Drama and Context in Real-Time Virtual Environments: Use of Pre-Scripted Events as a Part of an Interactive Spatial Mediation Framework

We suggest that the dramatically engaging mediation of an experience of place should be built in as a fundamental capability of a compelling and meaningful virtual environment (VE). Our main objective is to develop flexible interactive techniques that supply VE’s with a coherent context and make the resulting ‘virtual place’ available to the user in a dramatically engaging way. To support the concept of narrative expressive space, we propose a three-layer multi-purpose spatial mediation framework that utilizes an interactive narrative structure to coordinate stylized dramatic camera work, lighting, effects and sound. We then describe the use of pre-scripted events as a layer in this framework and explain the inherent benefits and problems, using a single-user prototype environment as illustration. The work offers guidelines for the design of VE’s to all fields that combine narrativity and spatiality, such as interactive entertainment, education and architecture.