Narrative as virtual reality 2 : revisiting immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media
"When the first edition was written, the dominant form of electronic literature was hypertext fiction. The book devoted several chapters to hypertext theory, as well as to the difficulty of creating immersive hypertext narratives. Hypertextuality has lost none of its prominence as a principle of organization of the Web, but it is no longer considered avant-garde on the digital-literary scene. While the new forms that are currently being developed verify some of the recommendations made in NVR (shorter texts, greater reliance on multi-modality, self-referentiality and a tendency toward conceptual art), they generally avoid narrativity and its particular form of immersion, and even interactivity is no longer seen as indispensable. It is in the popular form of the video game that serious attempts are being made to reconcile immersion with interactivity. The second edition deals in greater detail with both the increase of narrativity in video games, and its loss in experimental digital literature. It also takes into consideration the creation of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, which implement the idea of virtual reality in a way not foreseen by VR theorists of the nineties"-- Provided by publisher
Print Book, English, 2015
Second edition View all formats and editions
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2015
291 s
9781421417974, 1421417979
1001718868
Introduction
Virtuality
The two (and thousand) faces of the virtual
VR technology as immersion and interactivity
The poetics of immersion
The text as world: theories of immersion
Varieties of immersion: spatial, temporal, emotional
The poetics of interactivity
The text as world versus the text as game
Texts without worlds: dysfunctionality as a form of play
The many forms of interactivity
Hypertext: the functions and effects of exploratory, external interactivity
Reconciling immersion and interactivity
Participatory interactivity from life situations to drama
Chasing the dream of the immersive, interactive narrative
Conclusion
Revised edition of: Narrative as virtual reality : immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media. 2001