Janet Murray (Inventing the Medium):
- There is a tension between film and games as the model for VR.
- Since the interactor’s experience of agency is always the most important design value for digital environments, games are a more productive starting point.
- Hand controllers are key to success because they give us a presence in the virtual role, functioning as “threshold objects” when they mimic two-handed operations we can see.
- Virtual vehicles are a promising approach to constraining and empowering interaction.
- Documentary film approaches may work, shaping interaction as a visit (as I describe in Chapter 4 Immersion in Hamlet on the Holodeck). To be successful, designers need to invent:
- interaction conventions for navigating the space,
- cues to entice us to navigate,
- dramatic composition of the experience to rewards us for being in one place rather than another,
- a fourth wall equivalent to make clear what we can and cannot do.
If you’re at all interested in the narratology of VR, you need to read everything Janet Murray has written.