So Many Acronymns – XR, MR, VR, AR

There are several key terms that define a shifted reality narrative. XR (expanded reality) is the current umbrella term that’s replaced MR (mixed reality). VR (virtual reality) is derived from the French réalité virtuelle and generally refers to an experience that typically involves a headset which increases your regular 220 degree vision to 360 degrees. “It’s incredibly immersive to put you in another world. Once you put on a headset, there’s a bunch of scientific evidence out there that now states that you disassociate from your real reality within seven seconds,” adds Morrison.

AR (augmented reality), was popularized by any kind of reality that augments your reality often through your telephone. “For example, I have an AR app and I have an AR book in front of me, which is a physical book. On the page, you’ve got the image of the antagonist, which is a little hairy dwarf with a hammer. When you open your AR app and hold your phone over the image, the dwarf pops up off the page and is standing there as a 3D character.” All this while still the user is present in the real world.

Christopher Morrison

AR is also known as the mirror world. Morrison cites the “pass-through” option Google Maps as the best example where you hold up your phone and if you use the pass-through option, and a dotted line tracks your direction to a destination in real time as you move.

There is no single defining technology applicable to all these realities. “The metaverses are here, but they’re not interconnected yet,” he claims, because it’s still in its infancy.

If writers are looking to create XR worlds they can begin with the Unity or Unreal engines which are game engines.

Morrison notes that XR is a way of filming more than a way of telling stories. He likens it to the introduction of cinema technologies like Kinetoscope, Cinemascope and Panavision.

“360 filmmaking is a type of VR. It just means that you’re filming people as opposed to animating 3D objects. And you watch it in 360 cinema way.”

“This is a great opportunity to break the three-act structure tradition, the obsession with conflict that we’ve been taught is the center of every story.” It also challenges the tradition of every scene having to lead into the next scene.

“An immersive experience is a chance to explore much more in-depth character where you can break the cause and effect cycle to immense effect without the confusion that a passive experience leaves you with. It’s less jarring because this is how life works. It’s a chance for art to reflect life in a much more authentic way.”

Traditional three-act structure is concerned with a curated reality created by shrinking time to make drama happen now. XR is more interested real time experiences.

Like all stories, metaverses aren’t restricted to a particular genre. Morrison believes horror is a genre that excels in the metaverse world. He’s a self-professed genre fan whose focus is to bring genre into these storytelling spaces. “If you manipulate it properly, you can really tap into something incredibly primal and interesting when you are immersed in that world.”

“I think the horror experiences that fail are the ones that keep that tension grinding at a relentlessly high level and people just take off the headset. That’s the other great thing about this. It’s just like rip off the headset and you’re done.”

Christopher Morrison uses Richie’s Plank Experience as an example of a psychological horror that works well in the VR space where you can clone a real-world object into the virtual world.

“You’re on a giant scaffold, and they dare you to walk out on a series of wooden ledges and just hang out. Your body can’t tell if you’re up that high or not. Obviously, for those of us who have a fear of heights and a little bit of vertigo, this sounds like torture. But to other people, the discomfort is fun.”

Naturally, the stories will evolve as the technology improves and different writers with different attitudes enter the space. “This is a great place to explore character.” Morrison also states that themes and deeper images resonate better with him because they operate on a more rapid, tangible subconscious level. “You need to intellectually parse traditional cause and effect stories.”

You have to give away a little bit more of that authorial eye to the user, and allow them to uncover all of this information that you’ve placed in the environment. 

Richie’s Plank Experience on Steam

Another benefit of VR is that users choose the characters they want to get to know better and spend time with rather than having them dictated by traditional media.

Traditional metaverses relied on users selecting an avatar from a fixed menu. “Now there is a metaverse space called VR chat where you can basically make any kind of avatar you want.” Creators should also listen in on the chats to see users interact with each other as they’re developing their properties.

The experience you want to create determines the level of detail in the world you create. “What is the entry point for the audience? Is it going be a third person or a first person perspective?” Many of these decisions are answered as the story unfolds into various iterations. This process is similar to the animation pipeline because many creative decisions change over time.

XR stories can be as diffuse as the creators’ imaginations allow. Writers can also opt for a spiral structure where “you can layer in a story in a certain way that is slightly guided.” The term was coined by Jane Alison in her book Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative. Rather than adhering to Aristotle’s three-act structure, she studied other story structures from nature.

Spiral Stories

Spiral storytelling challenges the cause and effect model. Spirals allow you to loop backwards and forwards rather than following a line path. Morrison uses Kar-Wai Wong’s In the Mood for Love as an example. “It’s a love story that never consummates. Not only does it never consummate physically, they don’t even get a chance to say they love each other.”

“It spirals around that relationship. We’re always going back to that relationship. And we’re going back to a place. And that place is they both live in the same apartment complex. So there’s this corridor that we keep spinning around. We keep going back and we’re not necessarily even following the main characters when they’re in the corridor. We don’t necessarily know what time it is. The story still has a great amount of momentum, but it keeps spiralling around a location and a relationship.”

In The Mood For Love

Despite metaverses containing video game DNA, ratings darling The Last Of Us is arguably a game trying to be TV series. “It has a strong authorial point of view, but the way the characters embody the story is very ‘gamey.’ The game stops constantly for cut scenes – short animated movies you have no control over,” declares Morrison.

“Once the cut scene is over, you are immediately placed in the consequences of that. And you have to deal with the emotional and the physical consequences of whatever just happened. Neil Druckmann, who is the writer of those games, is brilliant at it.”

Breaking In

If you’re completely new to metaverses, a good place to start is to attend game jams and meet other creators who need writers. There is more opportunity in video games than filmmaking these days. “Creators build a game in 24 – 72 hours. That’s their goal.” Writers can market themselves as narrative designers or narrative leads and try to inject as much story into a game as possible. There are also game festivals where you can also meet other people. Reach out on LinkedIn or other social media to connect.

The majority of people at these events are tech-minded. Given the push for stronger game narratives, there are real opportunities for writers. Advertise that you’re a film or TV writer. You could even be a playwright, novelist or write industry articles for blogs or magazines.

The capacity of metaverses is not known. Not all the emerging technologies will easily lend themselves to your stories. Experiment. Play in the sandbox to see how each one informs your process. “We’re at the birth of a new media. This is the metaverse. This is virtual reality. It’s not filmed reality,” advises Morrison.

“We have a chance to create worlds in a completely new way that have new physics and new rules for interaction for society. And I honestly think we need new stories and new story structures to reinvent society right now.”

“We can choose compassion, cooperation and adaptation over conflict. The metaverse and XR are the media to do it in because we can reflect a real reality back at us that is divorced from conflict-obsessed three-act structure.”

What’s fascinating is that it’s been argued that streamers have become a mature medium, and in only a few short years they’re consolidating with many gone the way of the traditional four-wall theater.