VR failed when it was attempted in the 1990’s – motion tracking was imperfect, leading to users becoming nauseated. Additionally, the experiences took place in grimy arcades or in lobbies of movie theaters, and were too often seen as a spectacle that didn’t live up to the promise of physical immersion in a virtual environment. But with the advent of the modern Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive headsets, VR is making a roaring comeback. From empathy experiences to 3D drawing to videogames, VR experiences are proving to be engrossing and physically engaging.
For videogaming in particular, being able to quickly react to a zombie running at you and defending yourself by carefully moving your arm to line up a shot is an exhilarating experience. Arizona Sunshine, a modern VR videogame, is one such example of that experience. The player is thrust into an apocalyptic world and must fend off zombies by shooting them, throwing grenades at them, and generally evading them. Hearing a zombie come up behind you, physically turning around to see a raving monster in your face, and then having to quickly kill it is genuinely scary and exciting. This is where VR shines: through tracking the head motions of a player and then presenting to a player what would appear in front of them if they were truly in the virtual environment, the player feels present through vision and motion tracking. Many VR experiences even allow users to walk around a room, the motion tracked by cameras and allowing the player to really feel like they are walking around a completely different world.
In VR, emergent narratives and stories are told similarly as they are in videogames. VR too combines auditory, visual, and written content to present a narrative to the player. In VR, the primary means of keeping a user engaged is in the interaction, mostly in the motion tracking of head movements and handheld controllers. Just like in traditional videogames, these actions give way emergent narrative – a player aiming at a zombie and shooting it, for example. The physical motions are what really set VR apart from traditional videogames.
However, there is a piece of the experience that I believe is missing from this sense of presence one feels in a realistic VR setting: natural interaction with the inhabitants of the world around a user via dialogue. We’ve seen how dialogue in RPGs gives way to meaningful experiences with regards to explicit storytelling. If RPG-like storytelling is to translate into VR videogames, how do we reconcile the physical motions as player controls for a game with dialogue systems such as the Hub-and-Spokes system? Better yet, can we elevate these experiences by using a dialogue system which better fits VR?
You guessed it: yes, through chatbots. Let’s examine chatbots as a medium, and then discuss why they are so well suited for VR RPGs.
