, I could implement either a detached bird’s point of view, or dramatise the action more by using a shoulder-height position to include the user more direct in the event. 

[screenshots?]

The dramatisation progresses on a spatial level, while in film the dramatic effect heavily depends on the editing of the different camera positions.
In retrospect, Common Tales did follow basically three major guidelines in the editing: either it was character motivated, or it was spatially motivated, or defined by the user’s interaction. But a detailed discussion of camera and editing options in virtual environments would break the limitations of this paper.

The language of the camera and the edited picture is one main vehicle for narrative in films. It is also the main representation vehicle in virtual worlds, but here it has to follow different rules. 
This paper cannot deliver this new set of rules, as they are currently just evolving, but it can argue that one focus has to be the spatial architecture surrounding the characters shown. And it further argues that if this architecture is connected to narrative content, then this point of view comes close to what the film camera can achieve in terms of narrative and emotional impact to the movie industry.

Conclusion drama in the space

In this first approach I introduced the implementation of dramatic narrative in the spatial structure of virtual worlds. I described several options to include narrative elements in VR by using the parallels between the spatial cognitive map and the structuring of a world’s narrative content. The connection of both elements lead to the story map. A map in which the user navigates through space and story alike.

The implicit qualities of virtual spaces will influence this navigation and add more conscious and unconscious narrative elements. These elements grow from a mixture of architectural design and storytelling, adding up to new possibilities such as the “editing of space” and spatial-cinematic camera positions that improve emotional impact. 

Using these features in combination with the idea of a virtual “genus loci” bears in itself a possible step towards a “poetics of virtual space” whose language would derive from several origins such as architecture, film, and computer games and head towards a description of the currently evolving narrative structures in VR. But it is too early, yet, to conceal the wild spreading and growing field of narrative VR. Neither the technological basis nor the content development has reached a status quo, yet. 

New titles will add new elements to this “poetics of virtual space”. Peter Molyneux’s “Black & White”, for example, promises to change the whole landscape and its atmosphere in accordance to the user’s interactions. Whether new approaches like this really work will only be proven over a longer time period.

The drama in the creature
How do inhabitants and narrative affect each other?

The first part of this paper concentrated on the implementation of drama in the virtual space itself. Dramatic elements were envisioned as part of the architectural structure.

This second argument will follow a different route. It approaches the dramatic elements not as qualities of space, but as qualities of the creatures inside a space. The virtual architecture itself - in this approach - would serve as a more or less plain and empty container for numerous creatures of different dramatic functions that deliver the narrative and drama as part of their existence inside these spaces.

Dramatic creatures

A lot of research has been invested in creating AI and convincing expressive, lifelike, intelligent agents. There are a lot of different uses for true artificial intelligence, but structured dramatic narrative is not necessarily one of them. 

A single-standing, life-imitating character is not what this paper suggests to enhance drama in virtual worlds. If ever AI research succeeds to create an agent that passes as a real living being in the way it communicates (e.g. by passing the Turing test) this being, then, has been designed to create real-life communication but not narrative storylines. Artificial intelligence heads towards life. This paper considers stories as meaningful interpretations of human experiences. Those stories are not “life” but interpret it.

Neither cinematic, nor literary, nor theatrical characters are “artificially intelligent”. They have dramatic functions and an often remarkably depth, but they are not self-standing beings. Accordingly, this paper will argue towards a dramatic intelligent creature instead of an artificial life-like one. 
There is already some remarkable research in this field (especially the OZ project at Carnegie Mellon University; see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/oz/web/oz.html). But my definition of dramatic creatures widens the notion of a character, or agent towards various fields.

The OZ project at Carnegie Mellon University does research on creatures that have a partial artificial life but also a “destiny”. 

This destiny is not an exact sequence of actions and events, but is 
subtly shaped by the system, which embodies dramatic theory and 
principle, in order to create a cathartic experience. 
(Kelso/Weyhrauch/Bates, 1993)

This destiny can add a lot of narrative and dramatic impact to characters and the experience in the world and is close to what this paper proclaims to be dramatic creatures. But the way this destiny is controlled in the OZ project is via a “Drama Manager” that not only controls the several characters, but also the main world and filters the whole action back through the interface to the user. Although, the focus here shifts towards the character side, the manager is very close to Laurel’s PLAYWRIGHT concept where “the system must assume ultimate responsibility for playwriting. As the master of the plot, the system has control of the form the experience may take” (Laurel, 1986 p. 29). Although, Laurel heads towards dramatic functions (Laurel, 1993 p. 90ff) she still includes a master-mind controlling the unfolding of these functions as a whole and steering each of the characters . 

Free creatures

A pure concept of dramatic creatures denies such a mastermind control. Instead, it depends on the inter-relation of the creatures. 

This inter-relation can include narrative techniques. A “destiny” or a basic “need versus mode” model - as it is common in the character creation of characters in films - can be implemented and drive different creatures’ actions towards a dramatic combination for the user.
I introduced a basic outline for modelling such a dramatic creature in dependency to its inner needs and the outer problem (Nitsche, 1997).

Model for possible character creation in interactive environments (Nitsche, 1997)

The model uses narrative defined elements such as backstory, motivation, conflict, need and expresses them via predefined communication patterns in response to the demands of the external virtual world to the character.

None of these elements has to (but could if it improves the drama) refer to “natural” and life-like needs. Instead of hunger, sleep, illness, or any other biological need as they are used in AI related titles such as “Creatures”, this model works on a more dramatic and much less independent level. 

The backstory can be a very complex net of elements that are predefined by a storyteller. This net leads to the creation of according communication patterns, which are still developed by the storyteller. 
For example, a creature presenting a young man who serves in the army would have an according communicative pattern when approaching other soldiers - and possible a different one when approaching his mother, who always opposed his decision to join the army. The according pattern would be selected depending whether this person meets his mother or his drill-sergeant. As well as whether this person meets another creature that only reminds him of either his mother or his sergeant.
The nature of this pattern is defined by the storyteller. It does not have to be natural or even logical. Instead, a lot of drama is derived from surprising and even illogical behaviour (e.g. Seger, 1990). The dramatic event of an exploration or a reversal depends on this not-life-like ability.

As long as this behaviour stays coherent with the character and the overall setting it does work - not as a simulation of artificial intelligence, but as a dramatic function. It “must tell us something we recognize as being true to life” (Murray, 1997 p. 243). 
This defines the basic difference between the artificial life research in agent development and the dramatic intelligence approach. Dramatic intelligence will not lead to a new biological (almost non-narrative) universe, but to a story space where characters with different needs, problems, and communication patterns do interact with each other, influencing each other’s internal world, and finally causing conflict from the tension set up by the story world designer. This tension will express itself as drama and narrative to the user who participates in this event. And depending on the quality of the story world designer, this narrative will include a value true to life.

In the end each creature is a single-standing being, not controlled and restricted by a master-system and the story telling art of the designer replaces the master-system.

Creature forms

Digital creatures can have very differing forms, tasks, and mechanisms. Like the young solider, they can be visible shapes representing certain beings (animals, humans, trees, landscape etc.). In addition to that there are many other invisible possible forms for dramatic creatures. 

The only thing they have in common is that they have a certain spatial presence at least to other creatures of the same nature. There cannot be two creatures of the same nature in the same space. 

Steven Drucker’s notion of a “camera agent” (Drucker, 1994) hints towards a representational task for dramatic creatures. But instead of one agent, as Drucker suggests, there can be many different camera creatures. Each one trying to “win” the user’s point of view. And this battle leads to varying camera angles for the user.
This struggle mirrors the concept of competing characters sketched out above. But now the contents of “backstory”, “need”, or “communication pattern” differ. 
For a  camera creature the “communication pattern” could include a zoom, a change of focus, or a filter - the “background story” could include a certain interaction pattern and when the user activates this pattern, this camera creature could be called to the user’s position - the “need” could be to show a certain element in the world, or to hide it, or to connect two elements in one shot (like Common Tales’ “groupcamera”).

Other creature forms would include sound (e.g. voice over, music, sound effects), temporal conditions (e.g. growing processes or ageing processes as well as reversed time effects), lights (e.g. hard or soft lights, dramatic lighting of other visible creatures, colour, or brightness), or “nature” elements (such as simulated rain, wind, temperature). 

Again, these elements do not serve a life-like simulation situation. Weather-creatures will not compete with each other on the basis of physical rules but of dramatic ones. A thunderstorm will not arise when the world’s physics enable them, but when the lonely hero get lost in the forest. And lightning will not strike when simulated electric tension gets released, but when the user looks up the hill to see the eerie house above Bate’s Motel.

Growing creatures

Another fundamental difference between dramatic intelligence and artificial intelligence is the development of the creatures. While true artificial intelligence will lead to self-sustained and - probably in the very end - self-aware beings far out of control from theeir original creators , a dramatic creature can develop only to a very limited extend. 

Just like movies often concentrate on one single moment of the character’s growth, one single step in their development and focus all the narrative power towards the representation and development of this step - dramatic intelligence enables only limited creature development but allows at the same time a strong concentration on this limited step.

For example, the model sketched above does not include a evolution of communication patterns, only a change between existing ones. The shape and functionality of these patterns is predefined by the story world designer and concentrated on the single small included development step the character might take in the narrative. All the narrative effort is heading to show this one step. 
This concentration allows a high dramatic impact, which, in return, can enhance the value and meaning of this development.

Creatures in space

For the clarity of the argument this paper divides between the dramatisation of an event through the spatial design and the dramatisation through the spaces inhabitants. But such an absolute distinction is not feasible in the practice of virtual worlds. 

The dramatic creatures as I describe them above can be envisioned as inhabitants living out drama instead of “life” in the space. This brings up the notion of designing space for these inhabitants, comparable to the design of a solid architectural structure in relation to the social context of the object’s position.

In the dramatisation of space, the designer implements the narrative into the spatial structure with very limited restrictions in terms of its inhabitants. Dramatic intelligence demands to think just the other way round. The space has to fit the active creatures and support them. Instead of channelling traffic, making recreation areas or commercial centres available, the infrastructure for dramatic creatures works along the qualities of believable and coherent development of conflict, crisis, and resolution. 

The dramatic creatures in this paper are defined by a  unique position in the virtual space. They have a defined spatial form – visible or invisible. Thus, their existence follows - at least in terms of spatial logic – some spatial mechanics of real world inhabitants. As there cannot be two of the same creatures in exactly the same place, their spatial co-existence has to be structured.

Dramatic creatures have to “battle” for maintaining, winning back, or extending their spatial position. The rules for this battle are defined in the communication patterns of the creatures. 

To construct a valuable, accessible and intense spatial structure for such a complex battle on different levels is a demanding task for virtual architects. But it clearly addresses the awareness of architects for building in a special social environment. Just like in planning urban areas or any kind of architecture with a social context (and it would be hard to think of one without a social context) the virtual world would be built around the needs and demands of the dramatic creatures. A world built not for real life but as a plain canvas for story functions.

There will be visible pathways for visible creatures but invisible streets for camera creatures, a likewise invisible underground network for sound creatures, or a tube system for light creatures … defining access, co-ordination of movements, and the shaping of co-existence of different kinds of creatures lead to a microcosmos of interactions. Just like the solid architecture of a major project leads to a microcosmos for its human inhabitants in the real world.

In its logic this form relates much more to traditional architectural qualities with the twist that the inhabitants of this space are not humans, but dramatic creatures / functions.

Conclusion drama in the creature

I outlined two major definitions of this model of dramatic intelligent creatures: not two of them can be in the same space and instead of one main master-mind there are numerous single minds.
These single dramatic creatures are driven not by life-like artificial intelligence but artificially constructed “dramatic intelligence” that is much more limited but also more condensed and therefore more powerful in a narrative setting. 

A user visiting such a constructed story world becomes part of the ongoing conflict. Here, camera creatures fight an invisible fight to present their point of view to the user, avatars and objects compete with each other and the user to reach their predefined goals within this world, obstacles and help functions arise from several creatures. For example, a light controlling creature might show the user’s way or block the way through darkness, a sound controlling one might lure users into traps or give them helpful hints, a time controlling one might freeze the surrounding or speed up the time representation etc.

Constructing the creatures and the space for a world like this will prove to be very demanding, but especially online multi-user worlds can encourage the users to add new creatures themselves and enrich the amount of “dramatic intelligence” in the world.

This addresses a critical issue in virtual worlds: the user’s position inside the VR environment.

The drama and the user
What is the user’s position in the story world?

As described above the content and function of virtual worlds is closely defined by the world’s creator. Nevertheless, the relationship between the story world creator and the user in virtual worlds differ from the traditional author - reader concept.

Interactive media changed the narrative viewpoint. It is not anymore the story of the author told to an audience in order to make them participate in what he has in his mind. Instead, the interactive experience, the spatial exploration and confrontation with the virtual beings becomes the story of the individual user inside the world. 
The story world creator has very limited control over those final movements inside the world (although there are computer games that shrink the freedom of the gameplay in order allow more narrative control; e.g. “Dragon’s Lair”, in part also “Shenmue”). 

It is possible to motivate the user’s decision to travle through the story world – but not to control this journey as strictly as in a film. In the end, it is the user who is responsible for the essential actions. And this responsibility transforms the user to a co-author of the interactive experience. 
But if the users are co-authors, what is their position inside the evolving  creation?

Inside? 

Logging into a virtual world can include a “logging in” to a character, a graphical representation. 
I argue that this logging in to a virtual representation does not automatically transfer the user from an onlooker to a character. 

There are a variety of research projects that give the user - in one way or the other - an “actor” role in the virtual narrative. 
In Laurel/Strickland’s “Placeholder” the user “slips” into a predefined creature in the virtual world “taking on its appearance, voice, perceptual characteristics, and means of locomotion” (Laurel/Strickland, 1994). The user steers this creature from a first person point of view. 
The “ALIVE” project at the MIT MediaLab uses “smart rooms” – a spin-off the “intelligent rooms” mentioned in the introduction of this paper (Brooks, 1997) – that use one wall as a mirror where the user can see a reflection of his real body projected into the virtual screenworld next to other virtual beings. User play themselves in the virtual world in front.
Naoko Tosa’s “Romeo and Juliet in Hades” puts the users in the position of Romeo or Juliet in a mangaesque variation of the Shakespeare play. The story characters’ avatars appear “as alter egos of the players on screen” (Nakatsu/Tosa/Ochi, 1998). Users steer these characters on the screen in front of them through motion tracking devices and voice input devices. 
“Acting in VR” at the UCL takes even one step further as it works on virtual rehearsals for actors in VR that will feed back in performances in the real world afterwards (Slater et al, 2000).

The UCL project implies a training of users to become actors. Although its final goal is a performance in the real world, the user has to learn and understand the mechanics of the virtual rehearsal first. 

However, in spite of the relative complexity of the interface and the paucity of what was possible, the actors learned to use it, and mostly to use it well, in a remarkably short amount of time. (Slater et al, 2000 p. 7)

This paper is not following the step back into a real world rehearsal, but a training in virtual acting seems to be appropriate, especially if one keeps the alienating effect of VR in mind (see Satalich, 1995). 
It takes a trained actor often a long time to understand and act out a certain character. And usually there is an experience director, who guides the actor during this difficult process.
Although the limitations of the interface might enhance the control – the “acting for” as Turkle would say (Sherry Turkle in: Provenzo, 1991 p. 22) – it also cuts off essential elements of what is part of a professional actor’s performance. And an enormous amount of users never reach the status of an actor of a believable, coherent character other than themselves (or part of themselves). Nevertheless, there is a strong tradition among role-playing titles that encourage users to get “into character”. Turkle discusses the social implications of this effect in greater extend (Turkle, 1995). Laurel demands in the impersonation of the user as “actor” in the form of a “human agent” in a VR environment (Laurel, 1986). But I think this approach falls short of the various other ways users can and do interact with virtual worlds.

I do not neglect the notion of a user taking part in the virtual world as an actor, but this is only one form of the user’s position inside virtual environments. If one takes a look at the commercial success of games using different user positions than the “acting” one, it sometimes seems that too much concentration was spend on this one technique while others were more or less ignored by the researchers.
There is a distinct difference between a participant in an action and an actor within the action. Controlling a character on-screen and participating in the action does not necessarily mean that one becomes this character. 

Users can connect to a complete world as a whole without identifying with any special element inside this world but connecting to them all either all at once (in the simple worlds of “Pong” or “Pac Man”) or connecting to them to more and more parts of it as they are revealed through the user’s actions (e.g. “Mario Brothers”, “Unreal”, or other level-based titles). The users do not necessarily learn more about the being they are steering - but more and more about the world they are steering this being in. They get better in the process of steering itself and learn the game mechanics.

Beyond the fantasy, there are always the rules. (...) When you play a video game you enter into the world of the programmers who made it.
(…) The video games reflect the computer within - in their animated graphics, in the rhythm they impose, in the kind of strategic thinking that they require." 
(Sherry Turkle quoted from Provenzo, Video Kids p. 22 + 34)

Utvich refers to the same interpretation of “world” when he suspects that “Unlike the linear narrative, the key dramatic relationship may be between the reader/player and the world of the program.” (Michael Utvich in: Stern, Utvich p. 5)
Users learn the rule system and behavioural pattern of the surrounding world (see e.g. Greenfield, 1987) but rarely – with the mentioned exception of some role-playing-experiences – does this feed back into a character they are controlling. This learning process includes the user as active part of the virtual world - but this part does not necessarily have to be a meaningful narrative or character-like one. 

Game vs Story

A lot of interactive titles are in themselves obstacles to overcome. The user beats “the system”  but not a character or narrative element within the system. Reaching the perfect score in “Pac-Man” (as it finally happened in 1999, 19 years after the release of the original coin-up machine) does not fulfil a narrative goal within the world of “Pac-Man” but defines the end of a battle against the game itself. The human user did defeat the computer and the game’s screen literally freezes the moment the last level is finished. The program crashes.
Fighting a game like this is a sport, not a narrative. Comparable sport-like techniques can be found in rudimentary multiplayer games such as “Quake III”. The goal is a “real world” highscore, comparable to an Olympic record - but not a meaningful experience within the world or with the character you are controlling. But there are possibilities to connect a user closer to one or more characters without addressing the “acting” position.

Common Tales includes the player in a relatively linear storyline that evolves around two main characters. The player can switch from one hero to the other and influence what happens to whom and how. What the player usually can not change is that something specific has to happen.

As the designer, I defined these events - but left it open to the player which character should deal with them and how exactly to solve them. Thus, the player is positioned in an ongoing narrative that does not include him as an “actor” but as a participator in the story of the two main heroes. 

Their basic story reflects traditional dramatic tension: Thomas, a materialistic, street-wise burglar, meets Fiz, an idealistic fairy sprung from a children’s book. Both have to grow together as a team before they develop into the classical motif of the two “battling lovers”. 

A major quality this constellation is the openness of the dramatic tension. It will never be really resolved whether they finally get together or split up. Like successful TV series, such as “Moonlighting” or “The X-files” there always remains a quantum of unresolved possible development between the heroes, that keeps the audience interested. 

Outside?

Common Tales does not channel the user’s interest towards one single character but strengthens it via a participation in the progress, “life”, and history of both characters.

[triangle graphic]

In order to strengthen this triangle the narrative part focused on three main elements: teamwork, torture, and rescue. Each of these actions has to be steered by the user, but expresses a different nuance of the relationship of the heroes involved.

Teamwork is used to illustrate the positive development of the virtual heroes’ relationship. The co-operation of the both heroes is a narrative goal of the narrative and the design, therefore, rewards teamwork with progress in the narrative as well as in the spatial progress. 
As the success of this teamwork depends on the users, the growth of the relationship depends on their accurate steering, as well. Users are the controlling brains for a successful teamwork operation.

Torture is used to express the necessary tension between the virtual characters. At some points in the Common Tales virtual world, the characters can only succeed in solving a problem if one “uses” the other one in a painful way. For example in order to break through a glass door and escape from a prison, one character has to stand on a swivel chair in order to give it enough weight. The other character has to push this chair and the first hero through the glass, which will break only if this set-up is complete. It is up to the user to decide who stands on the chair and who pushes the chair, but it is predefined, that this is the only way to escape from that prison.

Rescue is the relief of the tension between the characters. Common Tales tries to direct the rescue activity to the same character that did the torture before in order to balance the ongoing relationship and keep it believable. Again, the success and the final action of the rescue depend on the player and his interaction.

The user has no own representation inside the virtual world of Common Tales but nevertheless is part of the storyline. This mirrors the identification process of TV soaps and series where the fictional characters become so familiar to the audience that the borderlines between reality and fiction blur. Common Tales, in fact, is designed as a series. Each episode delivers a single standing narrative but the user can explore more background information about the main heroes. As the main heroes change only minimal in their character definition (another analogy to soaps and other TV serial structures), it is not important in which order the user approaches the episodes. Each time a new character twist is discovered, this information will be stored and future episodes will use this information. This way, the user creates an individual database of the main heroes that increases one’s own familiarity with the main characters but enables a non-linear approach to the series as a whole. 
It is not important in which order you play the individual episodes, but how much character information you have gathered so far.

Common Tales builds its main narrative tension from the differences of the fictional, imaginary world and the real, disillusioned world as both co-exist in the virtual world of the Common Tales universe.

Conclusion and outlook

The two concepts sketched in this paper head towards two different poles for future research: “dramatic intelligence” and the “poetics of virtual space”. This includes the search for new inhabitants of virtual space who will dramatise it on the one side and the exploration of architectural design that bears dramatic elements in its basic structure on the other side.

Future research in the “poetics of virtual space” might find it helpful to include more archaic storytelling theories such as Propp (Propp, 1968) and Campbell (Campbell, 1973; also Vogler, 1992 for a modern interpretation of Campbell towards cinematic storytelling). Both work with archetypal patterns in storytelling: Propp analysed “functions” in his discussion of Russian folk tales – Campbell defined a “hero circle” that uses spatial metaphors such as cave, descend, threshold to describe narrative. Some researchers (e.g. Laurel/Strickland in their “Placeholder” project) already headed into this direction, but approaching the narrative on the basis of the here sketched story map and interpreting archetypal functions in a spatial context has not been defined, yet. This approach, furthermore, had to take in account the very recent development of new interactive titles in order to develop a possible language for the “poetics of virtual space”.

Future research of “dramatic intelligence” might include more artificial intelligence as a steering behavioural pattern of dramatic creatures. This is a path that could not be covered by this paper, as it is part of the ongoing wide research in AI. Practical implementations could use AI characters and replace their “intelligent” behaviour partly by “dramatic” one. The concept demands a interdisciplinary approach as creatures of very different “natures” have to be defined and arranged. Architects of virtual spaces will replace the director of a film, as their structures will have to deliver the movement, conflict, tension, and relief in a certain time-dependant dramaturgy. This immediate time-dependency relates, in return, to the concept of Novak’s “liquid architecture”. 

Intrinsically different the “poetics of virtual space” and the “dramatic intelligence” will be combined, if finally implemented into an interactive adventure. This melting together mirrors the history of a solid architectural structure: however intelligent the design and however technically perfect the final building in the end it is the human being, who uses the structure and gives it its final form. This “use” can include the player in different positions as I discussed above. I put emphasis on a more TV-like position of the user towards the virtual world, that does not exclude interactive access, but defines the relationship between the heroes, narrative and the human operator in a possible different way than “acting for” the virtual being.

It is here, that I close the argument towards the concept of multi-user worlds.
The shape of a multi-user world changes with time and the depending on the different generations of people using the structure. 
The more users participate in the virtual environment and contribute their individual ideas to the space, the richer the world gets. In addition, the alienating effect shrinks, as the space becomes more and more familiar. The effect strengthens the participation in the virtual world and often leads to virtual communities.
There are already examples for this kind of world co-shaping. One can buy or rent 3D houses in virtual worlds or settle in virtual villages to follow a certain job (e.g. in “Ultima online” or “Cybertown”). Here the human inhabitants start to take over the world and adjust it to their wishes. The fast evolving technology will play an important role in the mechanics of these worlds.

Building flexible story worlds - on the grounds of the fast evolving technology - that address and enhance these opportunities is the next step. Keeping the social importance of the risen virtual communities in mind, as well as the still spreading network of digital networks, these worlds will have enormous impact. They are not spatially limited anymore, but globally available and the more narrative and meaning a world designer will be able to implement in them – the greater the responsibility.

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Vogler, Christopher (1992) The Writer´s Journey. Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City.

Weinbren, Grahame (1995) In the Ocean of Streams of Story. In: MFJ No. 28 (Spring 1995): Interactivities.

Witmer, Bob G./Singer Michael J. (1998) Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionaire. In: Presence, Vol 7, No 3, June 1998 p. 225-240.

Interactive titles

Active Worlds (Activeworlds.com Inc.) at: http://www.activeworlds.com

Black&White (Peter Molyneux) Lionhead Studios, UK (to be published in 2000)

Command and Conquer USA, PC 1996 / Playstation 1998, Westwood

Creatures (Steve Grand) UK, Cyberlife, 1996

Cybertown (Blaxxun Interactive) at: http://www.cybertown.com

Dragon’s Lair (Rick Dyer) USA, 1998, DVD-ROM re-release by Digital Leisure

Everquest (Verant Interactive Inc.) USA, 1999, Sony Online Entertainment

Ground Control (Martin Walfisz) USA, 2000, Massive Entertainment/Sierra

Mario Brothers (Shigeru Miyamoto) JP, 1986, Nintendo

MediEvil (Chris Sorrell) UK, 1998, SCEE.

Metal Gear Solid (Hideo Kojima) JP, 1997, Konami

OnLive Traveller World (Onlive Inc.) at: http://www.onlive.com

Pac Man (Tohru Iwatani) JP, 1980, Namco

Pong (Al Alcorn) USA, 1975, Atari

Quake III Arena (John Carmack) USA, 2000, id Software Inc.

The Residents Bad Day on the Midway (The Residents/Jim Luedtke) USA, 1995, Inscape

Shenmue (Yu Suzuki) JP, 2000, SEGA

Silent Hill USA, 1999, n.n., Konami

Spyro () 1998, Universal Interactive

Unreal (EPIC) USA, 1998, GT Interactive

Vzones (Avaterra.com Inc.) at: http://www.avaterra.com/

Warcraft USA, 1994, Blizzard Entertainment

Research Projects

Acting in VR (Chrysanthou/Slater/Steed et. al) University College London Department of Computer Science 1999-
at: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/vr/Projects/Acting/

ALIVE (various researchers) MIT MediaLab (1994?)
at: http://alive.www.media.mit.edu/projects/alive/

Common Tales (Michael Nitsche/Ludvig Lohse/Teun Hilte) National Film and Television School, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Cambridge Moving Image Studio 1999-2000

Dogmatic (Galyean) MIT MediaLab 1995
at: http://ic.www.media.mit.edu/icresearch/dogmatic.html

Exploiting the Internet (Mike Trinder) Martin Centre Research Project 1998-2000 
at: http://www.arct.cam.ac.uk/research/cadlab/internet/index.html
see also: 
http://www3.arct.cam.ac.uk/cl/index.shtml 
(only accessible from within the cam.ac.uk domain)

The OZ project (Joseph Bates/Michael Mateas/Phoebe Singers) Carnegie Mellon University (1992-1997?)
at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/oz/

Placeholder (Brenda Laurel/Rachel Strickland) Interval Research 1994
at: http://web.interval.com/projects/placeholder/index.html

Romeo and Juliet in Hades (Naoko Tosa) ATR Media Integration & Communication Research Laboratories 1998-1999 
at: http://www.mic.atr.co.jp/~tosa/it/index.html

Film and TV productions

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount, USA, 1960)

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount, USA, 1958)

Star Trek: The Next Generation. Ship in a bottle (Alexander Singer, Paramount, episode 138,  January, 25th, 1993)

Tron (Steven Lisberger, Walt Disney Pictures, USA, 1982)

The Truman Show (Peter Weir, Paramount, USA, 1998)