Combining Interactive Fiction with Cinematic Virtual Reality

This contribution discusses the creation of a new hybrid narrative form, the Interactive Fiction in cinematic Virtual Reality (IFcVR), consisting in interactive fiction films developed by means of cinematic virtual reality (360 degrees videos), whose narrative units are interlaced with each other according to an interactive narrative structure. This represents an improvement of cinematic Virtual Reality (cVR), a format that is currently receiving increasing attention by research and cinema but appears rather limited from the points of view of both narrative and entertainment in that users do not have any agency in the storyworld, which strongly restrains the ambition of VR to grant freedom to interactors within the immersive experience. This contribution illustrates the hybridization process that joins cVR and Interactive Fiction (IF) in order to create interactive immersive filmic experiences. Such process is not a trivial task, because it entails harmonizing paradigms based on different ways of transmitting and representing stories, and contributing to establish a suitable narratology for this form of interactive digital narrative. This study investigates such issues and presents a prototype IFcVR that was created and tested in order to show the feasibility of the idea. Results show that the narrative hybrid IFcVR is perceived by its users as an entertaining, narrative and interactive experience.