Virtual Realities: Case Studies in Immersion and Phenomenology 3030825469, 9783030825461

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Ready, Virtual Reality Consumer
Evangelists and Sceptics
Structure and Scope
The Phenomenology of Presence in VR
Phenomenology and Embodiment in VR
Chapter Overview: Case Studies in Violence and Trauma
Conclusion
References
Chapter 2: Phenomenology and the Virtual Reality Researcher-Critic
Introduction
Film Phenomenology and VR Phenomenology
VR and Embodiment
Case Study: VR Military Shooter Experience
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: On the Excitement of Measuring the Virtual Reality Audience
Introduction
Quantifying the VR User
Hypothesis Generation
Self-Report Surveys
Biometrics
Limitations—and Surprising Benefits—of Audience Quantification
Case Study: VR Zombie Games
Studies 1 and 2
Study 3
The Impact of VR Phenomenology
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy
Introduction
Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy: A Background
VRET in Practice
Assumptions and Categories of Realism in VRET
Category 1: Photorealism
Category 2: Authenticity of Scenarios, Events, Specific Details
Category 3: Immersion, Presence, Involvement and Interaction
Category 4: Specific/Abstract Environments
VR Phenomenology and Anxiety: A Reflection
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Virtual Reality, Trauma and Empathy
Part 1: User Interpretations
[08:46] (2015)
YouTube Prosumer/Viewer Comments on [08.46]
New Dimensions in Testimony (2017)
Part 2: Immersion and Testimony
Kiya (2016)
Collisions (2016)
Chernobyl (2016)
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Regulation of Violent Content in Virtual Reality
Introduction
Media-Effects Research
Assumptions of Impact: A Lack of Research
Virtual Bootcamps or Premature Hype?
VR Phenomenology and Violent VR
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Conclusion
The ‘Unknowability’ of VR
Contribution and Limitations
Future Research
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Virtual Realities Case Studies in Immersion and Phenomenology

Stuart Marshall Bender & Mick Broderick

Virtual Realities “Virtual Realities provides an engaging, wide-ranging tour of virtual reality and beyond; with a good eye for balanced appraisal, careful consideration, and understanding of VR in context. A nuanced guide to evaluating VR applications, with an important emphasis upon direct experience and the potential to help researchers and developers produce experiences capable of instigating more meaningful change in the world.” —Tom Garner, University of Portsmouth

Stuart Marshall Bender • Mick Broderick

Virtual Realities Case Studies in Immersion and Phenomenology

Stuart Marshall Bender School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry Curtin University Bentley, WA, Australia

Mick Broderick School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry Curtin University Bentley, WA, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-82546-1    ISBN 978-3-030-82547-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Westend61 GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland



Acknowledgements

We much appreciate the encouragement and enthusiasm of our past and present Palgrave editors, Shaun Vigil and Camille Davies, for accepting and shepherding the project. We thank editorial assistants Glenn Ramirez, Liam McLean and Jack Heeney and Springer production staff Antony Sami for their diligence. We also thank the original group of anonymous peer assessors and the final anonymous manuscript reader for their insights and suggestions. Thanks also to our proofreader Ceridwyn Clocherty for her conscientious and swift turnaround. We thank Tomoko Nishizaki and the curators of the Hiroshima International Film Festival for inviting our production Genbaku Dome VR to premiere there in November 2019, which enabled us to test some of our assumptions about VR with a transnational audience. Stuart thanks Professor Skip Rizzo and Professor Barbara Rothbaum for their detailed discussions and demonstrations of the VR exposure therapy system Bravemind, as well as an introduction to the team at Virtually Better. Stuart also thanks Mark Covey and the team at Motion Reality for their generous time and introduction to their sophisticate military simulation system. Mick thanks Dr Tony McHugh for discussing clinical and therapeutic approaches concerning trauma and PTSD over the years, and finally, Christine Spiegel for her ongoing support and good humour during the longer-than-expected gestation of this book.

v

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Phenomenology and the Virtual Reality Researcher-Critic 27 3 On the Excitement of Measuring the Virtual Reality Audience 53 4 Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy 77 5 Virtual Reality, Trauma and Empathy109 6 Regulation of Violent Content in Virtual Reality171 7 Conclusion197 Index211

vii

Abbreviations

AI Artificially intelligent/artificial intelligence AR Augmented reality CG Computer-generated CGI Computer-generated imagery CVR Cinematic virtual reality fEMG Facial electromyography FRVR Free roam virtual reality HCI Human–computer interaction HMD Head-mounted display ISPR International Society for Presence Research Mil-sim Military simulator MR Mixed reality MST Military sexual trauma PE Prolonged exposure (therapy) PI Place illusion PSI Plausibility illusion PTSD Post-traumatic stress disorder SCL Skin conductance level USCICT University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies UX User experience VISOR Visual instrument and sensory organ replacement VR Virtual reality VRET Virtual reality exposure therapy

ix

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3 Fig. 1.4 Fig. 1.5

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4

Spielberg’s vision of a VR future in Ready Player One (2018). Note the stereotypical look of ‘awe’ and hand-reaching gesture from the character, the latter motif self-consciously adopted for this book’s cover image Full 360-degree frame from Clouds Over Sidra (Milk, 2015). The stretched image is a 2D flat representation of the full 360-degree field of view that would appear normal to a viewer in a VR headset View of the female detective from Gone in 360 Seconds. The image is cropped to represent the viewer’s field of view when looking at her in the 360-degree video (Bender & D’Silva, 2016) An example of first-person point of view in Lady in the Lake (Dir. Robert Montgomery, 1947) Author 1 immersed in the FRVR military simulation environment Dauntless (Motion Reality). The user’s perspective, in this instance, showed a large CGI brick maze in which the author hunted a second avatar controlled by another participant in the large play area Left: Gone in 360 Seconds (Bender & D’Silva, 2016). Right: Lady in the Lake (Montgomery, 1947) Onward’s first-person view of the battlefield from within the VR headset. Image: Downpour Interactive (2017) eSports version of Onward. Note the three team-players in the insert image at screen left crouching (VR League, 2018) Comparison of Quest versus PC-based graphics in an earlier version of Onward (Feltham, 2020)

2

5 11 12

14 30 36 40 43

xi

xii 

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 5.7 Fig. 5.8 Fig. 5.9 Fig. 5.10 Fig. 5.11 Fig. 5.12 Fig. 5.13 Fig. 5.14

An example of the Bravemind system. (USCICT, 2014) 82 The prototype system Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan. (USCICT, 2007) 85 The clinician-ready product Bravemind. (USCICT, 2014) 86 Simple environment designs and textures in the MST scenarios for Bravemind97 The opening image of [08:46] displays rudimentary graphics even for the time of its production 111 Illuminated by a single torchlight, the fire marshal is in seen the foreground with Audrey in the background at some distance along a dark corridor; grey smoke obscures the ceiling 113 David stands on a window ledge, preparing to jump, as Audrey, at right, pleads with him not to 114 The point of view perspective from a player–user looking back up at the towers as they/we fall to the ground 115 Virtual, life-sized Holocaust survivors, Eva Schloss (left) and Pinchas Gutter (right) give testimony in a museum setting (USC Shoah Foundation) 129 In 360-degree VR, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter gives in-situ testimony while revisiting a former concentration camp in Poland 131 The principal protagonists of Kiya, inside her home, where her ex-­boyfriend Williams (right) holds a revolver 134 Kiya is threatened by her ex-boyfriend as her sister pleads for him to stop 135 Moments before the first shot rings out, attending police officers with guns drawn take position on the exterior steps 136 Martu elder Nyarri Morgan sings a welcome to country from atop a sacred hill overlooking the land in Collisions (production still, 2016) 143 The rising mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion takes the form of a Martu ancestor–spirit in Collisions (production still, 2016)144 An aerial view of Martu lands managed by ancient Indigenous fire clearing, with smoke ascending past/through us from the VR camera point of view in Collisions (production still, 2016) 148 The opening sequence of Chernobyl displays a matrix of faux–nostalgic Soviet propaganda-style promotional documentaries and archival television news 152 The Terra-P Eco-Test Geiger counter registers visually and aurally any dangerous radioactivity within the VR Chernobyl environments154

  List of Figures 

Fig. 5.15 Conventional documentary interview–testimony with an Exclusion Zone resident, Ivan Ivanowicz, recorded in 2D 360-degree video Fig. 5.16 An oddly positioned and lit scientist interviewed in 2D 360-degree VR Fig. 5.17 The empty and spartan Chernobyl reactor control room recreated with high-definition photogrammetry Fig. 5.18 Although brightly lit, the hospital interior echoes with a haunting soundscape Fig. 5.19 The cavernous and derelict Pripyat swimming pool can induce acrophobia if the VR experience positions the player–viewer above the diving platform Fig. 5.20 The Exclusion Guide at ground level before the helicopter-style, vertical ascension to the top of the enormous Duga-2 over-thehorizon radar assembly Fig. 5.21 Near cloud-top, the elevated vista from the Duga-2 array, rendered in photo–realist 3D 360-degree video Fig. 6.1 Audience members experiencing Real Violence at Whitney Museum of American Art. (Leah, 2017)

xiii

155 157 158 159 160 161 162 182

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Ready, Virtual Reality Consumer The 2018 release of Steven Spielberg’s film Ready Player One was heralded as potentially reinvigorating public interest in virtual reality (VR) as a consumer product. Characters in the dystopian narrative don headsets that immersively transport them to a virtual environment called The Oasis (Fig. 1.1). In addition, the characters are shown wearing haptic gloves and suits that complete the immersive illusion of The Oasis, for instance providing the sensation of the lead character’s chest and crotch being touched by the virtual avatar of his female crush. The spectacular imagery of the film and its imaginative presentation of the immersive capacities of VR led to many industry commentators speculating that the film might usher in the VR zeitgeist and provoke mass adoption of the technology by consumers. For example, screen industry bible Variety claimed that it “could serve as a catalyst for the virtual-reality market” (Spangler, 2018). Recent years have been highly disappointing for the VR industry, with consumer uptake of the technology falling far short of the hype and expectations, although Mark Gurman from Bloomberg predicted that Spielberg’s film would help boost consumer VR sales in 2018 by 25 per cent (Gurman, 2018). Indeed, it appears that VR sales did increase by approximately 25 per cent in 2018, and 29 per cent in 2019 (Statista, 2021), although it is impossible to attribute this solely

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_1

1

2 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 1.1  Spielberg’s vision of a VR future in Ready Player One (2018). Note the stereotypical look of ‘awe’ and hand-reaching gesture from the character, the latter motif self-consciously adopted for this book’s cover image

to the release of Ready Team One. Paul Tassi from Forbes argued that the problem with consumer interest in VR: is not that people don’t think VR is fun or cool. It’s that it costs a lot of money, and that the tech in its current form is far more cumbersome than what’s featured in a movie like Ready Player One. (Tassi, 2018)

Many commentators exhibit a tendency to forget that, for more than a century, screen entertainment industries have consistently embraced new technologies such as the introduction of sound, zoom lenses, 3D photography (Schedeen, 2010), Cinerama (Bordwell, 1997), surround sound (Kerins, 2011), Imax (Brown, n.d.) and computer-generated imagery (CGI; Prince, 2012). Most of these technological enhancements were met with varying degrees of evangelical excitement, heralding a new era of audience and spectator entertainment. Such hucksterism has emerged over computer games, the creation of html, web 2.0, online avatar communities such as Second Life, and social networking. While it would be foolish to conflate these mediums, their associated platforms and variant historical trajectories, there is a commonality evident in the way these

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

technological innovations are anticipated and marketed, especially now with subjective user immersion via VR environments and devices. It is odd that Spielberg’s film, set in 2045, is superficially less visually creative in the technology it presents than his earlier Minority Report (2002) which imagined a 2050s future replete with transparent, holographic displays using virtual and haptic interfaces. Hence, Ready Player One appears inherently anachronistic in its projection of futuristic screen immersion and interactivity, something Ray Bradbury’s The Velt (1950/1972) and Fahrenheit 451 (1953) envisioned in the 1950s—both works later were adapted for film in 1969 and 1966 respectively. Ready Player One’s vision of tomorrow juxtaposes a grimy, overpopulated and dystopian Columbus Ohio with The Oasis VR realm, a space filled with avatars drawn from pop culture and Spielberg’s own back catalogue, all inhabiting the movie’s Uncanny Valley (Mori et  al., 2012).1 Unlike the immersive VR headsets and interfaces of its movie antecedents—such as Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983) or The Lawnmower Man (Leonard, 1992)—the cyclopean displays worn by the actors are more akin to the cheesy VISOR (visual instrument and sensory organ replacement) used by a principal character in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–94). Given the amount of CGI, it is also odd that the studio did not mass release this film only as a 3D theatrical or Blu-ray experience in order to better emulate the movie’s immersive VR narrative. Arguably, the reliance on a conventional 2D screen representation of a VR world speaks to the medium’s inability to effectively register the ‘immersive’ environment via a standard theatrical experience. While it is unlikely that even a major blockbuster such as Ready Player One is enough to shift consumers’ interest in buying VR equipment for home use, it is clear that the industry hopes each iteration of VR entertainment technology will finally break through to the consumer mass market. For example, in mid-2019 when Facebook’s Oculus company released the Oculus Quest, a relatively cheap, self-contained VR headset capable of room-scale immersion without being tethered to a high-performance desktop PC, many popular technology writers speculated that it would enable greater access to VR for people who had been intrigued by the promise of immersion but were put off by the clunky hardware and need for expensive computers (Bloomberg, 2018; Woozer, 2018). Arguably, the current hype around VR cannot be sustained by the actual technology offered by various headset manufacturers and software developers, and indeed some of the resurgent hype of VR has come under

4 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

scrutiny. From the perspective of VR-based tourism, Janna Thompson (2018) recently argued that “it will never be a substitute for encounters with the real thing”. Yet many of the evangelical claims about VR are centred on the notion that it will be of great personal and social benefit. One of the key ideas in this space is derived from Chris Milk’s inflated 2015 TED talk claim that VR represents “the ultimate empathy machine” (Milk, 2015). For Milk, a visual artist who has recently moved into VR production and was responsible for the United Nations sponsored VR documentary Clouds Over Sidra (Milk, 2015), empathy is engendered by the viewer occupying an optically—and, by his logic, emotionally—equivalent position to the subject. For example, Clouds Over Sidra depicts some short fragments of daily life for Sidra, a 12-year-old Syrian refugee in a camp in Jordan. The project has been used by UNICEF to raise awareness for “crisis situations” and was reportedly shown at a “high level donor meeting prior to the Third International Humanitarian Appeal for Syria in Kuwait in March 2015, which eventually raised 3.8  billion US dollars” (United Nations Virtual Reality [UNVR], 2015). According to Milk: When you’re sitting there in [Sidra’s] room watching her, you’re not watching her through a television screen, you’re not watching through a window. When you look down… You’re sitting on the same ground she’s sitting on. And because of that you feel her humanity in a deeper way. You empathise with her in a deeper way. I think we can change minds with this machine. (Milk, 2015)

Notwithstanding the inherent difficulty in correlating the funds raised for the Syrian appeal with the exhibition of the film to “high level donors”, Milk’s statement explicitly invokes substantial claims to notions of identification and subjectivity, as well as broader expectations of what constitutes empathy. Significantly, these are also issues to which cinema and media scholarship has attended over several decades, and which the VR industry is apparently wilfully or unconsciously ignoring in the push to empathy. These issues are dealt with at length in later chapters of this book but, by way of introduction, a frame from Clouds Over Sidra problematises one simple aspect (Fig. 1.2). For all the rhetoric of identification in Milk’s empathy machine claim and the example he cites (quoted above), the camera in this film is almost exclusively placed at an adult height (see Fig. 1.2) rather than at the eye-­ level of the subjects. When you look down, you are mostly looking down

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

Fig. 1.2  Full 360-degree frame from Clouds Over Sidra (Milk, 2015). The stretched image is a 2D flat representation of the full 360-degree field of view that would appear normal to a viewer in a VR headset

at Sidra and her friends. Certainly, there are technical assumptions in the VR industry around camera placement and height which have been debunked elsewhere (Bender, 2018). Yet generalised statements such as Milk’s seemingly ignored decades of screen media and cultural analysis concerning the subjective power relations of looks and gazes (see, e.g. Comolli & Narboni, 1971; hooks, 2013; Silverman, 1996). Against this background, there has been some criticism towards the claims of VR as an empathy machine. For instance, E. Ainsley Sutherland (2015) suggests that the “characterization” of VR and empathy promoted by the industry “is informal and assumes that feelings of presence and a first-person perspective alone will drive empathic feeling” (p.  2). Alyssa K.  Loh (2017) argues that many of the negatively themed VR experiences—such as those that drop the viewer into a scene of domestic violence or the location of a terrorist bomb attack—function not to put you in the position of the actual victim but in the position of the general category of an anonymous bystander or observer of the event, thus “deindividuating trauma”. Recent cross-disciplinary research in media and psychology has argued that “there is an overwhelming predominance of suffering as a theme in [many] virtual depictions, comingled with uncritically asserted promises of empathy, which are problematic as the technology assumes greater mainstream uptake” (Broderick et al., 2018).

6 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Some commentators have also expressed concerns that the technology will become too seductive. Consider for example, Wheeler Dixon’s (2016) essay on VR from a cinema studies perspective. Dixon opens by reminding readers of science-fiction dystopia Escapement (Maine, 1956) in which the characters—known as dreamers—spend months at a time unconscious and immersed in isolation chambers in entertainment arcades known as Dream Palaces which are eerily similar to popular conceptions of the overwhelming and immersive entertainment promised by VR. Dixon then traces the current wave of VR with the crowd-funded invention of the Oculus Rift headset in 2016 and a range of tech blog writers’ enthusiasm for the technology. Throughout Dixon’s article, which is clearly presented as a kind of prescient—though, by 2016, belated—warning, the assumption of total immersion looms above all accounts of the technology: I view a world in which a significant portion of the population are living in an alternative universe rather than contributing to the real one with some alarm. It may be that life in [the] 21st century, with its endless procession of terrorism, wars, famine, and ecological collapse is too much for the human mind to handle, and escape is the only option. The damage that we have done to the planet since 1950 is more than all the previous centuries of human existence combined, and in such an uncertain world, the urge to “check out” is certainly understandable. (p. 508)

Dixon’s choice to ground the sceptical view of VR and its potentially deleterious social affect/effect in a piece of dystopian fiction is understandable. There are a number of fictional warnings of immersive screen technology eroding human connection in society, from Aldous Huxley’s concept of “the feelies” in Brave New World (1932/1977) through to Spielberg’s romantic Ready Player One. Indeed, the science-fiction technophobia series Black Mirror (Netflix, 2014–2019) has a number of episodes that depict horrifying applications of VR technology. For example, in one episode, Men Against Fire, military forces implant an augmenting technology in a soldier’s brain that alters his visual impression of the human enemy into terrifying alien creatures targeted for extermination. In another episode, Playtest, a character is subjected to an experimental virtual horror environment which creates an experience so traumatising that he is left comatose and near death; this is further shown to be only one of many beta-testing guineapigs expediently discarded by the game developer/corporation.

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

Evangelists and Sceptics Even from these brief reference points it is apparent that there are predominantly two complementary but competing views about VR. The first, which is a position clearly occupied by Chris Milk, is a kind of article of faith that VR is—and will increasingly continue to become—an ultimately positive form of communication. For such evangelists, the technology is a “game-changer” (Adams, 2016; Fenech, 2018; Zeitchick, 2018), provoking empathy (Witton, 2017) and “blurring the line between the storyteller and audience” (Adobe, 2018). The second position—identifiable in essays such as Dixon’s as well as many fictional accounts of a VR-based society—is a scepticism grounded in the phenomenon Alvin Toffler once described as “future shock” (Toffler, 1971). Toffler’s account of the negative effects on individuals and society when people are “overwhelmed by change” (p.  1) echoes strongly throughout many of the sceptical commentaries on VR, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) technologies. These technologies are of course related, although it should be noted that they are somewhat different in how much the virtual world is mixed or integrated into the real world of the user. They can sometimes be subsumed under the heading Extended Realities (XR). It is tempting to read many of the current developments in this technological space according to Paul Virilio’s “political economy of speed” (Hanke, 2010, p. 206). Consider the rhetorical awe with which tech journalists report the sheer amount of investment in a variety of XR start-up companies: Some of the most significant investment rounds that comprised [more than $3 billion invested] in 2016: Magic Leap, raising $793.5 million, Unity at $181 million, Mindmaze at $100 million, NextVR at $80 million, 360fly at $40 million, and Baobab Studios at $25 million. The investment in VR by what Digi-Capital calls every “big boy” on the block (Alibaba, Warner Bros, Google, Morgan Stanley, 21st Century Fox, Comcast and Samsung) right down to Silicon Valley heavyweights, dedicated VR investment firms and angel investors, is anchored around on the expectation that this market is on its way to mass-market appeal. (Kite-­ Powell, 2018)

Dan Golding (2019) identifies that the contemporary discourse around VR focuses much more on the “image” of a person using a VR device than the “experience” of encountering VR (p. 340). For Golding, the lack of

8 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

availability of devices has led to more commentators, along with consumers, “fetishizing” the apparatus and speculating on what the experience might be like rather than what it actually is like. We feel Golding is correct in this assessment of the industry, and many of the case studies in this book point towards the problems with existing approaches to VR analysis, criticism and/or appreciation. Yet, Virtual Realities proposes a new methodology—one that acknowledges the limitations of current academic and popular discourse on VR but which also demonstrates how it is possible to engage with the experiences of VR right now, as well as look towards those of the future. Therefore, moving beyond Virilio’s concerns, it is important to “stand back from [new technologies] at a critical distance rather than unthinkingly revel in them” (Newman, 2005, p.  3) but, for VR, it will prove important to also step forward and put on the headset, watch the videos, play some game experiences, perhaps view some VR porn, and start to measure the practice of actual users. From such an encounter it will be possible to understand the arguments presented for and against VR but, much more importantly, to be able to identify and negotiate the chasm of knowledge in current understandings of the technology.

Structure and Scope One of the aims for Virtual Realities is to unpack some of the tension between evangelical VR hype on the one hand and sceptical views on the other. Of course, there are nuances to each position; however, both views clearly operate on the assumption that there is a teleological inevitably of mass uptake by consumers. Both positions also assume that the present technology is already immersive to the extent that users feel that they are really in the virtual world. In the technical fields related to VR studies, this is known as ‘presence’, and much psychological work has been undertaken to determine the parameters of what presence is, what technological requirements enhance or limit the experience, and how one might determine the extent to which a viewer is experiencing presence (see, for example, Lombard & Ditton, 2006; Peperkorn et al., 2015; Witmer & Singer, 1998). Yet, there is a striking absence of critical and practical commentary from the fields of academic screen studies. Hence, this book does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of VR. Rather, it points towards methodological issues—and some potential avenues forward—in research that is drawn from the field of screen

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

studies. Our aim is to provide some ideas, and indeed provocations, that move beyond the gee-whizz paradigm that claims the sky is the limit. At the same time, we aim to present methodologies and questions that avoid the problems inherent in the ‘sky is falling’ paradigm of VR scepticism. Rather than, say, making a broad claim about the empathy-inducing properties of a VR documentary, we provide examples of how a scholar might articulate their phenomenological encounter with a traumatic story presented in a VR experience. As indicated below, we will advance a particular approach to the analysis of VR that is labelled VR phenomenology. In many ways these are inevitable and practical limitations to the academic study of VR. For instance, unlike conventional film and television criticism, some readers of scholarly works on VR will have access to a headset, yet many readers will not. Thus, how does a researcher provide an authentic account of the immersive experience for the reader who cannot experience the same material? We explore both live action 360-degree video content as well as interactive VR experiences created using game engines and 3D models. There is of course ongoing debate in academic and industry circles about whether or not the former, 360-degree video, should even be classified as VR.  In screen studies, this debate seems to have been settled by advocates choosing to designate 360-degree video as so-called cinematic virtual reality (CVR) (Mateer, 2017). However, we contend that this nomenclature is really a red herring; 360-degree video productions are remarkably unlike cinema. For instance, by and large, 360-degree videos have no potential to be a shared experience. It is difficult or impossible to utilise conventional cinematic techniques of dramatic intensification such as close-ups and, as Bender (2018) illustrates, enormous opportunities to elicit emotion and character engagement are lost simply by the inability to generate shot/reverse-shot editing sequences. On such a basis, it is unclear what makes CVR cinematic. While it is understandable that such scholars are simply trying to find a way to legitimise 360-degree video as an object of study—and validate the particular mode of creativity—it facilitates a series of misconceived, misunderstood and misaligned approaches to comprehend the technology and works created in the medium. Against this background, Virtual Realities will comingle discussion of VR and so-called CVR as well as other immersive experiences where relevant. This approach is intended to provide sufficient context to establish the relevant provocations that will unfold over the five chapters. In doing so, we aim to provide pathways for scholars to explore the

10 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

medium, whether they are based in screen studies or drawing upon the field in some multi-disciplinary endeavour.

The Phenomenology of Presence in VR This book proposes that screen studies’ approaches to VR would benefit from both a simultaneous encounter with the definition of ‘presence’ from the field of human–computer interaction studies and a motivation to re-­ engage with the type of film phenomenology developed by Vivian Sobchack (1992, 2004, 2009). First, on the topic of presence, the International Society for Presence Research (ISPR) has a detailed explication of how this sensation can be defined. Although the statement runs several paragraphs and is worth reading in detail, for our purposes the first paragraph provides a clear indication of both the value and limitation of using this approach to articulate presence: Presence (a shortened version of the term “telepresence”) is a psychological state or subjective perception in which even though part or all of an individual’s current experience is generated by and/or filtered through human-­ made technology, part or all of the individual’s perception fails to accurately acknowledge the role of the technology in the experience. Except in the most extreme cases, the individual can indicate correctly that s/he is using the technology, but at *some level* and to *some degree*, her/his perceptions overlook that knowledge and objects, events, entities, and environments are perceived as if the technology was not involved in the experience. (ISPR, 2000)

Two of the obvious benefits of such a statement are that it is clearly defined and that it manages to accommodate close to all, if not all, possible experiences in VR. However, one of the limitations of the statement is that, while it provides an excellent overview in abstract and theoretical terms, by being so all-encompassing it does not quite capture the specific sensations of presence that might occur in different and specific scenarios, nor for specific users. For example, in watching many 360-degree videos in VR—and showing them to other people in a variety of situations—the authors of this book, Author 1: Bender and Author 2: Broderick, have experienced something that is difficult to describe in detail. Consider Fig. 1.3 from the 360-degree film Gone in 360 Seconds.

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

Fig. 1.3  View of the female detective from Gone in 360 Seconds. The image is cropped to represent the viewer’s field of view when looking at her in the 360-degree video (Bender & D’Silva, 2016)

When the female character looks directly at the viewer, there is momentarily a sensation that can best be described as feeling as if she is right there in front of you, yet, just as instantly, this sensation passes. Anecdotally, often a viewer might say after watching the video that “she was right there!” but such a statement does not mean that the viewer believes she was there in the room with them, nor that the viewer felt like she was there in the room for the entire duration of the video. Such responses are an example of “fail[ing] to accurately acknowledge the role of the technology in the experience” as the ISPR statement would suggest, yet that phrase does not really account for how it feels to have the experience. Similar experiences have occurred to both authors—and have anecdotally been reported by colleagues and associates—while watching either 360-degree pornography or while playing a VR shooter game. However, there currently does not seem to be appropriate analytic language to describe the sensation. In addition, these statements fall flat when the image is represented as above—for example, on paper or on a fixed-screen display—and

12 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

have been countered instantly by a number of colleagues at presentations who have said “But that looks like a scene from Lady in the Lake” (Dir. Robert Montgomery, 1947) (Fig. 1.4). To counter this, it is not enough to simply say “But it feels different in the headset, you temporarily forget that she’s not really there”. This example is discussed in detail in Chap. 2. Again, we emphasise that the ISPR’s statement—especially when read in full—probably encompasses, if not everything, then a substantial amount of what presence is and how it might be experienced in VR. However, we also suspect some specific developments upon the statement can be made by referring to early theorising of VR and corporeality from a phenomenological perspective. Murray and Sixsmith (1999) comment that “people bring their everyday, real-world understandings and social experiences to new virtual encounters” (p. 320). They provide an example from a contemporaneous study (Murray et al., 2000) where participants could move through a virtual cityscape. Participants typically moved their mobile view around building corners and stayed on roads and

Fig. 1.4  An example of first-person point of view in Lady in the Lake (Dir. Robert Montgomery, 1947)

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

alleyways even though they would have been able to simply move directly through walls. In addition, participants could have moved to a bird’s eye view and navigated that way; however, “participants indicated that this strategy had not occurred to them” (p. 440). Although the participants were not using a VR headset, this concept is relevant to our understanding of embodiment in VR. Consider, for instance, the type of ‘free roam’ VR (FRVR) training experiences designed for the military and the police such as those systems developed by Motion Reality in the USA and Zero Latency in Australia. In these environments, the user assumes a virtual avatar of a police officer, soldier—or, potentially, the ‘enemy’—and, instead of VR hand controllers, the user may have a replica weapon that is ‘real’ in the virtual world. Wearing a computer backpack, these systems enable the user to be untethered and move freely by simply walking around. This is of course within a defined but usually large-scale area the size of a basketball court or small warehouse. The virtual environment can be anything, such as an oil rig platform, a close quarters house interior, or any other custom-made CGI environment suitable for the training activity. Often the user’s hands and feet are also tracked and incorporated into the avatar’s movement in real time. These systems, while relying on fundamentally the same technology as VR systems that the average consumer can have in their home, are substantially more expensive and are almost always bespoke. They certainly provide a much greater range of possible movements for the user, for instance the size and scale of the ‘play area’ enables physically running over great distances (Fig. 1.5). In these FRVR systems, it is possible to see, hear and feel, the full sensation embodiment in the virtual environment and therefore experience its full effects for the user. Freed from the problems associated with participants having to navigate around by using the controller buttons or a teleport system, the user is able to move freely and quickly throughout the environment. It feels natural to duck or crouch behind an obstacle, then lean out and fire your weapon at another player. It is also possible to forget where you were originally standing in the physical world, and indeed to have no idea what part of the actual warehouse you are standing in. Of course, such disorientation is possible if using a home VR system for a long period of time. However, it is much less likely to occur in the home simply because the play area is confined to approximately 3–5m2 instead of over 100m2 enabled by large FRVR domains.

14 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 1.5  Author 1 immersed in the FRVR military simulation environment Dauntless (Motion Reality). The user’s perspective, in this instance, showed a large CGI brick maze in which the author hunted a second avatar controlled by another participant in the large play area

Against this background, and in regard to the maze/way-finding study by Murray et al. (2000), the FRVR system illustrated in Fig. 1.5 is highly instructive in its ability to create a perceptual and immersive illusion for the user. As an example, if a user in one of the FRVR environments attempts to walk through a virtual wall, their character is able to do so. Thus, in some of these systems, it is possible to ‘cheat’ by simply walking through a virtual barrier and shooting an enemy hiding on the other side who has ‘played by the rules’. Yet, remarkably, due to the immersive and realistic ‘rule-abiding’ nature of their illusion, this ability to cheat occurs to very few people who use these systems. Rather, most users reportedly behave as if the walls were real. Author 1, during his experience at Motion Reality’s headquarters in Atlanta, played along with the boundaries and walls instinctively during the gameplay. Then, after successfully shooting the other player, the game would reset and both players would have to walk back to their starting places at each end of the maze. At this point, Author 1 had to laugh as he caught himself walking through the maze and navigating through doorways to get to the starting point, instead of simply walking through the virtual walls in a straight line. In a following

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

conversation, one of Motion Reality’s executives commented that his young daughter had instinctively chosen to “cheat” the boundary system the first time she experienced it. By contrast, it is interesting to consider whether or not trained military and police personnel would even consider this as a possibility given that they arrive at the VR setup with pre-learned and pre-trained movement tactics. Thus, it remains an open question whether the extent to which the expectations a player brings to the FRVR system impacts their capacity and/or willingness to ‘play along’ with its boundaries and phenomenological limitations. Such an experience points towards both the immersive power of such an environment and also the instinctive, or perhaps conditioned, necessity for users to ‘play along’ with the experience. In order to become sensitive to such matters related to VR, we argue that screen studies should re-­ engage with some of the previous advances it has made in the area of film phenomenology.

Phenomenology and Embodiment in VR It is here that we should emphasise the type of phenomenology that Virtual Realities aims to engage with. There are a number of excellent overviews of film phenomenology, including its pioneering introduction to film studies (Sobchack, 1992, 2004, 2009), through various developments and applications (Glushneva, 2017; Shaviro, 1993; Stadler, 2009) and also the current re-engagement with phenomenology as a means to understanding the relationship between ethics and film (Sinnerbrink, 2016; Stadler, 2008). While it is a diverse approach, we primarily intend to utilise the framework as a launchpad for our own exploration through the medium of VR and, in particular, through an emphasis on the user/ viewer experience. As Stadler (2008) argues, “Perhaps the most significant contribution of phenomenology to film theory is the emphasis placed on the perceptual engagement of the physical body, rather than on the conscious or subconscious mind, or the socio-political body” (p. 44). While phenomenological approaches to screen media are sometimes dismissed as offering subjective interpretations of works, we contend that, at this point in screen theory’s engagement with VR, such self-reflection of the audience experience is precisely one of the methodological avenues for producing a rich understanding of how the medium works. As Sobchack notes, in reflecting on the value of phenomenology for traditional screen analysis:

16 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Phenomenology can lead to asking, ‘What’s going on here?’ What phenomenology does at its best is that it doesn’t provide closure. It takes you through observations of experience, close descriptions of it, and then possible interpretations of it. It’s not subjective in some sloppy or thin sense; it’s thick description that creates the ground of lived experience and for further, if secondary, research. (Sobchack, quoted in Hanich, 2017)

By drawing from this approach, we hope to present the case that beginning a research programme into VR from the point of a phenomenological encounter will yield insight and nuance to the analysis. Indeed, as demonstrated by Bender and Sung (2021), it is possible that taking such a ‘subjective’ approach from the outset can lead to significant gains for both scientific and quasi-scientific approaches to VR user analysis. One of the key arguments of this book is that by embracing the researcher–user’s phenomenological encounter with VR, it is possible to develop testable hypotheses on VR audiences that can be usefully measured, in addition to being able to develop a language that describes this user experience. Here we propose fully embracing the subjective experience of an expert analyst right from the outset. This does not mean totalising the VR experience, nor even presuming that the subjective experience of one analyst might be the same as any other. However, it does enable us to more richly engage with the medium and different types of VR experiences in order to begin to come to terms with how VR experiences work and what sort of effects and impact they can have on us. It is film phenomenology’s centralising of the body, both the body of the film/screen and the body of the viewer, that will prove most relevant to our engagement with VR. As Laura Marks emphasises in The Skin of the Film, drawing upon Sobchack’s initial phenomenology, film viewing is “an extension of the viewer’s embodied experience” (Marks, 2000, p. 149). The applications of such an approach to the medium of VR are immediately apparent. Some development will be required, and whereas film phenomenology would no doubt stress that a film is experienced in the process of watching, we contend that VR is watched in the process of experiencing it. Throughout the chapters and case studies that follow, we will contribute to the project presented by Robert Sinnerbrink in Cinematic Ethics (2016) to begin connecting phenomenology with cognitivist approaches to screen analysis. Whereas Sinnerbrink, like many of the current phenomenological approaches to screen, emphasises the value of such an approach to the

1 INTRODUCTION 

17

study of ethics, we largely bracket the ethics of VR and instead work to foreground the viewer and the viewer’s experience. Thus, without moving fully into the theoretical domain of phenomenology, the book will draw upon phenomenology’s insistence on the bodily and corporeal nature of experience. Without being exclusively focused on textual analysis, the book will attempt to describe salient factors of audio-visual construction in the VR medium. Without being a scientific examination, the book will draw upon human–computer interaction studies to invoke analysis of other users’ VR experiences. This is in an effort to better and more clearly articulate the VR experience than simply writing that a VR experience felt realistic, or felt like we were there, or even that it felt like we were present. Rather, it will prove possible—though not without its inherent difficulties and limitations—for the scholar to intellectualise and contextualise their own experience of VR in ways that will hopefully help the field of screen studies begin to come to terms with the medium and its effects. We recognise that at this point of intense research and creative activity in the VR area, there is simultaneously a huge move behind the notion of ‘we don’t know anything’—for instance, those scholars calling for investigations into what might be a new screen grammar of VR—and also a push to uncritically accept that VR achieves full immersion and does not need to be tested. For example, in the latter, there are numerous research grant applications—some of which the authors of this book have been invited to participate in—which simply assume that VR will create a sense of empathy. These projects typically propose to create some content, and then test the extent to which empathy is increased. Almost never do these projects propose to compare the VR to traditional video to first test their assumptions. In contrast, the methods in this book present ways to critically, aesthetically and phenomenologically critique and engage with VR. Thus, our primary objective is to advance a research programme utilising a mixed methodology which is focused on cinema history, practical creative experience and research, cognitivist approaches to psychology, and aesthetic analysis or poetics. The book is grounded in a cautious optimism about the future of VR and associated screen research practices. Cautious, in that the book avoids the unwarranted praise often foisted uncritically upon VR while simultaneously untangling the impact of that evangelism on the industry itself. Optimistic, in that we do not decry VR but instead look towards its potential benefits and outline ways in which screen research theory and practice can better align with the opportunities

18 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

afforded by the technology. To meet this objective, Virtual Realities presents a series of case studies which demonstrate how such a research programme would address a variety of problems in the field.

Chapter Overview: Case Studies in Violence and Trauma The chapters in this book present a variety of case studies dealing with applications of VR phenomenology. Each of the case studies involve representations of violence and/or traumatic-themed VR works—from military simulations, to VR exposure therapy (VRET) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), through to artistic interventions into social awareness of domestic violence, colonialism and environmental contamination. The purpose of these chosen case studies is twofold. First, both authors have written extensively about this subject matter in relation to traditional cinema and other forms of digital media. As we argue in Chap. 2, this expert background is arguably essential for VR phenomenology criticism. The second reason is that violent and trauma-themed material seems predominant in the field of immersive media. Indeed, given the context of the so-­ called empathy machine, many productions seem to take it for granted that the most obvious purpose for VR is to generate empathy around social issues of suffering. Despite this focus, we contend that the approach of VR phenomenology should be viewed as a methodology. The case studies here provide demonstration of the form in which an analysis may be generated from the subjective experience of the expert researcher–critic willing to wear the headset and undertake an immersive approach to their scholarly inquiry into VR. It is anticipated from these examples that other scholars will develop similar analyses, improvise upon and refine the approach to suit different subject matter. Chapter 2 advances the approach of VR phenomenology as a methodological manoeuvre for screen studies to begin engaging with VR in ways that enable rich, subjective and detailed examinations of the experience. The chapter argues that if traditional films are experienced in the process of watching them, then VR is watched in the process of experiencing it. Thus, the chapter provides an overview of film phenomenology as a methodology, linking some of the clear connections between its approach to embodiment with many of the common assumptions about VR such as presence and immersion. When applied to VR, this approach enables the

1 INTRODUCTION 

19

scholar to bodily engage with the VR experience while simultaneously applying a reflexive approach to articulating and understanding the subjective encounter deploying language from the field of human–computer interaction studies such as Plausibility Illusion and Place Illusion. The chapter concludes with a detailed case study that demonstrates the impact of a VR phenomenology in analysing the experience of a military simulation shooter in VR. Chapter 3 addresses the historically contingent conditions in which the techno-evangelism of VR is coincidental with the availability of affordable/portable means of measuring human bodily responses to various stimuli, including media works. From this convergence a surge in interest in the measurement of audience responses and behaviours has seen the rise of a field which is sometimes called user experience (UX). This chapter outlines some of the key ideas and techniques involved in UX measurement for VR users, providing specific examples from an eye-tracking study conducted on a CVR project and from psychophysiological studies of a zombie shooter VR game. One of the key points of this chapter is to identify the limitations of such approaches and indicate how aspects of VR phenomenology might be incorporated into the research design of such approaches to enable a more nuanced understanding of the UX. Chapter 4 conducts an overview and analysis of the now decades old use of VR for the treatment of anxiety-based PTSD. The chapter explores the development of applications of VRET that are designed to enable military and ex-military personnel to undertake therapy to alleviate their PTSD symptoms. These applications are designed to ‘immerse’ the patient in a virtual simulation of the environment and conditions in which they experienced a traumatic combat-related event. The immersive environment is intended to elicit the appropriate level of anxiety required for VRET to facilitate healthy (re)processing of the traumatic event. While there are numerous meta-studies and clinical studies that provide basic information on the VR component, the literature in this area typically, and understandably, focuses on the clinical deployment of VR for VRET and the efficacy of the treatment for patients with PTSD; much of the work in this area is for combat veterans that present with PTSD. The chapter contributes to the area in two ways. First, it uses VR phenomenology to examine the assumptions of realism and verisimilitude that are taken for granted by the psychology-based approaches of VRET. Second, the chapter uses the lessons learned by the 20-plus years of VRET research, testing and clinical use to provide valuable input to screen studies in its attempts to

20 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

understand how audiences engage with VR. The chapter is thus more than simply a primer on VRET for those outside the psychology disciplines; rather, it is intended to problematise many of the assumptions taken for granted with the field of VRET and also use the VRET case study to problematise some of the assumptions that screen studies—and the VR industry—simply have not encountered yet in attempts to use VR to provoke emotional responses in audiences. Chapter 5, presented in two parts, considers a range of distinct case studies of VR production that address traumatic historical events across differing virtual modalities, including two game engine-generated 360-degree immersions (Robertson, 2015; Turndrup, 2015), a mixed immersive experience combining photo–realist 360-degree VR with embedded 2D video (Tortum, 2015), an experimental 3D 360-degree art documentary (ACMI, 2016), and life-sized, hyperreal interactive human avatars (Aitkin, 2018; Broderick et al., 2018). This chapter functions primarily as a demonstration of how VR phenomenology can be used in a case where the original VR experience is unavailable for the scholar to view; in these cases—which are extremely common due to the gallery nature of many VR works—the scholar may rely upon screen captures of other viewers’ experiences as well as crowd-sourced user commentary. In Part I, the student-created VR animation 8:46 (2015) simulates the experiences of a small group of workers inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center when it is suddenly struck by an unseen passenger jet on 11 September 2001. The overt intentions of the creators’ and userrecorded gameplay shared online is contrasted with social media commentary and viewer evaluation metrics. In New Dimensions in Testimony two holocaust survivors are ‘captured’ in ultra-high resolution video and 3D to become virtual avatars, powered by a sophisticated A.I. in order to enable real-­ time, naturalistic interaction with ‘real’ audiences. One of these survivors also narrates The Last Goodbye (2017) and is shown, in-situ VR, visiting the death camp where his family were killed. In Part II, the role of immersion and empathy in a number of different VR works is considered. The short film Kiya (2016) by Al Jazeera and the Emblematic Group employs the authentic sound recordings of a homicide–suicide to recreate the last few minutes of a young mother’s life and that of the perpetrator–father “in an effort to raise awareness of domestic violence”. The experimental art documentary Collisions (2015) seeks to convey, through the poetic and artistic affordances of VR, intergenerational Indigenous knowledge of inhabiting place across millennia and the

1 INTRODUCTION 

21

ruptures of modernity and colonial violence. The hybridised VR documentary Chernobyl VR (2016) mixes documentary testimony with highly mimetic, photogrammetric representation of the contaminated powerplant and its surrounds, including the abandoned city of Pripyat. This chapter critiques some assumptions behind the express motivations in the design of these productions to engender a heightened sense of audience ‘empathy’. It draws from established trauma scholarship—and the turn to affect—concerning memory, testimony, empathy, immersion and representation. It applies concerns that “empty empathy” (Kaplan, 2005) frequently masks screen media’s sensationalised and sentimentalised documentation of trauma to proffer false sympathy (Bloom, 2017) rather than more objective analysis that engages with broader historical contexts. Chapter 6 explores one of the paradoxical aspects of the current VR discourse, the emergence of industry commentators and academic voices calling for the VR industry to consider self-regulating content due to perceived, inherent capacities of this medium to engender harm. In the past, calls for regulation and/or censorship would frequently be expected from lobby groups with a particular religious or political perspective, yet questions about the negative impact of VR content are encountering a surprising degree of attention from trade websites within industry and from commentary by media academics. Even a staunch advocate of VR such as Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford University has recently claimed of VR shooting games that “If a possible mass shooter wants to hone his craft, don’t hand him a virtual boot camp” (Bailenson, 2018b). This chapter probes this emerging debate in two ways. Firstly, it outlines how both of these perspectives operate from an assumption of VR realism and engagement that is an idealistic extension of current or near-future technology. By taking an approach grounded in VR phenomenology to understand this issue, the chapter explores the language used by VR violence critics in comparison with the medium’s actual capacities for expressing and depicting violent acts. Significantly, the chapter stakes a claim for screen studies in what will inevitably be a continuation of the media-effects debate. We argue that VR phenomenology can be an appropriate analytical toolkit to ensure that such debates are not colonised solely by the social sciences in the same manner by which the media-effects paradigm of traditional media has been.

22 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Conclusion This book aims to provide an overview for a fresh and innovative research agenda concerning VR and related immersive media technologies by foregrounding an explicit screen studies approach. A substantial level of financial backing has been directed towards these technologies, alongside significant intellectual investment in the technology, its content and audiences principally driven by technical research agendas (Jerald, 2016). Much of this work has come out of academic laboratories—often funded by military contacts—or start-up enterprises in Silicon Valley (see Bailenson, 2018a). Corresponding with the very recent availability of portable VR headsets, cameras and software presenting a high-quality interface/experience at affordable prices, is the escalating opportunity for widespread creative practice and screen theory research, hitherto prohibitive due to the costly barrier to entry. From our mixed methodology and the diverse case studies presented in Virtual Realities, we aim to provide a stimulating entry point and guiding direction for future research in the area.

Note 1. The Uncanny Valley is a theoretical concept (Mori et al., 2012) which refers to the phenomenon that as the appearance of a synthetic humanoid figure becomes more life-like audiences typically feel increasingly comfortable until the appearance reaches a point which is very close to life-like; at this point audiences typically respond with uneasiness and disgust. The “Uncanny Valley” refers to an imagined graph of this concept, whereby the axis of comfort shows audience comfort increasing gradually and then suddenly dipping dramatically, before increasing again as the design of the synthetic character matches a real-life human.

References ACMI. (2016). Collisions. https://guides.acmi.net.au/collisions/?_ga=2. 182162724.269350135.1527815682-­1573164994.1519892503 Adams, R. L. (2016). Five reasons why virtual reality is a game changer. https:// www.forbes.com/sites/rober tadams/2016/03/21/5-­r easons-­w hy­virtual-­reality-­is-­a-­game-­changer/#726fcb9541be Adobe. (2018). Immersive virtual reality creates a new currency in storytelling. https://theblog.adobe.com/immersive-­v ir tual-­r eality-­c reates-­n ew­currency-­storytelling/

1 INTRODUCTION 

23

Aitkin, M. (2018, February 16). Human assets: The promise and dread of digitising humans. https://immerse.news/human-­assets-­624f3066c2ce Bailenson, J. (2018a). Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do. W.W. Norton & Company. Bailenson, J. (2018b). If a possible mass shooter wants to hone his craft, don’t hand him a virtual boot camp. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/05/opinions/video-­games-­shooting-­opinion-­bailenson/index.html Bender & D’Silva. (2016). Gone in 360 Seconds (VR Film). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWJ221IBrU Bender, S. M. (2018). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education, 20(3), 277–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2018.1464743 Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2021). Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in virtual reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience. Psychology & Marketing, 38(6), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21444 Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy, schmempathy: Response to Zaki. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(2), 60–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.003 Bloomberg. (2018). Oculus’ new virtual reality headset may finally make you want a virtual reality headset. https://time.com/5407321/oculus-­quest/ Bordwell, D. (1997). On the history of film style. Harvard University Press. Bradbury, R. (1950/1972). The Veldt. The Dramatic Publishing Company. Bradbury, R. (1953). Fahrenheit 451. Ballantine Books. Broderick, M., Bender, S. M., & McHugh, T. (2018). Virtual trauma: Prospects for automediality. M/C Journal, 21(2) http://journal.media-­culture.org.au/ index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1390 Brown, J. (n.d.). The history of IMAX. https://www.imax.com.au/ news/2013/02/the-­history-­of-­imax/ Comolli, J.-L., & Narboni, J. (1971). Cinema/ideology/criticism. Screen, 12(1), 27–36. Dixon, W. W. (2016). Slaves of vision: The virtual reality world of Oculus Rift. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 33(6), 501–510. https://doi.org/10.108 0/10509208.2016.1144018 Fenech, S. (2018). PlayStation VR review – The device that will literally be a game changer. http://www.techguide.com.au/reviews/playstation-­vr-­review-­device­will-­literally-­game-­changer/ Glushneva, I. (2017). Embodied spectatorship: Phenomenological turn in contemporary film theory. University of Kansas. Golding, D. (2019). Far from paradise: The body, the apparatus and the image of contemporary virtual reality. Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media, 25(2), 340–353. Gurman, M. (2018). Spielberg’s Ready Player One lends VR timely marketing boost. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-­03-­26/spielberg-­ s-­ready-­player-­one-­lends-­vr-­timely-­marketing-­boost

24 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Hanich, J. (2017). The journeys of film phenomenologist: An interview with Vivian Sobchack on being and becoming. NECSUS. https://necsus-­ejms.org/ vivian-­sobchack-­interview/ Hanke, B. (2010). McLuhan, Virilio and speed. In P.  Grosswiler (Ed.), Transforming McLuhan: Cultural, critical, and postmodern perspectives (pp. 203–226). Peter Lang. hooks, b. (2013). Black looks: Race and representation. Routledge. Huxley, A. (1932/1977). Brave new world. Chatto and Windus. International Society for Presence Research (ISPR). (2000). The concept of presence: Explication statement. Retrieved from https://smcsites.com/ispr/ Jerald, J. (2016). The VR book: Human-centered design for virtual reality. ACM and Morgan & Claypool. Kaplan, E. A. (2005). Trauma culture: The politics of terror and loss in media and literature. Rutgers University Press. Kerins, M. (2011). Beyond Dolby (stereo): Cinema in the digital sound age. Indiana University Press. Kite-Powell, J. (2018). See these companies use virtual reality to make fitness active. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferhicks/2018/01/24/see-­these-­ companies-­use-­virtual-­reality-­to-­make-­fitness-­addictive/#1e6e439f7dd4 Loh, A.  K. (2017). I feel you. Artforum. https://www.artforum.com/ print/201709/alyssa-­k-­loh-­on-­virtual-­reality-­and-­empathy-­71781 Lombard, M., & Ditton, T. (2006). At the heart of it all: The concept of presence. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 3(2). https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1083-­6101.1997.tb00072.x Maine, C. E. (1956). Escapement. Hodder and Stoughton. Marks, L. U. (2000). The skin of the film: Intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses. Duke University Press. Mateer, J. (2017). Directing for cinematic virtual reality: How the traditional film director’s craft applies to immersive environments and notions of presence. Journal of Media Practice, 18(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468275 3.2017.1305838 Milk, C. (Producer). (2015, March 16). TED: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine [Online video]. https://www.ted.com/talks/ chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine Mori, M., MacDorman, K., & Kageki, N. (2012). The Uncanny Valley [from the field]. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, 19(2), 98–100. https://doi. org/10.1109/mra.2012.2192811 Murray, C.  D., Bowers, J.  M., West, A.  J., Pettifer, S., & Gibson, S. (2000). Navigation, wayfinding, and place experience within a virtual city. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 9(5), 435–447. https://doi. org/10.1162/105474600566934

1 INTRODUCTION 

25

Murray, C. D., & Sixsmith, J. (1999). The corporeal body in virtual reality. Ethos, 27(3), 315–343. https://doi.org/10.1525/eth.1999.27.3.315 Newman, S. (2005). Review of The Paul Virilio reader. IM Journal, 1(1), 1–7. Peperkorn, H. M., Diemer, J., & Mühlberger, A. (2015). Temporal dynamics in the relation between presence and fear in virtual reality. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 542–547. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.028 Prince, S. (2012). Digital visual effects in cinema: The seduction of reality. Rutgers University Press. Robertson, A. (2015, October 30). The virtual reality 9/11 experience is bad, but not for the reasons you’d expect: Why do we love ‘empathy games’ and hate [08:46]? The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/30/9642790/ virtual-­reality-­9-­11-­experience-­empathy Schedeen, J. (2010). The history of 3D movie tech. http://au.ign.com/articles/2010/04/23/the-­history-­of-­3d-­movie-­tech Shaviro, S. (1993). Cinematic body. University of Minnesota Press. Silverman, K. (1996). The threshold of the visible world. Routledge. Sinnerbrink, R. (2016). Cinematic ethics: Exploring ethical experience through film. Routledge. Sobchack, V. (1992). The address of the eye: A phenomenology of film experience. Princeton University Press. Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal thoughts: Embodiment and moving image culture. University of California Press. Sobchack, V. (2009). The active eye: A phenomenology of cinematic vision. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12(3), 21–36. https://doi. org/10.1080/10509209009361350 Spangler, T. (2018). Could Ready Player One awaken the sleepy VR market? Retrieved from https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/ready-­player-­one­virtual-­reality-­vr-­market-­growth-­catalyst-­1202724167/ Stadler, H. (2009). Film as experience: Phenomenological concepts in cinema and television studies. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12(3), 37–50. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10509209009361351 Stadler, J. (2008). Pulling focus: Intersubjective experience, narrative film, and ethics. Continuum Books. Statista. (2021). Unit shipments of virtual reality (VR) devices worldwide from 2018 to 2019 (in millions), by vendor. https://www.statista.com/statistics/671403/global-­virtual-­reality-­device-­shipments-­by-­vendor/ Sutherland, E. A. (2015). Staged empathy: Empathy and visual perception in virtual reality systems. Masters’ thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/97998/914478914-­ MIT.pdf?sequence=1 Tassi, P. (2018). In no way is Ready Player One going to ‘awaken’ the slumbering market. https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/03/13/in-­no-­way-­

26 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

is-­r eady-­p layer-­o ne-­g oing-­t o-­a waken-­t he-­s lumbering-­v r-­m arket/?utm_ source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=ya hootix&yptr=yahoo#397d01f51b73 Thompson, J. (2018). Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing. https:// theconversation.com/why-­virtual-­reality-­cannot-­match-­the-­real-­thing-­92035 Toffler, A. (1971). Future shock. Bantam Books. Tortum, D. (2015, January 31). How virtual reality technology is changing documentary filmmaking. IndiWire. http://www.indiewire.com/2015/01/ how-­v irtual-­r eality-­t echnology-­i s-­c hanging-­d ocumentar y-­f ilmmaking-­ 248298/ Turndrup, M. (2015, August 12). Kiya is an intense VR recreation of a domestic murder-suicide. UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/kiya-­is-­an-­intense-­vr­recreation-­of-­a-­domestic-­murder-­suicide/ UNVR. (2015). Syrian refugee crisis. http://unvr.sdgactioncampaign.org/ cloudsoversidra/ Witmer, B.  G., & Singer, M.  J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(3), 225–240. Witton, C. (2017). What is immersive storytelling? The frontier of virtual reality. https://thecmoshow.filteredmedia.com.au/immersive-­s tor ytelling-­ frontier-­of-­virtual-­reality/ Woozer, A. (2018). Facebook’s Oculus Quest makes virtual reality more accessible. https://insights.thirdrepublic.com/facebooks-­oculus-­quest-­makes­virtual-­reality-­more-­accessible/ Zeitchick, S. (2018, March 31). Cinematic VR could be a game changer – If anyone will pay for it. Daily Herald. http://www.dailyherald.com/business/20180331/cinematic-­vr-­could-­be-­a-­game-­changer-­x2014-­if-­anyone­will-­pay-­for-­it

CHAPTER 2

Phenomenology and the Virtual Reality Researcher-Critic

Introduction This book is not dedicated to a singular phenomenological approach; therefore, it is important to distinguish the approach to phenomenology that we draw upon. Following Michel de Certeau (1984), the book ‘poaches’ from a number of adjacent methodological domains and phenomenology—specifically the programme of film phenomenology initiated by Vivian Sobchack (1992)—as one of many strands of analysis that will be developed throughout the case studies that follow. Indeed, as we will demonstrate, the intention of the phenomenological method here is to use it as a subjective starting point for subsequent analysis of VR. Specifically it is the justification that phenomenology provides for a subjective approach to what we call the ‘researcher-critic’. This term should be taken to refer to a scholar analysing a text—in this case, a VR experience—and beginning with their own personal and subjective encounter with it, yet reflecting on that process with strong research integrity. Therefore, it is outside the scope of the book to fully outline the philosophical history of phenomenology, from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807/2019), Husserl’s transcendental approach (1990), Sartre’s emphasis on emotion as a component of consciousness and intentionality (1943/1992), Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception (1978), through to the ‘post-phenomenology’ of Don Ihde (2008). Rather, it is the purpose of this chapter to trace the contours of how film © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_2

27

28 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

phenomenology and its centralising of subjective experience can be applied to the problem of VR and enhance screen studies methodology. At the time of writing, this is the first sustained engagement with the topic, although there are some short texts that apply a similar approach to very specific cases of researcher creative practice that broadly consider ‘VR’ to include the virtual environments of traditional videogames (see, e.g. Reinhard, 2019; Nicholls, 2019). Ihde writes of phenomenology more broadly, “Our experience of spatiality is […] situated, embodied, specific, and fully signifying” (Ihde, 2019, p.  52). It is immediately apparent that such a methodology is highly attuned to the requirements of analysing VR. After all, it is common for even non-specialists to regard VR as representing a shift in the way that humans experience mediated space. Indeed, many VR experiences are marketed directly as enabling users to experience a place or specific space, including a VR work created by the authors of this book which enables the viewer to critically experience the place of the iconic Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima (Bender & Broderick, 2019). This emphasis on the human experience of embodiment is central to understanding the VR encounter, whether the VR user is watching a 360-degree video and ‘viewing’ a place from a fixed position, or experiencing a fully immersive VR gaming environment with an avatar motion-tracked to their hand and feet movement.

Film Phenomenology and VR Phenomenology As foregrounded by Vivian Sobchack in The Address of the Eye, film phenomenology is concerned with the way that cinema is an experience: The cinema uses modes of embodied existence (seeing, hearing, physical and reflective movement) as the vehicle, the “stuff,” the substance of its language. It also uses the structures of direct experience (the “centering” and bodily situating of existence in relation to the world of objects and others) as the basis for the structures of its language. (Sobchack, 1992, pp. 4–5)

Thus, film phenomenology aims to foreground the sensuous and experiential encounter a viewer has with the film. The film is actively felt by the viewer. The images enable the viewer to recall, in a visceral and corporeal rather than cerebral sense, the feeling of active experience. Film phenomenology has “provided a platform for constructing theories of embodied vision with focus on the haptic, visceral involvement of [the] spectator”

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

29

(Glushneva, 2017, pp. 6–7). For Jennifer Barker (2009), “Exploring cinema’s tactility thus opens up the possibility of cinema as an intimate experience and of our relationship with cinema as a close connection, rather than as a distant experience of observation, which the notion of cinema as a purely visual medium presumes” (p.  2). Barker contends that touch occurs through more than just the skin of the viewer’s body, but through their various bodily sensory systems including “tension, balance, energy, inertia, languor, velocity, rhythm” (p. 2). This is taken to be relevant to all cinema, not simply so-called ‘4D cinema’ which includes environmental effects such as simulated smells, temperature changes and smoke. For Robert Sinnerbrink (2016), “Phenomenological approaches, foregrounding the experiential aspects of cinema, put the human subject back into the picture, albeit a subject defined by its ‘affects,’ its corporeality, and its embodied difference” (p. 83). Thus, the application of film phenomenology to a VR phenomenology is immediately apparent. After all, the definition of presence by the International Society for Presence Research (ISPR) (2000) emphasises bodily involvement and the “individual’s perception” and, importantly, that “Presence is a property of an individual and varies across people and time; it is not a property of a technology”. As indicated in the introduction, the human body has long been the focus of what counts as ‘immersion’ in virtual worlds in presence research. Therefore, what we here label VR phenomenology puts the body of the user at the centre of the VR experience. This will be developed further below, but at this stage it is important to note that this approach also privileges the subjective experience of the researcher-critic. In this domain, the researcher-critic does not need to be a VR technical expert; however, we contend they must be experienced, be aware of the present issues and technological developments and, above all, be sensitive to their own experience. For example, a researcher who experiences cyber sickness within five minutes of using any VR headset may be able to conduct surveys about other users’ experiences, and may be able to even write about the cultural impact of VR technology, but they would be a poor VR phenomenologist unless they limited their analysis to the sensation of nausea and under what conditions it is caused. As Tim Gorichanaz notes, drawing upon Elliot Benjamin’s phenomenology and auto-ethnography work with spiritual mediums, “a researcher engaging in auto-hermeneutics must have a capacity for self-awareness, have a concrete way to externalize inner experiences, and be trained in qualitative research” (2017, p. 3).

30 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Consider the phenomenological problem posed in Chap. 1 in which a scene from the Cinematic VR (CVR) production Gone in 360 Seconds (Dirs., Stuart Bender & Brandon D’Silva, 2016) can be compared with the first-person point of view shots in the classic cinema text Lady in the Lake (Dir., Robert Montgomery, 1947). Two relevant images are presented below in Fig.  2.1. Printed here, it is tempting to comment—as Todd Berliner did at the 2016 Conference of the Society for Cognitivist Studies of the Moving Image—that “But, it looks just like Lady in the Lake”. However, this is not really the point—the experience of viewing Gone in 360 Seconds on the printed page such as this, or on a fixed-screen display, is substantially different to experiencing it using the VR headset and medium for which it was created. A VR phenomenology approach would instead consider the experience of this scene from within the VR headset. Tested on audiences, many claimed that, in Gone in 360 Seconds, “it’s like she was right there, looking right at me” (Bender, 2018). The experience of Author 1 and 2 reflects this to some degree; however, by using the ‘self-­ aware’ critical disposition highlighted above we can pause to re-consider what that feeling is in some greater detail. Nonetheless, the comparison to Lady in the Lake is important, and Sobchack has written at length on a phenomenological explanation of why that film does not convince the audience that it is ‘their’ point of view. Sobchack recalls Jean Mitry’s (1965/1998) analysis of the film, arguing that there is a “difference between the spectator’s body sitting relatively quiescent in a theater seat and the film’s body invisibly living out, through the activity of the camera, a kinetic life and activity clearly not shared bodily by the spectator”

Fig. 2.1  Left: Gone in 360 Seconds (Bender & D’Silva, 2016). Right: Lady in the Lake (Montgomery, 1947)

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

31

(Sobchack, 1992, p.  233). This point may provide justification for why audiences of Gone in 360 Seconds indeed experience a spontaneous sense of being there with the female detective who is perceived as staring directly at them. After all, the audiences we are referring to watched the video in a VR headset while sitting down in a chair, just as the character is. However, these responses to Gone in 360 Seconds should not be taken as a claim that the film fully captures the embodied experience. On one level this was factored into the production—CVR does not facilitate any interaction, so the narrative was designed around this limitation to involve the viewer/main character as a witness to a car hijacking and is thus told not to move nor speak. The aim of this was to limit the non-interactive nature interfering with the embodied experience of the audience. Yet, at other times, the limitations of this production design became apparent, and indeed share a similar problem to Lady in the Lake. The hijacking scenes of Gone in 360 Seconds tell the viewer/main character to “get on the ground”, yet the optical perspective does not lower to this point of view. Because the film is CVR—which means live action video rather than a computer-generated (CG) game engine environment—the viewer’s movement can only swivel the view around 360 degrees. The viewer can not physically lie on the ground and experience any difference in optical perspective. Thus, Mitry would no doubt argue that these scenes of the film fail to create a seamless sense of embodiment, just as the audiences commented—at times out loud—during their viewing experience.

VR and Embodiment In the developmental move from phenomenology to VR phenomenology, we are emphasising the contribution to scholarship of that theoretical approach to embodiment. As Stadler notes, in relation to cinema: Since human beings operate the equipment involved in filmmaking, there is a sense in which the film ends up being an amalgamation of human and machine, a kind of cybernetic organism. In this context, ‘the film’s body’ is a descriptive term that includes both the technological instruments that facilitate textual production and reception; perception and expression, and also the intentional and interpretative work of the human beings involved in forming meaning within the project of the film. (Stadler, 2008, p. 44)

32 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Extending this account to VR, there is the additional layer of a more immediate embodiment of the user. We do not simply see the image on the screen with our eyes as if the screen were our eyes; rather, we also move through the VR environment as if we were in that environment, and we reach down and grip a virtual object—via the controller—as if we were gripping the object in the real world. Indeed, we are gripping a real object in the real world—the VR controller. This is of course why there is repeated interest in developing haptic suits and haptic gloves that provide force feedback to the user to mimic the physical force of holding particular objects. Users and inventors alike are embracing their own phenomenological understanding of the medium. This physical embodiment is likely related to our innate fascination with imitation. As Dutton notes (using evolutionary psychology to justify Aristotle’s position on mimesis): Evidence for Aristotle can be seen in children’s imitative play: everywhere children play in imitation of grown-ups, of each other, of animals, and even of machines. Imitation is a natural component of the enculturation of individuals. (Dutton, 2009, p. 33)

This position seems to provide valid justification for the novel enjoyment typically experienced by first-time VR users (Bender & Sung, 2021), a theme we return to throughout the case studies in this book. It may also account in part for the intuitive way in which many first-time VR users, regardless of age, seem to become quickly accustomed to the various controls and movements of VR handheld controllers and their associated gestures and gripping functions. As an emerging field, VR phenomenology should also take inspiration from both post-phenomenology—or the study of human experience with technology—and also the psychology field of human–computer interaction (HCI). In methodological terms this means being aware of useful terminology, nomenclature and concepts from relevant scientific fields of inquiry. For some time, the field of HCI studies has been developing its own approach to presence and embodiment which relies upon experiment and observation of highly specialised laboratory trials. While these studies generally explore micro-phenomena, they contribute two highly useful concepts that screen studies can use in its exploration of VR phenomenology—the so-called plausibility illusion (PSI) and place illusion (PI).

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

33

Chapter 3 will demonstrate how these fields can also benefit from an encounter with VR phenomenology. According to the HCI literature, PSI and PI are defined as separate sensations of illusion that result in a feeling of immersion in a virtual environment. They can be applied to VR viewed in a headset, but are also very frequently applied to flat-screen videogames and other virtual environments viewed using displays such as curved-screens, CAVE setups and other visualisation systems. Mel Slater defines PSI as “the Illusion that what is apparently happening is really happening (even though you know for sure that it is not)” (Slater, 2009, p. 3553). By contrast, PI is defined as “the type of presence that refers to the sense of ‘being there’” (p. 3551). For Slater, “PI is about how the [virtual] world is perceived, the Psi is about what is perceived” (p. 3553). We can use the Gone in 360 Seconds example above to unpack these concepts. PI elements would be those that contribute to the sense of really being in the office with the detective, for example, the height of the camera matches the height expected of a person sitting in a chair, the background sound of the office seem convincing and, if the viewer turns their head around the 360-degree view, there should be no tell-tale signs of filmmaking apparatus such as lights or light-stands. Significantly, given the special circumstance of live action VR, the tripod stand should not be visible if one looks directly down at the ground. This is likely to be why so many CVR producers aim to digitally remove the tripod stand from the finished image, even if they may not be able to articulate this decision in terms of PI. PSI elements would include, for example, the spatial sound location of the detective’s voice—if the viewer turns their head to look to the right, the detective’s voice should now appear to emanate from the left. A further element of PSI would be that the detective is looking directly at the camera/viewer. Thus, even based on this brief analysis of the single frame from one 360-degree production, PSI and PI are clearly useful technical modes of classifying phenomenological elements of VR immersion. It is also important to note that some elements of a VR experience might have impact on both PI and PSI: for example, the spatial sound of the detective’s voice could also be classified as impacting PI. Throughout this book, we take the position that PSI/PI are useful starting points to draw closer attention to the technical and aesthetic properties of a VR experience in any phenomenological evaluation. It is worth noting that PSI and PI do not have to be ‘realistic’. Indeed, some of the more interesting VR experiences deliberately interfere with

34 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

these perceptions, and VR phenomenology offers an additional level of understanding of this experience. Consider, for example, the 1,000 Cut Journey VR experience created at Stanford University’s Virtual Human-­ Interaction Lab (2020). Aside from the social implications of the project, which a traditional analysis might focus on, for our purposes here the most significant part of the project is how the user’s body—represented by avatar hands in the experience—is manipulated by the PSI. In the narrative of this VR experience, the user adopts the character/role of a Black youth in an inner-city setting of the USA. Author 1 encountered this VR experience in the Stanford University lab. The very first part of the experience is presented as a kind of ‘orientation/familiarisation’ task where the user holds the HTC VIVE controllers in their hands and has to control the avatar’s hands to throw an object through a hoop. But, because the avatar’s hands are those of a child, the arms are shorter than an adult user’s hands; therefore, as you extend your (real) hand at one point the avatar’s (virtual) hand is at full extension even though in the real world your hand can move further away from your body. Thus, there is a strange effect from the tension between what you are experiencing via vision in the VR headset, and what you are experiencing with your body. This tension in the PSI element has a striking effect, immediately assisting with an alignment or a subjective experience with the avatar; this recalls Merleau-­ Ponty’s emphasis that the human body “is our point of view on the world” (1964, p. 5). In the following section, we demonstrate how the language of VR phenomenology can be used to drive analysis of a VR experience that begins with the user’s body.

Case Study: VR Military Shooter Experience In order to demonstrate what an analysis driven by VR phenomenology would look like, we now turn to a critical exploration of the VR first-­ person military shooter game Onward from Downpour Interactive (2016). This short demonstration intends to show how a subjective researcher-­ critic can use their own bodily and cognitive engagement with a VR experience as the basis of a nuanced analysis. In particular, it should be apparent that while some of what is presented in Virtual Realities are the sort of outcomes that might be expected from a screen studies academic analysis, we contend that the level of ‘immersion’ in the text required for the phenomenological approach supersedes what most close readings of VR have been able to produce. The demonstration also grapples with the

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

35

important consideration of how particular tasks of the phenomenological critic ought to be justified as analytically valid. It is intended that future scholars can draw upon this approach as a kind of case study demonstration, a notion we follow throughout the remainder of the book. However, it is not intended that future work would need to signpost as many of the critical/analytical steps and tasks undertaken. It will also become apparent that such an approach differs markedly from existing screen studies analyses of VR. First, some background on the VR experience. Onward was initially released in 2016 as a work-in-progress, a stage referred to as ‘early access’ which is common for many independently created videogames in the contemporary marketplace. The game is presently marketed as follows: Become fully immersed in the firefight! Experience a first person shooter as you never have before: Onward combines mil-sim [military-simulator] gameplay with the experience of playing in virtual reality. Players cannot rely on crosshairs or mini maps, instead you rely on coordination and communication with your squad in order to succeed at your objective. Realistic combat mechanics and artificial locomotion will push your combat survival skills to their limit as you engage in infantry combat across a large variety of maps and combat situation. (Oculus, 2021)

The short video clips and gameplay images that accompany the information page at the online platforms where the game is released (either via Oculus or via Steam) certainly provide what looks like an exciting military-­ themed shooter game. However, as stated earlier, VR is still at the point where many readers will not be able to experience Onward for themselves to validate what the researcher-critic writes about it. Equally, they may simply not wish to purchase the game to experience it for the purpose of validating someone else’s analysis. Certainly there are video clips on YouTube that show users interacting with the game which provide some indication of what the gameplay may be like (Fig. 2.2). For example, these show the first-person view of the player entering a battlefield terrain, such as a subway location or a Middle-Eastern themed marketplace, and using military weapons to attack enemies. The larger issue of weapons in VR is dealt with in Chap. 6’s discussion of regulating VR, including a critical discussion of some absurd comments made about weapons usage in VR. However, while we note in Chap. 5 that watching a 2D screen capture of another user’s experience in a 3D immersive VR environment may

36 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 2.2  Onward’s first-person view of the battlefield from within the VR headset. Image: Downpour Interactive (2017)

provide an auto-ethnographic insight into others’ real-time phenomenological experience as something we can observe, it simply does not replicate what it is like to ‘play’ something like Onward. Thus, it is important for the phenomenological critic to provide a thick description of how the game feels and what the player is able to do within it. That is, although it is possible for PSI and PI to be elicited via desktop (flat-screen) games, the 2D screenshots such as those provided above will undoubtedly fail to fully capture how PSI and PI actually impact the experience as played in a 3D immersive VR headset. At this point this distinction is perhaps most easily characterised for an unfamiliar reader by comparing the fundamental VR gameplay with gameplay on a console or desktop PC setup, using as an example more familiar first-person shooter games such as Call of Duty or Battlefield. Like its flat-­ screen equivalents, Onward can be played either as a single-player experience against computer-controlled (artificially intelligent [AI]) enemies or in an online multiplayer mode. Multiplayer mode consists of a maximum of five versus five players on each team. There are a limited variety of gameplay options, including ‘Uplink’ in which one team defends a radio tower from the other attacking team and ‘Escort’ where one team must escort a white-shirted VIP—one of their own players—from one end of

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

37

the VR environment to the other and protect them from the other team’s attacks. The major difference in gameplay is that, as a military-simulator (mil-­ sim) game, Onward places emphasis on weapons handling, movement, tactics (to some extent) and an immersive sensation of performing as a soldier. Flat-screen games like Call of Duty, Battlefield or even the VR shooter game Pavlov are not mil-sims, and instead focus on action and rapid respawning, where the player will re-enter the game shortly after being killed. By contrast, Onward—along with some desktop-based mil-­ sims such as the Arma series—limits these kinds of action-oriented gameplay. For example, in Onward’s multiplayer modes once a player is killed they cannot re-enter the game and must wait until the end of the game session, or until the objective is accomplished, or until all players of one team are killed. This is intended to shift the focus of players to tactical action. However, while these differences are notable, the main distinction between the two styles of gameplay is, of course, the VR component. As such, Onward is experienced very differently to any of its flat-screen counterparts, even other mil-sims such as Arma. The most obvious difference is in the way that the player uses their hands or, more specifically, the controllers to interact with their weapons system. Whereas a non-VR shooter game typically has the gun mounted at the centre of the frame, in VR the player’s hands can hold the weapon in any position and at any angle they can physically move their hands into. This means it is possible to shoot in one direction while turning your head to look in another. Significantly, aiming the weapon therefore feels relatively natural, much more so than on a desktop PC where aiming is performed using the computer mouse or with a console shooter where the user aims with the controller pad. For example, in the VR world, grenades must have the pin pulled and then thrown via an appropriate arm gesture. In classical film phenomenological terms, this might be an instance where the VR text “materially expresses human intentionality” (Sobchack, 1992, pp. 243–244) as the character’s hands essentially do what the player’s hands do. Indeed, this is one of the key selling features of the so-called ‘Knuckles’ controllers release by Steam that are intended to more closely resemble the intention, via pressure, of the user’s fingers (Robertson, 2019). For both Author 1 and 2, even with the basic HTC VIVE controllers, the aiming system of Onward felt instantly natural, and shooting was accurate. By contrast, Author 1 has always struggled to get comfortable with console controllers and Author

38 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

2 has only been able to grow familiar with console controllers over time. Also interesting is that the HTC VIVE controller is arguably designed in such a way that it more closely resembles the physical design of the grip of a gun, whereas the Oculus controllers use buttons and a design that is more akin to traditional console game controllers. Perhaps, for this reason, Author 1 find finds the Oculus controller vastly more difficult than the HTC VIVE to use. Whereas in a typical first-person shooter game the player moves by using the controls, Onward has two types of movement or ‘locomotion’ as it is called by VR designers. The first is physical movement which takes advantage of the room-scale nature of this kind of VR.  Within the play space available in any given player’s setup, the user can lean, walk, crouch, kneel and otherwise move with normal bodily actions. This is of course limited by the technology purchased by the user—for example, first generation HTC VIVE users are limited to an approximately 4 × 3 metre area, whereas HTC VIVE Pro users can set up a 10 × 10 metre play space. Of course, this also depends on how large the area is in the users’ physical space, for example, their house. The second type of locomotion is to use a button on the controller to move forward, backward or to strafe left and right. Of course, this is similar to the way gamepads work on flat-screen games; however, the interactive experience of using it is quite different. Both Author 1 and 2 found that intuitively and immediately they adopted a movement strategy of combining the two types above. To move quickly over terrain, they would hold down the forward button while physically moving their shoulders and head to scan the environment for enemies. But then, in close quarters to walls, doorways or forms of cover, it felt natural to use the button controller to move very quickly up to them and then to physically take a step forwards and crouch or take cover behind/ beside them. It is a commendable feat of PSI to engender the sense of movement, while knowing that you are still within the confines of your living room. Indeed, both Author 1 and 2 find the popular alternative type of locomotion—teleporting from one location to another by pointing the controller and pulling the trigger—to be quite disorienting and significantly reduces PSI. This embodied nature of the gameplay, and the novel excitement inspired by it, is also captured by one player’s comments on the platform Reddit:

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

39

Unlike other [console/desktop] shooters that try to maximize the time spent pulling the trigger, stopping only to instantaneously cram in more ammo, the more involved reload mechanics make you take longer and so force you to use cover. Spending so much time in cover cements the mindset that you care more about preserving your own (character’s) life than you do about taking your enemies’ lives. Next thing you know, your [sic] hopping skittishly from cover to cover trying to outmaneuver [sic] everyone instead of trying to overwhelm them with simple firepower. (7evin, as cited in reddit.com, 2018)

This user is also commenting here on the importance that the VR interaction afforded by the controllers—in this case a PSI element—makes to reloading the weapon, highlighting another unique aspect of VR-led locomotion in gameplay. That is, by contrast to a flat-screen game where reloading is accomplished with the click of a button, Onward requires the user to use their hands, fingers and controllers to mimic the movements of physically gripping the spent magazine, throwing it aside, again physically gripping the fresh clip from its storage location on ‘your’ belt, then inserting it into the correct part of the weapon. This process is slightly different for each type of weapon, all of which have a different location for the magazine and the cocking bolt. Importantly, rather than this simply being an interesting form of interaction design, or even for that matter a realistic simulation of reloading, for the 7evin commenter on Reddit, this process has embodied and highlighted this cognitive impact on how they play the game, particularly in comparison to flat-screen shooter games. Thus, their involvement with the text is impacted in unique and interesting phenomenological ways. This level of involvement is illustrated in the eSports version of Onward where the game is played competitively (Fig. 2.3), and players can be seen crouching and otherwise physically engaging with the virtual world even though they must stay in fairly small physical spaces in the real world for the purpose of being on stage for the eSports event. This bodily involvement as a key feature of Onward’s gameplay seems to provoke profound emotional responses spontaneously from users. Consider the following statement by technical magazine Polygon, noting the words articulating embodiment: Onward is one of the most stressful things I’ve ever done with a computer. I say this as a person who went through virtual boot camp [with the America’s Army videogame] and learned to play Arma 3 alongside one of the most well respected military simulation groups on the internet. I say this

40 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 2.3  eSports version of Onward. Note the three team-players in the insert image at screen left crouching (VR League, 2018) as someone who went to Fort Campbell to fight with the 101st Airborne inside their military-grade infantry combat simulator. All of that was a cake walk compared to Onward. (Hall, 2019)

The review even begins with the subheading “Please don’t tell my boss, but I got scared and I broke it real, real bad” (Hall, 2019). In another YouTube review—titled with considerable hype “Onward VR: The PTSD Simulator” (Criken, 2018)—a screen-capture video shows one player experiencing the game for the first time with a group of friends also linked up via multiplayer. Although their interactive gameplay itself is light-­ hearted and full of laughter, with friendly jokes among the players, the YouTube upload description is revealing—“This game is intense. We only played it for a couple hours and by the end we were all sweating and crying a little bit” (Criken, 2018). These are the sorts of comments users frequently make about horror-themed console/desktop videogames which have carefully crafted storylines for the user to follow. Thus, Onward provides a demonstrably involving experience capable of eliciting substantial emotional responses from the user/s without even having a particularly

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

41

‘creepy’ mood, atmosphere or storyline. Rather, it is a combination of the gameplay, the audio-visual experience and the bodily experience that is capable of such a strong phenomenological impact. Indeed, one of the more uncomfortable experiences possible within Onward is that one way to exit the game is to point a gun at your own head and pull the trigger. While it would be going too far to suggest that this is a ‘difficult’ action to perform, it is nonetheless startling to go through the motion the first time. By comparison, it is generally not possible to point a gun at ‘your’ own head in a flat-screen game, although it is of course possible for a player to deliberately ‘kill’ themselves by walking over a grenade, for example. Stadler, writing of film phenomenology, notes that, “As spectators we see and hear the film, experiencing it in and through our bodies: we may hold our breath during the suspenseful action sequences, flinch when the villain swings a punch at the hero, jump when a door slams in a horror film, or choke up with tears in sentimental moments” (2008, p. 45). In the case of VR phenomenology and Onward, we can only experience our avatar’s bodily movement through our own bodily movement. However, it is nonetheless mediated. Indeed, it is a terrific confirmation of the power of PSI and technological craft that the VR controller is able to generate the appropriate illusion that I am pointing the gun at my own head, for instance, or that I am holding a hand-grenade and throwing it across at my enemies. A phenomenological critic of VR would need to demonstrate, for want of a better phrase, their research bona fides in terms of how well they know the fundamental background of the text under analysis. Also important would be some sort of evidence or declaration that the researcher-critic actually experienced the VR being discussed if they are making claims about its effect on the user/audience. Indeed, the case could be made that this ought to apply in screen studies more generally. For instance, there are countless examples of academic writing about films that make claims about the use of particular stylistic devices that suggest the critic simply did not watch the film closely at all (for extended discussion and examples, see Bender, 2013). The material above is intended to provide such context but, in the case of Onward, it is also relevant to consider the development and distribution context as it reveals some crucial insights into the user’s phenomenological encounter with it. Still technically in early access phase at the time of writing, Onward has undergone a number of updates since 2016. Some of these are graphical

42 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

upgrades and improvements, some are added functionality and/or new content. The most significant change was in mid-2020 with the release of the Oculus Quest version of the game. Until this point, the game was only available on HTC VIVE and Oculus Rift—both are PC-based VR requiring the headset be wired to a high-performance PC, although there is an expensive, and optional, wireless adaptor for the HTC VIVE. The Oculus Quest, however, released in May 2019, enables room-scale VR without the need for wires or an external PC to run the graphics. The developer of Onward acknowledged one of the key benefits of the Oculus Quest versus the higher quality PC-based VR systems such as HTC Vive and (non-­ Quest) Oculus: “One thing […] is not having to worry about that wire, especially for a game like Onward where you need to go prone or crouch quickly and stand back up and turn corners,” explains Buckley. “When you’re constantly reminded of having a wire you’re not as free to move and win the game”. (Buckley, as cited in Graham, 2020)

Available for a much lower price than even the Oculus or HTC VIVE headsets, the Quest lowered the barrier to entry for many users. However, its cheaper cost came with lower graphics capability than the PC-based systems. This meant that games such as Onward could not automatically be run by the Quest and needed to be altered or even potentially rebuilt from scratch. The Quest thus presents trade-offs for both developers and consumers. For consumers, this means a balance between higher mobility versus reduced graphics performance as well as, at first, a reduced number of game titles due to lack of development. For game developers, the Quest promises higher uptake of consumers due to the lower cost of purchase, yet the games themselves require clever optimisation by simplifying graphics, interactive visual effects, post-effects and other mechanics. Nonetheless, as the designer of Onward noted, “We realised that getting on Quest […] is essential to a studio’s life […] It’s the next generation, it’s affordable, people like it because its wireless, I think PC VR will always be around but ultimately wireless and mobile VR will be the future” (Buckley, as cited in Graham, 2020). Additionally, and importantly, because the Onward release would run in what is known as ‘cross-play’ multiplayer mode, the graphics on the Oculus/VIVE PC-based version would need to be downgraded to match those of the Quest (Fig.  2.4). This is so that when a PC-based player

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

43

Fig. 2.4  Comparison of Quest versus PC-based graphics in an earlier version of Onward (Feltham, 2020)

encounters a Quest-based player, the PC player does not have an unfair advantage from their higher resolution graphics. In addition, PC-based graphics enable a greater ‘draw distance’ which means that objects further away will be visible on the screen. Thus, without downgrading the graphics for the PC system, a PC-based player would be able to ‘see’ a Quest player at a greater distance and would be able to shoot them more easily. As evidenced from Fig.  2.4, these changes result in substantial implications for the level of PI—the new Quest-friendly version of Onward stands in stark contrast to the greater detail of the previous PC-optimised virtual environment’s trees, lighting, textures and so on. In addition, the PSI is greatly lowered due to the depictions of character motion being vastly reduced. As has been described elsewhere, the level of nuanced detail in character motion in videogames has a substantial impact on both PSI and the overall impression of realism (Bender, 2014). Players already accustomed to the game on Oculus/VIVE found that the change in graphics quality immediately altered their experience detrimentally. This change was apparent immediately to Author 1 given his 1500  hours of game time logged since late 2016. Following numerous complaints, the developer ultimately withdrew the ‘update’ and enabled a revert to a previous version so that PC-based players could play with other

44 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

PC players temporarily (Byford, 2020). Nonetheless, as will be made clear in the analysis of VR exposure therapy (VRET) systems in Chap. 4, high-­ quality graphics is not essential to player immersion. Indeed, it is likely that the backlash against Onward’s Quest-friendly graphics was largely due to its obvious downgrade from what PC players had been using. That is, the key impact on immersion seems to be the result of how elements of the PSI contribute to the player’s experience (Bender & Sung, 2021). Eventually, the graphics were improved moderately to still work with the limitations of the Quest system while enabling a better experience for the PC-based players. At the time of writing, Onward supports multiplayer sessions, with a cross-play of HTC VIVE, Oculus and Quest users interacting. One final aspect of the phenomenology of Onward is to consider the impact of the interactive experience inherent to online multiplayer gaming. The analysis here is most interested in a key change that has occurred since the game was ported to the cheaper—and therefore popular—Quest. Significantly, because of the nature of cross-play between Quest and existing PC-based VR platforms, players interacting in an Onward session can be using any of these different devices. Each device is equipped with headphones and a microphone so the player’s voice can be heard by other players. Within the VR environment of the battle, players can activate the microphone to communicate as if via radio with their team; however, the microphone transmits any sounds from the player’s voice to any other player in the environment if they are within close range. For example, it is possible to hear a player on the enemy team breathing and/or talking from around the corner of a building if you are close enough. In addition, players wait in a virtual ‘lobby’ both before the game and after they have been killed. In the lobby, the player can choose their weapons, see a live preview of the action taking place in the battlefield while they wait, as well as write or draw on a virtual chalkboard. In addition, players can speak to each other as well as across teams. A future phenomenological analysis of how this experience has changed since the influx of Quest users will prove interesting. Much of the existing research on multiplayer video gaming has focused on the social benefits, for example the impact of task cooperation in an interactive context (Lim & Lee, 2009), as well as on trolling, particularly the gendered, and sometimes racist, nature of trolling behaviour (see, e.g. Buckels et al., 2014; Cook, 2019; Hilvert-Bruce & Neill, 2020). While these methodologies should be applied to VR multiplayer games as they become increasingly

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

45

popular, Onward and phenomenology offers a unique occasion to present a rather different analysis of some aspects of VR game socialising but, more importantly, an analysis of how this element affects the experience of the player. When Author 1 began playing Onward, the multiplayer community was quite supportive and enjoyable. Players took the game semi-seriously, which means they attempted to complete the tasks that are meant to be undertaken in a given game. For example, in the ‘Uplink’ mode, the attacking team should either kill all of the opposing team members, or alternatively get one of their players in position under the enemy’s radar and enter a code. By and large, players would attempt to complete these missions, although we will see below that this behaviour has changed by the time of writing. In addition, players were supportive of accidental team-kills. A team-kill is where one player shoots someone on their own team. This is notoriously easy when first beginning to play Onward because its mil-sim nature means that the enemy are not identified with a helpful colour code icon above their head like they are in popular action videogames such as Call of Duty or Battlefield. In addition, the Onward teams switch each round so that in one round a player’s team may be camouflage colour and then in the next round they will be black. Thus, for beginning players, it can be unclear who is who, and team-kills are frequent. When Author 1 began playing the game in late 2016, a new player would usually announce in the lobby that they have not played the game before, and other players would offer helpful support such as “… look at your hands to see what colour your team is in this round, then don’t shoot people that colour”. Aside from team-kills, experienced players would also generally offer to help explain tactics and offer basic tips for weapons reloading and so on to newer players, as did Author 1 with newbie Author 2. Nevertheless, accidental team-­ kills were inevitable, and usually a verbal apology in the lobby would suffice. Repeat team-kills, however, were punishable by the rest of the players who were able to vote to have that player ‘kicked’, a form of in-­ game governmentality that is presumably intended for the player to learn from their behaviour and modify it (Kontour, 2012). Overall, this experience was positive and enjoyable. Although players would enter and leave the community, the same kind of social experience persisted from late 2016 to early 2020. However, at the time of writing, the social experience of multiplayer in Onward is radically different. For example, team-killing behaviour is frequent (whether accidental, or

46 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

deliberate ‘fragging’), and instead of players helpfully explaining the simple solution of double-checking which colour team you are on at the beginning of the round, squabbles and arguments break out in the voice chat of the lobby. Players call each other names, and attempt to stage retributive team-kills in the following rounds. Seemingly at random, a vote will be called for any given player to be kicked from the game. In addition, the gameplay itself has suffered because a round will frequently end prematurely because a player from one team has simply shot everyone in their own squad or thrown a hand-grenade at their own group. Unsurprisingly, this event triggers even more name-calling and arguing in the lobby which delays the start of the next round. It is possible to avoid this experience by looking at the list of names of players before clicking ‘enter session’, and identifying known and familiar players who are experienced and likely to offer a satisfying game session. However, these sessions are usually occupied with a maximum of ten players, so the game player needs to wait some time or choose to enter one of the other lobbies and take their chances on the game being disrupted by team-kills and other problems. In some ways it is beyond a phenomenological analysis to argue why such changes have taken place; in a sense, it is enough to simply describe them. Further research, perhaps from a historical–technological poetics or surveys, or other type of close reading analysis could examine why the game’s social experience has changed. Nonetheless, it appears that these significant changes to the social experience of Onward occurred at the same time as a fresh influx of players using the Quest entered the game. Certainly, it could be coincidental that these changes are observed at the same time as the Quest version of Onward became available; perhaps the novelty of the game has simply run its course and this is a case of player fatigue. But there are some subjective speculations that can be made via the researcher having experienced so much of the game. From a subjective judgement of the voices of various players in-game, it seems that many teenagers and younger children are now playing Onward. The squabbles and arguments about team-killing are predominantly younger sounding voices. By contrast, all of the voices of other players were clearly adults during Author 1’s perceived ‘golden age’ of Onward (from late 2016 to early 2020). On the Onward Discord discussion channel (www.discord. com), many other users have begun to express similar problems since younger players have entered the game community. Interestingly, many of the discussion threads start as complaints about the children’s gameplay

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

47

and then move quickly to a more broad ethical consideration of whether or not children should even be playing VR, citing health and development concerns. It seems likely that the increase in younger players is an effect of the release of the Quest, a substantially cheaper VR headset that has been described as an excellent Christmas present, especially for tweens, due to its cost and that there is no need to attach it to an expensive PC (Mom Elite, 2019; Schmid, 2020; Tyler, 2020). However, as seen above, one of the noted outcomes of involving younger players in an online multiplayer game can be increased anti-social behaviour (Thacker & Griffiths, 2012). In closing this particular case study, it is worth considering what has been demonstrated here. Of course, the example of Onward should not be taken to demonstrate that the phenomenological researcher-critic must be embedded in a given VR experience for a number of years. It does not have to be auto-ethnographic research. It can be a type of auto-­ hermeneutics, which Gorichanaz distinguishes accordingly—“Auto-­ hermeneutics differs from autoethnography in that auto-hermeneutics generally seeks to characterize a discrete phenomenon through one person’s experience, whereas autoethnography seeks to paint a picture of the amalgamated experience of living in a culture” (2017, p.  4). Thus, the phenomenological method has been demonstrated as one that enables a particularly useful kind of close reading of the VR text, built upon important and essential subjective experience of the researcher-critic. The analysis been able to draw upon some of the usual material covered in screen studies—for example, a select commentary from the VR text’s producer/s, description and analysis of the audio-visual design, and a placement of the text against the technological and historical background from whence it is derived—but all of this has been informed by the researcher-critic’s initial self-immersion in the VR experience. This has led to not only there being analytic attention to aspects of the VR text that might otherwise have been missed, but the approach has directed what salient aspects of the game makers’ commentary are relevant, as well as whether important embodied and somatic responses from other users can add value to the overall analysis. Further case studies presented throughout this book will demonstrate similar approaches to other VR texts, for example interviews and observation with how adults versus younger players engage with the game. After all, it seems likely that younger players would have a height advantage in that their smaller stature is better reflected in height of the game’s avatar. Yet, to what extent is this borne out in the gameplay? Alternatively, to what extent does someone’s familiarity with traditional videogame console

48 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

controllers afford them greater agility in the more natural limb movement of a VR environment? Phenomenology thus offers a pathway forward to proposing such questions.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined the main benefits of the approach combining phenomenology with audience analysis of VR.  First, we articulated that the main drives of this approach were to develop the field of VR phenomenology via an emphasis on the practice of the researcher-critic. This researcher-critic is defined as a self-aware scholar willing to immerse themselves in the VR text under analysis and capable of reflecting on the experience they have had. Second, the chapter outlined the fundamental background of film phenomenology derived from the work of Vivian Sobchack. This field of scholarship was demonstrated to have substantial impact on how the body of the film viewer was important in understanding how a film text works. Against this background, the analytic approach of VR phenomenology was outlined, with its specific emphasis on how the viewer’s embodiment is central to their experience of VR.  Finally, the chapter provided a detailed demonstration of applying VR phenomenology to the mil-sim game Onward. This sample analysis indicates how the appropriate terminology and methodological approach yields a substantially nuanced critique of how the text works and affects the player’s body. Further case studies in the book draw upon this development of VR phenomenology as part of their methodological accoutrement.

References Barker, J. M. (2009). The tactile eye: Touch and the cinematic experience. University of California Press. Bender, S. M. (2013). Film style and the World War II combat film. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bender, S. M. (2014). Blood splats and bodily collapse: Reported realism and the perception of violence in combat films and videogames. Projections, 8(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2014.080202 Bender, S. M. (2018). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education, 20(3), 277–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2018.1464743

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

49

Bender, S.  M., & Broderick, M. (2019). Genbaku Dome VR: Experiencing Hiroshima’s atomic legacy. Hiroshima International Film Festival, 22–24 November, Hiroshima, Japan. Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2021). Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in virtual reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience. Psychology & Marketing, 38(6), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21444 Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. E., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences, 67, 97–102. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.01.016 Byford, S. (2020). July was a big month for VR games. The Verge. https://www. theverge.com/2020/8/3/21352323/july-­2 020-­v r-­g ame-­r eleases­roundup-­onward-­in-­death-­psvr-­oculus-­quest Cook, C. L. (2019). Between a troll and a hard place: The demand framework’s answer to one of gaming’s biggest problems. Media and Communication, 7(4), 176–185. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v7i4.2347 Criken. (2018). Onward VR: The PTSD simulator [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC1TBnkpBJM de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press. Dutton, D. (2009). The art instinct: Beauty, pleasure, and human evolution. Bloomsbury Press. Feltham, J. (2020). Onward: Oculus Quest vs PC VR graphics comparison. UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/onward-­graphics-­comparison Glushneva, I. (2017). Embodied spectatorship: Phenomenological turn in contemporary film theory. Film and Media Studies, Masters thesis, University of Kansas. Gorichanaz, T. (2017). Auto-hermeneutics: A phenomenological approach to information experience. Library & Information Science Research, 39(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2017.01.001 Graham, P. (2020). Getting onward on Oculus Quest was a ‘crazy’ but ‘essential’ process says Dev. Retrieved from https://www.vrfocus.com/2020/07/ getting-­onward-­on-­oculus-­quest-­was-­a-­crazy-­but-­essential-­process-­says-­dev Hall, C. (2019). Onward is a VR game so intense I nearly destroyed my computer. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/24/20707670/ onward-­vr-­impressions-­military-­sim Hegel, G. W. F. (1807/2019). The phenomenology of spirit (P. Fuss & J. Dobbins, Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Hilvert-Bruce, Z., & Neill, J. T. (2020). I’m just trolling: The role of normative beliefs in aggressive behaviour in online gaming. Computers in Human Behavior, 102, 303–311. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.09.003 Husserl, E. (1990). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (1893–1917) (J. Brough, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

50 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Ihde, D. (2008). Introduction: Postphenomenological research. Human Studies, 31(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/sl0746-­007-­9077-­2 Ihde, D. (2019). Postphenomenology and “places”. In E. Champion (Ed.), The phenomenology of real and virtual places (pp. 51–59). Routledge. International Society for Presence Research (ISPR). (2000). The concept of presence: Explication statement. https://smcsites.com/ispr Kontour, K. (2012). The governmentality of battlefield space. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 32(5), 353–360. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270 467612469067 Lim, S., & Lee, J. E. (2009). When playing together feels different: Effects of task types and social contexts on physiological arousal in multiplayer online gaming contexts. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 12(1), 59–61. https://doi.org/10.1089/ cpb.2008.0054 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). The primacy of perception. Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1978). Phenomenology of perception. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mitry, J. (1965/1998). The aesthetics and psychology of the cinema (C.  King, Trans.). London: Athlone. Mom Elite. (2019). The virtual reality gift guide. https://momelite.com/ the-­virtual-­reality-­gift-­guide Nicholls, F. S. (2019). Virtual dark tourism in the town of light. In E. Champion (Ed.), The phenomenology of real and virtual places (pp. 223–238). Routledge. Oculus. (2021). Onward. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/ques t/2677344882310094/?locale=en_US reddit.com. (2018). Interview with Dante and James from Downpour Interactive at the Onward Invitational. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/ OnwardVR/comments/8rmdc5/interview_with_dante_and_james_from_ downpour Reinhard, A. (2019). Landscape archaeology in Skyrim VR.  In E.  Champion (Ed.), The phenomenology of real and virtual places (pp. 24–37). Routledge. Robertson, A. (2019). The valve index might have the most fun VR controllers I’ve ever tried. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/28/18639084/ valve-­index-­steamvr-­headset-­knuckles-­controllers-­preview Sartre, J-P. (1943/1992). Being and nothingness: An essay in phenomenological ontology (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). New York, NY: Washington Square Press. Schmid, S. (2020). Tween gift ideas  – for 2020. https://everydaybest.com/ tween-­gift-­ideas Sinnerbrink, R. (2016). Cinematic ethics: Exploring ethical experience through film. Routledge. Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences., 364(1535), 3549–3557. https://doi.org/10.1098/ rstb.2009.0138

2  PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE VIRTUAL REALITY RESEARCHER-CRITIC 

51

Sobchack, V. (1992). The address of the eye: A phenomenology of film experience. Princeton University Press. Stadler, J. (2008). Pulling focus: Intersubjective experience, narrative film, and ethics. Continuum Books. Thacker, S., & Griffiths, M. D. (2012). An exploratory study of trolling in online video gaming. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning, 2(4), 17–33. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijcbpl.2012100102 Tyler. (2020). 16 best VR gifts for Christmas in 2020. https://thevrreviews.com/ best-­vr-­gifts-­for-­christmas Virtual Human-Interaction Lab, Stanford University. (2020). Empathy and perspective taking. https://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/2020/empathy-­and­perspective-­taking/ VR League. (2018). Onward invitational grand finals: Globochem vs Mob Squad [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetPRDRbOLM

CHAPTER 3

On the Excitement of Measuring the Virtual Reality Audience

Introduction The concept of ‘the audience’ has an interesting history in the humanities. Despite reams of scholarship on how a reader responds to a text, or how a film may impact an audience, it is remarkable how frequently actual readers and viewers are missing from the discussion. Usually, the humanities’ way out of this problem is to adopt what Noel King calls a “critical alibi” and hold that the individual interpretation presented by the critic may not hold for all audience members at all times (King, 1991). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide an overview of how the humanities has consistently attempted to displace actual audience members from the analysis in favour of projecting a hypothesised reader/viewer (for that, see King, 2000; Hunter, 1982; Greenfield, 1983; Bender, 2013). This seems to hold true, regardless of whether the critic is adopting a New Criticism-­ style emphasis on the text (Richards, 1929), a reader-response theory emphasis on how readers construct meaning from the text (Fish, 1980), or any variety of social-constructivist approaches to meaning making (King, 2000). Of relevance to the work under progress here, this methodology of imagining how a viewer might respond to a text also seems true for the majority of, so far, published scholarship on virtual reality (VR). It is for this reason that the type of film phenomenology overviewed in Chap. 2 is so useful—even if it is often a subjective account of the critic’s experience of a text, it is at least honest about being an actual experience. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_3

53

54 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

This contrasts starkly with the predominant mode of scholarship, particularly in film studies, which generally aims “to reveal meanings about the text—including its context and its society—which can apparently be uncovered by a suitably sophisticated mind or theoretical position” (Bender, 2013, p.  17). This kind of hermeneutics has adopted, in Ian Hunter’s words, “the task of problematising the reading of literature [or film] in order to achieve the ethical problematisation of the reader” (Hunter, 1988, p. 164). The purpose of such scholarship, which is productive and beneficial in its own right, is not to use the text as an ethical ‘occasion’ in which various social attitudes can be interrogated and worked through by the critic. In doing so, the critic is never really writing about an actual person who actually viewed the work, but rather is projecting an interpretation that enables the critic to universalise their virtuosic reading of the material. The contemporary screen studies approach to VR works adopts three broad approaches. The first of these fits the more traditional screen studies model of writing an interpretation of what the critic believes will be evident in the work. Despite the viewer supposedly being able to “literally edit the film for themselves” (Daniel, 2016), the critic nevertheless effectively presents a reading of the VR experience under discussion rather than considering what some other actual viewers thought about them (see, e.g. Lobwein, 2020; Mateer, 2017; McRoberts, 2017; Nash, 2017; Raessens, 2019). Second, some scholars adopt a quasi-philological methodology to a given VR text or small corpus of VR experiences and track the development process of the experience creators, attempting to outline the decisions behind certain development processes (see, e.g. Hassapopoulou, 2018). Third, there is some highly nuanced and philosophical theorisation of VR’s potential cultural impact (see, e.g. Dixon, 2016). Yet, aside from the second type of research above, which is still a marginal position, the viewer is remarkably absent. There are a few exceptions, which are discussed below, in which actual viewers are consulted (see, e.g. Bender, 2018; Jones, 2017); however, for all the commitment to a supposedly active viewer, real viewers are consistently absent from the majority of research in this field. Meanwhile, perhaps on the other side of the university campus, other fields of enquiry have routinely worked to analyse actual audience response to media texts. The psychological sciences, for instance, have for many years used various types of media as stimulus in laboratory studies of human response. Although the aim of such research has obviously not

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

55

been interested in the sorts of questions about texts and viewers that the humanities might care about, they have developed and refined methodologies and included newer technologies that enable the capturing of audience response on a moment-by-moment status. At the same time, multidisciplinary approaches within the academy more generally have led to a plethora of research teams cross-pollinating, to the point that organisations and research groups such as the Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image comprise a mixture of psychologists, philosophers and film scholars all working towards using rational and, where appropriate, empirical approaches to understanding how audiences respond to visual media. Some of these studies will be discussed below as they provide clear demonstration of the benefit of combining methods of measurement with film studies appreciation of textual construction. Contingent with the more popular uptake of home VR equipment, public and commercial interest has developed in what is now known as the “quantified self” (Lupton, 2016; Ruckenstein & Pantzar, 2017). The process of tracking one’s own heart rate and steps per day, for instance, as well as various sleep tracking apps for mobile devices, has become an important part of many people’s lives. It is easy to find, for example TED talks on ways in which measuring and analysing “your body, mood, diet, spending” can provide benefit to understanding and improving one’s life (TedEd, 2012). By gaining popularity at the same time historically as the return of VR, these interests in quantifying the self have resulted in a significant fixation on ‘testing’ the ‘effect’ of VR ‘on’ various users. It is now common to find research grant applications and published studies—primarily from the field of human–computer interaction (HCI) studies or media psychology—that use various types of audience quantification to explore how people respond to VR. There is thus a high level of interest around using these methods to analyse the VR user experience (UX). Indeed, the authors of this book have been invited to participate in a number of VR research projects that intend to use psychophysiological methods to prove that a particular VR experience has enhanced empathy or, in some cases, simply a sense of immersion in users. There are obviously research benefits to such approaches, especially the opportunity to identify the impact of specific moments in a VR experience (Bender, 2018; Bender & Sung, 2021). However, it is not the case that researchers will automatically obtain relevant nor useful understandings about the audience experience by simply wiring them up and asking them to encounter something in VR.

56 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

In this chapter we explore the current excitement around such approaches. One of the principal contributions to the field this chapter makes is in its description of a number of studies the authors have been involved in, reflecting on the research design to identify lessons that can be applied in the future. In addition, the chapter makes the case for phenomenology to be incorporated as a central component of any study in the area of VR UX. We acknowledge that there are valuable contributions to VR scholarship being made by the more traditional screen studies approach of hermeneutics outlined above, and we do not argue they should be abandoned. Rather, we argue that there is a substantial, and important, field of enquiry using empirical research into audience experiences of VR. Indeed, as we show in Chap. 6’s encounter with the current debate on regulating violent content in VR, it is in fact essential for screen studies to become more active in the area of studying actual audience responses before VR audience research is colonised by the transmission-model paradigm underlying much psychological and scientific research in this domain. This chapter aims to provide a brief overview of some of these quantitative audience measurement approaches and point towards how they could be used for the analysis of VR experiences. However, we do not argue that all VR phenomenology or screen studies analysis should draw from the field of quantitative measurement. The primary contribution of the chapter is ultimately to provide justification for approaches which do combine the VR phenomenology of Chap. 2 with the quantitative methodologies outlined below. This chapter is structured into two sections. First, the chapter provides a brief overview by way of introduction to some of the common methods of quantitative and semi-quantitative research as they are currently applied (or could be applied) in the field of VR—hypothesis generation, self-report surveys and biometrics—and discusses the limitations, and surprising benefits, of audience quantification. Second, the chapter explores three recent studies into VR zombie games that draw on empirical methodologies. This meta-analysis reveals the contributions that a VR phenomenology can make to empirical studies, and vice versa. Ultimately, this chapter is intended to provide implications for future research study design.

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

57

Quantifying the VR User Through the history of media effects research (discussed in detail in Chap. 6), it is clear there is a difficult relationship between a humanities approach to audience studies, where there is substantial understanding of what constitutes a text, and media psychology, where there are some highly sensitive methods of data collection. Through the remainder of this chapter it will be demonstrated that such approaches can be brought together to inform our understanding of VR. Indeed, given that VR has only recently become a viable interest area of screen studies, it is entirely possible for the research programme to be developed from the ground up to include quantitative and semi-quantitative methods in addition to the usual textual analysis and applied theory interpretative approaches. Later it will be argued that phenomenology provides a useful starting point for these projects. Below, we outline two of the key methodologies from media and consumer psychology that will be most relevant to audience-focused studies of the VR experience. This should not be understood as a comprehensive overview of scientific approaches to measurement. Rather, it is an introductory primer of useful approaches that can be poached and, as developed later, intermingled with the type of VR phenomenology presented in Chap. 2. In this section, it is not the intention to provide a full overview on how to conduct empirical quantitative research; for that, we refer interested readers to Field (2013), Shaughnessy et al. (2014), Heiman (2002) and Cacioppo et al. (2007). Rather, the purpose is to provide an overview that is directly relevant to the task of measuring VR audiences and will lead to the types of questions and answers that a screen studies-based VR phenomenology would be interested in. Therefore, we do not dedicate space here to issues such as the difference between within-subjects and between-­ subjects design, operationalising variables and minimising confounds, nor establishing laboratory protocols for participant recruitment, on-boarding and data preparation. These are written about at length in the relevant literature on quantitative research, and it is assumed that a screen researcher interested in these approaches will enlist or partner with an expert in quantitative methodologies. Instead, the purpose of this chapter is to set out a paradigm in which such multidisciplinary approaches could fruitfully be undertaken.

58 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Hypothesis Generation Regardless of the measurement methodologies utilised, these approaches to audience study will typically begin the generation of one or a number of hypotheses. These are testable—or falsifiable—expectations about the effect the media stimulus should have on the participants studied. For example, in a study exploring how participants responded to viewing a pornographic video in a VR headset, one study hypothesised that: Participants in the VR condition would show a higher state of physiological arousal […] and more subjective arousal than in the desktop condition. (Simon & Greitemeyer, 2019, p. 143)

The study thus aimed to compare the differences between watching a VR pornographic video in a VR headset and watching the same video reformatted to fit a desktop PC monitor and therefore ‘flattened’. The purpose of the hypothesis is to describe a measurable outcome which can be reported using statistics. It is thus a perfectly reasonable outcome for the VR condition, in this case, to not elicit a higher state of arousal than the desktop condition—and that can be reported using statistics. The hypothesis simply provides clear parameters to determine how the measurement will be made, as per the survey and biometric methodologies outlined below. Typically, the hypothesis is generated out of theoretical constructs identified in the literature, and which is therefore “a tentative explanation for a phenomenon; it is often stated in the form of a research prediction together with an explanation for the predicted outcome” (Shaughnessy et al., 2014, p. 19). For instance, in the VR pornography study above by Simon and Greitemeyer (2019), the hypothesis was generated by exploring the psychological literature on what creates sexual arousal as well as what creates presence/immersiveness, and what has previously been studied/found by other research into each of these areas. Simon and Greitemeyer (2019) ultimately confirmed their hypothesis, claiming that the participants reported—and experienced—a greater sense of immersiveness and a greater level of sexual arousal in the VR condition than when viewing the material on a desktop display. It is important to note here that these kinds of psychology studies aim to be generalisable, but also are careful to report their limitations. For example, the authors note that approximately half of the participants had never experienced VR before, which might influence the results, and that

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

59

the same video was shown both in the VR headset and in the desktop condition (Simon & Greitemeyer, 2019). In addition, it is often assumed in psychology studies that the scope of the findings will apply to only a ‘limited range’ of situations and cases (Shaughnessy et al., 2014, p. 51). For example, this narrow scope is evident in Simon and Greitemeyer (2019) in that the results cannot be generalised to all users, nor all pornographic videos, nor all VR material. Indeed, it is important to note that the experience of the VR virgin is likely to severely impact the cohort’s response to the material presented, and influence the degree to which the results can be considered generalisable. Nonetheless, it is this gradual development and refinement of theoretical constructs via hypothesis testing that leads to clearer theorisation. Later, we show by example how VR phenomenology offers valuable insights for the development of relevant hypotheses rather than only relying upon a literature review of theoretical construct ought to be tested. In particular, while a VR phenomenology approach may not always satisfy the strict criteria of a psychology study in terms of how narrow the theoretical construct must be, it does provide an avenue for the humanities scholar to ask the kinds of questions that are of interest to the field. Self-Report Surveys Surveys are likely to be somewhat familiar to screen studies academics who have undertaken some form of primary research. They are used to capture participants’ “thoughts, opinions, and feelings” by asking the same set of predetermined questions and quantifying the responses (Shaughnessy et  al., 2014, p.  137). Participants may respond to the survey questions only once, or they might be asked to respond to the same questions before and after being presented with a given stimulus. Survey responses are usually quantifiable using a system such as the 5-point Likert scale. To be meaningful, it is important that survey questions are valid and reliable, and for this reason many psychology studies use or adapt existing questions that have been delivered many times across many studies. These are sometimes referred to as scales, for example the immersion scale developed by Jennett et al. (2008) which has been used in subsequent studies, including one examining stress and workload in a military VR training task (Lackey et al., 2016). In the original scale, participants are asked questions such as “To what extent did you feel consciously aware of being in the real world whilst playing?” and “To what extent did you feel you were focused on the

60 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

game?” (Jennett et al., 2008, p. 659). Although this original usage used a desktop videogame—that is, not a VR game in a VR headset—the scale is still considered relevant for the study of immersion in VR by (Lackey et al., 2016). Questions in the survey/scale are designed to tackle a particular aspect of the phenomenon under study—usually derived from the theoretical construct hypothesised as above—and aim to ask about the same aspect in a number of different ways. This ensures validity but, of interest to the screen researcher, is that the language in many of these scales is often asking the participants to rate many of the aspects of a VR experience that can then be analysed. For example, the two questions above from Jennett et al. (2008) indicate how ‘focused’ the participant felt in the experience/ game, which can be used to make an evaluation of how immersive a given game/VR experience is. The presumption is that the result is unlikely to be valid simply by asking each participant “How immersive do you think that was?” A one-off question of that nature runs into problems of interpretation, for example one participant’s concept of ‘immersion’ might be different to another’s. Indeed, Authors 1 & 2 encountered this issue during informal audience discussion after screenings of their VR experience Genbaku Dome (Bender & Broderick, 2019) at the Hiroshima International Film Festival in 2019. This experience, which is essentially a 360-degree video documentary, was experienced by festival attendees using Oculus Go headsets. The only level of interaction possible for audience members was by swivelling their heads around the full 360-degree view. Yet, over casual discussion with various attendees, some people expressed claims that effectively said it was highly immersive, while others said it was not immersive because it was only a video. Since this was not a research project in the sense of collecting human data, these informal (mis)interpretations of the definition of immersion ultimately do not matter. However, it indicates the value of using an established, reliable and valid scale to more accurately unpack the respondents’ attitudes and opinions. It is important to remember that psychology and/or HCI studies usually do not simply use one survey, and the surveys are often interrelated in complex ways. For example, in Lackey et al. (2016), the immersion scale is merely one among many measures, including task performance, flow, effort, frustration and mental demand. The researchers are interested in how the results from each of these scales can be analysed statistically, looking for patterns and interactions that can use a participant’s response(s) on one scale to predict their response(s) on another. For the purpose of screen

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

61

studies, such an approach is likely both overkill and far too localised and specific. As we show in the section below, we can answer highly relevant screen questions without overly complex surveys, yet our surveys must be constructed and administered in accordance with appropriate methodological requirements. As will become evident to a screen studies researcher, many of these surveys and scales are adapted from adjacent media such as broadcast television and videogames, rather than being re-developed specifically for the purpose of VR. It is therefore a valid research consideration and, at this stage, is open-ended whether or not VR constitutes such a departure from traditional media that these scales can be considered at all reliable or valid in the context of a VR study. We would argue that VR phenomenology offers a move towards a multidisciplinary approach to UX quantification that can enable greater reliability and validity of further scale development. Biometrics Of most significant interest in the contemporary quantified-self milieu is the potential for biometric analysis of human responses to VR. This is a suite of research techniques and methodologies that, while by no means new, offers exciting options for the researcher interested in how a human responds to a stimulus such as VR. The area of research utilising biometrics is known as psychophysiology and aims to use the measurement of various markers of physiological states as indicators of a psychological experience (Cacioppo et al., 2007). This section will explore two of the most common, and therefore most applicable, types of psychophysiological techniques that can be applied to VR audience analysis—eye tracking and skin conductance level (SCL). These approaches can be combined or used independently. Psychophysiology also includes more advanced methods such as fMRI and cortisol level analysis, but fMRI will not work with VR at this point in time, and these methodologies are outside the scope of this primer chapter. In addition, this section will necessarily be over-­ simplifying much of these approaches; however, we refer interested readers to Cacioppo et al. (2007). Eye tracking is the easiest—or, at least, most intuitive—of these two psychophysiological methods to understand for someone coming from a screen or film background, as demonstrated in Bender and Sung (2020). Screen studies has already begun to utilise eye tracking of film sequences (see Dwyer et al., 2018; Redmond & Batty, 2015), though only Bender

62 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

(2018) has applied it to VR. Very commonly used in psychology, UX studies and consumer psychology, the process of eye tracking is to present subjects with a visual stimulus and use a system equipped with binocular infrared cameras to record where the eyes fixate. The fixations of the subject’s eyes are taken as an indicator of attention, so, in terms of understanding psychophysiology, the physiological response being measured is the eye fixations which are taken as indicators of the psychological state of attention. Typically, professional moving images result in an audience showing what is called “attentional synchrony” in which most viewers look at the same parts of the image at the same time (Smith, 2012, 2013; Smith & Mital, 2013). Analysing the dynamic and temporal attentional synchrony throughout moving images enables the researcher to understand what sorts of audio-visual elements typically result in attracting attention from viewers. The results of eye-tracking studies can be displayed as heatmaps, which use colour coding to indicate hotspots, in this case areas of most fixations/ attention. But they can also be analysed statistically, without heatmaps, to provide statistical justification for claims around how long users looked at particular parts of the frame or, in VR, the 360-degree view (see Gn, 2019). Thus, in relation to VR, eye tracking obviously offers a way of investigating the screen studies claim that “audiences literally edit the [VR] film for themselves, by choosing where to look” (Daniel, 2016). This position has been systematically debunked by eye-tracking studies (Bender, 2018; Marwecki et al., 2019; Pillai & Verma, 2019) that show audiences show attentional synchrony even when they have the option of looking wherever they please in a VR 360-degree video. As such, options for eye tracking in computer-generated (CG)-based game-engine driven VR environments offer exciting new avenues for research moving forward. SCL is a measure of the electrical conductivity of a person’s skin; this level alters as a person becomes more or less aroused—taken here to mean excited, but can also be an indicator of stress and/or fear. Therefore, the physiological result of “increased skin conductance” is considered an indicator of the psychological state of “emotional arousal” (Cacioppo et al., 2007, p. 11). SCL is measured with two electrodes positioned on the skin, usually of the palm or first two fingers of the participant. In a study of an animated film, Suckfüll (2010) found that SCL was able to empirically show that half of their participants had their strongest emotional reaction to a particular emotive moment of dramatic significance in the film. At this stage, the applications of SCL analysis to VR are therefore an area of

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

63

significant opportunity. It has been used by HCI researchers to anaylse subjects playing traditional videogames (Dekker & Champion, 2007; Ravaja et al., 2006), but is also frequently used in the development of VR training and health applications (see, among many examples, Gorini & Riva, 2008; Rizzo et al., 2011; Costanzo et al., 2014; Shiban et al., 2016; Cardoş et al., 2017; Gn, 2019). As discussed in detail below, it has also been applied to attempt to track VR users’ levels of fear and excitement while playing zombie survival games (Bender & Sung, 2021; Lin et al., 2018). Limitations—and Surprising Benefits—of Audience Quantification From the point of view of screen studies, there are at least two limitations immediately obvious from the above description of quantitative methods of audience analysis. The first is that these methodologies assume that the stimulus—the film, video or VR work—actually has an effect on the audience. No doubt many humanities scholars will take issue with such an assumption; this “hypodermic model” of the text having direct influence on an individual subject has been criticised even from within the field of psychology (Ferguson & Beresin, 2017; Ferguson & Dyck, 2012). As Livingstone argues in relation to audience studies and television: Media effects [research] is often seen to challenge individual respect and autonomy, as if a pro-effects view presumes the public to be a gullible mass, cultural dopes, vulnerable to an ideological hypodermic needle, and as if television was being proposed as the sole cause of a range of social behaviours. (Livingstone, 1996, p. 1)

This links to the second limitation with the methods outlined above— that the quantitative approach is interested in average audience responses rather than those of an individual viewer/user. An individual participant’s responses, attention or emotional activity is not meaningful in and of themselves to these approaches. For these reasons it is understandable that humanities scholars are sometimes reluctant or suspicious about these approaches. The domain of screen studies that has embraced these kinds of methodologies are the scholars involved in the field of cognitivism (for thorough overviews, see Shimamura, 2013; Nannicelli & Taberham, 2014). Yet such approaches have been criticised as “reductive” in that the

64 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

generalisable findings of the studies may not tell us much about how an individual text works (Sinnerbrink, 2016, p.  86). However, as per the project outlined in Sinnerbrink (2016), this is in many ways the opposite criticism sometimes levelled at film phenomenology, that it results in subjective interpretations of a text that cannot be applied to other viewers or other works. Sinnerbrink (2016) sees some combination of film phenomenology and cognitivism as a means of producing a ‘hybrid’ methodology that avoids the problematic issues inherent to each of them. Thus, the VR phenomenology discussed in this book is indeed a multidisciplinary one, grounded in both cognitivism and phenomenology. It is the first approach to systematise this mixed-methods approach to the screen studies analysis of VR. In the next section we demonstrate how this can yield a particularly nuanced approach to analysing the VR experience.

Case Study: VR Zombie Games The case for combining biometric approaches with phenomenology can best be made here by summarising three recent research studies into VR zombie shooter games. The first two are Lin (2017) and Lin et al. (2018) which are firmly in the psychology-based discipline of HCI studies. The third is Bender and Sung (2021) which is published in a psychology journal but will be revealed as a demonstration of an interdisciplinary approach combining a screen studies phenomenology with consumer psychology approaches to biometric methods. Each of these studies used a VR zombie experience as the stimulus text, and quantified the audience response using surveys and/or psychophysiological techniques. This is actually a kind of meta-case study—the focus is on examining the methodologies utilised by these studies. The topic here is not so much the VR experiences themselves, the participants in the studies, nor even really their responses. Rather, the topic of this chapter’s case study is actually the methods and results of the studies. It will be demonstrated that there are significant benefits and limitations to each of these studies, and that this is a result of the different aims of each approach. Ultimately, it will be clear that the field of VR research will benefit tremendously from teams of researchers operating within quantitative approaches.

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

65

Studies 1 and 2 The first two studies (Lin, 2017; Lin et al., 2018) will be treated together as they are published from the same research lab and use the same stimulus VR text, The Brookhaven Experiment (Phosphor Games, 2016). The first study aimed to investigate “players’ fright reactions and coping strategies” (p.  350) in the game, with an emphasis on identifying how these are related to the dimensions of plausibility illusion (PSI) and place illusion (PI) identified as theoretical constructs in the literature (refer to Chap. 2 for full discussion of PSI/PI). The researcher hypothesised that players high in neuroticism would adopt avoidance strategies when faced with fear-inducing elements in the game, that players high in sensation-seeking personality types will be more active in their approach strategies towards virtual dangers such as zombies and that female players will be more avoidant and will use more self-help strategies during scary moments than male players. It should immediately be obvious that this study aims to use the VR text to test something about the human subjects using it; this is evident in the study’s methodology. There are three in-depth surveys and scales used to measure each participant’s sensation seeking, neuroticism and basic demographics before they played the game. After playing the VR game, participants then completed further surveys rating their most feared elements in the game experience, how they coped with them, and their overall experience of fear. Ultimately, the study concludes with clear findings for each of the hypotheses. Space prohibits a full discussion here, but the salient findings are that males and those with high sensation-seeking personalities tended to “approach threats” and “monitor [their] surrounding environment” more than other participants, and females reported more use of “avoidance” strategies such as “closing one’s eyes” than did males (p. 356). In addition, PSI and PI elements created fear, but did not impact on which coping strategies were used by participants. The second study (Lin et al., 2018) is specifically interested in “examining the audience appeal of horror content” by using the same game as the previous study (p. 3223). The researchers use a combination of self-report surveys to measure fear during gameplay and their expected sense of self-­ efficacy in coping with a horror-themed videogame. In addition, after playing the game, participants responded to a survey rating their enjoyment of the experience and were then given the choice to play one of eight other VR games available from a selection, including both horror and

66 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

non-horror options. SCL was used to measure arousal. It is a very robust research design, and enabled the researchers to propose a “three-factor model” resolving the “paradoxical issue of the appeal of horror media content in a VR survival horror game” (p. 3236). This model holds that the experience of fear and enjoyment while playing the game is “conditional” on whether or not the player has both “high self-efficacy in playing the game” and “high arousal” during gameplay (p. 3236). The researchers also employ the theoretical construct of suspense via Zillmann’s (1980, 1996) psychology of suspense and excitation in television audiences, and revise this model in light of their findings to argue that “fear is a factor that influences enjoyment, with self-efficacy moderating the relationship” and that a heightened arousal is key to “the appeal of mediated horror content” (Lin et al., 2018, p. 3239). Both studies are highly novel and show clear contributions to the field of research on VR. Specifically, they both demonstrate rigorous methodological attention to the measurement of audiences. The surveys are well designed—or are adapted from reputable and reliable sources—and are used to perform statistical analyses that yield interesting findings. The integration of SCL in the second study is particularly well executed. The primary benefit of both studies is in the contribution to an understanding of the audience in general terms. Study 1 makes a well justified case for the effects of player personality on how they interact with the horror elements of the VR experience, and Study 2 presents generalisable claims about the appeal of horror based on the audience’s preferences for particular types of entertainment. The relevance of these findings are reflected in the journal outlets chosen for the publications—Study 1 is in a psychology journal and Study 2 is in a communications journal. It is therefore possible for screen studies researchers to derive useful concepts from these results and to use them to add ballast to particular claims about VR horror experiences. At the same time, however, these studies have a major limitation from the perspective of screen studies, namely that the generalisability of the claims above is quite limited given the stimulus choice. While there is nothing wrong with choosing an individual VR experience, both studies use one very short section of the game The Brookhaven Experiment. In this one section of the game, essentially the environment and gameplay is the same throughout, a dark town hall in which the player experiences a series of zombie wave attacks and must simply shoot and attempt to survive. In each study, participants experienced a maximum of six minutes of gameplay in this single scenario. This narrowing of the test conditions is in

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

67

many ways a necessary condition of psychology-based approaches. Indeed, these two studies are perhaps a bit less controlled than a pure psychology approach would really expect. Yet, this does mean that the findings cannot be generalised to a real-life use of VR. While it is feasible that someone might only play five minutes of a VR experience—particularly if they are being given a demonstration at a friend’s house, for instance—this is not the normal profile of a VR consumer who has invested possibly thousands of dollars in the devices and apparatus. In addition, the scenario was chosen as a stimulus of convenience—it was an early-release demo that was available for the researchers to use. As a result, the studies do not really reveal much about how the audio-visual construction, nor the gameplay, of the VR experience has an impact on users. Study 3 The third study (Bender & Sung, 2021) explores a similar VR text and uses some related methodologies, but employs them in an effort to understand the text and the UX rather than necessarily exploring the players themselves. The study is specifically interested in “users’ affective experience in a VR game and whether such affect experience relates to [their level of] enjoyment” (p. 4). To explore this, the researchers primarily used two psychophysiological methods, SCL but also facial electromyography (fEMG). fEMG involves attaching electrodes to relevant muscles on the face that enable measurement of “subtle psychological processes” even when the expressions of enjoyment, anger, fear and so on may not be perceptible visually (Cacioppo et al., 2007, p. 269). A further innovation of this combination of SCL and fEMG is that it enabled the researchers in Study 3 to track the experience of VR users throughout their experience; thus, the methodology offers real-time temporal resolution of the users’ experiences of fear, joy and arousal/excitement during their gameplay. It should also be evident that such approaches are expensive, and therefore should not be considered essential for the study of VR, which is why they do not appear repeatedly in this book. Yet, much can be learned and applied by the VR phenomenologist from understanding the benefits and limitations of quantitative studies. But, more importantly, funded studies using laboratory settings can benefit immensely from the inclusion of a VR phenomenology phase in the study design. A significant component of Study 3 is its text choice. The researchers examined a range of horror-themed VR experiences, played each of them

68 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

in turn, and finally settled on Arizona Sunshine (Vertigo Games, 2016). This was rated as a popular game on many VR websites, and was chosen because the researchers identified a number of different gameplay types and environmental designs in its narrative. Specifically, three starkly different game modes were identified: the on-boarding, or introductory mission, in which the player is essentially taught how to pick up weapons, move around and interact with the VR world; an abandoned mine, in which the player must make their way through a very dark environment where zombies are hiding, and use a virtual torch to illuminate some otherwise completely dark rooms; and a wave-attack mode in which the player has to survive hordes of zombies that repeatedly attack them. During the identification of these modes, the researchers played the game and noticed their own bodily responses. Along with the same type of literature review as Studies 1 and 2, this play-through process led to the generation of hypotheses about how each of the game modes would affect the players. These hypotheses included that the abandoned mine and wave-attack modes would evoke significantly higher arousal, fear and enjoyment compared to the on-boarding mode, and that “the specific onset of a fear-­ evoking game component” such as being trapped in “a dark room with fearful auditory cues” would evoke significantly higher arousal, fear and enjoyment than the rest of the game (Bender & Sung, 2021, p.  941). While the outcomes of these studies might appear to simply “state the obvious” and reinforce assumptions, they are important as empirical and falsifiable proofs. Indeed, they also directly validate the approach of VR phenomenology. These hypotheses meant that more than a simple five minutes of gameplay would be required. Unlike previous studies, participants in this one experienced about 25 minutes of the VR game, pausing after approximately 6–8 minutes played of each game mode to take a break from the experience. Arguably, this provides a more ecologically valid playing experience than previous studies, because gamers at home are unlikely to go through the effort of setting up a VR headset and such to play only six minutes of a VR experience at any one time. The results of the study found support for the hypotheses. First, the abandoned mine and wave-attack modes results in much higher fear, joy and arousal than the on-boarding mode. The researchers argue this is a result not only of the gameplay, but of specific PSI and PI defects in the on-boarding mode such as superimposed text and instructions about how to use the VR controllers and so on. Second, the dark room section of the abandoned mine mode

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

69

provoked almost 2.5 times higher sensations of fear, arousal and joy than any other moment in the gameplay. The study also confirms prior literature on sensation seeking that fear and joy are related and, like Lin et al. (2018), that arousal is a related factor. However, unlike Study 1 or 2, this study does not tell us much about the participants as people. Rather, the study is interested in the text and its experience. This of course makes sense since the study is published in a consumer marketing psychology journal. Especially of interest to the present book is that this study was driven entirely by what could be called a VR phenomenology—the text was not chosen out of convenience (as in Studies 1 and 2) and the section of the text was not selected because it represented the horror genre necessarily. Instead, the text was chosen out of the phenomenological encounter the researchers had with a variety of VR horror games, and in particular by being aware of their own bodily responses to different sections of the game. Without this attention to the dark room section of the abandoned mine, the study might have ignored this moment and used the on-boarding mode. Such a decision would have compromised the significance of the findings as the dark room was found to be by far the most salient moment of the gameplay. This also directly fed the resourcing and laboratory protocol stages—an appropriate level of funding was required to ensure that each testing session could run for approximately one hour, with research assistants efficiently taking the participant through the three different sections of the gameplay. The Impact of VR Phenomenology Taken together, the three studies on VR zombie games—by different research teams, using different quantitative methods—are able to portray a remarkably nuanced understanding of the VR horror experience. The first two take quite traditional media–psychology approaches to analysing a stimulus, in this case the VR zombie game, in order to generalise about the audience. Like many studies from the field of media–psychology, the text is not particularly relevant to the research; therefore, while the methods are rigorous and the findings of both studies are simultaneously intriguing, novel and useful, they do not tell us much about the VR experience itself. By contrast, the third study presented adopts a multidisciplinary methodology that uses VR phenomenology to identify which aspects of the VR should be analysed, and then relies upon the

70 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

psychophysiological measurement of users’ affective states as a means to identify the salient elements of the VR that have contributed to those responses. We argue then, that not only is there space for a VR phenomenology in future quantitative research studies, but that it is perhaps essential. This position is certainly in line with traditional film phenomenology, even if the quantitative methods have not normally been applied. Indeed, reflecting on the way film phenomenology can inform other methodologies, Sobchack suggests: Objectivist research usually comes after, not before, description. Where do the questions come from that lead to empirical research? Phenomenology can lead to asking, “What’s going on here?” What phenomenology does at its best is that it doesn’t provide closure. It takes you through observations of experience, close descriptions of it, and then possible interpretations of it. (Sobchack, as cited in Hanich, 2017)

This attitude is in some ways anticipated by psychophysiology itself; for example, in their chapter of the Handbook of Psychophysiology, Bradley and Lang (2000) argue “The heart pounds, flutters, stops and drops; palms sweat, muscles tense and relax […] faces blush, flush, frown and smile” (p. 581). Summarising this viewpoint in her cognitivist study of audiences watching an emotional animated film, Suckfüll (2010) suggests “an aspect of emotion is that the body acts” (p. 49). Thus, if screen studies is interested in how VR experiences are experienced, some combination of biometric and phenomenological approaches enables us to explore precisely this element of the medium.

Conclusion This chapter has provided a primer on some selected quantitative approaches to measuring audience responses that will be of interest to screen studies researchers working with VR texts. These were identified as hypothesis generation, self-report surveys and biometric approaches. The chapter began with an overview of the problematic history of ‘the audience’ in the humanities, identifying that throughout the history of hermeneutic interpretation, the audience is often an idealised or projected reader/viewer rather than a real person. This was demonstrated as being a central problem in the long-standing media effects debate whereby

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

71

psychological sciences maintain that media have effects on audiences, whereas the humanities typically side-stepped the issue by focusing on the larger cultural effects of ideology and messaging. But with the contingent emergence of the quantified-self movement in society at about the same time as the re-appearance of VR, there has begun a new vitality to the interest in measuring audiences as they experience VR. Thus, the chapter argues that some quantitative approaches can be beneficial for the screen researcher. The chapter then provided summaries of the methods of surveys, hypothesis generation and some select psychophysiological methods from the fields of psychology and HCI. Finally, by comparing the methods and findings of three recent studies in VR zombie experiences, the chapter demonstrated how VR phenomenology can substantially contribute to areas of quantitative audience measurement. We should note also that the chapter has deliberately avoided detailing some specific statistical and procedural details—such as the difference between within-subjects design and between-subjects design—as it is our belief that unless the researcher already possesses the research experience in developing such projects, they should be forming a multidisciplinary team with an expert statistician and quantitative researcher. As such, the aim of this chapter is partly an effort to convince those in the sciences that undertaking a project with screen studies researchers will yield results that provide high impact outcomes beneficial for each discipline.

References Bender, S. M. (2013). Film style and the World War II combat film. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Bender, S. M. (2018). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2018.1464743 Bender, S.  M., & Broderick, M. (2019). Genbaku Dome VR: Experiencing Hiroshima’s atomic legacy. Hiroshima International Film Festival, 22–24 November, Hiroshima, Japan. Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2020). Data-driven creativity for screen production students: Developing and testing learning materials involving audience biometrics. Digital Creativity, 31(2), 98–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462626 8.2020.1767654 Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2021). Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in virtual reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience. Psychology & Marketing, 38(6), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21444

72 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2000). Motivation and emotion. In J. T. Cacioppo, L.  G. Tassinary, & G.  G. Berntson (Eds.), Handbook of psychophysiology (pp. 581–607). Cambridge University Press. Cacioppo, J. T., Tassinary, L. G., & Berntson, G. G. (Eds.). (2007). Handbook of psychophysiology. Cambridge University Press. Cardoş, R. A. I., David, O. A., & David, D. O. (2017). Virtual reality exposure therapy in flight anxiety: A quantitative meta-analysis. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 371–380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.007 Costanzo, M. E., Leaman, S., Jovanovic, T., Norrholm, S. D., Rizzo, A. A., Taylor, P., & Roy, M.  J. (2014). Psychophysiological response to virtual reality and subthreshold posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in recently deployed military. Psychosomatic Medicine, 76(9), 670–677. https://doi.org/10.1097/ PSY.0000000000000109 Daniel, A. (2016). VR cinema is here  – and audiences are in the drivers’ seat. https://theconversation.com/vr-­c inema-­i s-­h ere-­a nd-­a udiences-­a re­in-­the-­drivers-­seat-­66677 Dekker, A., & Champion, E. (2007). Please biofeed the zombies: Enhancing the gameplay and display of a horror game using biofeedback. Paper presented at the Situated Play, Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference, Tokyo, Japan. Dixon, W. W. (2016). Slaves of vision: The virtual reality world of Oculus Rift. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 33(6), 501–510. https://doi.org/10.108 0/10509208.2016.1144018 Dwyer, T., Perkins, C., Redmond, S., & Sita, J. (Eds.). (2018). Seeing into screens: Eye tracking and the moving image. Bloomsbury Academic. Ferguson, C. J., & Beresin, E. (2017). Social science’s curious war with pop culture and how it was lost: The media violence debate and the risks it holds for social science. Preventive Medicine, 99, 69–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. ypmed.2017.02.009 Ferguson, C. J., & Dyck, D. (2012). Paradigm change in aggression research: The time has come to retire the general aggression model. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 17(3), 220–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2012.02.007 Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics. Sage. Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class? Harvard University Press. Gn, B. J. W. (2019). Examining the cognitive biases associated with autism spectrum during social stress: A virtual reality paradigm, Honours dissertation, Curtin University. Gorini, A., & Riva, G. (2008). Virtual reality in anxiety disorders the past and the future. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 8(2), 215–233. Greenfield, C. (1983). On readers, readerships and reading practices. Southern Review, 16, 121–142.

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

73

Hanich, J. (2017). The journeys of film phenomenologist: An interview with Vivian Sobchack on being and becoming. NECSUS. https://necsus-­ejms.org/ vivian-­sobchack-­interview/ Hassapopoulou, M. (2018). Playing with history: Collective memory, national trauma, and dark tourism in virtual reality docugames. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2018.1519207 Heiman, G. (2002). Research methods in psychology. Houghton Mifflin Company. Hunter, I. (1982). The concept of context and the problem of reading. Southern Review, 15(1), 80–91. Hunter, I. (1988). The occasion of criticism: Its ethic and pedagogy. Poetics, 17(1), 159–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-­422X(88)90028-­9 Jennett, C., Cox, A. L., Cairns, P., Dhoparee, S., Epps, A., Tijs, T., & Walton, A. (2008). Measuring and defining the experience of immersion in games. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, 66(9), 641–661. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2008.04.004 Jones, S. (2017). Disrupting the narrative: Immersive journalism in virtual reality. Journal of Media Practice, 18(2–3), 171–185. https://doi.org/10.108 0/14682753.2017.1374677 King, N. (1991). Critical alibis and thin description. Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, 6(2), 291–298. King, N. (2000). Hermeneutics, reception aesthetics, and film interpretation. In W. J. Hill & P. Church (Eds.), Film studies: Critical approaches (pp. 211–221). Oxford University Press. Lackey, S. J., Salcedo, J. N., Szalma, J. L., & Hancock, P. A. (2016). The stress and workload of virtual reality training: The effects of presence, immersion and flow. Ergonomics, 59(8), 1060–1072. https://doi.org/10.1080/0014013 9.2015.1122234 Lin, J.-H. T. (2017). Fear in virtual reality (VR): Fear elements, coping reactions, immediate and next-day fright responses toward a survival horror zombie virtual reality game. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 350–361. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.057 Lin, J.-H. T., Wu, D.-Y., & Tao, C.-C. (2018). So scary, yet so fun: The role of self-efficacy in enjoyment of a virtual reality horror game. New Media & Society, 20(9), 3223–3242. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817744850 Livingstone, S. (1996). On the continuing problems of media effects research. In J. Curran & M. Gurevitch (Eds.), Mass media and society (2nd ed., pp. 305–324). Edward Arnold. Lobwein, G. (2020). Consuming conflict: Militainment, desire and virtual reality in contemporary art, M.Phil, Queensland University of Technology. Lupton, D. (2016). The quantified self: A sociology of self-tracking. Polity Press. Marwecki, S., Wilson, A. D., Ofek, E., Gonzalez Franco, M., & Holz, C. (2019). Mise-unseen. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM

74 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, New Orleans, USA, October. Mateer, J. (2017). Directing for cinematic virtual reality: How the traditional film director’s craft applies to immersive environments and notions of presence. Journal of Media Practice, 18(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468275 3.2017.1305838 McRoberts, J. (2017). Are we there yet? Media content and sense of presence in non-fiction virtual reality. Studies in Documentary Film, 12(2), 1–18. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2017.1344924 Nannicelli, T., & Taberham, P. (Eds.). (2014). Cognitive media theory. Routledge. Nash, K. (2017). Virtual reality witness: Exploring the ethics of mediated presence. Studies in Documentary Film, 12(2), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.108 0/17503280.2017.1340796 Pillai, J. S., & Verma, M. (2019). Grammar of VR storytelling: Narrative immersion and experiential fidelity in VR cinema. Paper presented at the The 17th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry, Brisbane, QLD November 14–16, 1–6. Raessens, J. (2019). Virtually present, physically invisible: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s mixed reality installation Carne y Arena. Television & New Media, 20(6), 634–648. Ravaja, N., Saari, T., Salminen, M., Laarni, J., & Kallinen, K. (2006). Phasic emotional reactions to video game events: A psychophysiological investigation. Media Psychology, 8(4), 343–367. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532785xm ep0804_2 Redmond, S., & Batty, C. (2015). Editorial – Seeing into things: Eye tracking the moving image. Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, 25. https:// refractory130.rssing.com/chan-­43296867/latest-­article1.php Richards, I. A. (1929). Practical criticism. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rizzo, A., Parsons, T.  D., Lange, B., Kenny, P., Buckwalter, J.  G., Rothbaum, B., … Reger, G. (2011). Virtual reality goes to war: A brief review of the future of military behavioral healthcare. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 18(2), 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-­011-­9247-­2 Ruckenstein, M., & Pantzar, M. (2017). Beyond the quantified self: Thematic exploration of a dataistic paradigm. New Media & Society, 19(3), 401–418. Shaughnessy, J.  J., Zechmeister, E.  B., Zechmeister, J., & S. (2014). Research methods in psychology. McGraw-Hill. Shiban, Y., Diemer, J., Brandl, S., Zack, R., Muhlberger, A., & Wust, S. (2016). Trier Social Stress Test in vivo and in virtual reality: Dissociation of response domains. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 110, 47–55. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.10.008 Shimamura, A. P. (Ed.). (2013). Psychocinematics: Exploring cognition at the movies. New York, NY.

3  ON THE EXCITEMENT OF MEASURING THE VIRTUAL REALITY AUDIENCE 

75

Simon, S. C., & Greitemeyer, T. (2019). The impact of immersion on the perception of pornography: A virtual reality study. Computers in Human Behavior, 93, 141–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.018 Sinnerbrink, R. (2016). Cinematic ethics: Exploring ethical experience through film. Routledge. Smith, T.  J. (2012). The attentional theory of cinematic continuity. Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind, 6(1), 1–27. Smith, T. J. (2013). Watching you watch movies: Using eye tracking to inform cognitive film theory. In A.  P. Shimamura (Ed.), Psychocinematics: Exploring cognition at the movies (pp. 165–191). Oxford University Press. Smith, T. J., & Mital, P. K. (2013). Attention synchrony and the influence of viewing task on gaze behavior in static and dynamic scenes. Journal of Vision, 13(8), 1–24. Suckfüll, M. (2010). Films that move us: Moments of narrative impact in an animated short film. Projections, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.3167/proj. 2010.040204 TedEd. (2012). The quantified self  – Gary Wolf. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=aGFUL02dVKM&feature=emb_title Zillmann, D. (1980). Anatomy of suspense. In P.  H. Tannenbaum (Ed.), The entertainment functions of television (pp.  133–163). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Zillmann, D. (1996). Sequential dependencies in emotional experience and behavior. In R.  D. Kavanaugh, B.  Zimmerberg, & S.  Fein (Eds.), Emotion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 243–272). Psychology Press.

CHAPTER 4

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy

Introduction In the prologue of At War with PTSD (McLay, 2012) the author, a psychiatrist deployed with US troops in Iraq, describes his first encounter with a virtual reality (VR) environment of a combat zone. Initially written in the style of a personal recount of an actual incident riding in a Humvee past a statue of Sadaam Hussein as mortar shells bombard the vehicle, McLay finally reveals his description to be a kind of literary conceit. He is comparing the digitally presented virtual environment to the kinds of sensory characteristics of being in an actual Iraq combat zone, for example desert wind, the distal sounds of mortar fire and his reflex instinct to duck “as something whizzed by, seemingly inches above my head” (p.  2). Reacting to a series of software problems, such as characters that glitch rapidly from one position to another on a loop, McLay concludes with an aside to the researcher showing him the VR technology, “I’m sure you can fix the bugs, but I still don’t understand how this virtual reality stuff is going to help combat Veterans get over post-traumatic stress disorder” (p. 2). McLay is describing one of the first iterations of virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) designed for veteran post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As this chapter demonstrates, there has been extensive scientific research into developing VRET applications for PTSD related to combat and other military experiences on the basis that it afflicts small but © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_4

77

78 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

significant numbers of military veterans. Described in more detail below, VRET is an augmented form of prolonged exposure therapy (PE) in which the individuals are treated through gradually increasing degrees of exposure to an anxiety-triggering experience. The efficacy of PE (without VR) for the treatment of PTSD has been proven by more than 50 randomised controlled trials and it is the primary evidence-based treatment for the disorder. However, the augmentation of PE by VRET has many practical advantages for individuals afflicted by military-related PTSD since most combat or service scenarios are impossible to recreate for the use in PE.  The use of VRET offers a safe, immersive digital environment in which to simulate the traumatic scenarios and control the exposure to the anxiety-inducing memories in order to improve the individual’s functionality and quality of life. Outside of military-related mental health, a range of other anxiety disorders have been successfully treated or show promising responses to VR in preliminary trials. Some are examples of uncommon, extreme types of anxiety such as terrorist attack trauma (Josman et al., 2008); while others include much more common, everyday issues such as arachnophobia and acrophobia (Maples-Keller et  al., 2017) or performance anxiety (Bissonnette et al., 2016). Nonetheless, VRET has had a slow uptake in commercial and clinical use, despite the heavy research emphasis it has received. Surprisingly, it has been a common experience for the authors of this book to encounter mental health professionals and researchers still interested in wanting to know whether or not VR could be applicable in the mental health setting and how it could help with anxiety disorders. These use cases of VR have received very limited attention from the humanities; both Anders Engberg-Pedersen (2017) and Daniel Grinberg (2016) have undertaken excellent cultural studies analyses of how VRET represents part of the military-entertainment-industrial-complex when considered in tandem with other types of military simulation employed by the US armed forces. Significantly, both of these scholars are writing about military simulation (and VRET) in the context of analysing artist Harun Farocki’s video-installation documentaries Serious Games (Farocki, 2009–2010). Nonetheless, this chapter adopts a different approach—by honing in on the actual use of the VR in a VRET system—which is merely a means of augmenting a therapeutic process that already works without the VR element—we aim to appropriate empirical evidence of user engagement with some of the largest funded research projects in applied VR.

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

79

This chapter does not then simply review the literature on VRET. Instead, the chapter aims to adopt the approach of VR phenomenology to these systems and practices to investigate the assumptions of realism that are borne out in the psychological literature on VRET. This investigation is also not merely a desktop literature review. Rather, it has been developed out of the authors’ engagement with the literature, some of the key psychological researchers in the area of VR and PE, software developers working on VRET experiences, as well as extensive experience ‘in the headset’ trialling the premium approaches to utilising VR in the therapeutic setting. First, the chapter provides a background overview of how traditional exposure therapy works and uses this to demonstrate how VRET functions. Second, the chapter critiques and evaluates the assumptions of realism that emerge in the psychological literature on VRET, focusing on the four key categories of the practice: photorealism; the authenticity of scenarios, events, specific details; a combination of immersion, presence, involvement and interaction; and the development of scenarios and environments that are either specific or abstract. Third, the chapter provides reflections on the phenomenology of encountering these systems in VR from the perspective of the researcher-critic.

Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy: A Background Although this chapter focuses to a large extent on PTSD treatment, this reflects the fact that most of the scientific work on VR and VRET has been conducted in the military domain on PTSD. This in turn is a reflection of the large military investment in VR research which has increasingly identified the need for innovative PTSD treatment and echoes the long period of US and coalition military involvement in the Middle East (Rizzo et al., 2011). However, VRET has also been used for other forms of anxiety treatment, as noted above, such as fear of flying, public speaking and spiders. It is essential to understand that the basic concepts upon which VRET is based predate the use of VR. While VR might be a somewhat new practice, the process of PE has a long history of clinical delivery since the late 1980s that must be understood in order to appreciate how VRET works. There are three techniques that are commonly deployed in PE.  Each involves graduated exposure to a stimulus that provokes anxiety for the individual. These are implemented in the treatment space under the guidance of a clinician and take place without any real threat to the individual

80 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

undertaking treatment (Foa & Rothbaum, 1998). The first technique involves in vivo exposure, or exposure to the real-life stimulus that causes distress, but is in fact not harmful to the individual, for example public speaking, public transport or crowded public places. The second is imaginal exposure, a technique in which the individual is required to repeatedly imagine the anxious stimuli. The third technique is an interoceptive procedure in which the bodily sensations associated with anxiety are invoked by the patient performing a range of exercises, for example: “1. hyperventilation, 2. shaking head, 3. putting the head between the legs, 4. step-ups, 5. holding breath” to condition individuals not to suffer a panic attack (see Lee et al., 2006, p. 3). Foa, in describing emotional processing theory, proposes PE works to reduce the subject’s fear and avoidant behaviour in anticipation of anxiety-provoking situations by creating the conditions for building cognitive skills for counteracting the fear: First, the fear (emotional) structure must be activated in order for it to be available for modification. Second, new information that is incompatible with the pathological elements of the fear structure must be available and incorporated into the pathological memory structure (or form a new nonpathological competing structure). (Foa, 2011, p. 1044)

The process of PE consists of anywhere from 8–14 clinical sessions in which the patient is prompted to recall in as much detail as possible the traumatising event that occurred. The trained clinician elicits further detail and at regular intervals asks the patient to rate their level of stress and discomfort (Foa, 2011; Foa et al., 2007). Each session involves deeper and more detailed verbal and mental recounting of the event until the subjective level of stress is reduced. PE can present some practical difficulties for clinical use. For example, combat-related PTSD typically involves a stimulus that is difficult or impossible to recreate clinically or safely such as an explosive device detonating close to the subject. Similarly, although it may be practical to transport an individual to the top of a building to exposure them to a fear of heights, this is time-consuming and costly. Significantly, there are some individuals who are either unable—or unwilling—to imagine the fearful stimuli in enough detail to provoke the anxious distress required for treatment to have an effect (Rizzo et al., 2013). As such, VR offers a highly useful augmentation to PE that counteracts some of these pragmatic issues. It promises to create highly convincing (i.e. ‘authentic’) virtual environments and experiences that resemble the

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

81

real world and immerse the viewer in them via the head-mounted display (HMD) that replaces their field of view with a digital environment. For example, a digital airplane journey can be used to simulate the fearful experience of flying while the patient is seated safely in the clinician’s office. There are a number of substantial reviews of the development of the technology and its various trials to which the interested reader may refer (Anderson et al., 2013; Botella et al., 2017; Krijn et al., 2004; Opris et al., 2012; Rizzo & Shilling, 2017; Rothbaum et al., 2010). It appears that a reduction in PTSD symptoms are typically observed over the course of approximately 11 sessions of VRET, as measured by established self-­ report scales of depression and PTSD checklists (Rizzo et al., 2011). For the purpose of this analysis, the interest is less in the technique itself and more in the attitudes that permeate the extant research around expectations and assumptions about realism in the experimental environments and subject experiences. VRET in Practice The premium VRET systems in use today can be found in the Bravemind PTSD treatment system developed at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USCICT) (Rizzo, Harltholt, et al., 2014a; Rizzo et  al., 2011; Rizzo & Shilling, 2017), and in the various anxiety applications developed by a private company (Virtually Better) designed to address fear of flying, public speaking and so on. The Bravemind system is the most relevant to the analysis here, so it will be described in detail. The system consists of two linked PCs, one which drives the VR headset worn by the patient and the second which is operated in desktop mode by the clinician (Fig. 4.1). The primary innovation of the system is that many aspects of the virtual environment can be tailored to both the traumatic event specific to the individual patient, and to the level of graduated exposure required in a given session. For example, a former soldier’s trauma symptoms might be related to an event during deployment where they were in close proximity to an improvised explosive device detonated in a marketplace. In traditional PE the patient would be required to mentally recall this experience via prompting by the clinician. By contrast, in Bravemind, the patient verbally recalls the location, a marketplace, and the clinician clicks the appropriate button on their own console to load up the relevant virtual environment of a Middle-Eastern themed marketplace. The patient can then be prompted to recall further

82 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 4.1  An example of the Bravemind system. (USCICT, 2014)

details such as the time of day or night, general number of people in the marketplace, location and proximity of the explosion and so on, all of which can be dialled in by the clinician. As discussed later, the actual qualitative representation of each of these details has far less verisimilitude than might be suggested by the description above. Nonetheless, the value is not that the virtual environment creates a one-to-one representation of the patient’s traumatic experience, but rather that it enables activation of the fear structure as outlined above. Ingeniously, it helps with facilitating the graduated exposure required for any form of PE to work. In the first session, for example, the patient may simply ‘sit’ in the virtual Humvee, describing the temperature of the day on which the traumatic event took place. They might be virtually placed in the driver seat, passenger seat, or up in the gun turret, according to wherever they were at the time of the original event. In the second session, the vehicle might drive. In the third session the sound of distant gunfire might be introduced, and so on. There are numerous studies that have validated the VRET approach for military anxiety-based PTSD as well as a range of other anxiety disorders (McLay et al., 2017; Norr et al., 2018; Valmaggia et al., 2016; Loucks et al., 2019). As discussed below, what is remarkable about these studies for the screen studies researcher is that they provide an incredibly rich resource for exploring questions of realism,

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

83

authenticity, immersion, presence and the associated issues of plausibility illusion (PSI) and place illusion (PI).

Assumptions and Categories of Realism in VRET As an example, one of the problems with the scientific and psychological literature is indicated in the following summary of the aims of a recent VRET trial comparing it with PE: Two virtual reality systems were available and used interchangeably […] In both simulators, simulations of wartime environments were viewed through a head-mounted display rendering three-dimensional visual graphics and relevant sounds. Neither system provided photo-realistic images, but rather graphics and sounds similar to what might be seen in a video game. (McLay et al., 2017, p. 221)

As demonstrated later, the systems used in that study simply do not resemble the visual, aural and kinaesthetic complexity of contemporary videogames that the individuals may have played or witnessed others playing. In the context of the business model driven competition within the videogame industry to promote increasingly ‘photorealistic’ graphics, it is important to attempt to reconcile the paradox that has existed in the VRET domain between content, mechanisms and systems that fail to provide photorealistic images and those that are, as McLay et al. (2017) above describe as “similar to what might be seen in a video game”. Against this background, this review analyses the assumptions of realism that emerge in the psychological and health science literature on VRET for anxiety and stress-related disorders. Our focus on the concept of realism is because it is so commonplace, normative and easily understood, as has been problematised throughout earlier chapters in this book. For the purposes of this analysis, Medline and ProQuest databases were used to search for journal articles in the psychological sciences for keywords, including ‘virtual reality exposure treatment’ and ‘virtual reality trauma therapy’. Additional material, such as work in press, was located using Research Gate as well as mainstream news searches that pointed towards VR studies that did not appear in the database searches. From this review, a sample of articles published from the years 2000–2017 was analysed to elaborate any underlying concepts about realism. The results were then coded into four thematic categories—photorealism, scenario

84 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

authenticity, immersion/presence and specific/abstract environments. Thirteen representative articles chosen in the sample were then re-­ examined in greater detail in order to identify the thematic content. Additional articles that did not refer specifically to these themes, but which can be interpreted as operating upon similar assumptions will be referred to in the discussion but were not included in the formal coding process. The aim of the analysis is not to critique those studies nor their methodologies, but consider the construct of realism and highlight where particular assumptions may leave gaps in the research that deserve attention. Conventionally, it would not be expected of psychological studies to give much attention to the concept of realism because the focus of such research is on the outcomes and processes of the treatment; however, this in itself may raise problems and limit the understanding of how best to undertake VRET. The most basic term of ‘realism’ was used frequently throughout the literature. For the screen studies scholar, this literature in fact presents quite interesting reading. Whereby realism as a concept is contested in the history of screen analysis (Bazin, 1967–1971; Benovsky, 2017; Bordwell, 1985; Williams, 1980), in the psychological literature on VRET, there are two distinct, but interrelated, themes that repeatedly constitute what the term realism refers to. These are category 1, the degree of photorealism (graphic quality and image resolution) of the environment. and category 2, the apparent authenticity of scenarios, events and specific details such as dialogue and behaviours within the world and activity of the user. Themes in category 3 did not specifically refer to the term ‘realism’, and the concepts of immersion and presence do refer to more than just realism; however, it is possible to identify clear underlying ideas about realism in the literature around these themes, particularly in their emphasis on involvement. Category 4 themes address significant concepts around whether or not the realism of a virtual environment is necessary to provoke and treat patient anxiety. Category 1: Photorealism Based on everyday usage of the term, it may seem logical to assume that screen-mediated realism would refer specifically to the graphical quality and resolution of the visual environment and characters. Generally, photorealism is used uncritically in the VRET literature to suggest that a graphic fidelity that has a correlation with ‘realistic’ portrayals. Often this

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

85

tendency is linked to technical achievements such as “advanced lighting techniques for enhanced image quality” (Gorini & Riva, 2008, p. 222) or that an upgrade has occurred in the software used to provide the “game engine” such that the VRET runs “enhance the realism and credibility of the stimulus content” (Rizzo, Difede, et al., 2014b, p. 311). It is therefore reasonable to infer what “realism and credibility of the stimulus content” in this context means using a comparison of screenshots between the first iteration of the prototype (Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan) in 2007 and its updated (Bravemind) 2014 version (see Figs. 4.2 and 4.3). Among other improvements in game physics and motion and other PI/PSI elements, this comparison shows most clearly that the 2014 version displays improved textures and shadows that clearly exhibit a greater degree of photorealism (Fig. 4.2). The character animations are demonstrably smoother and their interactions with the scenery are more convincing. For example, the 2007 version shows some minor issues with object collisions, evident in the soldier’s foot and lower leg being visibly cut off by the ground texture as he shoots from a kneeling position. These are all elements likely to contribute to the effect of both PI and PSI. However, the character animations are still somewhat stilted in the later 2014

Fig. 4.2  The prototype system Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan. (USCICT, 2007)

86 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 4.3  The clinician-ready product Bravemind. (USCICT, 2014)

version and lack the highly nuanced animations that characterise the blockbuster commercial shooter games such as Battlefield and Call of Duty (see Bender, 2014). For example, when studied in motion, the three characters running across the view in the foreground of Fig. 4.3 are clearly all animated by identical programming routines. The visual effects—for example explosions, fire—are also quite rudimentary in Bravemind, without the layered compositing and complexity of the contemporaneous instalments of Battlefield, Call of Duty and others. These could be considered defects of PSI, and it is clear that the researchers in the field are aware that the VRETs do not feature the same level of photorealism as commercial videogames. However, it seems that this may be a benefit. Paradoxically, the nature of exposure treatment itself means that a higher degree of photorealism found in a game such as Call of Duty or Battlefield may potentially be over-arousing and thus detrimental to the habituation that lies at the core of effective PE. Accordingly, one of the early discoveries of the initial generation of VRET methodologies was that even quite primitive graphic depictions were sufficient to trigger the level of engagement for successful PE. Indicative of this is VRET pioneer ‘Skip’ Rizzo’s reflection on the 1997 project of Virtual Vietnam that also used a primitive VR headset:

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

87

People 20 to 25 years after their Vietnam [War] experience, when they were put in the Virtual Vietnam scenario—a very graphically impoverished scenario back in the late 90s—they would come out of the scene and report seeing things that weren’t built into the simulation: it was from their own memories. [For example, they would report that in] the rice paddy, there was a water buffalo there and the Viet Cong were firing from the margins of the jungle. None of that was in the scene. (Rizzo, as cited in Javelin Technologies, 2012)

There therefore appears to be reasonable consensus in the literature that graphical fidelity is not as significant as other factors in terms of eliciting the appropriate stress response(s) from individuals. Indeed, the level of photorealism of the VR experience is regarded as likely “secondary in importance” to the kind of activities the user undertakes and particular scenarios in which they are placed (Rizzo & Koenig, 2017). This recalls Chap. 1’s phenomenological concept of the VR user ‘playing along’ with the intentions of a given VR experience to more or less overlook various limitations in the PI and PSI. Arguably, the VRET literature provides some indirect evidence for cognitivist views of mental simulation elicited by highly selected PI/PSI elements and their association with generating a sense of immersion and presence (Bender & Sung, 2021). Nonetheless, there is a view that “perceptually convincing” VR graphics “may, at the very least, improve face validity and increase user buy-in from patients and clinical end-users” (Rizzo & Koenig, 2017, p. 7). This observation is germane, given that part of the rationale for employing VRET is that it can appeal to individuals who may be non-compliant with traditional treatments (Reger et al., 2009). Category 2: Authenticity of Scenarios, Events, Specific Details The psychology literature emphasises that VRET users and individuals respond strongly to scenarios, events and details that appear to be ‘authentic’. Authentic in this sense implies a resemblance to a corresponding scenario/activity in the real world (for artistic/poetic VR impressions that generate a feeling of authenticity, see Chap. 5). This is not simply another word for photorealism, but it is clearly related to PSI and PI. To illustrate, the experimental design of one study (Pertaub et al., 2002) presents virtual audience members in a virtual seminar room in order to treat public speaking anxiety. The virtual audience was designed to exhibit “random

88 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

autonomous behaviours in real-time, such as twitches, blinks and nods, designed to encourage the illusion of life” (Kwon et al., 2013, p. 980). The small movements, randomly cued rather than following a recognisable pattern, are described as creating a sense of authenticity in the VR environment on the basis that they seem to correspond to random, minor movements that actual human audiences in a seminar can be expected to make. Cognitivist film theory speculates that similar types of minor detail in screen works typically have the effect of generating a sense of realism via their affordance to enhanced mental simulation and imagining (Bender, 2014; Currie, 1995). These concepts of authenticity are also linked to the PI elements of sound. For example, in the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan project, the researchers suggest that a densely laden sound design would enhance the ‘realism’ of the project based upon face validity testing of the stimulus material via feedback from deployed troops. The soldier–participants suggested “three-dimensional sounds” as well as that gunshots “include a representation of impact with a vehicle or building” (Reger et al., 2014, p. 292). In addition: Unrealistic visual intrusions distracted users from a sense of realistic participation [for example] An Iraqi voice saying the unrealistic phrase ‘Go home cowboy!,’ unrealistic Saddam statue, geographically dispersed building structures instead of clusters of structures with miles of vacant desert, too many destroyed vehicles, and too many clouds in the sky were all potential distractions. (p. 292)

It should be noted that researchers have found that non-compliance may occur in individuals who “get distracted by the technology (‘this isn’t real’) when it does not exactly simulate their experience and use this discrepancy to avoid emotionally engaging in their traumatic memory” (Rothbaum et al., 2010, pp. 130–131). These are perhaps issues of a mismatch in how a particular individual interacts with the elements of PI and PSI, though it is an interesting VR phenomenological finding in its own right. Consider, for example, recent studies which have attempted to treat performance anxiety in musicians using a form of VR (Bissonnette et al., 2016; Williamon et al., 2014). This treatment relies upon a purpose-built stage in a laboratory which features spotlights, some props, as well as a large, flat projection screen on which the participant views a virtual audience in a virtual auditorium. Although the researchers label this a VR

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

89

project, it would be better described as a form of mixed reality (MR) and it does not involve a VR headset. However, what is important is that the actual components of the MR environment are designed to correspond as closely as possible to the authentic environment in which student musicians are training to perform. Thus, these psychology-based studies are stumbling into VR phenomenological considerations during the design of their applications, which, as argued in Chap. 3, suggest substantial opportunities for screen studies academics to contribute to the development of future VR studies in the health sciences. Category 3: Immersion, Presence, Involvement and Interaction Concepts of immersion and presence—which have long been key themes in the technological development of VR (see Lanier, 2017)—appear frequently in the literature on VRET and are consistently defined as important in developing the relevant conditions for patient exposure. Presence, where “the user often feels, at least to some degree, ‘present’ in the simulated world” is, argue Wilson, Foreman and Stanton (2009, p. 213), to be “engendered at least as much by the activity that occurs in the simulated world as its sensory realism”. But, importantly, this is not necessarily related to the issues of authenticity nor realism identified above. Indeed, the authors cite “arcade simulators” and non-VR computer games as examples of applications in which users experience presence. Arguably, presence can be created due to the interactive experience focusing the user’s attention on the virtual world. Baños et al. (2000, p. 331) refer to this as “absorption”. They suggest that “both reality judgement and presence” are impacted by it and what they term “external correspondence”. As further evidence of the distinction between the concepts of presence and the other themes listed in this article, Wilson et al. (2009) suggest that high quality pilot training “flight simulation is probably the closest match to its real-world equivalent, both in the apparent realism of the simulated world and in the sense of presence experienced by the user” (p.  214). From this view then, presence is an effect created by the VR, one which may be influenced by its qualities of realism and authenticity and the interactive activity required of the user. Witmer and Singer (1998) define presence as demanding two factors: the involved attention of the user as defined above; and immersion, which is “a psychological state characterized by perceiving oneself to be enveloped by, included in and interacting with an environment that provides a continuous stream of stimuli and

90 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

experiences” (Witmer and Singer, as cited in Baños et al., 2000). According to Gorini and Riva (2008): Compared with imaginal exposure, VRET has the advantage of being highly immersive and more realistic since it has the potential to stimulate different sensory modalities through visual, auditory and sometimes tactile cues, motion and vibration that help patients to feel immersed in the experience. (p. 217)

This “tactile augmentation”—via interactive capacity—is taken to be capable of “increase[ing] the realism of the virtual experience” as well as increasing the sense of presence for the user (Hoffman et  al., 2003, p.  284). For instance, aside from vibrations to simulate the concussive effect of an explosion or the impression of being located inside a vehicle, the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan system incorporates optional olfactory stimuli—for example street rubbish, military ammunition smells, local food cooking spices and diesel—to enhance the imaginal process of the patient (Rizzo et al., 2010). It should also be noted that this smell stimuli is rarely used in practice because the quality of the scents is regarded by the researchers as ineffective, whereas something as simple as smelling a copper penny coin is more effective at evoking memories associated with the smell and taste of blood because of the olfactory stimulation caused by doing this (Rothbaum and Sherrill, personal communication 19 June 2018). It can therefore be argued that the perceived level of presence created by a VR experience also appears to affect the level of anxiety created; however, for Bouchard, Bosse, Loranger, and Klinger (2014, p.  195) “the level of anxiety experienced during exposure is a poor predictor of treatment success”. Rather, in Bouchard’s study of social anxiety VRET, “the only factor associated with treatment outcome” was the level of involvement experienced by the participants. Thus, enhancing anxiety via presence seems to be important but only to a certain extent, whereas the maximising of involvement appears to be most important to treatment success. Indeed, Rizzo et al. (2004) argue that: In essence, as long as the VR scenario “resembles” the real world, possesses design elements that replicate key real-life challenges and the system responds well to user interaction, then ecological validity is enhanced beyond existing analogue approaches. (pp. 212–213)

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

91

Category 4: Specific/Abstract Environments This final category describes the two broad research themes in the VRET literature—the predominant approach of creating specific VR environments for particular cases of anxiety and a marginal, yet promising, paradigm which explores the use of abstract environments which have a more generalisable application. The projects discussed thus far fall into the first category. The abstract environment category, which is a much less common approach, is described using the EMMA’s world project reported by Baños et al. (2009). The project, detailed below, is intended for use with a range of anxieties and is pitched as an alternative to the costly setup of the specific treatments. The literature does not specify if EMMA is an acronym, nor what the origin for the name is. However, it appears to have been developed from a European Commission grant under the title Engaging Media for Mental Health Applications which has perhaps been collapsed and reduced to EMMA. The specific VR environments are reported to have been highly successful in treatment trials. They also have two decades of application, development and clinical research to validate the procedure. It is important to note that the specific environments should not be described as ‘fixed’. Bravemind is based on the premise that the clinician–operator will modify the environment in real time to match it as closely as possible to the scenario of the patient’s traumatic experience. This can involve, for example, adjusting the lighting conditions to match the time of day, the sky conditions, as well as positioning the proximity of sound effects of small arms fire, and so on. The public speaking anxiety projects also sometimes involve the clinician or researcher activating different audience interruptions, murmurs and so on at different times. However, they are designed for very specific anxiety conditions and cannot be repurposed for alternate scenarios. For example, the music performance anxiety project ‘performance simulator’ cannot really be used for most public speaking anxieties nor acrophobia (Williamon et  al., 2014). Therefore, for Baños et  al. (2009) this “can make application of VR systems in daily practice cost prohibitive; many virtual environments are needed to treat many different problems” (Baños et al., 2009, p. 347). The design of EMMA’s world, then, is intended to allow individuals to: Explore a stressful environment to the degree required for specific therapeutic needs […] The system shows customized, clinically significant

92 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

e­ nvironments for each individual, emphasizing the meaning of the trauma or stressful event over the realism of the VR environment. (Baños et  al., 2011, p. 603)

Here, realism appears to refer to a combination of photorealism and authenticity. The treatment procedure used in EMMA’s world can be difficult to imagine, so it is worth citing an example from the authors at length, one that could equally apply to Alfred Hitchcock’s use of colour in Marnie (1964) to suggest traumatic memory: The goal is not realism; rather, by using customised symbols and aspects that evoke an emotional reaction in the participant, the application can help the patient process trauma emotionally, within a safe and protective environment. For example, in one case, a patient lost a loved one in a car accident. Viewing the colour red activated an intense emotional response, because of the memory of the deceased loved one covered in blood. The patient’s goal was to eliminate that disturbing and painful connection. In a case like this, it is less important to create a realistic scenario than to activate and process the negative emotions associated with the traumatic event in a more adaptive way, while also activating and processing positive emotions to help the person throughout the therapeutic process. (Baños et al., 2009, p. 353)

While the authors report effective treatment using EMMA’s world, they do acknowledge that “some PTSD populations” may require the more “specific and realistic VR environment[s]” of the sort discussed above (Botella et al., 2015, p. 2535). Thus, the military scenarios—and specifically the military sexual trauma (MST) scenarios discussed later— are prime examples of such approaches. However, as we show, other types of anxiety also benefit from these specific/realistic environments and their enhanced sense of PI.

VR Phenomenology and Anxiety: A Reflection The above discussion has demonstrated both the basis of VRET, and the assumptions and findings about realism and immersion that have been informally developed via the extensive practical work by VRET researchers and designers. We now turn to a brief VR phenomenology of one of the key ideas that saturates this field, the generation of anxiety via VR experiences. It is important to note at the outset that neither Author 1 nor 2 have encountered VR in the context of being a ‘patient’. Rather, the

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

93

systems have been encountered on the basis of being interested researchers, and therefore we necessarily have a kind of meta-experience. However, this analysis is primarily interested in what an encounter with these systems reveals about the experience with VR texts more generally. Indeed, in relation to Chap. 6’s analysis of VR regulation, a VR phenomenology of some of the MST VRET experience below indicates that there is substantial empirical research still to be conducted to understand how users can be impacted by VR. In relation to the capacity for VR to produce anxiety in users, it appears that, by and large, the user needs to be willing to play along with the experience, or be given a task to achieve which will require them to ‘give in’ to the experience. For example, in a recent experiment using a simple 360-degree video of an interview panel, typically developing adolescents and autistic adolescents were given the task of presenting a short speech (Gn, 2019). The VR experience was an adaptation of a classical psychology test known as the Trier Stress Model (Shiban et al., 2016) which is normally delivered via a large television screen. In such an experiment, the video shows four people who act as an audience for the test subject. In a randomly assigned condition, one of the audience members is positive towards the test subject (e.g. smiling, nodding and otherwise indicating encouraging non-verbal gestures), one member is negative (frowning, yawning, etc.) and the other two members are neutral. All of them— except for, at times, the negative audience member—look directly at the subject. The experiment found via self-report surveys that all participants experienced a sense of anxiety when presenting a speech in the environment, even though they knew that it was not real, and that it was a simple video with no sound nor interactive components (Gn, 2019). Thus, the PSI elements are somewhat low; perhaps only the audience members’ reactions and photorealistic appearance function as PSI elements. Yet, the PI elements are quite high—the camera height was chosen to represent an average adolescent’s height, the room is presented realistically via the photoreal high resolution 3D capture and display, and the situation itself is plausible. In addition to the classical Trier Stress Model, the project was also inspired by the researchers’ experience of watching the VR film Gone in 360  Seconds (Dir., Bender & D’Silva, 2016) which was discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2 of this book. For that VR film, audience members both during formal questionnaires and during informal discussion, reported a sense of being afraid and intimidated by the female detective staring directly at them via eye-contract in/through the headset (Bender, 2018).

94 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Like the musician performance anxiety simulator (Bissonnette et  al., 2016), which is a mixed-reality application in which participants can practise their instrument on a mock stage in front of a large video projection panel that shows a mock audience, the VR version of the Trier Stress Model works primarily when the participant works to accomplish the task. In the case of the music performance anxiety application, the participant rehearses. In the case of the VR Trier Stress Model experiment, the participant delivers a speech. These aspects of interaction perhaps contribute to the effects of involvement, presence, immersion via elevating and augmenting the PSI and PI elements inherent to the audio-visual characteristics of the experience. Indeed, during the VR zombie experiment described in detail in Chap. 3, the most anxiety-inducing segment of the game Arizona Sunshine occurred for participants when they were using a virtual torch to illuminate a darkened mine shaft in an attempt to locate an exit (Bender & Sung, 2021). The importance of task and interaction is emphasised a number of times in the psychology literature on VRET.  As indicated, although various smell devices have been tried—and are repeatedly touted by some manufacturers as creating convincing smells—the researchers and practising psychologists found that the systems never really worked properly. Instead, as noted earlier, simply asking the participant to smell a copper penny, or sometimes to hold the penny in their mouth, would elicit a tactile and olfactory sensation of smelling, or tasting, blood. Interestingly, the researchers of the early military VRET systems simply had the participant– soldier using a console-style game controller to move around. However, they soon found via feedback from participants that it felt disturbing and “unnatural” to be walking around a marketplace, or down a desert highway for instance, without holding a weapon (Rizzo et al., 2010, p. 117). So the system was then equipped with a replica training model of a standard US military assault rifle; however, it was inactive in the game and the researchers and developers are quick to point out that the gun does not function in the system: There is no option for firing a weapon within the VR scenarios. It is our firm belief that the principles of exposure therapy are incompatible with the cathartic acting out of a revenge fantasy that a responsive weapon might encourage. (p. 117)

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

95

Thus, it is important to keep in mind that the phenomenology of a VR experience is comprised of far more than simply what is presented via the visual display and the audio. As Michael Grabowski (2017) notes, humans do not experience the real world—and thus, do not perceive VR worlds— using discrete senses of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling and hearing. Rather, the human brain goes far beyond the incomplete information available, generating sensations and feelings based on minimal information in some cases; in other cases, the stimulation of “one sense may change the perception of another sense” (p. 5). Indeed, this is central to the award-winning VR experience by filmmaker Alejandro Iñárritu titled Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand, 2017). Carne is an art exhibit in which audience members don a VR headset and a backpack computer, and then walk through a virtual experience of crossing the Mexico–US border. This narrative involves being barked at by guard dogs, threatened by border guards with machine guns, witnessing other—motion-captured, computer-­ generated [CG]—characters panicking, and also being chased by a border patrol helicopter. In terms of mixing reality with the VR experience, participants walk barefoot through the narrative exhibit which takes place in a large warehouse where the floor is covered in sand. Thus, the tactile sensation of the sand on the audience’s feet and between their toes adds substantial PI to the audio-visual experience attained via the headset. Audience members report being “blinded” by searchlights of the border guards, “deafened” by the noise, feeling a “natural inclination to respect [the] personal space” of the CG characters, and “instinctively” dropping to a kneeling position when other characters do so after being ordered to by the border patrol (Benjamin, 2017). It is by all accounts a terrifying and moving experience (Dingelder, 2018; Prince, 2019; Raessens, 2019). Importantly, however, the VR component is one of three aspects of the exhibition—before even putting on the VR headset, audience members first sit in a very cold air-conditioned room that is a replica of a detention centre cell. They remove their shoes, and are then able to enter the VR space. After completing the VR narrative experience, the headset is removed, and audience members exit through a gallery space in which video vignettes are displayed of various real people upon whom the dramatic story has been based, which presumably retroactively enhance the sensation of authenticity. Thus, the frisson of the VR component is augmented, amplified and inflected via the overall immersion and hyperreal simulacra of detention centre, sand, CG imagery and video documentary.

96 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

An analysis of the recently developed MST add-on for Bravemind will indicate some of the power of some VR experiences to generate anxiety. After the initial funding round to develop the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan prototype into a deployable system (Bravemind), the researchers sought additional funding to develop a series of scenarios dealing with MST. This involved adding a number of virtual locations to the project that are based on reported scenarios in which military sexual assaults have taken place, both in operational deployments and at US bases, for example, “barracks, tents, […] latrines, […] offices, a town bar area, abandoned lots, motel rooms and civilian automobile settings” (Rizzo & Shilling, 2017, p. 8). In relation to the EMMA’s world research outlined above (Baños et  al., 2009), it is hypothesised that these scenarios may represent a middle-point on the continuum between specific and abstract VRET, such that “The system does not attempt to recreate a sexual assault, but, rather, sets up the contexts surrounding the assault in which users can be supported in the therapeutic confrontation and processing of MST memories” (Rizzo & Shilling, 2017, p.  8). In doing so, the system “provide[s] therapists with a tool to approximate individual survivor narratives to trigger memories as a basis for PE” (Mozgai et al., 2020, p. 3). The MST modification of the Bravemind platform is undergoing testing and has so far demonstrated success at reducing PTSD symptoms in participants with MST, including maintained improvement at three months following treatment (Loucks et al., 2019). One of the central researchers in this area, Barbara Rothbaum, justifies the use of VRET for MST according to the following principle: In general, people with PTSD are very avoidant. That’s been their way of coping. They don’t want to go there, they don’t want to think about it, they will avoid all reminders. (Rothbaum, cited in Fox5, 2017)

Thus, the VR environment in this context is just specific enough—for example, a generic barracks, the streets around a bar, a generic motel room—to trigger the patient’s recall of the traumatic experience, but is still abstract enough that it does not cause flooding nor overstimulation of the patient’s traumatic memory. It is notable how these sexual trauma VREs differ from those that form the bulk of the Bravemind platform. First, when Author 1 experienced these environments it was immediately apparent that they did not seem to attempt to reproduce anything remotely like the photorealistic detail aimed for in earlier specific VRET

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

97

environments. It was still possible to move physically in the environment, yet the graphic quality was substantially less detailed than the earlier Bravemind environments. Even though those environments remained simple, even for contemporary videogame standards, in the MST environments there is less attention to PI elements such as lighting. For example, the interior night time locations would require more complex lighting simulation to appear realistic by comparison to the exterior daytime locations in the original system for non-sexual trauma PTSD (Fig. 4.4). Second, the environments are lacking in nuanced, authentic details that characterise the attempts at making the other Bravemind scenarios convincing. Third, there is clearly a lack of authentic activities, tasks and a lack of interaction in the scenarios. The environments are also unpopulated; for example, the bar areas are completely empty. While it is possible that these limitations may serve relevant purposes, this assumption has not been tested. Most notable in this expansion pack is the amount of content dedicated to audio cues. This is apparent in the screenshot of the so-called ‘Wizard of Oz’ interface that drives the real-time modifications of the environment which includes 32 different sound effects including two pants zippers and six sounds of clothes being removed, all of which are heard through headphones. It seems this level of sonic detail is regarded by the researchers as more significant in activating the patient’s fear structure than as a visual realism of the environments. However, it is difficult to not consider these intuitive design strategies in phenomenological terms; the emphasis on zippers and breathing evoked a far greater sense of embodiment for Author 1 than do the more atmospheric sound emphases in the original Bravemind which focused on environmental effects, gunfire and explosions.

Fig. 4.4  Simple environment designs and textures in the MST scenarios for Bravemind

98 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Most significantly, the development of the MST modifications initially included a perpetrator character that would follow the user wherever they went in the scenario. After testing with clinicians—not individuals undergoing treatment—it appears this was “deemed to be more provocative when actually implemented in the scenario than had been anticipated during the design phase” (Rizzo, 2016, p.  6). This was then adapted to include a button for the clinician to instantly remove this character. It is noteworthy that this feature is described as being similar to Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator character” in the project summary (Rizzo, 2016, p.  6). Indeed, during a test session of this scenario at Emory University in Atlanta, USA, Author 1 felt a distinct “unnerving” and “creepy” sensation to the Terminator character’s co-existence in the virtual world. Most significant is that this sensation was less about the character’s physical appearance, but rather the shape and movement associated with the shadow of the character. Because the character is coded to ‘lock’ on and follow wherever the user moves, this means that he is essentially always by the user’s side or directly behind them. At one point, the Terminator/Aggressor’s shadow was projected onto the wall of the hotel room next to Author 1’s avatar shadow. Author 1’s shadow was stationary, but the Terminator/ Aggressor swayed side to side just slightly. These elements of PSI, via the subtle and naturalistic motion of the shadow, substantially created a sense of anxiety and nervousness. In some cases, the level of anxiety elicited is taken to be a marker of immersion in the environment. For example, in the promotional video for a police training VR system, a local police officer makes the following startling comment: Every officer that has jumped in [the VR training] and tried it so far, after about five minutes they’re fully immersed in that world. And when something bad happens, their heart races, their pulse quickens. And they’re there. And they have to react. (GOVRED, 2020)

Interestingly, in the case of such training, the objective is not to desensitise nor lower the anxiety of the police officers via repeated exposure. Rather, the intention is apparently for them to experience a range of simulated events that elicit the feelings they are likely to have when something occurs in the real world. This privileging of anxiety has become quite common, as indicated below, although what is also quite novel about the approach to the police scenario training—at least, according to the one

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

99

police officer interviewed—is that he believes it is essential for many experiences of the scenarios to unfold without the need for violent intervention. This seems to mean that it maintains the surprise element and apparent randomness when the police officer ends up—virtually—in what is known as a shoot/don’t-shoot situation. Each of these applications calls to mind one of the most astonishing things the authors have encountered in the last five years of trialling various VR systems at different institutions, companies and through colleagues and network contacts—the sheer number of times that people want to show a first-time user the highly anxiety-inducing experience of a “fear of heights” scenario. There are commercially available versions (e.g. Richie’s Plank) (4Fun Studio, 2017) but also one created at the Stanford University Virtual Human Interaction Lab which is described in Jeremy Bailenson’s book as the exciting VR experience that convinced Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to buy Oculus (Bailenson, 2018). In these experiences, there is usually a—virtual—plank or tightrope that leads across a dramatic drop, such as the plank extending outwards from a tall skyscraper (Richie’s Plank) or across a sci-fi-themed interior chasm such as in Bailenson’s lab at Stanford. Author 1 has seen this experience demonstrated both at Stanford, but also in other totally unrelated situations such as during the demonstration of a police decision training VR simulation product showcase. In each case it is seemingly meant to show off the dramatic potential for bodily impact in VR. It is even true in situations where the people exhibiting the heights scenario are often blatantly aware of the bodily responses aroused by it. Bailenson, for instance, proudly and excitedly writes about how Zuckerberg’s increased heart rate and sweat would be measurable during the experience (Bailenson, 2018). According to the blog post by one therapist after experiencing the virtual plank for the first time in a group setting, the impact is highly sensational, terrifying and confrontational in that it feels difficult to cross the virtual plank: Only one person in the evening managed it [to walk across the plank]! Although in the back of your mind you know that the floor is actually there, it’s very very difficult to override what your eyes and your ears are telling you. The adrenaline begins to flow, heartbeats faster and respiration increases. I don’t think there was anybody who tried that scenario who wasn’t perspiring. A very real experience. (Lightfoot, Lightfoot, n.d.)

100 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Most notable is that in many of these demonstrations there is a tactile referent object in the real world; in the photographs accompanying Lightfoot’s experience, there is a wooden plank on the ground in real life that can be measured using the VR controller and adapted to suit the represented plank in the game experience. In Bailenson’s lab there is no plank, but the floor is equipped with a large subwoofer sound system that shakes the entire floor as the virtual floor “opens up” beneath the user, revealing that they are standing on a plank. In Chap. 5 Author 2 reflects on the fear of heights stimulus induced atop a photorealist radar array in Chernobyl VR (2016), one devoid of any tactile prop. Rather, it is the ultra-high definition photogrammetry that amplifies the verisimilitude and elevated sense of presence. Against this background, clearly the anxiety-generating properties of VR are useful, as in VRET, and even entertaining (as in Richie’s Plank, under the right circumstances, or the VR zombie shooters explored in Chap. 3). Yet, as argued in Broderick et  al. (2018), the fun scenarios downplay the potential therapeutic potential of serious applications such as VRET. From the respective positions of VR-evangelists and VR-sceptics, as outlined in Chap. 1, the emphasis on bodily shock and anxiety for entertainment purposes simultaneously creates expectations for the medium that both advance its uptake and hinder its popular appeal. Why would someone want to attend VR therapy, for example, if they are terrified that the procedure might re-traumatise them? Hearing of the sheer overwhelming bodily experience of someone’s plank-walk, however hyped the language may be, might limit the face-validity of a serious VRET session for a patient with legitimate acrophobia. Meanwhile, the amount of military funding for VRET applications could arguably drive a VR-sceptic to question the military-entertainment-industrial-complex, and fuel questions about the ethics of militarising VR’s reported ability to overwhelm the senses. It seems that a VR phenomenology can help to unpack some of these extreme experiences in VR, with an aim of more empathetically— to use that tired term—engaging with the medium’s capacities, limitations and opportunities in the health space.

Conclusion This chapter has focused on the application of VR for the purposes of PE for various anxiety-based disorders using VRET.  While VRET may not ever be a full replacement for PE for anxiety and stress disorders, it does

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

101

offer a viable alternative to augmentation for existing face-to-face treatments such as PE. Certainly, VR has been used in surgical medical training and practice for many years, irrespective of the ebb and flow of commercial or consumer interest (Bailenson, 2018; Lanier, 2017). Yet, the current emphasis around affordable VR technology means that other health-­ related application—for example, VRET for anxiety and stress disorders— may well become more readily adopted. The analysis presented utilised existing psychological research into VRET’s application to anxiety disorders and identified four dimensions of realism underpinning the approach— photorealism, authenticity, immersion/involvement and scenarios that are abstract/specific. It is clear that the research so far has not identified an optimal mixture nor configuration of VRET with respect to each of these dimensions. For example, although photorealism has been regarded as secondary in importance for creating a convincing impression of ‘reality’, it is not known if this will remain true as users’ everyday expectations of VR technology and graphics changes. It is also unknown to what extent photorealism, or the level of specificity in the scenarios, will impact upon immersion and cognitive load in stress resilience training. Therefore, these questions represent the next major challenge in the field. It is unlikely that there will be a one size fits all solution. Significantly, these are areas of knowledge and theory that have substantial precedents in the last century of cinema and media production, as well as screen theory of affect. It is likely that a hybrid methodology incorporating the best of health science research, technology and humanities creative-practice will yield a highly productive investigative paradigm in this domain. Indeed, the recent development of the MST scenarios for Bravemind adopted a similar hybrid design-based approach to work with clinicians, psychological researchers and design experts (Mozgai et al., 2020). The chapter concluded with a thorough VR phenomenology of the experience of anxiety generated by VRET and other related VR applications. The phenomenological analysis identified that anxiety appears to be a central theme in many VR experiences, whether those that have serious application such as VRET, police training, or for entertainment purposes, for example walking the virtual plank. In each case, anxiety seemed to both imply and create the sense of immersion. The demonstration provides ample evidence that research disciplines—from screen studies, to HCI studies, to psychology—currently have a plethora of different ways of describing immersion in VR environments. Future work should attempt

102 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

to harmonise the valid findings of each discrete area, with an eye towards generating a clear model of immersion, emotional excitation and realism.

References Anderson, P.  L., Price, M., Edwards, S.  M., Obasaju, M.  A., Schmertz, S.  K., Zimand, E., & Calamaras, M. R. (2013). Virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting & Clinical Psychology, 81(5), 751–760. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033559 Bailenson, J. (2018). Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do. W.W. Norton & Company. Baños, R. M., Botella, C., Garcia-Palacios, A., Villa, H., Perpiña, C., & Alcañiz, M. (2000). Presence and reality judgment in virtual environments: A unitary construct? Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 3(3), 327–335. Baños, R.  M., Botella, C., Guillen, V., García-Palacios, A., Quero, S., Bretón-­ López, J., & Alcañiz, M. (2009). An adaptive display to treat stress-related disorders: EMMA’s world. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 37(3), 347–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/03069880902957064 Baños, R. M., Guillen, V., Quero, S., García-Palacios, A., Alcaniz, M., & Botella, C. (2011). A virtual reality system for the treatment of stress-related disorders: A preliminary analysis of efficacy compared to a standard cognitive behavioral program. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 69(9), 602–613. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2011.06.002 Bazin, A. (1967–1971). What is cinema? Vols. 1 & 2 (H. Gray, Trans.). University of California Press. Bender, S. M. (2014). Blood splats and bodily collapse: Reported realism and the perception of violence in combat films and videogames. Projections, 8(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2014.080202 Bender, S. M. (2018). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education. https:// doi.org/10.1080/25741136.2018.1464743 Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2021). Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in virtual reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience. Psychology & Marketing, 38(6), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21444 Benjamin, B. (2017). Carne y Arena Part 1—VR by Alejandro G. Iñárritu with Emmanuel Lubezki. Retrieved from https://ascmag.com/blog/the-­film-­ book/carne-­y-­arena-­vr-­masterpiece-­innaritu-­lubezki Benovsky, J. (2017). Realism in film: Less is more. Dialogue, 56(01), 131–141. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0012217317000130 Bissonnette, J., Dubé, F., Provencher, M.  D., & Moreno Sala, M.  T. (2016). Evolution of music performance anxiety and quality of performance during

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

103

virtual reality exposure training. Virtual Reality, 20(1), 71–81. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10055-­016-­0283-­y Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the fiction film. Methuen. Botella, C., Serrano, B., Banos, R. M., & Garcia-Palacios, A. (2015). Virtual reality exposure-based therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder: A review of its efficacy, the adequacy of the treatment protocol, and its acceptability. Neuropsychiatric Disease & Treatment, 11, 2533–2545. https://doi. org/10.2147/NDT.S89542 Botella, C., Fernandez-Alvarez, J., Guillen, V., Garcia-Palacios, A., & Banos, R. (2017). Recent progress in virtual reality exposure therapy for phobias: A systematic review. Current Psychiatry Reports, 19(7), 42. https://doi. org/10.1007/s11920-­017-­0788-­4 Bouchard, S., Bosse, J., Loranger, C., & Klinger, E. (2014). Social anxiety disorder: Efficacy and virtual humans. In B. K. Widerhold & S. Bouchard (Eds.), Advances in virtual reality and anxiety disorders (pp. 187–210). Springer. Broderick, M., Bender, S. M., & McHugh, T. (2018). Virtual trauma: Prospects for automediality. M/C Journal, 21(2). Retrieved from http://journal.media-­ culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1390 Currie, G. (1995). Image and mind: Film, philosophy, and cognitive science. University of Cambridge Press. Dingelder, S. (2018). Can you handle Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s virtual reality film, ‘Carne y Arena’?: Once inside this ultra–realistic experience, some people hit the ground, while others hide behind border guards. The Washington Post. Retrieved from https://link.library.curtin.edu.au/gw?url=https://www-­ pr oquest-­c om.dbgw.lis.cur tin.edu.au/docview/2027448694?acc ountid=10382 Engberg-Pedersen, A. (2017). Technologies of experience: Harun Farock’s serious games and military aesthetics. boundary 2, 44(4), 155–178. https://doi. org/10.1215/01903659-­4206373 Farocki, H. (2009–2010). Serious games I–IV.  Retrieved from https://www. moma.org/collection/works/143767 Foa, E.  B. (2011). Prolonged exposure therapy: Past, present, and future. Depression and Anxiety, 28(12), 1043–1047. https://doi. org/10.1002/da.20907 Foa, E.  B., & Rothbaum, B. (1998). Treating the trauma of rape: Cognitive-­ behavioral therapy for PTSD. Guilford Press. Foa, E. B., Hembree, E. A., & Rothbaum, B. O. (2007). Prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD: Emotional processing of traumatic experiences. Oxford University Press. Fox5. (2017). VR helps military sexual trauma survivors confront past, find healing [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=ue494drmU0s

104 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Gn, B. J. W. (2019). Examining the cognitive biases associated with autism spectrum during social stress: A virtual reality paradigm (Honours Dissertation). Curtin University. Gorini, A., & Riva, G. (2008). Virtual reality in anxiety disorders the past and the future. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 8(2), 215–233. GOVRED. (2020). Apex officer VR training simulator for police officers and law enforcement agencies. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ggwneJMHblg Grabowski, M. (2017). Perception and poetics of VR documentaries. Paper presented at the ZDOK17: Being There, Switzerland. https://intern.zhdk.ch/ index.php?id=113453 Grinberg, D. (2016). Virtual battlegrounds: The multiple realisms of Harun Farocki’s immersion. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 0146-5546 (57). Hoffman, H.  G., Garcia-Palacios, A., Carlin, A., Furness Iii, T.  A., & Botella-­ Arbona, C. (2003). Interfaces that heal: Coupling real and virtual objects to treat spider phobia. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 16(2), 283–300. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327590ijhc1602_08 Javelin Technologies. (2012). PTSD exposure therapy—Dr. Albert ‘Skip’ Rizzo interview [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=OK893GmwuhM Josman, N., Reisberg, A., Weiss, P.  L., Garcia-Palacios, A., & Hoffman, H. G. (2008). BusWorld: An analog pilot test of a virtual environment designed to treat posttraumatic stress disorder originating from a terrorist suicide bomb attack. Cyberpsychology & Behavior, 11(6), 775–777. https://doi.org/10.1089/ cpb.2008.0048 Krijn, M., Emmelkamp, P. M., Olafsson, R. P., & Biemond, R. (2004). Virtual reality exposure therapy of anxiety disorders: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, 24(3), 259–281. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2004.04.001 Kwon, J. H., Powell, J., & Chalmers, A. (2013). How level of realism influences anxiety in virtual reality environments for a job interview. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, 71(10), 978–987. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. ijhcs.2013.07.003 Lanier, J. (2017). Dawn of the new everything: A journey through virtual reality. Henry Holt & Co. Lee, K., Noda, Y., Nakano, Y., Ogawa, S., Kinoshita, Y., Funayama, T., & Furukawa, T. A. (2006). Interoceptive hypersensitivity and interoceptive exposure in patients with panic disorder: Specificity and effectiveness. BMC Psychiatry, 6, 32. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-­244X-­6-­32 Lightfoot, I. (n.d.). Thoughtlounge uses virtual reality to support treatment. Retrieved from http://www.thoughtlounge.co.uk/blog/posts/ vr-­meets-­hypnotherapy

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

105

Loucks, L., Yasinski, C., Norrholm, S. D., Maples-Keller, J., Post, L., Zwiebach, L., … Rothbaum, B. O. (2019). You can do that?!: Feasibility of virtual reality exposure therapy in the treatment of PTSD due to military sexual trauma. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 61, 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. janxdis.2018.06.004 Maples-Keller, J. L., Bunnell, B. E., Kim, S. J., & Rothbaum, B. O. (2017). The use of virtual reality technology in the treatment of anxiety and other psychiatric disorders. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 25(3), 103–113. https://doi. org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000138 McLay, R. N. (2012). At war with PTSD: Battling post-traumatic stress disorder with virtual reality. Johns Hopkins University Press. McLay, R.  N., Baird, A., Webb-Murphy, J., Deal, W., Tran, L., Anson, H., … Johnston, S. (2017). A randomized, head-to-head study of virtual reality exposure therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder. Cyberpsycholgy, Behavior & Social Networking, 20(4), 218–224. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2016.0554 Mozgai, S., Hartholt, A., Leeds, A., & Rizzo, A. S. (2020). Iterative participatory design for VRET domain transfer. Paper presented at the Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Norr, A. M., Smolenski, D. J., Katz, A. C., Rizzo, A. A., Rothbaum, B. O., Difede, J., … Reger, G. M. (2018). Virtual reality exposure versus prolonged exposure for PTSD: Which treatment for whom? Depression and Anxiety, 35(6), 523–529. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.22751 Opris, D., Pintea, S., Garcia-Palacios, A., Botella, C., Szamoskozi, S., & David, D. (2012). Virtual reality exposure therapy in anxiety disorders: A quantitative meta-analysis. Depression and Anxiety, 29(2), 85–93. https://doi. org/10.1002/da.20910 Pertaub, D. P., Slater, M., & Barker, R. (2002). An experiment on public speaking anxiety in response to three different types of virtual audience. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 11(1), 68–78. Prince, S. (2019). Digital cinema. Rutgers University Press. Raessens, J. (2019). Virtually present, physically invisible: Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s mixed reality installation Carne y Arena. Television & New Media, 20(6), 634–648. Reger, G.  M., Gahm, G.  A., Rizzo, A.  A., Swanson, R., & Duma, S. (2009). Soldier evaluation of the virtual reality Iraq. Telemedicine Journal and E-Health: The Official Journal of the American Telemedicine Association, 15(1), 101–104. Reger, G., Rizzo, A. A., & Gahm, G. A. (2014). Initial development and dissemination of virtual reality exposure therapy for combat-related PTSD.  In M.  P. Safir, H.  S. Wallach, & A.  S. Rizzo (Eds.), Future directions in post-­ traumatic stress disorder: Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment (pp. 289–302). Springer.

106 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Rizzo, A. (2016). BRAVEMIND: Advancing the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD exposure therapy for MST. Retrieved from http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a636987.pdf Rizzo, A. A., & Koenig, S. (2017). Is clinical virtual reality ready for primetime? Neuropsychology, 31(8), 877–899. Rizzo, A., & Shilling, R. (2017). Clinical virtual reality tools to advance the prevention, assessment, and treatment of PTSD. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 8(Suppl_5), 1414560. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 20008198.2017.1414560 Rizzo, A. A., Schultheis, M., Kerns, K. A., & Mateer, C. (2004). Analysis of assets for virtual reality applications in neuropsychology. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 14(1–2), 207–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/09602010343000183 Rizzo, A. S., Difede, J., Rothbaum, B. O., Reger, G., Spitalnick, J., Cukor, J., & McLay, R. (2010). Development and early evaluation of the Virtual Iraq/ Afghanistan exposure therapy system for combat-related PTSD. Annals of the New  York Academy of Sciences, 1208, 114–125. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1749-­6632.2010.05755.x Rizzo, A., Parsons, T.  D., Lange, B., Kenny, P., Buckwalter, J.  G., Rothbaum, B., … Reger, G. (2011). Virtual reality goes to war: A brief review of the future of military behavioral healthcare. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 18(2), 176–187. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-­011-­9247-­2 Rizzo, A., John, B., Newman, B., Williams, J., Hartholt, A., Lethin, C., & Buckwalter, J. G. (2013). Virtual reality as a tool for delivering PTSD exposure therapy and stress resilience training. Military Behavioral Health, 1(1), 52–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/21635781.2012.721064 Rizzo, A., Harltholt, A., Rothbaum, B.  O., Difede, J., Reist, C., Kwok, D., … Buckwalter, J.  G. (2014a). Expansion of a VR exposure therapy system for combat-related PTSD to medics/corpsman and persons following military sexual trauma. In J.  D. Westwood, S.  W. Westwood, L.  Fellander-Tsai, C.  M. Fidopiastis, R.  S. Haluck, R.  A. Robb, S.  Senger, & K.  G. Vosburgh (Eds.), Medicine meets virtual reality 21 (pp. 332–338). IOS Press. Rizzo, A. A., Difede, J., Rothbaum, B. O., Buckwalter, J. G., Daughtry, J. M., & Reger, G. (2014b). Update and expansion of the Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan PTSD exposure therapy system. In M. P. Safir, H. S. Wallach, & A. S. Rizzo (Eds.), Future directions in post-traumatic stress disorder: Prevention, diagnosis, and treatment (pp. 303–328). Springer. Rothbaum, B.  O., Rizzo, A.  S., & Difede, J. (2010). Virtual reality exposure therapy for combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Annals of the New  York Academy of Sciences, 1208, 126–132. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1749-­6632.2010.05691.x

4  VIRTUAL REALITY EXPOSURE THERAPY 

107

Shiban, Y., Diemer, J., Brandl, S., Zack, R., Muhlberger, A., & Wust, S. (2016). Trier social stress test in  vivo and in virtual reality: Dissociation of response domains. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 110, 47–55. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.10.008 University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (USCICT). (2014). Virtual reality therapy: Bravemind and STRIVE [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRL0TzrNtVc USCICT. (2007). Virtual Iraq/Afghanistan [VR Software]. USCICT. (2014). Bravemind [VR Software]. Valmaggia, L. R., Latif, L., Kempton, M. J., & Rus-Calafell, M. (2016). Virtual reality in the psychological treatment for mental health problems: A systematic review of recent evidence. Psychiatry Research, 236, 189–195. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.psychres.2016.01.015 Williamon, A., Aufegger, L., & Eiholzer, H. (2014). Simulating and stimulating performance: Introducing distributed simulation to enhance musical learning and performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 25. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2014.00025 Williams, C. (Ed.). (1980). Realism and cinema. BFI Readers in Film Studies. Routledge Kegan & Paul. Wilson, P. N., Foreman, N., & Stanton, D. (2009). Virtual reality, disability and rehabilitation. Disability and Rehabilitation, 19(6), 213–220. https://doi. org/10.3109/09638289709166530 Witmer, B.  G., & Singer, M.  J. (1998). Measuring presence in virtual environments: A presence questionnaire. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(3), 225–240.

CHAPTER 5

Virtual Reality, Trauma and Empathy

Part 1: User Interpretations As noted in Chap. 1, there appears to be a tendency for contemporary VR works to focus on empathising with suffering. This chapter further critiques the assumptions of the explicit motivations for the design of a number of VR productions that ostensibly aim to engender a heightened sense of audience ‘empathy’ for the depicted victims (see Milk, 2015). Using a mixed-methodology including close textual reading, auto-ethnography, VR phenomenology, and qualitative and quantitative data analysis, it draws from established trauma scholarship and the turn to affect (Gregg & Seigworth, 2010; Plantinga, 2009) concerning memory, testimony, empathy, immersion and representation. It applies E. Ann Kaplan’s (2005) concern that “empty empathy” frequently masks screen media’s sensationalised and sentimentalised documentation of trauma to proffer false sympathy (Bloom, 2017) rather than more objective analysis that engages with broader historical contexts. We note in these case studies the differing forms of mediation and engagement such as encounters via computer, YouTube, headset environments, or in museums, including sole or group interaction. The first half of Part 1 principally employs narrative description of the content of the VR productions with comments from the Authors’ engagement as well as reconstructive description of crowd-sourced experiences from producers, consumers and critics that have viewed the works. Part 2 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_5

109

110 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

reflectively considers the material from the first half and undertakes an analysis of the assumptions of empathy in regard to traumatic, violent and disturbing subject matter (Robertson, 2015b). In both sections we present an exhaustive (though hopefully not exhausting) subjective, methodological attempt to perform VR phenomenology via close reading of the selected texts. In order to untangle the sometimes contradictory viewer–user responses to these VR products it is worth considering the stated intentions of media producers and compare these with user–audience interpretations of their work in order to assess the veracity of claims concerning empathy and affect. As a demonstration of VR phenomenology, at times this chapter illustrates how a researcher-critic can engage with the affect and effect of crowd-sourced responses to VR experiences. The chapter also provides a comprehensive and targeted example of how a VR phenomenology might draw upon cognitive walkthrough methodology to generate nuanced description of the process of encountering a purported traumatic and/or empathetic VR experience (Doumanis & Economou, 2019; Rieman et al., 1995; Sanchez et al., 2000). Readers may notice some inconsistencies in our narrative and phenomenological descriptions, alternating between we/ us and user/players/participants/viewers/audiences. These linguistic variances have been retained since we feel they indicate not only the difficulties in the precision of critical discourse to emulate our experiences but also to reflect the affect of immersion across differing modes. In some VR environments, it felt right to describe experiences from a somewhat removed, third-person perspective; in others, the experience evoked what seemed to be a more appropriate first-person subjectivity. [08:46] (2015) [08:46] was released on 11 September 2015. The production was developed on Unreal Engine 4 with WWise, Optitrack, Autodesk technologies and was recommended to run on a GTX790 or higher, with an Oculus Rift DKs (professional tracking recommended) and an Xbox gamepad. The developer was listed as 846 Studios. The voice and motion capture actors both have strong European accents, and their English pronunciation is sometimes muffled or otherwise unintelligible. It is also important to note here that both Authors were unable to play the [08:46] game demo in full VR due to it only working in the original Oculus headset. Hence, we could only experience others’ video gameplay and their recorded movements and commentary. Before [08:46] was deleted from

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

111

the Oculus homepage—quite possibly due to adverse reactions and/or trolling (see below)—the production was described by the content makers as: a narrative driven experience designed for virtual reality, which makes you embody and [sic] office worker in the North Tower of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 events, emphasizing the victims’ point of view. Based on countless hours of research in order to try to properly recreate the atmosphere and dynamics with in the top floors of the towers, [08.46] was designed and developed as a school project during three months by a six members team [sic], working in close collaboration with two actors for mocap [motion capture] and voice acting. Having put our best efforts to craft a compelling and challenging narrative experience, we now release [08.46] on the 14th anniversary of the tragedy that shaped our century.

The game commences with the viewer–player sitting in a small office in front of an older desktop-style computer terminal with a spreadsheet on the screen. In the background, diagonally opposite at right, a young woman sits at a desk with a computer and red phone (Fig. 5.1). By late 2015 visual standards, the production design of the office environment is quite unsophisticated, rendered mostly via simple shapes without much texture nor detail. That said, the overall lighting effects are more elaborate, adding to the environmental verisimilitude, for example the geometry of

Fig. 5.1  The opening image of [08:46] displays rudimentary graphics even for the time of its production

112 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

office windows and vertical blinds and, later, single-source torchlight illuminating the smoky darkness. The office location seems mundane with assorted ambient sounds of staff chatter and phones ringing. The female office worker, Audrey, asks us/the player to retrieve a file from the desk drawer and hand it to her, a task that is achieved interactively via the VR controller. After the file is handed to Audrey while we/the player stands in close proximity to her desk, almost immediately a loud and shuddering explosion rocks the building. Office equipment and parts of the ceiling are strewn about the room. Audrey instantly shields her head from the debris and then runs to the window saying “Oh my God, what was that? All this smoke, there must be a fire… It’s ’93 all over again”. The cryptic comment refers to the earlier attempted demolition of the Twin Towers in 1993 when a 1200 pound truck bomb was detonated below the North Tower by Islamist terrorists (History.com, 2013). Audrey picks up her phone but there is no ringtone nor power. She asks us/the player to try, interactively, to open the office door, but it is jammed shut. From outside a voice enquires “Is anybody in there?” and, after a few attempts, a tall, solidly built man clears the doorway from outside, explaining he is the “fire marshal” for the floor and that we, Audrey and player, are the “last people left” in the section of the building. In reality, this speed of this unseen evacuation is implausible, as is Audrey’s rapid comments equating the blast with the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Interactively handing the player a torch, he instructs us to leave since “the building is on fire”. Smoke is becoming visible from the exterior windows as we follow the warden down darkened corridors. Travelling through the passageways illuminated with a single source of light is reminiscent of generic horror films and many first-person shooter games. Particulate matter, presumably ash, falls from above and dust lingers in the opaque atmosphere. Turning to follow the marshal, we weave left and right, passing dangling wires from the collapsed ceilings and walk over debris scattered across on the floor. The user/player navigates this environment by pushing the forward button on the VR controller in their hand. Improbably pixelated and multifaceted bubbles of grey smoke roll overhead. Although this imagery appears ridiculous and unconvincing in its geometry and physics, after the initial chagrin it becomes increasingly evocative. We are then instructed to try exiting through a series of fire doors, illuminated by glowing signs (Fig. 5.2). However, none of these options are

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

113

Fig. 5.2  Illuminated by a single torchlight, the fire marshal is in seen the foreground with Audrey in the background at some distance along a dark corridor; grey smoke obscures the ceiling

successful. The only sound emerging from the abandoned and damaged building is our character’s footsteps and the repeated violent shaking of unyielding doorhandles. Noting how the temperature is rapidly rising, Audrey insists “we have to get outta here”, pleading to us/the player to “find the door!” Still unable to exit from any door, we go back to the fire marshal who instructs us to return to our office while he tries to establish where the other office workers have gone. From behind we follow Audrey through dark passages to our office, only to discover a man (David) sitting at a desk speaking on a mobile phone. He is highly distraught and seeking assistance from the 911 operator. David is illuminated by our solo torchlight but also backlit from the office windows that reveal bubble-like plumes of smoke outside moving between the towers. Audrey borrows his mobile phone to call her mother, instantly telling her parent to “calm down”, presumably as the news of the first explosion has been broadcast in the elapsed time. Audrey explains she is with colleagues in the tower. David silently sits next to her on an internal window ledge. Suddenly, in mid-sentence, a second violent explosion is heard from outside. Audrey turns to look outside, still talking to her mother, “Oh my God! Was that a plane?”. David also turns and looks across to the South Tower, saying “I can’t believe this. If we got hit the

114 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

same way we won’t walk out of this building alive”. Audrey demurs, telling him “You don’t know that; help must be coming our way”. She adds quickly “It’s so hot”, panting and repeating, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe”. David unilaterally decides to break a window to let in fresh air, ignoring Audrey’s protest about the likelihood of that act drawing the flames closer. David is resolute. “Listen. Either we do it or we stay here, suffocating, waiting for some help that won’t come…”. At this point David’s voice trails off and he turns to us/the player. “You. Grab something heavy and help me”. While we/the player search for an interactive object to pick up, David moves forward and breaks open a window using a metal stool. The concussion of shattering glass and the roar of rushing air dominates the soundscape. David repeats the action, smashing a second window, forcing Audrey to move aside. With a loud grunt, David then thrusts the stool out of the window. Slowly, with his head in hands and the rush of air streaming in, David steps up onto the window ledge (Fig. 5.3). Distraught, Audrey turns and confronts him, crying “What are you doing?! Step back; you’re going to fall!”. Looking outside, David proclaims “I won’t die in this fire, suffocating like a dog. Do you really think there is a chance for us [sic] to come for us? For all we know there is a fricken plane burning just a few floors below”. Audrey implores him to step back, but David leans forward and

Fig. 5.3  David stands on a window ledge, preparing to jump, as Audrey, at right, pleads with him not to

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

115

falls silently to his death. The imagery evokes the iconic 9/11 photo The Falling Man and subsequent 2006 documentary by Henry Singer. At this crucial point we/the players have two courses of action. We can stay and comfort Audrey who sobs and begs us not to leave—in which case the room slowly fills with smoke and the game fades to black, implying that we die of suffocation. Or we can follow David by also plunging to our death. Depending how quickly we adopt the latter course of action, our face-forward point of view might also view David’s body in the distance as we accelerate towards the ground, or we might change/rotate our view to look back above and see the two towers billowing smoke (Fig. 5.4). Either way, there is no visual nor aural representation of the player, of our impact, just a sudden cut to black and silence lasting only a few seconds before the production credits fade in. The actual elapsed time between the first plane strike on the North Tower at 8:46 am, the eponymous VR game title, and the second crash into the South Tower at 9:02 am is approximately 16 minutes. Most of the published [08.46] gameplay online runs closer to 10 or 12 minutes maximum; the latter lengthier exposure occurs if gamers spend time exploring the environment rather than simply advancing through the interactive narrative and space.

Fig. 5.4  The point of view perspective from a player–user looking back up at the towers as they/we fall to the ground

116 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

YouTube Prosumer/Viewer Comments on [08.46] The following samples of real-time gameplay of [08.46] uploaded to YouTube provide interesting comparisons between users and viewers. Contrasting these VR video captures is informative as the separate recordings offer differing perspectives and interactions throughout the game, hence the point of view, physical positions and actions by the VR players is not identical. Therefore, comparing these videos provides insight into the phenomenology of the participant/viewer presence as a self-conscious, auto-ethnographic critique. The recorded comments by and visuals of the VR players experiencing the game is noteworthy as it captures their real-­ time, in-situ observations, affording subsequent viewers a subjective, qualitative account of the gamer/reviewers’ reception. Sample 1: Under the heading 8:46 – 9/11 Google Cardboard – SBS 3D – Terrorist Attack Simulator  – Controversial VR Experience? the YouTube video by Bill at Pretty Neat VR (2015) presents the project as a video capture of both left and right eye fields of view; this stereoscopic 3D presentation of both images represents the visual parallax if viewed on a stereoscopic display. At the time of writing it has slightly over one million views, with 1900 positive to 653 negative votes. The player is not visible in this upload; however, Bill can be heard on the soundtrack addressing the audience at the beginning. His introduction is bland and matter-of-­fact, noting the game/demo “depicts the events of 9/11, the North Tower, and its [sic] from a victim’s point of view”. Prior to the game beginning, we watch Bill’s computer screen capture which shows him scrolling down the dedicated [08:46] Oculus computer page, as he adds “I think this is a very controversial type of Demo. I’m not sure if it’s educational or not”. He quickly moves past the comments page, noting “a lot of people were having issues here about it but I figure I’d go ahead and record it, anyway”. He concludes his commentary with: Let me know what you guys think. Was it wrong to make a game like this or demo? We’ve made stuff like this in the past… somebody commented about D-Day, or Pearl Harbor, or something. So yeah, let me know what you guys think and I’ll go ahead and let this play. (Pretty Neat VR, 2015)

As Bill ‘plays’ the game, we face an interesting, dual experience from the perspective of phenomenology. First, we witness his phenomenological encounter with [08:46] which is intriguing in itself. Second, we have our

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

117

own phenomenological encounter with Bill’s video capture of his experience. The latter may bring on mild to strong motion sickness, as experienced by Author 2, since we have no agency nor bodily control over what is presented. We only see what he chooses to see, and we only see the parts of the virtual environment he chooses to explore. Bill’s voiceless engagement with the game appears mostly impassive, for example not responding to the first extremely loud explosion while positioned behind Audrey. When the game has the player return to the office to reveal David on the phone, player Bill moves close to the windows and looks outside, seemingly more interested in the billowing smoke effects, the adjacent South Tower and the exterior setting, rather than the drama unfolding between the two work colleagues as they make their desperate phone calls. Similarly, when the second explosion shakes the other tower, Bill’s VR gaze remains firmly on the point of impact and smoke outside. He doesn’t turn to look at Audrey as she gasps repeatedly “I can’t breathe”. He does, however, respond immediately to David’s demand to “grab something heavy and help” by interactively smashing open a window with a computer terminal. When David steps up to the ledge, the player’s torch/point of view quickly whips between views of David and Audrey and back again as she begs him to step back. After David jumps to his death, Bill does not move to the open window to look out, unlike several other players who uploaded videos; rather, he stays behind, somewhat removed from Audrey while she pleads with him to stay with her, coughing in the smoky and darkening room. All of this suggests to us that either Bill has previously watched the game demo, which is not acknowledged, or he deliberately avoids editorialising during the video capture and remains more far more dispassionate than the other samples under discussion here. Unlike the samples to follow, given Bill’s absence of spontaneous player commentary, there is only the virtual positioning and exploration that Bill adopts throughout the demo—via his gaze/point of view and movement/ positioning—that evinces specific engagement and interaction, for example what game aspects he chooses to follow/pause/ignore. As we note in Chap. 3 concerning eye tracking and attentional synchrony, where precisely a player looks and remains fixated—as recorded in the gameplay video—is a probable indicator of either character engagement or deliberate avoidance, as this later response may be a potential response to traumatic imagery or to witnessing traumatic events in real life (Andrews et  al., 2013). Also, in Bill’s case, there is no recorded epilogue to bookend his

118 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

introduction, only silence as the game credits appear following the concluding fade to black. Sample 2: The most self-consciously affecting uploaded gameplay comes from Reality Check VR who writes at the top of his YouTube channel: Please keep comments positive!) [sic] I did not expect this demo to impact me so emotionally. I think I felt a bit like I was a guardian angel simply witnessing something that I could not help to save in any way, that made it devastating to play through the whole demo. Like going back in time and sailing the Titanic. You want to save people… but… im [sic] just in VR…. I hope people use these tools to help others learn and create understanding. (Reality Check VR, 2015)

This preamble provides an interesting articulation of the paradox of immersion and interaction, evoking both god-like omniscience and passivity yet simultaneous helplessness and lack of agency. From the perspective of VR phenomenology, these types of articulated user experience (UX) offer a novel way of making sense of the impact of VR. Of course, this is not to mean that any individual experience is taken to be de facto the full explanation; rather, it means that the ways a given VR experience is capable of impacting on and engaging with its audience can begin to be understood by eliciting thematic ideas about audience response from these experiential reports. Published on 14 September, only a few days after the release of [08:46] on the Oculus site, the video has had approximately 163,000 views, with a 90% positive response rate—2200 thumbs up versus 275 thumbs down— as is therefore the highest ratio of support amongst the videos examined in this chapter. Looking straight to camera in full screen, the gamer notes: it’s an educational experience, I guess, to the victims of 9/11 and this is not meant to be something that’s just, ah, to be laughed at or something that’s enjoyable as a joke. It’s supposed to be serious. It’s to show people that might not know exactly what happened maybe grasped a little more of a firstperson idea of what actually happened on those days [sic], ah during those hours, possibly, if you were in one of these buildings. (Reality Check VR, 2015)

Reality Check VR notes that he found his “buddy Billy”, the aforementioned player in Pretty Neat VR, had already uploaded a gameplay video and “a lot of people are going to go back and forth and talk about ‘should

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

119

games like this be made; should terrorist attacks or devastations in general be something that’s recreated?’ I think if they’re done tastefully, they’re done with the purpose of education, I think that for the most part things can be re-created”. Addressing the camera, he shakes his head, continuing, “there’s a lot of things that there’s not a reason to do so, but ah, we’ll just give it a go and you can let me know what you think”. Unlike Billy’s earlier video capture, in an act of auto-ethnography, Reality Check VR records himself on screen, shown via a small inset box at the bottom of the display, with the dual stereoscopic view of his VR experience unfolding in real time. After donning the headset, he occasionally lifts it to check his computer screen. Before commencing the game, he swivels his head to view his VR surroundings, orienting himself, and comments “They’ve got you starting out as a worker in one of the buildings and I can hear a lot of chatter”. These physiological movements affirm the veracity of a film phenomenology approach to VR analysis by highlighting the embodied aspects of participant screen viewing/interaction. Continuing the gameplay, he walks the file over to Audrey and stands in front of her desk when the first explosion occurs. The inset image shows the gamer in real life responding physically to the unexpected virtual impact and noise, ducking in his chair, as if the falling VR ceiling is hitting him. Reality Check VR exclaims a drawn-out “Shhhiiit… wow!” He looks about the office and then briefly lifts his head set, gaining composure before turning to the camera, saying “the graphics are very basic but knowing what’s happening is just … [repositioning his headset] it still… gives me the chills”. He takes the fire marshal’s torch and follows him, stopping to open illuminated/interactive doors and finds the offices empty or filled with rubble, commenting “I just want to know if you can help anybody, but”. As he returns with Audrey to the office, he looks up at the corridor ceilings and says “it makes me want to duck, because of the smoke”. As they approach the office, the gamer can be seen shaking his head slightly, seemingly in dismay. Inside, when David yells into the phone “I’m going to die in here”, the gamer pulls back on his seat, lifts his headset briefly and exhales loudly, which is an often unconscious somatic response to encountering traumatic imagery (Broderick, 2008). After returning to the virtual world of [08:46], Reality Check VR moves towards the windows and sees the smoke outside. He begins to grimace as Audrey calls her mother, his mouth curling sadly when the second impact occurs, which again jolts him back in his seat. Although most of his face is

120 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

obscured by the headset and large earphones, it is clear Reality Check VR is weeping, sniffing tears. He then snorts back sobs and moves uncomfortably in his seat. Coincidentally, the player’s breathing becomes slower, heavier and more laboured at the same time as Audrey moans that she cannot breathe. He helps David find a bulky object to break a window, exhaling heavily, and then continues to weep as David throws the stool out of the window, seemingly in resignation. Reality Check VR pulls back in his chair when David steps up to the window ledge. He gasps loudly when David leaps, looking away from the window and down at his feet and begins to sob and shudder. Sample 3: Similarly, This Is Dark Wolf uploaded his LetsPlay video to YouTube titled 08:46 | 9/11 Terrorist Attack Oculus Rift Game (2015). This clip has had over 7 million views with 49,000 likes and 38,000 dislikes. Dark Wolf’s channel does not allow for viewer comments so it is impossible to determine whether the likes versus dislikes are aimed at the gamer’s performance and commentary or the VR game and its production values. Addressing his audience, Dark Wolf provides a pre-viewing caveat directly to the camera before donning the Oculus Rift and playing: We’re here to play [08:46] which is a 9/11 incident game. Basically, it takes place during the 9/11 attacks. So I am playing the victim. If it’s too sensitive of a game for you then I recommend that you don’t watch this video. However, keep in mind that I am a New Yorker, and I was there during the 9/11 attacks.

In a small inset graphic to the lower right of the video, Dark Wolf is shown wearing his VR gear, playing the game and commenting throughout. Just prior to the first plane crash, Dark Wolf complains about the inverted controller keys requiring him to rethink his forward and backwards movements to enable interactivity with character and objects. As with Sample 2, the identification of such technical problems quickly foregrounds both auto-ethnographic and phenomenological perspectives. In this distracted state, the impact of the jet startles him. “Yo, my heart is beating out of its chest”, a comment which he repeats after the second impact and when he sees David jump from the window. Dark Wolf stays in the office to be with Audrey, debating whether or not he should experience the other gameplay course of action, to also plunge to his death. After initially staying in the building at the game’s conclusion, he returns to the scenario and decides to jump, saying “I don’t wanna do this, but, here we

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

121

go!” As Dark Wolf accelerates towards terminal velocity and the towers stream past his point of view, he repeats “Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Ohhhh”. During the cut to black screen and the fade-in to titles, Dark Wolf cringes in his chair, grimacing. He twice exhales forcefully and shakes his head repeatedly saying, “That was not fun”. Dark Wolf removes his headset and addresses the camera directly: “I can’t believe I put myself through that”, exhaling again and looking off camera. “But you know what? As long as it [i.e. my screen capture] entertains you guys, that’s all that matters”. The seemingly off-hand comment—followed incongruously by a pitch to viewers to subscribe to his YouTube channel—may seem insensitive or callous. This perception is precisely why fellow gamer BlackWeeb (2016) mercilessly ridicules the video in his own mash-up/critique, chiding Dark Wolf’s self-aggrandising pitch for viewer subscriptions. It is not clear from his concluding comment if Dark Wolf is bemoaning the game experience and his own somatic and emotional reaction to it, as opposed to foregrounding his immersion and overt LetsPlay guidance. The latter interpretation would suggest his comments about “entertainment” relates to his own on-screen performance and evaluation, not the intrinsic value, or lack of it, in the game itself. Sample 4: The next VR gameplay was uploaded by Mr.ProBoss in October 2016 under the tile TERRORIST ATTACK SIMULATOR 9/11 – 8:46 Oculus Rift Game (Mr.ProBoss, 2016). As with the previous gamer, Mr.ProBoss captures his encounter on video and displays the game in real-time stereoscopic format for YouTube. He prefaces the video with this text on his YouTube channel: Didnt [sic] want to jump in the end since it was scary AF but whatever. The game is so much more different in VR though. You should definitely try it out:) (Mr.ProBoss, 2016)

Both points are worthy of unpacking. Firstly, despite the player’s on-­ screen performative bravado and cynical tone throughout, he acknowledges his reluctance to jump out of the window at the conclusion, stating it was “scary [as fuck]”. Secondly, while seemingly “stating the obvious”, Mr.ProBoss encourages viewers of his video to play the game in VR due to its significant experiential difference. Hence, he challenges the phenomenon of those simply wanting to view the demo/game vicariously via his YouTube upload to actively experience the “difference” in VR.  He also

122 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

introduces his screen capture video by highlighting a technical glitch, as did Dark Wolf before him, that suggests an annoying rupture in the game’s illusion of presence: Playing a 9/11 simulator, and yeah, it is really fucked. And I had to cut the really really big beginning because it was really unsynced, and I just couldn’t be bothered to sync it ‘cos it took absolutely ages. So, we start from when the plane crashes. I hope you enjoy it, ‘cos I really enjoyed it; it’s really fun. And if you like the video please subscribe. (Mr.ProBoss, 2016)

From this fairly dismissive and confusing introduction—it is not clear why is it “fucked”; because of the “scary” experience or the technical issues—the video launches immediately from the point of impact as we/ Mr.ProBoss stand next to Audrey’s desk. The audio and visual violence of the crash unsettles Mr.ProBoss who exclaims “Mother fuck me!” while swivelling his head to scan the office, looking down at the seated office worker. “Oh Audrey, you look like you fell really badly in the chair”. Audrey stands and moves to the window, asking “What was that?”. Mr.ProBoss, looking up at the damaged ceiling, simultaneously questions “What the fuck happened?”, adding “I think the physics broke in this game”. Mr.ProBoss seems to interact with the game as if it is part of a first-­person shooter horror encounter. The player continues with wisecracking comments and follows the fire marshal down the corridor describing how “scary” the darkened environment appears, saying “Oh my God, what is this? Is this smoke? This is scary as fuck”. As Audrey becomes increasingly distraught trying to open doors, Mr.ProBoss addresses her—and we the viewers—in a manner akin to someone sitting in a movie theatre talking out loud in a stream of consciousness. As in the movie theatre, Mr.ProBoss’ words have no impact on the characters, while this seemingly spontaneous act of vocalising also gestures to the game’s interactive and immersive affect: Okay, okay. Chill. Chill girl. We will get away. We will find a way to get out. I just want you to be really calm. I got this, no worries. (Mr.ProBoss, 2016)

Facing endless locked doors and piles of building debris, obscured by smoke and with only a torch to illuminate the scene, Mr.ProBoss quips “this is really fucking trippy”.

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

123

Back in the first office, he peers out of the tower windows to see the smoke billowing outside, commenting “this thing is so scary”. He watches as David continues his call to 911, observing that both David and Audrey have ash on their heads but queries out loud “How does he have a phone? I thought they didn’t have phones…”. Unlike other demo players, Mr.ProBoss engages with this sequence while physically set back deep inside the office, his torchlight illuminating both characters from its single beam. He jokes to himself while looking about the office, standing in front of a computer, sarcastically suggesting he will simply “return to my normal work routine” following the catastrophic attack. He turns to look at Audrey and David, making light of the situation, asking “What’s the password. Do any of you know the password?” After borrowing David’s phone, as Audrey tries to calm her mother down, the second plane strikes the tower opposite with a loud explosion. Mr.ProBoss reacts, moving back from the window “What the Fuck?! Did the airplane just crash into this thing? No way…” before moving forward to witness the building burning. As Audrey panics, Mr.ProBoss says to her “Chill, chill, chill, chill, chiiiiilll. Calm down”. When David declares he will break open a window and directs Mr.ProBoss to “grab something heavy”, the player seems to relish the idea, saying “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go”. He searches for an interactive item to use, shouting “Let’s fuck the monitor up” and successfully smashes the window. Mr.ProBoss laughs as David initially fails to break the glass with a stool, nearly hitting Audrey on the rebound. He eggs on David’s second attempt, yelling “C’mon, Boom! That’s it”. David stands near the now open window and the player approaches to look outside and down the street below, showing us the view, saying “Oh my God, that’s so high”. When David prepares to jump, Mr.ProBoss mirrors Audrey’s pleas for him to step back, commenting “Don’t tell me you’re gonna jump. Naw. Don’t jump […] what the fuck are you doing?”. Standing on the window sill, David asks Audrey rhetorically if she really thinks anyone will come to rescue them, to which Mr.ProBoss responds “I dunno. Let’s hope so. But by killing yourself…” and moves forward towards Audrey. Off screen, David jumps, and Mr.ProBoss pulls back, saying “Did he jump? No way”. Bizarrely, the player acts as if he is responding in real time to Audrey’s sobbing appeal not to leave her, reassuring her that he will stay, nodding in affirmation, yet immediately followed by “Just kidding! Bye”. He moves towards the window ledge and looks back at her. “Bye girl. We’ll miss you. Goodbye”. The perspective changes instantly from the darkened, smoky

124 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

office interior to the bright exterior. Falling fast, Mr.ProBoss moves his head around to change perspective looking up and then down as the sound of air rushing past and sirens below him become louder, and turning to black before the assumed impact. On screen, Mr.ProBoss lifts his head to address the camera, noting “Oh my God. I totally have goosebumps”. As the credits appear, he says “What? That was it? Daaaaamn. It was fun though. It was a great fucking game. Ten out of ten for sure”. Judging from his comments and reactions, it would appear that Mr.ProBoss has either already played the game or seen aspects of it. His instant responses seem too pat and cynical. Perhaps for this reason, the video remains relatively marginal, with only 2304 views as at the time of writing. Of these viewers, less than 1% bothered to rate it—21 were positive (66%) and seven were negative (33%). The YouTube user comments are few but are mostly consistent in their verbatim criticism: Matthew Why are you so offended, this allows for people to have Empathy towards the situation and gives greater awareness to the overall tragedy. I don’t look at it as way of mocking the events of 9/11 but rather truly remembering and understanding the true horror or Radical Terrorist, and don’t start with some bullshit about inside job Nancy McGill 9/11 was an inside job. John Zimmerman This guy had no empathy though. All fucking insensitive bullshit. At the beginning he said the game was “a lot of fun.” What a fuckin asshole Flower Nigga *really funnnnn Shelby - PARANORMAL INVESTIGATOR SPI this shit offends me!!! my best buddy died in the south tower, it isn’t a joke he suffered horrifically on that day and it’s still so painful today. Alyssa T No one finds the game to be a joke. It’s not a funny game at all? It is empathetic to the terrorist attacks and giving people a look into the horror of that day… John Zimmerman Alyssa T I don’t think it’s the game he was offended by, but rather the guy who was playing it. He describes the experience at the beginning by saying he “really liked it and it was really fun.” He was laughing and joking about it the whole time, and it was just completely fucking distasteful

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

125

Flower Nigga’s asterisked comment “*really funnnnn”, however, may well be ambiguous. Read straight, it seems to confirm his ridiculing of the game scenario but, if read as sarcasm, the comment reinforces the dubious, disrespectful perspective of Mr.ProBoss and his repeated invoking of “fun”. Sample 5: While it may be difficult to glean the overall impact of these VR videos, a summary analysis of the quantitative metrics and qualitative comments is possible. The final sample video of the [08.46] VR experience considered here, The Gamer’s 9/11 Virtual Reality Experience [Unreal Engine 4] Demo + Download, was uploaded on 13 September 2015, the day after the game’s release (The Gamer, 2015). The Gamer’s video offers no context, written or spoken, just the raw gameplay video recorded in monoscopic 2D in 16:9 ratio. It commences with a view of the start button and game controller superimposed on the player’s office desktop computer and ends 12 minutes later after we/The Gamer follow David’s suicide leap out of the window until near impact before it cuts to black and ends without showing the production title credits. Other than The Gamer’s specific interactions, movements within the game and directed point of view, nothing else provides commentary, analysis nor critique of the demo. At the time of writing, the video has had over 2.6 million views with 4045 comments. It has received 20K “thumbs up” and 4.2K “thumbs down”, roughly 80% likes to 20% dislikes. Apart from multiple comments about the poor voice acting and inappropriate European accents, the low quality of the game engine/aesthetic, and conspiracy claims over the “real” 9/11 event, many people registered shock and fright at the loudness and unexpectedness of the explosions. Surprisingly, no one explicitly noted that this was a video capture of a single game player’s experience, recording their perspective—for example where they looked and paused, or moved within the environment—for viewers to replay non-interactively and in 2D on smartphones, tablets or computers. The following is representative of different viewers’ comments, presented here as verbatim text: People’s criticism […] on the basis of it being a “game” is irrational. Video games are another medium like film and print that can be used to tell a story, whether that story is real or fictional, the point is to evoke the emotions necessary to immerse the audience in the story; in this case the story is historical and real, and it’s in this sense that this is intended less as a source of entertainment and more of an educational tool. The easiest way to repeat past events is to not be educated by them and the results.

126 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Ha ha. Yeah, this garbage immature video will help stop this happening again [emoticon of face crying from laughter] People need to stop being little wussies and realize this game was not made to make fun of or be offensive to the victims of 9/11. It was designed to honor all of the victims to help show people what it was really like to be in the situation that day. May all victims Rest In Peace. America strong forever [emoticon of USA flag] … they could and should have put more effort in the details, sounds, graphics and honestly if you wanna get real.. the guy that jumped out of the window was pg rated.. I feel that no sensor should be applied and let people know that people were being almost pushed out the windows by increasing heat and smoke and the situation was way more dire than this simulation No one knows for sure what those people went though and to take it so lighthearted really tugs at me!! They were real people that went through hell and died and to mock it is awful!! This is what we have to remember. I work for a psychologist who believes that we should know the horrific experiences of the people inside the towers and first responders, so that we carry the emotional memory […] We have to take these tragedies seriously and understand that distancing ourselves emotionally makes it easier to move on without learning from it or preventing it from happening again. I think it’s brilliant to simulate an experience to have even the slightest idea what loved ones and undeserving people went through; survivor or not. Watching this made me feel even more empathy than I did before. Understanding and immersing yourself in their experience makes the whole event more chilling. That’s far from disrespectful […] it’s further educated me. I just don’t think it’s right to do this. Very poor taste. Sorry. The fact that this is no where near a 911 simulation makes this video offensive lol. Its like making a movie about slavery without having them be whipped and they were able to casually have a drink of water as they worked. I really do not like that game as this was a real, a horrible incident and should not be part of a video game. This is nowhere near respect for the about 3,000 people killed in this brutal and condemned act […] I would have considered that game as “experiencable history” if there had been a disclaimer in silent tribute to the victims of the 11th September.

According to Siersdorfer et al. (2010), who surveyed bibliometrics of more than 6 million comments on 67,000 YouTube videos by using lexical algorithmics, “the influence of sentiment expressed” can be identified and

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

127

delineated across comments, views, ratings and topic categories. Like much of unmoderated social media, YouTube’s high propensity for online trolling is well known, as is the anonymity of comment providers identified only by their nominal sign-in “handles” (Crecente, 2016). According to Buckels et al. (2014), in general, cyber-trolling appears to be an “Internet manifestation of everyday sadism”. The 2014 study of psychological personality/identity testing showed “trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism”, with sadism presenting “the most robust associations with trolling behaviour”. However, based on a much smaller sample, Lange (2014) contends, “under the right circumstances” such online ranting “helps construct an emotional public sphere […] that generates discussion among similarly concerned YouTube participants”. The polarities of these user comments, combined with the statistical apportioning of comments alongside likes/dislikes, provides quantitative and qualitative insight into user experience, not of the VR game itself but, ironically, of the vicarious experience of embodiment and presence via the phenomenological capture of video gameplay from other gamers who effectively stand in as avatars for the subsequent audience. The VR phenomenology is thus expressed by viewers inhabiting the experiential presence of a third party, a simulacrum in true Baudrillardian sense (1994), since the VR production can no longer be accessed in its original form as the release has not been updated for playback on current Oculus, or any other, VR headsets. New Dimensions in Testimony (2017) This case study considers two productions that approach traumatic memory and testimony from differing technological modes of presence and interaction. In New Dimensions in Testimony (2017), there is the potential for VR and AI to capture and create holographic avatars of living participants who interactively (self)generate autobiographical discourse. Neither Author has experienced this work as, at the time of writing, it could only be accessed in a handful of northern hemisphere venues. According to Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California (USC)—a space which has as its mission to “develop empathy, understanding and respect through testimony” by sharing the voices of those affected by genocide, including that of the Holocaust (USC Shoah Foundation, 2021)—“the immediacy of this

128 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

format brings you really close to the subject. And I think it’s going to become the standard way in which we document our history” (Goode, 2017). Smith, adopting the familiar evangelist mode of rhetoric to promote and market the technology as the “standard way in which we [will] document our history”, is referring to a USC digital media production project that created life-sized 3D avatars of Holocaust survivors Pinchas Gutter and Eva Schloss (Ziv, 2017). The pair were recorded via 6000 LEDs illuminating their face in 20 different combinations, with eight cameras capturing the exposures from multiple angles, all in ultra-high definition. According to the project’s exhibition curator, David Traum, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter was “captured” in 3D as a virtual holograph. Gutter, and Schloss, spent 25 hours providing 1600 responses to a broad range of questions that Traum maintains covered “a lot of what people want to say” (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2017). It is unclear who constitutes the “people” referred to here and how diverse or representative they were and, presumably, it was also what they wanted to ask, rather than say that Schloss and Gutter’s digital responses addressed. However, the Shoah Foundation’s information sheet on New Dimensions in Testimony asserts, “words such as ‘hologram’ and ‘avatar’ fail to accurately describe” these digital witnesses (USC Shoah Foundation, 2018) (Fig. 5.5). “We avoid using these terms because to date the technology to display a hologram does not exist, and ‘avatar’ implies that the image is animated or is somehow unreal. These are live recordings of living witnesses giving authentic answers” (USC Shoah Foundation, 2018). This is an interesting illustration of how the contemporary push to simply label VR, augmented reality (AR) and other forms of mixed reality (MR) as immersive and life-like has left the industry with difficulties in nomenclature. Moving forward, it is an area that VR phenomenology might be able to help address. Visitors to museums and memorial sites where Gutter and Schloss’ virtual presence are displayed can ask them one or a series of questions about their wartime experiences and life in the concentration camps. The responses are naturalistic and authentic, as are the pauses between questions. It should be noted that, at the time of writing, neither Author has experienced New Dimensions in Testimony in a museum setting, only video recordings of audience interactions. The high-definition 4K screen is photo–realist and reportedly mimetically convincing in-situ, yet this does

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

129

Fig. 5.5  Virtual, life-sized Holocaust survivors, Eva Schloss (left) and Pinchas Gutter (right) give testimony in a museum setting (USC Shoah Foundation)

not mean that audiences believe it is ‘real’, nor does it mean that repeated viewings yield the same impression of plausibility. Indeed, if such use of the technology is to become any kind of a ‘standard’ way to document testimony of historical events, an opportunity exists to begin examining real audience responses and attempt to untangle the complexities of plausibility illusion (PSI), place illusion (PI) and immersion. It is here that the intersection between VR and auto/biography hybridise in complex and potentially difficult ways. It is where the concept of automediality may offer insight into this rapidly emerging phenomenon of creating interactive, hyperreal versions of our selves using VR (Broderick et al., 2018). These hyperreal VR personae can be questioned and respond in real time, where interrogators interact either as casual interlocutors or determined interrogators. The impact of New Dimensions in Testimony on visitors is often described as sobering and palpable. Visitors as observers or interlocutors are frequently taken aback by the capacity for these avatars to engender a high degree of empathy from their automedial testimony (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2017). An ongoing concern amongst

130 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

witnesses, scholars and cultural curators of memorials and museums dedicated to preserving the history of mass violence, and its associated trauma, is that, once the lived experience and testimony of survivors passes with that generation, the impact of the testimony diminishes. As such, new media modes of preserving and promulgating such knowledge in perpetuity are certainly worthy of embracing. As Stephen Smith suggests, the technology could extend: to people who have survived cancer or catastrophic hurricanes […] from the experiences of soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder or survivors of sexual abuse, to those of presidents or great teachers. Imagine if a slave could have told her story to her grandchildren? (Ziv, 2017)

As seems inevitable with other uses of immersive technology, the emphasis on utility appears to be on traumatic and negative events of social importance. There appears little interest in, for example, preserving the testimony of an Olympic athlete’s success, or that of an important contemporary painter or other role model. Rather, the empathy-effect of immersion is privileged as being a means of conveying the feeling of trauma and suffering. Yet questions remain as to the veracity of these recorded personae. The avatars are created according to a specific agenda and the autobiographical content controlled for explicit editorial purposes. It is unclear what, and why, material has been excluded. If, for example, during the recorded questioning, the virtual holocaust survivor became mute at recollecting a traumatic memory, cried or sobbed uncontrollably, all natural, understandable and authentic responses given the nature of the testimony, should these genuine and spontaneous emotions be included along with various behavioural ticks such as scratching, shifting about in the seat and other naturalistic movements to engender a more heightened realism? As such, VR phenomenology offers a means of critically engaging with the affective impact of these various PSI and PI elements which likely have effect far beyond simply rating ‘high’ or ‘low’ on a Likert scale as per the discussion in Chap. 3. The generation of the photo–realist, mimetic avatar, remaining as an interactive persona long after the corporeal, authorial being is gone, reinforces Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra (1994) where a clone exists devoid of its original entity and unable to challenge or add nuance to its automedial discourse. And what if some unscrupulous hacker managed to

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

131

corrupt and subvert Gutter or Schloss’ AI so that it responded antithetically to its purpose by, for example, denying the Holocaust ever happened? As an aside, the ethical dilemmas of such a paradigm were explored in the dystopian 2013 film The Congress (dir: Ari Folman), where Robyn Wright plays herself, and her avatar, as an out-of-work actor who sells off the rights to her digital self. A movie studio exploits her screen persona in perpetuity, enabling audiences to ‘become’ and inhabit her avatar in virtual space while she is limited in the real world from undertaking certain actions due to copyright infringement. As such, there are numerous ethical considerations surrounding the potential for AIs to expand beyond automedial (self) expression towards photo–realist avatars interacting outside of their prerecorded content (Aitkin, 2018). When such systems evolve, it may be nigh impossible to discern on screen whether the person you are conversing with is authentic or an indistinguishable, virtual doppelganger; even a Turing Test may be unable to challenge and identify such hyperreal simulacra (Oppy & Dowe, 2019). Nevertheless, encountering such mimetic VR–AI simulacra in a museum setting is vastly different from donning a headset to watch nonagenarian deathcamp survivors describe their experience in-situ. In contrast, the documentary The Last Goodbye (2017) features Gutter revisiting the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland where his family was murdered in order to record the encounter in VR (Fig.  5.6). For Author 2, who viewed this work with an Oculus Go, the embodied presence and in-situ testimony within the confines of these environs was arguably more compelling than

Fig. 5.6  In 360-degree VR, Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter gives in-situ testimony while revisiting a former concentration camp in Poland

132 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

the genteel setting of survivors reprising their traumatic experiences in their homes, museums or the compositional artifice of media production studios.

Part 2: Immersion and Testimony In this section, we note the opportunities and complexities foregrounded by VR phenomenological readings highlighting three case studies as examples. In Kiya (2016), the producers employ the authentic cell phone recordings of a homicide–suicide to recreate the last few minutes of a young mother’s life and that of the perpetrator–father “in an effort to raise awareness of domestic violence”. In Collisions (2016), cinematic VR (CVR) gives poetic voice to a rare Indigenous perspective that connects place with Aboriginal Dreamtime spirits and ancestors, recalled in an encounter during cold war atomic testing. Finally, the hybridised VR documentary Chernobyl (2016) mixes highly mimetic representation of the nuclear power plant and it surrounds, including the abandoned city of Pripyat, with archival and contemporary testimony. We conclude by noting how expert VR phenomenology can employ and extend the methods and discourse of textual analysis and criticism while recognising the limitations of such approaches to this medium. Kiya (2016) Video games, gory films, graphic images on the Internet—much of the violent content we consume, whether for entertainment or information, is associated with effects of dehumanization, an unfeeling response in the wake of cruelty. Reading, perhaps, is one exception. Virtual reality may be another. (Frank, 2016)

As with the collective student project that became [08:46], journalist and documentary filmmaker Nonny de la Peña, the CEO of Emblematic Group, the “next-generation media company for immersive news, entertainment and branded virtual reality” (Emblematic Group, n.d.), created an immersive VR environment in which audiences could experience, in close to real time, the tragic events that led to a double gun fatality in suburban American. Kiya is a short, five-minute VR work that is split between the exterior and interior of a house in leafy North Charleston, chiefly dramatised from 911 calls and from witness statements. It is an extension of

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

133

de la Peña’s 2015 VR project One Dark Night that re-enacts the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman using dialogue recorded from multiple 911 calls within and around a Miami Gardens condominium. The official Emblematic Group website notes Kiya was commissioned by Al Jazeera America to accompany the conventional television documentary series Death in Plain Sight “which tracked the correlation between lax gun laws and domestic violence homicides in South Carolina” (Emblematic Group, 2015). In an op-ed for the New York Times, de la Peña outlined her motivation for VR’s capacity to recreate historical events: Could I use virtual reality to offer a better understanding of how events transpired, and to make people connect to stories they might otherwise ignore? Could I reach younger audiences who are accustomed to digital worlds and gaming platforms, and help them become informed global citizens? (de la Peña, 2016)

Producer de la Peña stresses that Kiya is VR capturing “the entire sequence of events to re-enact a tragedy and bring new attention to the issue of domestic violence”. As we discuss later in relation to the cinematic– poetic VR documentary Collisions (2016), the sentiment of social change is echoed in immersive VR maker Lynette Walworth’s commissioning, production and international exhibition strategy that embraces human rights advocacy and funds from major international donor and governance organisations. Authors 1 and 2 experienced Kiya using various VR display opportunities—an HTC VIVE environment in which it is possible to physically move around in the space as the drama unfolds, although it is not possible to interact nor intervene with the characters, and an Oculus Go headset in which the narrative of Kiya has been rendered out as a 360-degree video from a fixed position. The second option shows exactly the same events, but the only interactive capacity is for the viewer to swivel their head within the 360-degree viewpoint. As discussed later, both modes of encountering the experience create vastly differing effects. The project commences with a disclaimer advising “viewer discretion” due to “vulgar language, disturbing scenes and images”, followed by text stating the “experience uses actual audio of 911 emergency calls [and] police documentation and photos”. Participants begin the VR experience outside a suburban home on a misty street listening to a police operator

134 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

discussing the approach of Zakiya (Kiya) Lawson’s two African–American sisters, en route in a car. They mention Kiya’s ex-boyfriend is with her in the house armed with a gun. They want to enter to remove the children. A quick transitional dissolve to black relocates the viewer inside an open plan living room where the sisters confront Williams who holds a lowered revolver in his right hand and stands close by Kiya (Fig. 5.7). Another abrupt transition returns viewers to outside the house at the curb-side end of the driveway, showing the younger sister speaking with a different 911 operator asking where the patrol cars are before returning to the house via another transitional dissolve. Inside, the elder sister tries to calm Williams down, imploring him, for the sake of his children, not to “throw his life away”. Outside in the driveway the elder sister pleads with the operator who relays police “are coming as quickly as they can”. As two patrol cars arrive, the younger sister describes the situation to the officers who have exited the vehicles with their guns drawn. Another rapid dissolve relocates to inside the room where Williams is holding a gun to Kiya’s head. The younger sister pleads repeatedly “please don’t do it, please don’t do it”. Kiya screams “let go!” and “calm down!” (Fig. 5.8). Williams wrestles with the struggling Kiya, revolver at her temple, and demands the remaining sister to “get out now!” A rapid dissolve to the outside situates us closer to the house as the sister exits a screen door and

Fig. 5.7  The principal protagonists of Kiya, inside her home, where her ex-­ boyfriend Williams (right) holds a revolver

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

135

Fig. 5.8  Kiya is threatened by her ex-boyfriend as her sister pleads for him to stop

descends the porch steps. A white male officer and his white female partner train their guns on her, motioning to come forward. She complies and tells the police “he’s got her … please grab her”, an impassioned request immediately followed by a loud gunshot. Instantly the sisters scream in shock and both wail in horror, the police beckoning them back as they slowly ascend the exterior steps. The younger sister yells at the police “He’s in the living room!”. As the crouching police tentatively push past the threshold of the front door, another shot rings out and a muzzle flash is visible through the doorway (Fig. 5.9). If watching in a room-scale VR interactive environment, depending on where each VR viewer/participant has positioned themselves at this point, this action can be read in one of two ways. It either appears to be the result of the first officer shooting as he and his partner jolt at the sound, appearing as a recoil or, alternatively, the second shot is clearly shown as having been fired from inside. The 360-degree video version of Kiya has the viewer positioned in such a way that it is possible to (mis)read the second gunshot as having been fired by the police officer. Almost immediately, a superimposed title appears—“After murdering Lawson, Williams turned the gun on himself” which clarifies any possible ambiguity. The production concludes with a 911 operator returning a call to one of the sisters who is inconsolable in her grief, followed by two more titles:

136 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 5.9  Moments before the first shot rings out, attending police officers with guns drawn take position on the exterior steps On average three women a day are killed by their husbands or intimate partners in the United States. Kiya’s sisters are now campaigners against domestic violence.

Along with de la Peña’s other VR works recreating traumatic events, the producer has declared that having “seen tens of thousands of people respond to these pieces […] I know that they work” (2016). But this prompts the question—in what way do they “work”? Do these tens of thousands of respondents react in the same, homogeneous manner and, if so, where is the evidence of such responses as opposed to anecdotal, qualitative recollection? If not, then what is the perceived range of audience/ participant responses and how are these measured or recorded? Without the involvement of any of the methods discussed in Chap. 3, it is difficult to know. For de la Peña, such apparently universal reaction to her work is based both on the novelty and on intensity of VR exposure, creating strong empathy and a lingering impression: They tell important stories in an entirely new way, and they use the immersive power of virtual reality—its ability to generate intense empathy on the part of the viewer—to wring from the audience the intense emotional connection that these stories deserve. Kiya’s story still haunts me, and I hope that you are moved by it, too. (de la Peña, 2016)

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

137

However, no evidence is offered to justify claims of VR’s intrinsic “power […] to generate intense empathy” more than a powerful novel or article, artwork, musical composition, documentary or movie. Implicit in these observations is the same assumption espoused by fellow New York Times op-ed writer and photo–journalist, Danfung Dennis, who claims that “In V.R., we instinctively feel a surge of empathy for those whose experiences we are immersed in. The suffering of people […] becomes our suffering” (Dennis, 2016). Well, perhaps, but such claims of universal empathy are highly contentious (Robertson, 2015a, 2017). For example, one VR viewer–participant, byteframe, cynically trolled the official Kiya Steam website and uploaded their own gameplay video on YouTube linked from de la Peña’s comments page. An innocuous comment, “Thank you for telling your story. I listened”, is linked to the video. There is no commentary recorded, only the actions of the player using twin VR wands as floating, animated objects to hack the production with offensive, sexualised gestures. Using the left and right hand VR wands, byteframe penetrates the mouth of a female character, simulating fellatio, and another as a phallus protruding from the male perpetrator’s groin. Using the wand’s circular ring, byteframe simulates an orifice, penetrated by the antagonist’s large revolver. Other objectionable reactions on the site include IVlastor Jason’s comment “this game made me realise that I should respect women more. So from now on I will beat my wife only 2 times a day instead of 5”. Kiya can be viewed in three different ways: as a pre-rendered 360-degree video on a computer screen with limited rotation via mouse control; as a pre-rendered 360-degree video in a VR headset with head-orientation interaction; or as a real-time rendered environment in a more sophisticated VR headset which enables the user–viewer to physically move about in the same space as the characters. Each of these viewing modes provides a range of subjective possibilities—and limitations. The VR experience is significantly enhanced by immersion via a room-scale virtual environment. By contrast, viewing a pre-rendered 360-degree video on a screen or with a non-tracked headset such as the Oculus Go has the Kiya narrative play out with no viewer agency. Events simply occur in a linear fashion, and while a spectator can rotate their heads, there is little freedom of movement. Like a fly on the wall, this perspective offers a passive observation akin to ‘objective’ cinéma vérité. As with traditional documentary counterparts, the 360-degree video version of Kiya locks the viewer to a particular optical position chosen by the filmmaker. However, when Kiya plays in a

138 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

room-scaled VR headset, for example the HTC VIVE, viewers have the capacity to move about in three-dimensional space, both within and outside the home where the activities take place, although the user/viewer cannot choose when to transition from interior to exterior. Furthermore, the characters in Kiya appear, despite the relative low quality of computergenerated imagery (CGI) production values, more ‘realistic’ as they are encountered ‘life size’ with a freedom of movement and virtual proximity to the immersive viewer that can be unsettling, if not uncomfortable. Rather than detracting from the VR experience, for critic Priscilla Frank (2016), the relatively unsophisticated rendering of human forms in Kiya facilitates a frisson that alludes to a subjective experience akin to traumatic mis/dis/remembering (DePrince et  al., 2012). Frank describes Kiya’s characters as: blocky and cartoonish, resembling figures in a video game more than live action people. The authentic audio coupled with the abstracted visuals creates a jarring sensory experience. The conflicting signs of reality and unreality arguably echo the experience of a jumbled memory, or perhaps a particular scarring one. Like a nightmare, despite the inconsistencies or surreal details, it feels real. (Frank, 2016)

The participant’s sense of immersion, presence and empathy might equally be an affect of neurophysiology where the brain and body are “tricked” by the phantasmic experience of occupying a virtual space that offers our sensorium stimuli to compensate for the artifice of the cumbersome VR apparatus (Friedman, Donenfeld, Zafran,, & Goldsmiths, 2009; Riva et al., 2019). Unlike [08:42], Kiya does not enable participant interaction with characters or objects within its CG environs. However, the rendering and action can produce somatic reactions and instinctual impulses. For example, while using an HTC VIVE within the North Charleston home setting, standing next to, or in between Kiya’s gun-­ wielding boyfriend and the women present, a viewer may feel compelled to get out of the way or be startled by sudden movements at the border of their peripheral VR vision, as was Author 2. However, it should be noted that Author 2 was also bemused by the VIVE environment occasionally positioning him waste deep within the floor, immediately rupturing the immersive sense of presence until the glitch was rectified. Hence, experienced outside of a 3D domain—that is, one that enables viewers to

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

139

physically walk about within Kiya—the encounter becomes a largely flattened, mono-dimensional space with more limited movement that constrains an arguably passive, observational orientation. This is one of the major limitations of the 360-degree video version of Kiya experienced either in an Oculus Go type of VR headset or on a desktop computer screen. Although the few (26) comments on the Kiya Steam page are mostly supportive, where players largely recommend the experience, a number (quoted verbatim) express disappointment with the aesthetics, such as Aldondrius: Well another piece of story from real life that i rather watch in the news or documentary than to see this horrible graphics with bad animation and expressions. This is not quality content, it’s not a game, 5 min apps anyone can do with a free engine then distribute it, is nobody able to stop this spamming of bad content filling up the great Steam library

Similarly, Maddoggyca was less than impressed: I get the idea there trying to do, but the models of the people and the eviorment completely kills this project, There was really no feel of expense, tention, drama, or connection to whats going on The real audio is the only thing going for it wil very poor animation (or lack there of) no exasperation on any of the models… even body language is competely missing

Such comments suggest that a number of players encountering the experience are prevented from engaging at the level of empathy the producer and others attribute to Kiya due to insufficient character/location photorealism, physics and motion. Similarly, a dedicated YouTube channel (Emblematic Group, 2016) features Kiya as a pre-rendered 360-degree video. The site records over 5000 views with only 0.5% respondents, 23 positive versus 3 negative ratings. Despite the number of viewers, only two viewers left comments and they were equally divided in their responses, with one suggesting that “a real life re-enactment in 360 would’ve been more effective”. Indeed, Emblematic Group’s earlier productions, such as Clouds over Sidra (2015) commissioned by the World Economic Forum to demonstrate the plight of refugees, attracted “racist, vitriolic reviews” on the Steam website (Crecente, 2016). From these quantitative and qualitative responses, it is difficult to ascribe a majority, let alone, universal empathic reactions.

140 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Collisions (2016) Collisions unites perceptual, affective and cognitive engagement with experiential immersion […] Through the presence it brings to the fore, and the skilful use of virtual reality cinema’s spatial and temporal dimensions, the viewer may be drawn into an ethical inhabitation of the image, which can transform their understandings of others, of the world, and of themselves. (Daniel, 2018, p. 14)

In order to analyse some poetic and artistic affordances of VR (Bye, 2017; Grabowski, 2017; Raikes, 2012; Tortum, 2015, 2016), this case study concentrates on a VR documentary–artwork featuring the embodied testimony of Australian Indigenous Martu elder Nyarri Nyarri Morgan. Self-consciously digital art, the production is difficult to categorise in conventional genre terms; it adopts testimony, cinéma vérité, film-within-film sequences, CGI and time lapse photography. Working with his interpreter– grandson Curtis Taylor and digital media artist Lynette Wallworth, Nyarri Morgan’s recollection of his encounter with a mid-1950s British nuclear weapon test in Australia’s outback is steeped in a rare perspective of place, evocatively expressed through the capacity to experience Morgan’s story in 360-degree immersive video (Wallworth, 2016b). Instead of the game engine, CG graphics of [08:46] and Kiya, the live-­ action 360-degree camera technology employed to enliven Morgan’s story is artistically deployed to render an embedded sense of spirituality, one that connotes an Indigenous connection to place traversed by Dreamtime spirits and ancestors, and harmonised to the cyclical movement of the circling cosmos and seasonal patterns of climate and ecology. It is Morgan’s experience of witnessing the effects of an atomic bomb blast that dominates the production. His stark recollection and vision is one recounted to be experienced phenomenologically in VR. As immersive digital art-maker Wallworth says, “the camera allows you to feel the experience of being in his home, under that enormous sky […] to place the viewer in relation to this community, to this land and give a sense of place” (Wallworth, 2016a). Wallworth privileges what she considers the fundamental importance of using “the newest technology to talk about something which is ancient in this country—Martu’s sense of stewardship, how you look after something for a hundred generations” (Wallworth, 2016a). Morgan’s encounter has “waited over six decades to be told” and is presented in a manner that sensitively and powerfully gives

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

141

voice to a unique Martu perspective of, and encounter/collision with, the nuclear age. This case study analyses the narrative, immersive and poetic approach of Collisions against its claims of creatively engendering viewer impact. Wallworth does not generally speak of eliciting empathy from her VR works, rather she foregrounds the collaborative and ethical praxis of her art-making where participants are often co-authors and/or co-producers, highlighting that, in this work, as in previous and later projects, “there were a series of cultural protocols that had to be followed” and that she/ we had to be “invited” to the community to hear and share Nyarri’s story (Wallworth, 2016a). It is an approach praised by Adam Daniel as “an exemplar for how the medium of virtual reality may reconfigure some of the existing conceptions around the ethico-aesthetics of cinema” (2018, p. 7). As with Kiya, Collisions was commissioned by the World Economic Forum. It has been showcased at major international screen festivals (Sundance, Tribeca etc.), museums and various international fora, such as the UN Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty session in Vienna, the Washington Climate Summit, and the World Economic Forum Davos. Showing Collisions to social–political elites was important for Wallworth as she was “wanting to use it as a tool to try and inform and change minds, and that is the most you can ask for an artwork”, adding “it isn’t just an experience but a catalyst for change” (Wallworth, 2016a). However, the global reception of Collisions is distinctly different from several other consciousness-­ raising VR productions, including most case studies examined here. An important variation is that while Collisions was briefly made available for public download via the now defunct Jaunt VR website, there is now no digital ‘footprint’ of user comments, likes/dislikes or online metrics of views to evaluate such qualitative or quantitative impact. Authors 1 and 2 both viewed Collisions on VR headsets, with Author 2 additionally experiencing the production in group settings at Australian museums such as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne and at PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Art). Unlike [08:46], Collisions has no interactive elements nor related function. Its 18-minute runtime elapses as a fixed, linear narrative, as does Kiya, although, as we noted earlier, Kiya can be experienced within a virtual physical space, such as an HTC VIVE, with limited navigational interaction using wands.

142 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Collisions opens with a fade-in from darkness to display a jet-black sky filled with rotating stars streaking slowly in a circular pattern. At this point it is unclear if the VR view is monochromatic, 2D or 3D and/or 360 degree. A low electronic score plays as an unseen and uncredited female voice—in fact producer-director Lynette Wallworth’s—which provides a poetic, personal narration to orient participants, emphasising “This is not my story, it is Nyarri’s story. A Martu man who lives as his grandfathers lived”. She explains we are undertaking “a journey” to hear a story that has waited decades to be told. To the crackling sound of an outdoor fire we cut to see the expansive north Western Australian scrub featuring grasslands and snappy gum trees. Wallworth’s voiceover continues enigmatically, “In Nyarri’s world time doesn’t move in a straight line. Before I even met him, he was already waiting for me”. From an elevated position at the rear of a four-wheel drive (4WD) pick­up we travel at speed along a red dirt road, passing eucalypts, clumps of wiry spinifex grass and stray cattle along the roadside. Despite the state of the dirt road, the journey is smooth, evoking a slight sensory impression of flying, belying the fluid artifice of the VR’s gimbal. This near-ground level momentum is altered by a cutaway to an elevated, downward (drone) view of the 4WD, accompanied by another vehicle close by, both kicking up a trailing cloud of red dust. From this vantage we can rotate our neck and body to view—above, below and to the sides in full 360 degrees—movements which shows a cloudless sky and the broad expanse of the remote Western Australian bush. The drone overflies a range of tin-roofed buildings comprising an outback Indigenous community, home to some of the Martu people. As the cars approach at ground level, we see children on pushbikes and others walking about the settlement. An unseen, distant voice sings in an Aboriginal language. Perched atop a large craggy hill, Nyarri Morgan sits in the foreground, hand raised to his head, singing a traditional “welcome […] to his home” (Fig. 5.10). We then hear another voice who identifies himself as Curtis Taylor, the grandson of Nyarri, and a Collisions co-producer. As Curtis continues his introduction, a cut foregrounds Nyarri’s wife, Nola Taylor, who smiles at us/the VR camera, which phenomenologically assumes the viewer’s point of view. In the mid-distance standing to the right near a gate, Curtis is motionless, his narration introducing us to Nyarri, whose story we are about to hear. Nyarri joins his wife, and both elders offer their welcome with a “hello”, noting that we, the viewer, have “come a great distance”. Another cut shows the breadth and depth of the desert community with a

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

143

Fig. 5.10  Martu elder Nyarri Morgan sings a welcome to country from atop a sacred hill overlooking the land in Collisions (production still, 2016)

large hill “that holds uranium” dominating the background while in the foreground dogs wander in a pack. Light country music underscores Curtis’ narration—“In the 1950s Britain tested atom bombs in the outback of Australia. Nyarri was a young man then and didn’t know any other world but his own”. To which Wallworth’s voiceover adds “There are some films I brought with me to show him—films of the atomic bomb”. At twilight the community gathers outside under the darkening sky to watch archival 2D videos projected onto a portable screen beside a 4WD. These edited clips show a nuclear detonation in Nevada with hundreds of US marines marching towards ground zero as an enormous mushroom cloud broils and ascends into the sky. Over this video Curtis narrates “That day, Nyarri saw a thing he couldn’t name. It would be 20  years before he heard the words ‘atomic bomb’”. However, as compelling and shocking as this archival film is, almost imperceptibly, Nyarri can be faintly heard from behind the VR camera, our point of view. By turning our head more than 90 degrees we find the elder behind us, pointing at the mushroom cloud on screen and looking directly at the camera/us, speaking in language (uninterpreted), saying this is what he saw in the Australian bush 60-plus years ago (Taylor, 2017). Nyarri’s surreal encounter with the atomic bomb immediately follows, rendered in near photo–realist CGI. The sequence occurs in slow-motion. The bleached flash and thunderous roar of the explosion is shown from

144 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 5.11  The rising mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion takes the form of a Martu ancestor–spirit in Collisions (production still, 2016)

ground level where we adopt Nyarri’s point of view. Startled red kangaroos turn from the flash and blast to hurriedly hop away as a rapidly approaching shock wave knocks them to the ground; many are seared from the heat and all are killed. Nearby, patches of water boil away in puffs of steam. The atomic cloud rises towards the sun, forming the shape of a Martu ancestral deity, the silhouetted sun transforming into one of the spirit’s eyes (Fig. 5.11). Soon, radioactive ash falls like dirty snow. Looking around left to right we can see the carcasses of felled kangaroos, smouldering shrubs and rising vapour, before the screen fills with course, dark ash and fades to black. Over the startling sequence Curtis interprets Nyarri’s voice and story—“I thought I saw the spirit of my gods rising to speak with me”.

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

145

Nyarri understood this as the intervention of a spirit–god providing a bounty, a gift of “easy hunting” from the slain marsupials that fell to the ground, so Nyarri and his group “took them and ate them” and some of the party “got sick”. The next scene presents Nyarri sitting alone, illuminated by the ember glow from a large outdoor fire, wood crackling and smoke rising in the air. Wallworth narrates: “Oppenheimer could never have known that he might poison a young man’s god”. She continues, “There is what we do not know, and then there is what we come to know”. Nyarri sits still, staring at the fire. With an overlay of Robert Oppenheimer’s (at first) non-­diegetic voice—“We knew things would never be the same”—Nyarri looks up and stares silently at us/the camera. A cut returns to a view of the projected outdoor video screen, now showing archival film of Oppenheimer from 1945 and then reflecting 20 years later: A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu […] says, now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all felt that, one way or another.

A dissolve to stars rotating across the ark of sky transitions to a lap dissolve from night to day as Wallworth’s voice speaks poetically of conflicting epistemological perspectives—“We collude with the urgent needs of a single point in time. Martu contemplate the expanse of a hundred generations”. An ambient electronic score continues as the stars fade and dawn breaks over the Pilbara landscape in a rapid time lapse. The eastern sun rises with Curtis narrating: This country is home, and family, and loved ones. It’s a relationship that doesn’t end. In this country every rock is known.

The narration in Collisions is complex, with interweaving voices that are often not identified nor immediately understood as emanating from a particular person. For example, Lynette Wallworth and Curtis Taylor take turns in narrating but are we to assume in the passage above that the voice of Curtis is directly interpreting Nyarri Taylor, or are these important words his or Wallworth’s? It seemed to both Authors that Wallworth’s voiceover narration and the interpreting of Nyarri by Curtis enveloped us as omniscient, whereas Nyarri’s voice appears spatialised, directional and

146 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

diegetic. In Collisions the VR’s presence is dynamic and fluid, and the phenomenological perspective of embodiment polyphonic, as we receive and seemingly inhabit the voices of multiple personae: We looked after this land for thousands of years so that the country can be good for the generations after us.

The sun continues to rise slowly on the horizon, casting long shadows across the topography while Nyarri/Curtis speaks, further describing the intimate custodianship the Martu have with the land. At one point high-­ pitch squawks of a small hawk interrupt the tranquillity—in contrast to the ongoing low-key drone of the electronic score—as its swoops past the VR apparatus/us. The directional, diegetic sound may prompt us to swivel around and catch a fleeting view of the bird unexpectedly darting by. The next scene situates Nyarri at ground level and we hear magpies chortling and other birds singing nearby. He walks through sparsely wooded grasslands, undertaking traditional bushcare by setting the knee-­ high grass alight with a firestick, as Curtis intones: Martu knowledge, painting with fire, creating mosaics across our country that prevent other fires and create new growth; the wisdom to control where the flames will travel—knowledge transferred across a hundred generations.

As an aside, this description of Martu knowledge has assumed even greater significance after the catastrophic 2020 summer bushfires in Australia that destroyed over 12.6 million hectares of land, emitting over 404  million tons of carbon dioxide and killing over one billion animals, leading to nationwide calls to draw from this centuries-old Indigenous land care practice and knowledge (Werner & Lyons, 2020). Returning to the film, the soundscape erupts with the crackles and pops of the fire catching. Equivalent to a cinematic long-take but fixed within a static 360-degree VR position, Nyarri can be seen in mid-shot moving left to right, now using a cigarette lighter to burn the bush, only to literally disappear, saying “I am going now”. The disappearance is created via multiple brief lap dissolves that serve to situate Nyarri further and further away from the camera/us, moving and disappearing again into the distance, tangential to his previous location. Wallworth’s mise-en-scène, the VR camera positioning and post-production editing depict Nyarri as spirit-­like, inhabiting and traversing the land across time and space, a poetic evocation of

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

147

perspective that arguably approximates The Dreamtime’s ontological understanding—and phenomenological experience—of the supernatural “everywhen” (Nichols, 2014). Indeed, Wallworth’s collaborative digital interpretation is entirely consistent with Morgan’s localised Dreamtime engagement. This is not a ‘mystical’ vision in the desert, nor mirage, but a common, though overwhelming, encounter with spirits who share space and time beyond and outside of Judeo–Christian teleological precepts (Nichols, 2014). Indeed, Wallworth has recalled—when showing Collisions to representatives of Yawanawá, an Amazon tribe from Brazil—that they declared the technology perfectly suited for presenting the poetic–artistic experience of their transcendental visions, local rituals and perspectives, subsequently inviting the digital artist to collaborate on the interactive VR project Awavena (2018). Having presented her immersive digital works in various viewing spaces, including planetariums, Wallworth is fascinated by the different cultural strategies adopted to experience VR. She sent VR headsets to the Yawanawá so that they could experience Collisions and, “interestingly, they all lay down when they put the headsets on. For them, the sense was [that] they were now bodyless, and in order to intensify that state they wanted to lie on the ground […] the way it feels to them is very different I think”. This comment suggests that the Yawanawá eschewed the conventions of Western VR reception by embracing a disembodied engagement and instead adopting a prostrate pose that, while culturally appropriate, limited the capacity of head and shoulder rotation and tilting. Certainly the museum set-ups we encountered offered only standard swivel chairs to experience Collisions. However, the Oculus Go has a feature that simulates viewing a screen production from within a 360-degree CGI simulated cinema, complete with (empty) rows of seating and stage bracketed with curtains. When using such an application, Oculus Go users are encouraged to lay down with a pillow under their head to, bizarrely, experience watching a 2D film embedded in this virtual theatre space. From the perspective of VR phenomenology, we can only wonder how venues exhibiting Collisions would have reacted had we decided to lay down on the floor. In the next scene, smooth and slow-moving drone imagery from high above the tree tops follows Nyarri as he strides about the land, his lit fires sweeping across the terrain directly below with blue-grey smoke ascending past—and seeming through—us/the camera (Fig.  5.12). The electronic score accompanying the scene now includes organ notes and melodies

148 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

recalling western religious music. This bird’s/god’s eye view approximates phenomenologically an Indigenous perspective concerning place and space, something that seemingly abstract traditional dot paintings may not immediately convey to the uninitiated—a 2D spiritual and cognitive map learned through “law” and by walking through country, not to Western scale or Euclidean geometry, but encompassing landmarks fashioned from Dreaming stories, songs, art and dance (Best, 2001). The fluidity of the drone movement and arresting imagery of the violent, human-induced wall of flame hundreds of metres long, incinerating the bush below, may seem incongruous given Curtis’ interpreting of Nyarri—“Look after your country. Look after your young ones. Think about your land and the ones to follow”. The drone stops and hovers, enabling viewers to ‘float’ above the holocaust. Nyarri then himself speaks in English—“And look after yourself. Look after life”. The scene is perhaps another ‘collision’ alluded to by the production’s title, one that conveys environmental violence as essential for regeneration and a nuanced land management, in stark contrast to Nyarri’s encounter with the nuclear fire that decimated and contaminated flora and fauna decades before. The scene concludes with this hovering aspect and ethereal soundtrack, over which Wallworth’s voice returns to her earlier refrain—“There is what we do not know, and then there is what we come to know. And then there

Fig. 5.12  An aerial view of Martu lands managed by ancient Indigenous fire clearing, with smoke ascending past/through us from the VR camera point of view in Collisions (production still, 2016)

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

149

is what we do next… [the screen fades to black] that makes the difference”. A fade-in shows a trestle table with paint and brushes under the shade of a large tree. Nyarri walks towards it and sits, in mid-shot, unperturbed by Martu community life that goes on all around him—a teenage girl moves a chair, dogs take off in a pack to chase something, an elder strolls past, a young woman exits a 4WD and chases a child on a bike. The musical score in the background is less atmospheric and more rustic—violin strings, Ken Burns/Civil War style. An unseen newsreader can be heard announcing that a new open-cut uranium mine (Kintyre) has received “conditional state and federal approval”, noting there is division amongst the Martu people. Lap dissolves show Nyarri completing his dot painting of the atomic mushroom cloud. He sighs and then looks to the camera/us, before holding up his artwork, studying it intently. Over the end credits we see clips of the Martu community, young and old, including Nyarri, excitedly and playfully donning VR headsets to view the imagery recorded for the production. The interlinked themes of time and place are woven throughout the narrative of Collisions and are intrinsic to the production, from the fluid aerial drone video and lap-dissolve edits to the slow and contemplative pace. The languid style of Collisions invites contemplation and subtly eschews the didacticism of many other consciousness-raising or campaign-­ oriented VR projects. Morgan’s revelation is presented in a manner that sensitively and powerfully gives voice—and body—to a unique Indigenous perspective and encounter with the nuclear age. Rooted firmly in the immersive presence of Martu lands—Wallworth asserts the power of VR is that “you feel present, you feel there” (2016a)—Collisions is a “first contact” story that resonates through the temporal dimensions of millennia-­ old habitation, contemporary land rights and the future legacy of mining and exploitation. As such, it conforms to Wallis and Ross’ formulation (2020, p. 14) of a “Fourth VR” as “Indigenous Futurism”, where VR can foreground “native languages in virtual worlds; provide new articulations of Indigenous activism; embody connections between the past, present and future and demonstrate the interconnectivity of all living things”. Chernobyl (2016) I would even go as far as to argue that Chernobyl’s exploratory play conveys more historicity and specificity than conventional 360° attempts of ­immersing

150 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

viewers into the site of a disaster that capitalize on the dark tourism appeal of Chernobyl. This once again challenges the idea that empathy can be generated by simply placing users into short-term photorealistic simulations of actual locations and/or events, with no consideration of the complex psychological, phenomenological, contextual, and sociopolitical dimensions of empathy. (Hassapopoulou, 2018, p. 14)

Unlike the VR case studies above, Chernobyl provides an immersive and interactive experience of great depth in terms of both space and time. The VR production case studies discussed above conventionally run over 5–18 minutes. However, the mixed-media world of Chernobyl is far more elaborate and dense, as is the photorealism of the immersive simulations and Chernobyl’s use of historical 2D video and situated actuality of place. A viewer–participant can spend several hours exploring Chernobyl without necessarily repeating actions nor revisiting locations. Unlike the relatively blockish graphics in [08:46] and cartoon-like human forms in Kiya, the characters in Chernobyl are encountered in conventional “documentary-­ realist” mode (Nichols, 2014) albeit within 360-degree video segments. Hence, their commentary and testimony are embedded within actual locations, engendering a heightened verisimilitude from the surrounding space captured in VR. A trailer and behind the scenes documentary of Chernobyl was released in 2015 (The Farm 51, 2015), with the main feature coming a year later. The Farm 51, the Polish VR and game manufacturers behind the production, asserts that: Virtual Reality (VR) is not only about entertainment. We wanted to leverage computer game mechanics to create an interactive account of the tragic fate of the people and places affected by the Catastrophe of Time. Our application is a tribute to the victims of the disaster, a virtual document that gives the opportunity to visit a radiated area and get to know its history. (The Farm 51, 2016)

As with de la Peña’s stated aim with Kiya, both productions strive to deploy VR to “more than just entertainment” and to “be about” something else. The implication in all cases is that the VR experience will do something ‘different’ and ‘better’ than ‘just’ a conventional documentary. The emphasis here on the “catastrophe of time” is important, and perhaps the production’s success or failure can be measured against this concept. The phrase reflects the observations of 2015 Nobel Prize Winner for

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

151

Literature, Svetlana Alexievich (1997/2013), author of Chernobyl Prayer, who also appears in a brief interview for the VR production. Hence, the phenomenological experience of time—and place—within Chernobyl’s virtual domain is crucial. The Farm 51 website self-consciously foregrounds of the aesthetics of “beauty”, describing their approach for Chernobyl as: beautifully rendered 3D photogrammetrical scans of the locations and buildings, that are basically digital copies of these places, combined with spherical photography and 360 videos. (The Farm 51, 2016)

However, in contrast to beauty, the more apposite description is an experience of the “sublime”—specifically in the Burkean sense of the transcendent emotional response to place that engenders a simultaneous feeling of awe and terror (Burke, 1998), evoking the terror of the nuclear catastrophe and awe at the scale of the devastated terrain and structures via imagery of abandoned, derelict habitats and workplaces. It should also be noted that The Farm 51 have morphed their educative documentary experience to shamelessly resemble Stalker—both the Tarkovsky film from 1979 and the 2007 computer game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl— for their 2019 title Chernobylite: a science-fiction survival horror experience, mixing the free exploration of its disturbing world with challenging combat, unique crafting, and non-­linear storytelling. Try to survive and reveal the twisted secrets of Chernobyl in the 3D-scanned recreation of the real Exclusion Zone […] The melted core of the burning Reactor No. 4 mixed with the other chemical substances to create a highly radioactive material that hadn’t exist anywhere in the world besides Chernobyl. And we’re going to tell you the story of Chernobylite: conspiracy, horror, survival, love, and obsession in a form of a video game. (The Farm, 2019)

Against a black background, Chernobyl starts when a small 4:3 ratio screen emerges in the 360-degree display to show a faux–nostalgic Soviet propaganda-style promotional documentary (Fig.  5.13). Narrated in English, the video commentary is accompanied by an upbeat military marching tune—“Comrades! Working people! Chernobyl is your secure family’s future. Come and let us build a new, better tomorrow. Every pair of hands is needed. Atomic energy is our future”. A montage depicts the cityscape and environs, young families at play, constructions workers and

152 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

then engineers inside the reactor. At this point the soundtrack changes to claxons wailing and sirens blaring. An explosion is heard while the screen is over-exposed into white noise and rolls in high-gain static. It dissolves to display archival TV imagery of former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev announcing “We experienced a great misfortune—an accident in the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl”. One by one screens rapidly appear and multiply to form a matrix of nine showing multiple video grabs and overlapping reportage of the event before the mosaic simultaneous fades from static to black, simulating all screens being powered off. A single black and white aerial view of the abandoned city of Pripyat next appears in 2D.  Superimposed text is underscored with mournful music (low-pitched legato strings): When we talk about the past or the future we read our ideas about time into those words but Chernobyl is, above all A Catastrophe of Time. [Svetlana Alexievich]

It is important to recognise the non-diegetic soundtrack that runs across Chernobyl, particularly in opposition to its absence in [08:46] and

Fig. 5.13  The opening sequence of Chernobyl displays a matrix of faux–nostalgic Soviet propaganda-style promotional documentaries and archival television news

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

153

Kiya. What does this confected, post-produced sound mean in this context as a possible cue for emotion/empathy, something well documented in screen studies (Holmström, 2020; Richardson, 2013)? Does it enhance the immersive experience and sense of presence? The aerial view over the city instantly morphs into colour and full 360-degree VR. Even from this elevated and distant vantage, the buildings are clearly derelict and the town appears overgrown with trees and shrubs, the roads deserted and deteriorating. Another quick fade-to-black launches the main menu—a circle of icon/buttons floating above the 360-degree city panorama. These include the titles Gliwice, Flat, Hospital, Minsk, Power Plant, Village, Duga-2, Scrap Yard, School No. 3, Amusement Park, Kiev, Swimming Pool and Community Centre. Inside the “Village”, “Exclusion Zone Guide” Sergey Akulinin stands in a small field covered by a patchwork of unmelted snow. He describes how many residents of the exclusion zone outside of Pripyat returned not long after the evacuation to continue their traditional agrarian lifestyle. We are introduced to “Exclusion Zone Inhabitant” Ivan Ivanowicz standing next to his woodshed with chickens wandering the yard. The interview is presented in relatively low-resolution 2D 360-degree video. We are then relocated to inside a small, dimly lit rustic dwelling. Within the timber rooms, tiny illuminated flecks of dust or downy tufts hang in the air, then slowly descend. This seemingly incidental graphic element and game physics helps create an experiential impression of realism of space and time (Bender, 2014) since, in these ‘walk through’ environments, player– participants can move physically within the locations. The specks appearing in the near foreground help us in depth perception and distinguish space between objects, especially inanimate 3D structures. The player–viewer is able to move within the confines of their own ‘room-­scale’ play space by using their body; however, to move beyond this area in the virtual environment they can aim a blue circle locator with one of their hand controllers, and pull the trigger to ‘teleport’ to that part of the virtual space. As indicated in earlier chapters, this teleportation option is one of the standard forms of movement in VR. Yet, both Authors found this to substantially reduce the PI of Chernobyl, though only momentarily. The score deployed here is less dour and more akin to the high-pitched, repeated staccato strings of Bernard Hermann or John Cage, evoking estrangement and caution (Walus, 2012). As noted above, further research could shed light on if, and how, these strident, non-diegetic sounds relate to subjective empathy as opposed to conventional documentary scores.

154 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Amongst the spartan furnishings is a sleeping cat that tingles with a blue CGI glow reminiscent of Cherenkov radiation. One of the viewer’s interactive/directional controllers can transform into a “Terra-P Eco-Test” Geiger counter. When approaching the cat, for example, it emits an alarm to warn of dangerous radioactivity present, in this instance 4 millisieverts per hour (mSv/hr). In an adjacent room (Fig.  5.14), an old suitcase betrays the same tell-tale effect and triggers the Geiger’s alarm at nearly double the exposure rate (7.7mSv/hr). Throughout Chernobyl this haptic and immersive alert remains startling and unsettling despite it occurring at other locations and in different somatic and phenomenological contexts. Once again outside the modest habitat, Chernobyl guide Akulinin asks resident Ivan Ivanowicz about the quality of his life in the exclusion zone (Fig. 5.15). Despite Ivan’s response, the sequence had a jarring effect on both Authors 1 and 2, due to the friction of mixed-mediums within the VR display. Having left the interactive 3D interior space, this live-action video section presents a flattened domain where the interlocutors remain mostly immobile and static. As such, the presence of guide and interviewee in this return to 360-degree video sequence seems redundant and superfluous. The testimony would be better served by utilising voiceovers as we wander about inside the rudimentary dwelling in 3D 360 degrees rather than being presented in this largely diminished format. Indeed, on-location

Fig. 5.14  The Terra-P Eco-Test Geiger counter registers visually and aurally any dangerous radioactivity within the VR Chernobyl environments

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

155

Fig. 5.15  Conventional documentary interview–testimony with an Exclusion Zone resident, Ivan Ivanowicz, recorded in 2D 360-degree video

testimony in Chernobyl is often presented physically withdrawn or somewhat distant from the VR camera—that is, our point of view—presumably to show the embedded figures in a landscape. As such, these sequences generally lack intimacy and, arguably, lessen empathy with the characters, whereas those enabling testimony within a building’s interior and in near proximity to the camera, for example the locations in Minsk and Kiev, engender a phenomenological closeness to their subjects. One of the most iconic images from Chernobyl and Pripyat shows hurriedly abandoned schools, where textbooks and children’s belongings are strewn about and the floors covered with scores of discarded protective rubber and glass masks. It is an image of one such mask that introduces “Elementary School No. 3”. Inside the sequence, 3D photogrammetry renders a virtual classroom environment that feature Soviet-era educational posters such as one of Lenin. Rubble is scattered about the floor, peeling paint and the patina of mould and dirt cover the walls. The understated, dour musical score continues and the virtual Geiger counter clicks at levels not much above normal background radiation. Whether seated or standing, Chernobyl’s 3D photogrammetry and use of real-time game engine 3D rendering enables participant–players to crane their heads and necks or bend their body around doorways and into corridors and other rooms. The unexpected expansion of the spatial

156 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

domain in this manner greatly improves the immersive experience of embodiment, and is further enhanced by literally walking through VR environments, for example by using a room-scale headset like the HTC VIVE or Oculus Quest/Rift. Along one passageway, as in the village dwelling, dust particles hover about or gradually descend from the ceiling. Moving forward and looking up, the ambient sound of liquid dripping is revealed to be water droplets falling from a rusty pipe. Exiting to another bleak room, imagery of broken windows is accompanied by the howls of wind. Geiger counter clicks become more frequent on approach to pools of water ponding on the concrete floor. Inside this space the narrator perfunctorily describes aspects of Soviet cold war life, noting there were many community fallout shelters, and schools and kindergartens had warehouses filled with protective masks. Further into the space, a floating icon “Look” hovers, superimposed above an open trunk. The narrator encourages us to examine it, which disconcertingly triggers the radiation meter’s beeping alarm. It is these moments of interactivity that stand in stark contrast to the non-interactive 360-degree video of Collisions, or the inability to interact with the scenery or characters in either version of Kiya. That is, whereas the PSI of Kiya and Collisions is reduced because of the lack of interaction, it is substantially enhanced in Chernobyl. However, the floating icons indicating interactive elements reduce the PI in Chernobyl due to their ‘artificial’ nature. Thus, the elements of PSI and PI in different VR experiences should be explored by future research to examine the various types and impressions of immersion that can be created rather than just following the human–computer interaction (HCI) studies approach that merely attempts to rate how much PSI or PI a VR experience may have elicited. At the main menu, clicking on the icon “Gliwice” transports us to inside a large laboratory office in southern Poland filled with scientific equipment recorded in 2D 360-degree VR. Two key lights illuminate an elderly female professor in a white lab coat seated on a chair, looking off to the right, which makes the interlocutor’s off-centre angle of address oddly disconcerting since there is no one else visible in the room (Fig. 5.16). The figure is slightly over-exposed and moves little, appearing more like an avatar than a human being delivering testimony. The narrator interprets as she describes the unexpected detection of radiation in late April 1986, saying, “We were very worried, and even scared”. At first, the professor had assumed the radiation was accidentally released at her facility, but “from sources within

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

157

Fig. 5.16  An oddly positioned and lit scientist interviewed in 2D 360-degree VR

Europe and the Voice of America we heard about Chernobyl and then we stared to wonder”. In retrospect, this narrative prefigures the ‘composite’ fictional character of scientist Ulana Khomyuk played by Emily Watson in the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl (Bendix, 2019). Selecting “Power Plant”, the dull sound of a helicopter—as opposed to the actual drone video source—creates the impression from the video that we are flying over Pripyat towards the enormous sarcophagus that shrouds the damaged reactor. In the following 360-degree scene, our guide stands next to a Soviet constructivist statue in front of the power plant, briefly describing the history and building of the protective structure. This is followed by an abrupt cut to our view inside a CG environment of the control room. The space instantly looks game like and CG, unlike many of Chernobyl’s better rendered environments that are stitched together seamlessly from high-resolution photogrammetry. The control room of the RBMK reactor is a large room dominated by a curved wall featuring numerous electronic instrument display panels, all dully lit. A long desk runs parallel before it. Apart from a few indoor green plants, the space is eerily sterile, dingy and grey—simple 3D textures simulate bland wood panelling, doors, stone floors and ceiling. A pinboard near the main doors holds clipboards in Russian text. Before the central display, an illuminated, superimposed sound button links to narrated information about the

158 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 5.17  The empty and spartan Chernobyl reactor control room recreated with high-definition photogrammetry

“emergency shutdown” that instigated the accident. To play this audio requires moving into close proximity to the control desk which triggers the Geiger’s alarm. However, there is little else to interact with here and, devoid of chairs or any other sign of previous human habitation, the location evokes a mausoleum-like aura (Fig. 5.17). Thus, there is substantially reduced PSI and PI in this environment, which is odd considering the control room’s importance to understanding the events that unfolded in 1986. In terms of our VR phenomenological response, for these reasons, the control room experience was ultimately frustrating and a missed opportunity that failed to maintain the interest of either Author 1 or 2. As with the elementary school and the Pripyat locations, a visit to the “Hospital” enables a ‘walk’ through of 3D 360-degree captured photogrammetric environs. The hospital is composited brighter throughout, illuminated by pale, low-angle sunlight streaming in through windows and open doors. The rooms are mostly gutted, with ceramic tiles striped off the walls and floors, leaving the raw cement and brickwork exposed. Layers of paint peel from walls and ceilings while metal gurneys, bare tables, shelves and light fittings remain in-situ as ghostly clanks of glassware and instruments scraping surfaces reverberate, unseen in the background (Fig. 5.18). Throughout a visit to this location, the haunting soundscape subtly permeates the space.

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

159

Fig. 5.18  Although brightly lit, the hospital interior echoes with a haunting soundscape

Elsewhere, some of Chernobyl’s most impressive, large-scale photogrammetric locations include Pripyat’s indoor swimming pool, gym and community centre. Each of these cavernous spaces is starkly presented in 360-degree vistas. Taking the optical position atop the “Diving Platform” can be unnerving while looking about the surrounds from this simulated elevation, an effect not unlike the ‘fear of heights’ scenarios so favoured by VR enthusiasts to demonstrate the technology to first-time VR users discussed in Chap. 4. Similarly, the proximity to the enormous floor-to-roof windows, their massive panes of glass long shattered by the elements, has an overwhelming impact. Shredded insulation and wiring hangs from the skeletal, remnant ceiling (Fig.  5.19). Similarly, the gym is derelict and tagged with graffiti, the basketball court hoops still attached to the walls and the timber floor unvarnished with boards split and broken. Overlapping non-diegetic voices of children chatting and playing echo in the background as a ghostly soundtrack to accompany the narrator’s description. As Richard Bégin (2014, 386) has argued, “Digital technologies enable the creation of a symbolic reality of trauma, insofar as they are capable of introducing the sense of disaster experienced through the devastated scene into the realm of communication”. In Chernobyl, the textured digital layering of the soundscape may help evoke empathic, pre-traumatic association and/or the haunting of places unreconciled with the tragedy, the deaths,

160 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 5.19  The cavernous and derelict Pripyat swimming pool can induce acrophobia if the VR experience positions the player–viewer above the diving platform

contamination and lingering illness (Bain, 2015; Lauwrens, 2020). However, due to the unavailability of crowd-sourced comments—in contrast to [08:46] and Kiya—the VR phenomenological approach outlined in Chap. 3 suggests such claims are worthy of future investigation. Perhaps the most spectacular experience in Chernobyl is not the power plant, the reactor nor the evacuated and decaying city but the nearby “Moscow Eye” designated by the “Duga-2” icon/button on the VR production’s main menu. After a low-level drone/simulated helicopter approach to the control building presented in 360-degree video, the narrator announces that the Duga-2 used its radar, with a range of over 3000 kilometres, “to detect ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads” and strategic bombers travelling over the Soviet Union. In the following 360-degree shot, Chernobyl Guide Sergey stands before the enormous metal array that is Duga-2, “the largest over-the-horizon radar in the world” (Fig. 5.20). At this location a VR option is to ‘walk’ interactively at the ‘top’ of the facility. A slow vertical video (drone) ascent simulating a helicopter induced a palpable sense of upward lift for both Authors 1 and 2 since the immediate and close field of vision is several huge metal towers joined to form a single apparatus. Chernobyl’s narrator warns in halting, accented English, “in a minute you will be standing on the top of the antenna. You can have

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

161

a walk but be careful, rust construction may be dangerous”. A short fade-­ to-­black transports us to the top of the huge structure, suddenly appearing in 3D.  The view and CGI-photogrammetric rendering is spectacular (Fig. 5.21). A rapid monotone knocking on the soundtrack is explained as a continuous radar signal, called “the woodpecker”, rendered useless by the radiation emitted by the reactor disaster, disrupting the antenna’s function only a year after it commenced operation. Seemingly positioned at cloud-top level, walking along the elevated and narrow catwalks may instil vertigo since moving a few centimetres off the platform presents a drop of several hundred metres. The haptic affect, panoramic and psycho-­cognitive illusion of extreme height and precarity once again engenders the sublime via the potential to simultaneously evoke awe and terror. Irrespective of these VR features—embedded 2D flat-screen video, 3D 360-degree video, CGI and high-resolution photogrammetry—the testimony, vistas and reconstituted environments in Chernobyl are principally experienced as a serious, that is, educational game. Hence, its overall capacity to generate empathy, as opposed to the frisson of virtual immersion into a dark tourist “traumascape”, is debatable (Tumarkin, 1995). Arguably, the critically acclaimed 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl, discussed further below, generates a greater sense of empathy due to its long-form,

Fig. 5.20  The Exclusion Guide at ground level before the helicopter-style, vertical ascension to the top of the enormous Duga-2 over-the-horizon radar assembly

162 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Fig. 5.21  Near cloud-top, the elevated vista from the Duga-2 array, rendered in photo–realist 3D 360-degree video

conventional focus on character, rather than the VR convention of focusing on location. In spite of over 30 years of analysis and media representation of Chernobyl, there is comparatively little gameplay online showcasing Chernobyl as VR. Of those examples, viewer–player comments vary widely, though overall they average out across a range of platforms with ratings of 2.5 to 3 out of 5. Equally ambivalent are online industry reviewers of the production, such as those on Rock Paper Shotgun (O’Connor, 2016), Steam (2016), Oculus (2017) and AirEntertainment (Lupsha, 2018) that mostly concentrate on the mixed quality of Chernobyl’s UX, the technical glitches, hang-ups and other deficiencies, including uneven VR production effects across the various locations. Only one, mostly positive, comment overtly suggest the production’s capacity to generate empathy: If you take the time, really take the time, you just might be moved in a way you never thought possible […] The Farm 51 has done something special. They have set a new way to visit history. A way that works very well in VR and gives your emotional side a spiritual opening, if you just take the time to

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

163

open yourself up and allow that unfortunate time really shine in a way that we can all learn from it. (The PlayStation Brahs, 2017)

The sentiment seems to reflect both The Farm 51 and Chernobyl Prayer author Alexievich’s (1997/2013) observation about the “catastrophe of time” as intrinsic to the VR game’s experience. Yet, as The PlayStation Brahs comment suggests, this requires viewer–players to “really take time” to enable “emotional” and “spiritual” engagement. But is a VR experience of the Chernobyl story/ies any more empathetic than other mediated forms? The HBO television miniseries on the nuclear disaster has reanimated a greater global interest in the history of Chernobyl. Watched by millions around the world, in the USA it rated higher than the final season of HBO competitor Game of Thrones (Pattern, 2019). Critically, it received numerous industry nominations and awards such as Emmys and Golden Globes, and was at one time the highest rated miniseries on IMDB (the Internet Movie Database) with a score of 9.7/10 from nearly 150,000 online reviewers. Similarly, there are near-universal international accolades for Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s multi-award winning Chernobyl Prayer (1997/2013) include those from The New Yorker, The Time Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The New Statesman. Translated into several languages, this literary work of survivor testimony has found a large and diverse audience and received an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Amazon. Hence, whatever the value of Chernobyl as a VR experience, it is likely to remain a niche product reaching a limited audience while more established media consolidate their market and achieve arguably more critical impact.

Conclusion In each of the VR case studies presented here, various claims concerning the enhanced capacity for generating empathy have been shown as problematic. Several creative producers and proponents of this position uncritically espouse near-universal audience–participant empathic responses. However, such platitudes ignore the negative and critical evaluation of these same productions, including common feedback that suggests the medium’s capacity for ‘innovative’ storytelling was neither necessary nor relevant to the traumatic history being recalled and represented. Indeed, some online commentators have argued VR actually detracted from the narratives, noting that more conventional expressive forms such as documentary video and journalism elicit greater affect.

164 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

By undertaking a sustained VR phenomenology with a series of texts privileging traumatic subject matter, this chapter has raised at various points some options for future analysis, such as various producer claims of their impact or affect. Hence, VR phenomenology enables the potential for a subjective account of these effects that could be used to generate testable hypotheses for an experimental study of the impacts of any of these VR works. Finally, in writing this chapter, we became aware of the importance of foregrounding our auto-hermeneutic reflections on the difficulties of writing this way. It is tempting, if not automatic, to default to many of the common tropes and discursive assumptions of screen studies and close reading such as “the sequence is jarring because of the transition from one medium to another” or “despite the state of the dirt road, the journey is smooth, evoking a slight sensory impression of flying”. Both of these descriptions are contestable as shared or common phenomenological interpretations—what if others do not feel the transition jars or register a sense of flight? Both Authors are conscious that our individual, or shared, subjective experience may not be the same as that experienced by other VR players–viewers. Screen studies critics and scholars must therefore be vigilant against defaulting to a conventional critical standard since VR texts intrinsically offer multivalent opportunities for non-fixed engagement, potentially usurping universal claims of a preferred critical reading or understanding.

References Aitkin, M. (2018, February 16). Human assets: The promise and dread of digitising humans. Immerse. https://immerse.news/human-­assets-­624f3066c2ce Alexievich, S. (1997/2013). Chernobyl prayer (A.  Gunin & A.  Tait, Trans.). London: Penguin Random House. Andrews, L., Joseph, S., Troop, N., Van Rooyen, T., Dunn, B. D., & Dalgleish, T. (2013). The structure of avoidance following trauma: Development and validation of the posttraumatic avoidance scale (PAS). Traumatology, (19, 2), 126–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534765612455225 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). (2017, August 15). Meet the avatars [Televison series]. Catalyst. https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/meet-­the-­ avatars/11017094 Bain, C.  P. (2015). Evoking history through Sound: A soundscape concept for Ghosts of the Horseshoe, Honours thesis, University of South Carolina. https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1040& context=senior_theses

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

165

Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation: Body. In Glaster, S (Trans.), Theory: Histories of cultural materialism. : University of Michigan Press. Bégin, R. (2014). Digital traumascape. Space and Culture, 17(4), 379–387. Bender, S. M. (2014). Blood splats and bodily collapse: Reported realism and the perception of violence in combat films and videogames. Projections, 8(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2014.080202 Bendix, A. (2019, June 5). HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ series invented a main character to depict the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident. Business Insider Australia. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/hbo-­c hernobyl-­s eries-­i nvented-­ nuclear-­physicist-­character-­2019-­6?r=US&IR=T Best, M. (2001). Mapping the land: Spatial, social and sacred relationships of Australian Indigenous people to land, Honours thesis, Edith Cowan University. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar ticle=1874&context= theses_hons Bloom, P. (2017). Empathy, schmempathy: Response to Zaki. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(2), 60–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.12.003 Broderick, M. (2008). Waiting to exhale: Somatic responses to place and the genocidal sublime. IM: Interactive Media, 4. http://imjournal.murdoch.edu.au/ im-­issue-­4-­2008/ Broderick, M., Bender, S. M., & McHugh, T. (2018). Virtual trauma: Prospects for automediality. M/C Journal, 21(2) http://journal.media-­culture.org.au/ index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1390 Buckels, E. E., Trapnell, P. E., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Trolls just want to have fun. Personality and Individual Differences, 67, 97–102. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.01.016 Burke, E. (1998/1787). A philosophical enquiry into the sublime and beautiful. Penguin Books. Bye, K. (2017, March 3). #512: Experiential poems: Exploring emotions & embodied vulnerability in VR with Cabbibo [Voices of VR Podcast]. https:// www.roadtovr.com/experiential-­p oems-­e xploring-­e motions-­e mbodied-­ vulnerability-­vr-­cabbibo/ Crecente, B. (2016, November 4). Project Syria VR experience arrives on Steam to racist, vitriolic reviews. Polygon. https://www.polygon. com/2016/11/4/13507754/project-­syria-­steam Daniel, A. (2018). Inhabiting the image of Collisions: Virtual reality cinema as a medium of ethical experience. Fusion journal, 4, 6–15. de la Peña, N. (2016). Where virtual reality takes us: Kiya. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/sundance-­new-­frontiers-­ virtual-­reality.html Dennis, D. (2016, January 21). Where virtual reality takes us: American Bison. New  York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/opinion/sundancenew-­frontiers-­virtual-­reality.html

166 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

DePrince, A. P., Brown, L. S., Cheit, R. E., Freyd, J. J., Gold, S. N., Pezdek, K., & Quina, K. (2012). Motivated forgetting and misremembering: Perspectives from betrayal trauma theory. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 58, 193–242. Doumanis, I., & Economou, D. (2019). Using cognitive walkthrough and hybrid prototyping to gather user requirements in early design virtual reality prototypes. Immersive Learning Research Network, 234–246. Emblematic Group. (2015). Kiya. https://emblematicgroup.com/experiences/kiya/ Emblematic Group. (2016, February 10). Kiya [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYsAIukRqog Emblematic Group. (n.d.). Reach beyond. https://emblematicgroup.com/# Frank, P. (2016, April 3). Can virtual reality make us better people? The godmother of VR has big plans to change the world. Huffington Post. https:// www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/can-­virtual-­reality-­make-­us-­better-­people_ n_56d617e0e4b0871f60ed1e65 Friedman, D., Donenfeld, A., Zafran, E., & Goldsmiths. (2009). Neurophysiology-­ based art in immersive virtual reality. International Journal of Arts and Technology, 2, 331–347. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJART.2009.029239 Goode, L. (2017, Novenber 7). Are holograms the future of how we capture memories? The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16613234/ next-­level-­ar-­vr-­memories-­holograms-­8i-­actress-­shoah-­foundation Grabowski, M. (2017). Perception and poetics of VR documentaries: Being there. https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/files/2017/11/referat_grabowski.pdf Gregg, M., & Seigworth, G. J. (2010). The affect theory reader. Duke University Press Books. Hassapopoulou, M. (2018). Playing with history: Collective memory, national trauma, and dark tourism in virtual reality docugames. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2018.1519207 History.com. (2013). World Trade Center is bombed. https://www.history.com/ this-­day-­in-­history/world-­trade-­center-­bombed Holmström, J. (2020, August 19). How sound design triggers emotion [VisionLabs Tech Blog]. https://medium.com/vionlabs-­tech-­blog/how-­sound-­design-­ triggers-­emotion-­bf052d3da2a9 Kaplan, E. A. (2005). Trauma culture: The politics of terror and loss in media and literature. Rutgers University Press. Lange, P. G. (2014). Commenting on YouTube rants: Perceptions of inappropriateness or civic engagement? Journal of Pragmatics, 73, 53–65. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.07.004 Lauwrens, J. (2020). Hearing the pain of others: Engineering affect and empathy through the soundscapes of This Song is For… (2019) and Love Story (2017). Image & Text, 13. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext &pid=S1021-­14972020000100009

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

167

Lupsha, J. (2018, January 15). App review: Chernobyl: VR project For PSVR. AirEntertainment. https://airentertainment.biz/app-­review-­chernobylvr-­project-­for-­psvr/ Milk, C. (Producer). (2015, March 16). TED: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine [Online video]. https://www.ted.com/talks/ chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine Mr.ProBoss. (2016, October 15). Terrorist attack simulator 9/11  – 8:46 Oculus Rift game [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqAHa7dr5k Nichols, B. (2014). Introduction to documentary. Indiana University Press. O’Connor, A. (2016, September 26). Chernobyl VR project now on vive too, updates videos. Rock Paper Shotgun. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/ chernobyl-­vr-­project-­vive-­release Oculus. (2017, September 29). Chernobyl VR project: A future that was lost. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1028758880514808/? locale=en_US Oppy, G., & Dowe, D. (2019). The Turing Test. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2019 ed.). https://plato.stanford. edu/archives/spr2019/entries/turing-­test/ Pattern, D. (2019, June 12). ‘Chernobyl’ explodes ‘Game of Thrones’ digital record for HBO. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2019/06/chernobyl-­ record-­b reaking-­d igital-­v iewership-­g ame-­o f-­t hrones-­t rue-­d etective-­c raig-­ mezin-­hbo-­emmys-­1202631705/ Plantinga, C. (2009). Emotion and affect. In P. Livingstone & C. Plantinga (Eds.), The Routledge companion to philosophy and film (pp. 86–96). Routledge. Pretty Neat VR. (2015, September 14). 8:46 – 9/11 Google Cardboard – SBS 3D – Terrorist Attack Simulator – Controversial VR Experience [Video file]. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuwHFGPHSIk Raikes, H. (2012). An introduction to neopoetics. Technoetic Arts, 9(2–3), 285–292. Reality Check VR. (2015, September 15). 8:46 EMOTIONAL educational virtual reality experience 9/11/2001 [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Wt75Chh0y7Q Richardson, A. (2013). Hearing the film: The emotional effect of sound in film (Senior Honors thesis). Brockport College, CUNY. http://digitalcommons. brockport.edu/honors/75 Rieman, J., Franzke, M., & Redmiles, D. (1995). Usability evaluation with the cognitive walkthrough. Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 387–388. Riva, G., Wiederhold, B.  K., & Mantovani, F. (2019). Neuroscience of virtual reality: From virtual exposure to embodied medicine. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 22(1), 82–96. https://doi.org/10.1089/ cyber.2017.29099.gri

168 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Robertson, A. (2015a, January 24). The virtual reality of Sundance, Day 2: Hate is the purest emotion – When the empathy machine works too well. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/24/10820778/sundance-­2 016­virtual-­reality-­immersive-­journalism-­experiences Robertson, A. (2015b, October 30). The virtual reality 9/11 experience is bad, but not for the reasons you’d expect: Why do we love ‘empathy games’ and hate [08:46]? The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/30/9642790/ virtual-­reality-­9-­11-­experience-­empathy Robertson, A. (2017, March 3). VR was sold as an ‘empathy machine’  – but some artists are getting sick of it. The Verge. https://www. theverge.com/2017/5/3/15524404/tribeca-­film-­festival-­2017-­vr-­empathy-­ machine-­backlash Sanchez, A., Barreiro, J. M., & Maojo, V. (2000). Design of virtual reality systems for education: A cognitive approach. Education and Information Technologies, 5(4), 345–362. Siersdorfer, S., Chelaru, S., Nejdl, W., & San Pedro, J. (2010). How useful are your comments? Analyzing and predicting YouTube comments and comment ratings. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW ‘10). ACM, New  York, NY, USA, 891–900. https://doi. org/10.1145/1772690.1772781 Steam. (2016, September 26). Chernobyl VR project. https://store.steampowered.com/app/504010/Chernobyl_VR_Project/ Taylor, C. S. (2017). Telephone interview, 3 March 2021. The Farm 51. (2015, December 3). Chernobyl VR Project – trailer [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reIzoNE9WcE The Farm 51. (2019). Chernobylite. Retrieved from https://www.thefarm51.com/eng/ The Farm 51. (2016, July 1). Chernobyl VR project: More than just entertainment. The Farm. https://www.thefarm51.com/eng/projekt/chernobyl-­vr­project-­2/ The Gamer. (2015, September 13). 9/11 virtual reality experience [Unreal Engine 4] demo + download [Video file]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpj­JfDU-­4M The PlayStation Brahs. (2017, October 17). Chernobyl VR project. The Review. https://theplaystationbrahs.com/2017/10/17/chernobyl-­v r-­p roject­the-­review/ Tortum, D. (2015, January 31). How virtual reality technology is changing documentary filmmaking. IndiWire. http://www.indiewire.com/2015/01/ how-­v irtual-­r eality-­t echnology-­i s-­c hanging-­d ocumentar y-­f ilmmaking248298/

5  VIRTUAL REALITY, TRAUMA AND EMPATHY 

169

Tortum, D. (2016). How virtual reality technology is changing documentary filmmaking (MSc thesis). https://cmsw.mit.edu/wp/wp-­content/uploads/ 2016/10/326754928-­Deniz-­Tortum-­Embodied-­Montage-­Reconsidering-­Im mediacy-­in-­Virtual-­Reality.pdf Tumarkin, M. (1995). Traumascapes: The power and fate of places yransformed by tragedy. Melbourne University Press. Turndrup, M. (2015, August 12). Kiya is an intense VR recreation of a domestic murder-suicide. UploadVR. https://uploadvr.com/kiya-­is-­an-­intense-­vr-­ recreation-­of-­a-­domestic-­murder-­suicide/ USC Shoah Foundation. (2018). Dimensions in testimony: Technology in the service of humanity. https://sfi.usc.edu/dit USC Shoah Foundation. (2021). What we do. https://sfi.usc.edu/what-­we-­do Wallis, K., & Ross, M. (2020). Fourth VR: Indigenous virtual reality practice. Convergence, 30 July. Wallworth, L. (2016a, August 8). Discussion: ‘Collisions’ tell tales with VR. CGTN. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1C5lxD3P7k Wallworth, L. (2016b). Inception. Collisions. Australian Centre for the Moving Image. https://guides.acmi.net.au/collisions/ Walus, B. P. (2012). A new modular approach to the composition of film music. PhD dissertation, University of Adelaide. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu. au/dspace/bitstream/2440/84425/8/02wholev1.pdf Werner, J., & Lyons, S. (2020, March 5). The size of Australia’s bushfire crisis captured in five big numbers. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/ science/2020-­03-­05/bushfire-­crisis-­five-­big-­numbers/12007716 Ziv, S. (2017, April 19). How technology is keeping holocaust survivor stories alive forever. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/2017/10/27/how-­ technology-­keepingholocaust-­survivor-­stories-­alive-­forever-­687946.html

CHAPTER 6

Regulation of Violent Content in Virtual Reality

Introduction One of the highly contentious aspects of the current debate around virtual reality (VR) is the emergence of industry commentators and academics calling for increased regulation of content amid suggestions that violent content in the medium can lead to negative personal or social effects (see Krohner, 2016; Meyer, 2016). For example, consider the following comments, first from a technology and entertainment journalist writing at the website AR/VR Journey who speculates: How realistic does VR need to become, for example, before it’s inappropriate for a 13 year old to play an Iraq war simulator? Most of us recognize it’s not a big deal for them to manipulate a character on a screen. They can look away. Isn’t it something different to put a child into that situation as if it’s really happening to them? Don’t soldiers come back from the front traumatized not only by what happened to themselves, but what they saw happen to others? Could we not reasonably anticipate a milder form of PTSD afflicting children who play highly realistic VR war games? (Beyman, 2019)

Here, the author’s conjecture is based on the assumption that a person ‘playing’ something violent in VR is the same “as if it’s really happening”, something which is supposed to be automatically different to when the same person plays a desktop videogame on a flat screen. There is also the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_6

171

172 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

suggestion that seeing something happen in a VR headset could lead to the extreme situation of generating a psychological disorder. This is all in addition to the traditional assumption that these concerns are intended to ensure the protection of children. Now consider the following commentary by VR researcher and staunch advocate of the benefits of the medium, Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford University in the US, whose think-piece article is titled “If a possible mass shooter wants to hone his craft, don’t hand him a virtual boot camp” (2018a). After invoking Norwegian mass shooter Anders Breivik’s self-­ proclaimed use of the flat-screen videogame Call of Duty to train his aiming, Bailenson’s CNN.com piece states: My argument here is not that virtual reality games are going to cause people to become violent […] But if a possible mass-shooter wants to hone his craft, we shouldn’t hand him an over-the-counter digital boot camp. (Bailenson, 2018a)

Bailenson’s commentary is addressed in detail later, but the key point here is that he offers no compelling nor reasonable evidence for the claim that carrying out violent behaviour in VR will have great impact on the player. The comment that Breivik used a holographic sight in Call of Duty to practise shooting intuitively makes no sense; controlling a gun on a flat-­ screen display with a computer mouse or console controller in no way replicates any of the experience of holding and aiming a physical weapon. Breivik has reportedly clarified his claims, suggesting that his practising with the holographic sight was more about thinking through training manoeuvres than muscle-memory or actual gun-handling skills (Crecente, 2012). Indeed, this concept is central to much of Bailenson’s own arguments elsewhere about the benefits of VR compared to desktop use—that the embodied nature of using one’s hands to interact with the world is more realistic and immersive (Bailenson, 2018b). Certainly, Bailenson’s research at Stanford is groundbreaking in examining ways to produce short-term empathy in lab participants using VR (Bailenson, 2018b; Oh et al., 2016), but those findings can in no way be extrapolated to the dramatic claims he has presented about school shootings and VR training. Given his central importance to VR research, Bailenson’s claims are irresponsible in the way they draw links between desktop game research, mass shooters, and what may or may not happen when someone plays a VR shooter game (see Wilson & McGill, 2018).

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

173

Nonetheless, the key element to both of these comments above is not so much the hyperbole implied by both writers. Rather, the central issue is that there is essentially no research to justify either claim. This issue pervades almost all contemporary research and journalistic response to the familiar debate of violence and media, this time updated for the medium of VR. Consider, for example, the audience response during a 2015 consumer safety presentation in San Francisco designed to provide the tech industry with insights into the potential legal ramifications of VR. Reportedly, some audience members noted that “the whole premise of VR is that it is different from traditional video games, so would they get different regulations?” (Johnson, 2015). As this chapter shows, in the six years since then, the argument has not become much deeper and the research has not become much clearer. In the past, calls for regulation and censorship would usually be expected only from lobby groups with a particular religious or political agenda, yet these questions about the negative impact of VR content are gaining a surprising degree of attention from industry websites and academics. For example, amid the sudden interest in VR during 2016, one industry commentator wrote: Immersion is key to the VR experience […] This is important to keep in mind, because at the end of the day the actual content of VR video game is likely to be similar to that of regular video games. There will still be zombies to kill and worlds to conquer. The question is whether or not this immersion in combination with violent or sexual content could lead to an incitement to violence. (Connected Consumer, 2016)

This discourse is reflected in comments by academia. Professor Todd Richmond at the University of Southern California (USC) mixed reality (MR) lab insists that, although concerns around VR violence seem like old-fashioned claims by “people who used to argue that comics might rot your brain […], I will also argue that this medium is fundamentally different than those others because of this embodiment that happens in VR that doesn’t happen in TV, movies, comics, books or games” (as cited in Crecente, 2017). Certainly, it seems that the VR industry is keen to involve experts on these matters. For example, a legal perspective was recently offered in one VR trade magazine, with the guest author suggesting that classification agencies might want to consider applying different standards to the new immersive media than they do to traditional fixed-frame screen

174 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

content, claiming that “For anyone who’s had bullets whizzing past their head on the Oculus Rift platform […] there’s no doubt the all consuming immersive sensory distorting VR is a very different mental and physical experience from the traditional game format” (Ward, 2016). We contend that at this stage most comments about the impact of VR violence on users are based on dubious extrapolation of prior research on non-VR violent content. This tendency leads to problematic statements like the following, “To the extent that violent video games increase hostile tendencies and arousal, we should expect even stronger effects from VR” (Aubrey et al., 2018, p. 17). Despite these strong claims, it is remarkable that the scholarship on immersive media provides little, if any, understanding of these issues and therefore all debate is really a matter of conjecture and inherited theory from the still unresolved controversies over “videogame violence effects” (Ferguson & Konijn, 2015). Nonetheless, there appear to be two strands to this issue: the legacy of classical media-effects paradigm concerns about the potential influence on consumer aggression and attitudes towards violent media; and a concern about the emotional safety of users, which is a smaller part of the traditional media-effects paradigm but has recently become fashionable in other areas of media and communications scholarship around the concepts of “distant trauma” and “vicarious trauma” (see Kaplan, 2005; Pinchevski, 2019; Rothe, 2011; Sullender, 2010). Indeed, one of the intriguing paradoxes here is how these ideas come into friction with the seemingly frequent emphasis on VR as an educative medium for trauma as identified in Chaps. 5 and 6. If, as Chris Milk (2015) insists, VR is “the ultimate empathy machine” and most of the associated empathy machine VR documentary experiences are focused on traumatic situations and suffering, then does it follow that such experiences should come with content warnings? This chapter will adopt a VR phenomenology to the analysis of these popular claims about violence in VR. First, the chapter outlines the relevant background of media-effects research in violent media—television and videogame violence—to provide a firm basis from which to explore the current misconceptions and inadequate theorisation about the subject in regard to VR.  Second, we overview the current research and policy discussions that do exist in relation to violence, traumatic content and VR. Third, we use VR phenomenology to engage directly with Bailenson’s claims about providing a “virtual boot camp” for a “possible mass shooter”. It is intended that this chapter will work against the background of the previous chapters in its attention to specific case studies of violent and

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

175

traumatic material in VR. In doing so, the chapter aims to help focus the current research agenda for both humanities and social science scholarship in this domain.

Media-Effects Research Classic media-effects psychology studies focused on stimulating aggressive behaviour in laboratory settings using various violent television and experimental films. In some cases these were, on their own terms, successful at producing aggressive results with statistical significance (Bandura et  al., 1963; Berkowitz & Rawlings, 1963; Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior, 1972). Nonetheless, the practical significance of these highly artificial studies has been questioned by subsequent scholarship in both the humanities (Gauntlett, 2005; Kontour, 2009) and from within psychology itself (Ferguson, 2015). Throughout the 1980s, more nuanced media psychology scholarship attempted to develop sophisticated models that factored in variables such as family history and personality traits and which, by examining larger population sizes, occasionally found results that indicated a positive relationship between violent media viewing and aggression (Freedman, 1986; Lynn et  al., 1989; Mueller et  al., 1983). More recently, longitudinal research has been unable to find any correlation or other relationship between violent media consumption and aggressive behaviour (Coyne et al., 2018; Kuhn et al., 2018). The legacy of this research is that, within the field of media psychology, there is an unresolved set of attitudes around whether or not violent material has positive, negative or neutral impact on audiences. Those on the cautionary side continue to publish, usually assembled around the work of Anderson et  al., (2010) and Bushman (2018) and often via meta-studies of the familiar research. On the contrary, those who dismiss such work as a simplistic “moral panic” (Ferguson, 2018) also continue to publish meta-studies to emphasise the limitations of prior work. Thus, there is yet to be a consensus on the effect and user responses towards violent media of any type, and certainly none dealing with immersive content. On the other hand, there is a substantial body of humanities media scholarship that has dealt with media effects with the intention of debunking the artificial and non-generalisable nature of the psychology studies (Eitzen, 2013, 2014; Slocum, 2005). Within communication studies more generally, in the 1970s through to the early 1990s, the field did

176 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

attend to the effects of violence on viewers within a broader approach of topics in audience studies (Gray, 1992; Lewis, 1991; Lull, 1990; Silverstone, 1994). The primary outcome of this work was an ultimate dismissal of the earlier behaviourist psychological studies that had attempted to prove a transmission model of messages, including violence, and behaviour, including aggression. With respect to violence, these types of audience studies have more or less fallen out of popularity in recent scholarship, with contemporary cinema and media studies taking a cultural approach to media violence, with discussions now speculating on questions of realism (Heller-Nicholas, 2014), gender and genre (Clover, 1992) or Freudian explanations of the social fascination with violence (Charney, 2001; Kramer, 2001), or as an expression of varying cultural anxieties (Schneider, 2004; Sharrett, 1999). Humanities scholarship in the area of media effects has by and large abandoned the project of developing empirical understandings of audience responses to violent material. The history of media psychology and mass media analysis shows that the former has perhaps taken the topic too seriously while the latter has not taken it seriously enough, just at the point where technological research methodologies have begun to become more accessible, and meaningful. Where empirical audience research does occur in the context of media studies, it tends to be with the aim of exploring the meanings made by audiences as they interact with a given medium—for example Facebook—and, while useful in that context, it is quite deliberately unlike the stimulus response of scientific research (Schrøder, 2018) nor the analysis of effect and affect proposed in this present book. The need to move beyond, or at least side step, the issue of games causing violence has been acknowledged in a number of highly valuable research works, particularly in the journal Games and Culture where many articles have conducted astute analysis of the politics and ethics of violent non-VR games in terms of industry and gameplay mechanics (Maloney, 2016; Phillips, 2015; Sparrow et al., 2018). Nonetheless, these kinds of analyses typically do not conduct empirical research on the players’ experiences of audio-visual devices in the games. It is this focus on the player experience that is central to the novelty of a VR phenomenology.

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

177

Assumptions of Impact: A Lack of Research At present, there has been limited attention to VR by government rating boards internationally. In their laboratory study of participants playing a VR versus a desktop version of a horror game, Wilson and McGill (2018) note that rating boards “do not currently consider content experienced in VR as being differently affecting than the same content viewed on flat screens, as the same rating and content descriptors are given to versions of a game with and without VR modes” (2018, p. 535). An analysis of the Australian Classification Board documents and ratings reviews, for example, show that this is true of how VR games and experiences are classified in that country. The VR zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine, in which users experience extremes of fear—accompanied by joy—as they evade and shoot endless waves of attacking zombies (Bender & Sung, 2021) is rated R18+ on the basis of “High impact violence, online interactivity”. The military-simulator (mil-sim) game Onward, discussed at length in Chap. 2, is rated MA15+ on the basis of “Strong violence, online interactivity”. While both VR games clearly involve strong/high-impact violence—for example the user can aim weapons, can shoot at close range, and in Arizona Sunshine zombies’ heads explode—the rating system does not really differentiate between these game experiences and the desktop/console flat-screen game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare which is rated MA15+ for “Strong bloody violence and war themes, online interactivity”. If the comments from Bailenson and others above are right, the “strong violence” in Onward should be considered more impactful than even the “strong bloody violence” of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Or perhaps not; arguably the classification agency would be wise to wait until more research is conducted on the impact of VR before modifying their approach. Indeed, one aspect of potentially harmful VR use that is outside the scope of the present analysis is captured by the term “online interactivity” which, among other things, is concerned with the possibility of sexual harassment in multiplayer contexts in VR. The embodied nature of avatars and bodily physicality represented in the virtual reality (VR) environment creates a range of opportunities for various types of harassment (Cross, 2016; O’Brien, 2016; Wong, 2016). This also remains an over-theorised but under-researched field. Wilson and McGill (2018) argue that Sony’s decision to include the simple consumer advice “PlayStation VR creates a sense of presence and immersion” is inadequate because “presence” is a technical term and

178 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

“immersion” is so generic that together neither term captures the impression “realism” generated by a VR game (2018, p. 538). The researchers also note that, by and large, ratings boards do not consider the embodiment of the player, but rather what violence is “seen” by the player (2018, p. 543). However, there are some examples of international ratings bodies beginning to question whether their existing systems are adequate for VR. Consider the New Zealand Classification Office’s approach, which is very clear on how impact might be affected by VR: Another thing to consider is the impact of the medium—in other words, is the format of the game likely to have an impact on its audience? Will this lead to a different classification? This isn’t usually a difficult consideration for us, as formats generally stay pretty much the same over time while underlying technology improves. Games for example have always been played on screens with some kind of controller, over time graphics have markedly improved and different control mechanisms have been designed, including, notably, the analog stick for 3D games and Wii’s motion controller. While these changes were significant, the experience of playing games is still fundamentally similar—VR arguably changes all this, creating an experience that is strikingly different to what has gone before. (Classification Office, 2016)

It is important to note that, as of yet, New Zealand has not incorporated these ideas into their classification system, and that the above comment is written by an officer after having their first interaction with a VR game. This is similar to some European games classification observers that show there is an appetite to consider how VR will require an overhaul of rating systems (Hilgert & Sümmermann, n.d.). Some industry members such as PlayStation’s technical chief of VR development suggest that: The power of the medium is so much so that, in the future, the industry will probably come up with slightly different ratings so that we can communicate to consumers what kind of contents are inside. (Shuhei Yoshida, as cited in Hill, 2015)

Yoshida goes so far as to speculate “But it’s a challenge for the future, as the media is so powerful, something could potentially cause trauma to people when they try that, because they’ve played something really awful” (Shuhei Yoshida, as cited in Hill, 2015). Common to all of these governmental attitudes is the uncritical expectation we have identified repeatedly

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

179

between evangelists and sceptics alike—that VR will almost certainly be like nothing experienced before and that it will have great impact. At this stage it appears that many people—academics, industry players, games designers, journalists—are beginning to gesture at the relevant aspects of the problem around VR and violence and impact. Yet, there is no common language nor widely accepted approach to attempting to understand the problem. Indeed, a repeated refrain in current understandings of VR violence is that they are marked by repeated calls for research to fully understand the medium (Crecente, 2017; Ward, 2016). Nonetheless, rather than any sort of agnostic curiosity about the outcomes, there is already emerging the clear expectation that future research will inevitably prove that VR has greater impact and will therefore need to be more controlled than traditional media. This is demonstrated below via a number of recent comments by researchers and media journalists alike. First, consider Todd Richmond’s assumption regarding traditional videogames in comparison with VR: No matter how much a developer may strive to have a player embody a character, there is always that border around the screen that serves as a sort of cognitive separator. Not so with VR. (Richmond, as cited in Crecente, 2017)

As we have seen throughout the case studies in previous chapters, this is a repeated claim about the embodiment potential of VR. Richmond’s position is actually quite nuanced and, unlike many comparisons, provides a very clear way of distinguishing why VR might have a different impact than traditional videogames. But consider now a second example of academic speculation. In one of their “recommendations for the use of VR by the general public” a group of researchers suggest—despite having provided circumstantial data rather than any form of empirically valid research—that: As compared to the viewing of traditional movies containing graphic violence or pornography, the impact of full immersion settings and the associated risk of users suffering psychological trauma will steadily increase as VR technology advances. Users have to be made aware of this possibility. (Madary & Metzinger, 2016, p. 19)

180 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

And third, writing in the popular online magazine Medium, Krohner (2016) draws upon a further assumption of vicarious trauma: When we think about how our brains and bodies respond to many VR experiences as lived and not imagined, we can assume that effects can be long lasting. If we are to experience war, rioting, abuse, or even how it feels to ‘be’ in a different body, should we have established ways to deal with the emotional and psychological effects? With regular consumption, I think our responses to VR/MR will desensitize to a degree. However, it’s still unknown how much of an imprint each experience will have on the human psyche. (Krohner, 2016)

While it may be the case that users should be made aware of possible emotional effects of viewing something in VR, this is not necessarily because the “full immersion” has been demonstrated to create traumatisation in the audience. Indeed, as Stephen Prince (2009) has noted in regard to the larger context of vicarious trauma from traditional cinema, having an “intense fear” or “helplessness” of attending the movies out of fear of being attacked is “not the ordinary profile of emotional response that cinema elicits in its audience” (2009, p.  4). There is therefore equally no reason at this stage to presume that VR will automatically have such an impact. Indeed, one of the ways in which highly violent material is used in trauma psychology studies is as a way of modelling the development of trauma. In studies that follow what is known as the trauma film paradigm (Horowitz, 1975; Weidmann et al., 2009), participants who do not currently exhibit any post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms are shown a movie clip such as the violent sexual assault sequence in Irrèversible (Dir., Gasper Noè, 2002). PTSD is what is known as a disorder of recovery (Foa, 1997; Shalev, 2007), and studies using the trauma film paradigm intend to use the shocking stimulus video to track the normal symptoms that occur after exposure or experience to such events (Horowitz, 1975; Lazarus, n.d.). These include nightmares that recall the traumatic event, and persistent anxiety. However, when people recover from these symptoms, they do not develop PTSD. The trauma film paradigm has begun to be adapted to VR, finding that a particular horror-themed sequence, experienced in a VR headset, created the same level of stress from which trauma symptoms can be modelled as using the Irrèversible clip (Cuperus et al., 2017). It should be emphasised that studies using the trauma film

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

181

paradigm must pass stringent high-risk ethics assessments and be conducted by appropriate psychological researchers. Although the VR zombie studies reported in Chap. 3 do not operate from the trauma film paradigm nor follow the same protocol, two of the studies did ask for follow-up reports of nightmares, which would be indicators of severe distress after exposure to the violence in VR.  However, neither study had significant numbers of participants report disturbance to their sleep, nor mental “intrusions” during the day or night as a result of the VR zombie experience, with “fewer than 5% of the participants experienced negative reactions, such as being too scared to sleep, constantly hearing zombie voices, or being afraid to walk alone at night” (Lin, 2017, p. 357). While these are far too few studies from which to generalise an overall picture of the impact of VR, it does at least indicate that some tempering of the hysterical discourse around VR’s impact is in order. But, rather than potentially traumatise users, we are at the same time also warned that VR might have the potential to desensitise users: This could be through violent games, or through exercises for military personnel in which soldiers train in simulated combat scenarios […] It could mean that a person is no longer as affected by extreme acts of behaviour, like violence. They may fail to show appropriate empathy or compassion. (Meyer, 2016)

These claims are unsubstantiated, but also seem unlikely in normal usage of VR. As discussed in Chap. 4’s analysis of VR exposure therapy (VRET) for military PTSD, there is a highly involved process required to use VRET for habituation and exposure therapy. Thus, to desensitise someone requires a VR environment which is highly tailored and unique to the particular fear structure—and memory—to which the subject will be desensitised. It also requires a trained clinician to prompt the user and run the sessions; between eight and fourteen of these dedicated sessions, following a particular treatment protocol, are necessary to have positive effects. It is precisely this conundrum that is explored and problematised in the VR artwork Real Violence (Jordan Wolfson, 2017). In watching Real Violence, audience members witness a 360-degree video in which the artist appears to attack a man on the street with a baseball bat. As Michelle Kuo, writing in Artforum suggests, “The result is not interactivity but isolation: For all the realism of the VR, viewers cannot intervene” (Kuo, 2017). By

182 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

design, it is impossible to find anything online that demonstrates or shows a sample of what viewers experience in the headset. Like Carne y Arena (Dir., Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2017), unless you are able to experience the VR art exhibit in a gallery setting, the best that can be expected is to rely upon subjective accounts and marketing copy. While it is impossible to find material that shows what is “in” the video, it is relatively easy to find pictures and videos of audience members experiencing Real Violence (Fig. 6.1). The reactions are interesting because of their ambiguity. As we watch in real time, many audience members seem to simply stare; despite having a 360-degree view, they just look at the fight. Very few people seem to look elsewhere, which would be an avoidant strategy to limit one’s exposure to the violent attack they are ‘witnessing’ in the VR headset. But people’s faces also rarely show emotion. Of course, potentially the video is having a dumbfounding—rather than numbing—effect on audiences. Some

Fig. 6.1  Audience members experiencing Real Violence at Whitney Museum of American Art. (Leah, 2017)

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

183

audience members show a nervous smile on their faces. Quotations of audience members after viewing the exhibit speak to its impressive and expressive power but also to its potential for ultimately banal responses. For example, in reporting on a gallery visit, Schwartz (2017) notes that one viewer shakes their head as they walk away from the exhibit, while two 18-year-old viewers burst into laughter, and a 60-year-old woman just “want[ed] to know what the point of the installation was supposed to be. Was the violence real, as advertised?”. Ultimately, it remains unclear whether participants are shocked by the violence, or by the novel display of the violence, or, as discussed in earlier chapters, simply by the novelty of wearing a headset and seeing something they would not expect. Yet, since we cannot see the exhibit without attending whichever gallery is hosting it, the legacy of the artwork remains in print, where we are warned of the disturbing and confronting content and, by implication, the great potential for VR to impact audiences (Bollmer & Guinness, 2020; Freeman, n.d.; Kaplan, 2017).

Virtual Bootcamps or Premature Hype? Given that, in many ways, much of this popular and academic speculation is adjacent to the same concerns that Bailenson presented in his 2018 think-piece, we now turn to a more detailed engagement with that position. In some ways, his claims are not as dramatic as they initially seem. Nonetheless, there is some hyperbole to them, and this leads to potential misunderstandings and misappropriation of his subtle argument. First, Bailenson places his commentary in context: Video games have one mandate: to be fun. But the companies that create and market them must also be socially and morally aware. They must consider the kinds of experiences they are developing, especially in first-person shooter games. (Bailenson, 2018a)

Then, after uncritically recalling Anders Breivik’s claim that he used 2D flat-screen games to practise shooting people prior to his mass shooter spree, Bailenson smoothly transitions to the embodied and haptic nature of a VR game. By contrast to the “two-dimensional game” that Breivik used to train, a VR user can “look all around the scene” and experience “simulate[d] touch” via the handheld controllers and “most importantly, players use their arms and body to engage in actual combat movies, instead

184 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

of just hitting buttons” (Bailenson, 2018a). He then claims that this “repeated movement […] causes changes in brain structure” and “improves performance in the real world” which prompts the statement, no doubt twisting Chris Milk’s (2015) empathy machine idea for dramatic effect, that “In other words, virtual reality is the ultimate training machine” (Bailenson, 2018a). Thus, Bailenson’s argument appears not to be that VR games might be desensitising, nor that they might even provoke a normally adjusted player into a violent rage in the real world; rather, he is more concerned with how an individual already motivated to conduct a mass shooting might take advantage of the unique properties of a VR shooter game to rehearse. Therefore, he proposes three example options for how such a situation could be ameliorated. The first example is to alter the “physics of bullets” in VR. Bailenson suggests that rather than travelling straight from where the player is aiming to the target: If virtual reality also traveled with a slight curve, then virtual shooters would always be pointing away from a target in order to eventually hit it. This learned side-aiming would likely carry over to the real world, and people would have trouble hitting a target straight ahead. (Bailenson, 2018a)

Second, Bailenson proposes that the guns should behave differently to real guns, for example by flicking one’s wrist instead of pulling the trigger. Doing so would apparently prevent a potential shooter from knowing what to do when they finally get to the point of “picking up an actual gun” for their rampage (Bailenson, 2018a). The third suggestion is for game developers to make the targets non-human; he cites as an example robots which are not only non-human but also move differently and therefore do not resemble the motion and behaviour of human targets. These are claims entirely about the acquisition of skills. While Bailenson avoids the simple—and tired—transmission model argument that mediated violence may create an aggressive individual out of someone who was hitherto a pacifist, his suggestions are nonetheless quite bizarre. Unsurprisingly, the piece was criticised quite quickly. For example, Erik Kain, a videogames and culture writer at Forbes.com stated that Bailenson’s claims are “rather extreme” and “with frankly staggering implications [that are] also incredibly silly, bordering on preposterous” (Kain, 2018). Kain’s rebuttal of Bailenson comes from the perspective of a VR user, and interestingly much of what he says is clearly developed out of what might

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

185

be called an informal VR phenomenology. For example, he suggests that VR guns are already difficult to use, and aim, and do not feel at all similar to the experience of shooting a real gun (Kain, 2018). The topic was also addressed on the industry-facing Voices of VR podcast, in which the presenter Kent Bye interviews VR developers and/or stakeholders in the industry (Bye, 2018). Interviewing the developer of the VR game H3: Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (Rust LTD, 2016), Bye asked the developer what he thought of Bailenson’s claims. Anton Hand, the H3 developer, claims he began working on the game as a means of testing out the mechanics of guns in VR.  In response to Bailenson’s commentary, Hand does acknowledge that even though VR is more like handling a real gun, it is still an abstraction. To replicate guns in VR, his approach is to try to capture the overall impression of handling weapons so that they feel realistic via including a lot of nuanced handling elements. This is in line with cognitivist arguments about simulation and mental involvement in media, whether traditional narrative media or VR (Bender, 2014; Grodal, 2009): It’s so much further away from the real thing than people realise. But it is still impactful because it’s so much more embodied than sitting in front of a flat screen [with] a plastic game-pad. (Hand, cited in Bye, 2018)

Indeed, although initially convinced by Bailenson’s argument, the interviewer Kent Bye acknowledges that he has never fired a real gun (Bye, 2018). As in Chap. 2’s discussion of the VR phenomenology of the mil-­ sim game Onward, some players of shooter VR games have found improvised—and now commercially available—ways to mount the VR controllers onto a mock gunstock. While the gunstock does not look like a real-life gunstock, it does enable customisation of where the controllers—and therefore your virtual hands in-game—are in order to match where they would be on the virtual gun. In addition, the primary purpose is for competitive play—stabilising the virtual weapon by using a gunstock configuration enables greater accuracy than when attempting to ‘hold’ the weapon with both hands independently wiggling in the air. But one of the most surprising effects of the mocked gunstock from Author 1’s perspective is that although the weight distribution is all wrong—the frame is bottom heavy, whereas a gun in real-life is obviously not—and although this does not match the virtual gun in-game, the device certainly does contribute to the plausibility illusion (PSI) in-game.

186 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Despite these criticisms, Bailenson’s piece actually puts at the forefront of the argument the player’s interaction and embodied experience of the violence they commit—albeit virtually—in a VR shooter. As he originally argued: My argument here is not that virtual reality games are going to cause people to become violent, or that law enforcement or the military, for example, shouldn’t have access to them. But if a possible mass-shooter wants to hone his craft, we shouldn’t hand him an over-the-counter digital boot camp. (Bailenson, 2018a)

Indeed, while Bailenson’s claims are, as Wilson and McGill (2018, p. 536) argue, “scientifically unfounded”, they do in fact inadvertently re-­ orient the discussion in a helpful way. Indeed, they offer useful grounds for a multidisciplinary approach to the problem of VR violence that can draw upon VR phenomenology as well as the existing approaches towards media violence from the fields of communications studies and media psychology. VR Phenomenology and Violent VR It should be apparent from the discussion above that the new(er) medium of VR has experienced the inevitable claims of having negative effects on the audience. This is unfortunate, since it is far too early for any valid or reliable claims to be made on the medium’s effects, particularly in regard to an already contested area such as violence and disturbing content and potential impact variation across differing cultures and cohorts. The real danger, in terms of screen research, is that the fields of psychology and human-computer interaction (HCI) will be able to colonise the domain of VR media-effects research. As outlined above, this is essentially what has taken place in the other areas of media-effects research—television, videogames and movies (Bender, 2018). This is why screen studies—and the humanities more generally—has a clear role to play and, arguably, a VR phenomenology is central to this. For example, a VR phenomenology would make it clear that any studies of the ‘effects’ of VR ‘on’ a user would consider the population’s experience with VR as a factor. On this basis, three of the key studies dealt with in Chap. 3’s articulation of the psychology-based method—to study VR zombie game players—are both flawed in a fundamental way; that is, none of the studies reported the

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

187

extent to which a user’s previous experience with VR influenced their responses to the game and/or the violence depicted in it. There is ample material for VR phenomenology to devise research hypotheses and to excite collaborations from adjacent disciplines. The methodology also offers highly fruitful opportunities for industry collaboration. Consider the following statement from a VR designer, Scott Stephan: If you see a horror movie on a screen, you have the abstraction. It’s not so frightening, and you know you’re there for fun […] I found that, in room-­ scale VR, things that might be fun on a TV screen, like jump scares […] We actually have a rule that no creature should be larger than the size of a small dog. Anything above that and you get this primal, lizard-brain thing of, ‘Oh, this isn’t a fun scare. It’s a survival scare’. (Scott Stephan, cited in Handrahan, 2016)

This is a very interesting intuitive claim. It is clearly drawing upon the contemporary popularisation of evolutionary psychology as a means of understanding human representations (Dutton, 2009). As such, it actually offers quite fruitful avenues to create intriguing hypotheses that can be tested out via lab-based approaches as well as the sort of cognitive play-­ through methodologies demonstrated throughout this book. Indeed, the CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, when interviewed by Kent Bye on the Voices of VR podcast, also used evolutionary terms to suggest that it is understandable for VR to strive towards increased realism and mimesis (Mike Gallagher, cited in Bye, 2015). Evolutionary aesthetics is an exciting new field of study. Despite some compelling criticism of its potentially reductionist approach, evolutionary psychology has contributed some novel and exciting ways of exploring horror media as both an adaptation but also an entertaining stimulant of the evolved human mind (see Clasen, 2017). Currently, the primary contributions of evolutionary aesthetics apply to creepy and fear-based artworks (McAndrew, 2020) which quite clearly have special significance in the analysis of VR environments in VR. Yet, there are many other areas in which such an approach could be both benefited by, and supplement, VR phenomenology. Perhaps part of the issue with the problem of whether or not violence in VR requires regulation is that the medium genuinely is progressing quite quickly. Even the technological and gameplay developments since 2015 show that there are a large variety of responses that can be generated

188 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

by VR experiences. The case studies presented throughout this book have illustrated that there are a large number of elements that have an effect on both the impact of the experience and the level of cerebral or visceral response that can be elicited. For example, Chap. 2’s analysis of the mil-­ sim game Onward shows that the impact of graphics and interaction can strongly affect how immersed the player can feel in a violent combat experience. Chapter 3’s examination of zombie horror games indicates, among other things, that sound and visual darkness can have an enormous impact on the bodily experience of fear and excitement. Chapter 4’s overview of VRET reveals that, in order for clinical levels of stress to be elicited by a VR experience, there probably needs to be some very clear connection between what is experienced in the VR headset and what original real-life stress has been experienced by the user. This is not to mention that quite specific clinical conditions—and a trained clinician—are necessary to fully elicit substantial stress. However, on the other hand, we have also seen in this chapter that some psychology researchers are confident that they can generate enough stress via a horror experience to model traumatic responses to real-world events. The analysis of different types of VR trauma experiences in Chaps. 5 and 6 shows that the affective impact of such experiences is highly contingent upon differing levels of graphic quality and is enhanced further by the difference between three degrees of freedom, as in 360-degree video, and six degrees of freedom, as in fully computer-generated (CG)-rendered VR in a tracked headset. Against this background, it is far too early for anybody to be making conclusive claims about whether or not VR experiences are so impactful that they require regulation. At this stage, more research is needed, and the right kind of research. In many ways, this can be considered a compelling area in which multidisciplinary research can be conducted. One of the central areas for research will be developing the kind of language that can describe what is experienced. VR phenomenology can help to create a methodology for determining and exploring how these digital experiences are most clearly articulated. Indeed, by taking seriously the subjective experiences of users, a VR phenomenology would also be able to consider the crowd-sourcing opportunities of the internet. As various chapters of this book have demonstrated, there are many well-informed VR users reviewing, commenting and sharing their VR screen captures, and subjective encounters with the medium. Not all of these need to be taken verbatim or as direct evidence of any particular claim; however, they offer a rich

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

189

resource for the sufficiently attentive scholar to consider how the medium is having both an impact and an effect on users. As a small example of how such an interdisciplinary approach could take shape, consider the following commentary that occurs in one episode of the Voices of VR podcast dealing specifically with violence. In this episode, Kent Bye makes the following claim which should by now be familiar, “We watch a movie, and we see it [the violence], but we’re not there”. In the same episode, he suggests: I have had experiences where I’ve shot a man in virtual reality and it was different than anything else I’ve experienced in terms of 2-D mediums or video-games, and having had some traumatic experiences in my life I could say that there was some low-level triggering of PTSD that I experienced. (Bye, 2015)

These statements are meant by the speaker to claim that there is ‘something’ substantially and fundamentally different to violence in VR. It is an interesting assumption, one that this book has shown to be trotted out not only in some of the sensationalist claims of VR violence, but also in comparisons of VR to traditional media more generally. And this claim is repeated despite decades of cognitivist research into audience experiences of traditional cinema that implies audiences feel strong emotions when consuming traditional content (see. for example Plantinga, 2018; Smith, 1999). Thus, it is a straw man argument to simply say that VR is different to film in that you feel like you are there in one medium but in another you are simply a passive observer. The argument must be more nuanced than that. However, what is especially interesting about this Voices of VR podcast episode is that it is clear that Bye is struggling and attempting to work through the appropriate language to express a subjective experience that he has clearly had in VR. It is precisely this issue that VR phenomenology has the potential to address and, with it, the potential to set a clear focus to the research agenda into how—and in what ways—violent and disturbing VR content have effects on audiences.

Conclusion It is remarkable the amount and persistence of claims for the potential regulation of violent content in VR; this is clearly a complex issue. Indeed, the potential interactions between violent media and audiences have

190 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

always been complex. This chapter has indicated some of the problems inherent to the traditional media-effects debate that are now at risk of being applied uncritically and haphazardly to the new medium of VR. We do not pretend that there is a simple solution. One of the key themes throughout this book has been that it is simply not possible to articulate a totalising explanation for any given phenomena to do with VR creation or experience. This chapter has most directly addressed this theme in the context of recent calls for potential regulation for violence and/or disturbing content in the medium. This should be an uncontroversial position. After all, few would expect an analysis of a handful of violent movies to provide a solid corpus from which to build a framework about all violence in traditional cinema. The same holds true for other genres and subject matter in all types of media. For this reason, it is hoped that the primary outcome of the present book will be to begin to establish the parameters upon which future research into VR might develop. This chapter began with an overview of recent hyperbolic claims about the supposedly problematic impact of violence in VR. These claims were characterised as borne out of the ever-present expectations of the medium having greater capacity for immersion, realism and an emotional hold over the viewer than practically all forms of traditional media. To place these claims in historical context, the chapter provided a brief overview of the long-standing media-effects debate in the context of traditional media. Against this background, the chapter identified and described how the current claims about VR are based on some as yet under-researched assumptions about violence, impact and audience response which lead to a detailed examination of Jeremy Bailenson’s claims about how VR could be used to train a mass shooter. Finally, the chapter provided an overview of a possible VR phenomenology paradigm for exploring the impact, affect and effect of violent and traumatic material in immersive media.

References Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H.  R., & Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 136(2), 151–173. https://doi. org/10.1037/a0018251 Aubrey, J.  S., Robb, M., Bailey, J., & Bailenson, J. (2018). Virtual reality 101: What you need to know about kids and VR.  Retrieved from http://www.

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

191

Commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/uploads/pdfs/csm_ vr101_final.pdf Bailenson, J. (2018a). If a possible mass shooter wants to hone his craft, don’t hand him a virtual boot camp. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn. com/2018/03/05/opinions/video-­g ames-­s hooting-­o pinion-­b ailenson/ index.html Bailenson, J. (2018b). Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do. W. W. Norton & Company. Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(1), 3–11. Bender, S. M. (2014). Blood splats and bodily collapse: Reported realism and the perception of violence in combat films and video games. Projections, 8(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2014.080202 Bender, S. M. (2018). Media violence. In P. M. Napoli (Ed.), Mediated communication: Handbooks of communication science, vol. 7 (pp.  299–316). De Gruyter Mouton. Bender, S. M., & Sung, B. (2021). Fright, attention, and joy while killing zombies in virtual reality: A psychophysiological analysis of VR user experience. Psychology & Marketing, 38(6), 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21444 Berkowitz, L., & Rawlings, E. (1963). Effects of film violence on inhibitions against subsequent aggression. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66(5), 405–412. Beyman, A. (2019, April 22). How real is ‘too real’? Does VR change the violence in videogames argument? AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine. Retrieved from https://arvrjourney.com/ how-­r eal-­i s-­t oo-­r eal-­d oes-­v r-­c hange-­t he-­v iolence-­i n-­v ideogames-­ argument-­5e3c43a8b5e6 Bollmer, G., & Guinness, K. (2020). Empathy and nausea: virtual reality and Jordan Wolfson’s Real Violence. Journal of Visual Culture, 19(1), 28–46. Bushman, B. (2018). Teaching students about violent media effects. Teaching of Psychology, 45(2), 200–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628318762936 Bye, K. (2015). #267: Violent video games & ratings: Protecting the frontiers of VR with ESA [Podcast]. Retrieved from https://voicesofvr.com/267-­violent-­ Bye, K. (2018). #668: guns, money, & morals: A debate on the ethics of VR simulation, capitalism, & the limits of decentralized techno-utopianism [Podcast]. Retrieved from https://voicesofvr.com/668-­guns-­money-­morals-­a-­debate-­on -­the-­ethics-­of-­v r-­simulation-­capitalism-­t he-­l imits-­of-­decentralized-­techno -­utopianism/ Charney, L. (2001). The violence of a perfect moment. In D.  Slocum (Ed.), Violence and American cinema (pp. 47–62). Routledge. Clasen, M. (2017). Why horror seduces. Oxford University Press.

192 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Classification Office. (2016). The Classification Office meets virtual reality. Retrieved from https://www.classificationoffice.govt.nz/blog/virtual-­reality/ Clover, C. (1992). Men, women, and chainsaws: Gender in the modern horror film. Princeton University Press. Connected Consumer. (2016, April 13). Will virtual reality video game content be protected by the Freedom of Speech? Connected Consumer. Retrieved from https://connectedconsumer.osborneclarke.com/digital-­e ntertainment/ will-­v irtual-­r eality-­v ideo-­g ame-­c ontent-­b e-­p rotected-­b y-­t he-­f reedom-­o f­speech/ Coyne, S. M., Warburton, W. A., Essig, L. W., & Stockdale, L. A. (2018). Violent video games, externalizing behavior, and prosocial behavior: A five-year longitudinal study during adolescence. Developments in Psychology, 54(10), 1868–1880. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000574 Crecente, B. (2012, April 19). Anders Breivik ‘trained’ for killing spree with ‘Call of Duty’. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/4/19/2959672/anders-­b reivik-­t rained-­f or-­k illing-­s pree­with-­call-­of-­duty Crecente, B. (2017, March 24). Experts set to meet with fed government about need for VR ethics, more research. Polygon. Retrieved from https://www.poly gon.com/2017/3/24/15055542/vr-­government-­regulation Cross, K. (2016, November 10). Sexual assault enters virtual reality. The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/sexual-­assault-­ enters-­virtual-­reality-­67971 Cuperus, A. A., Klaassen, F., Hagenaars, M. A., & Engelhard, I. M. (2017). A virtual reality paradigm as an analogue to real-life trauma: Its effectiveness compared with the trauma film paradigm. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 8(Suppl_1), 1338106. Dutton, D. (2009). The art instinct: Beauty, pleasure, & human evolution. Bloomsbury Press. Eitzen, D. (2013). Cultural effects of cinematic violence. Projections, 7(1), 3–24. Eitzen, D. (2014). Effects of entertaining violence: A critical overview of the general aggression model. In T. Nannicelli & P. Taberham (Eds.), Cognitive media theory (pp. 158–176). Routledge. Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Does movie or video game violence predict societal violence? It depends on what you look at and when. Journal of Communication, 65(1), 193–212. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12142 Ferguson, C. J. (2018). Violent video games, sexist video games, and the law: Why can’t we find effects? Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 14, 411–426. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-­lawsocsci-­101317-­031036 Ferguson, C. J., & Konijn, E. A. (2015). She said/he said: A peaceful debate on video game violence. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 4(4), 397–411.

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

193

Foa, E. B. (1997). Psychological processes related to recovery from a trauma and an effective treatment for PTSD. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 821, 410–424. Freedman, J.  L. (1986). Television violence and aggression: A rejoinder. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3), 372–378. Freeman, N. (n.d.). A history of violence: Jordan Wolfson on his shocking foray into VR at the Whitney Biennial. Retrieved from https://www.artnews.com/art-­ news/artists/a-­history-­of-­violence-­jordan-­wolfson-­on-­his-­shocking-­foray-­into -­vr-­at-­the-­whitney-­biennial-­7856/ Gauntlett, D. (2005). Moving experiences: Media effects and beyond (2nd ed.). John Libbey. Gray, A. (1992). Video playtime: The gendering of a leisure technology. Routledge. Grodal, T. (2009). Embodied visions: Evolution, emotion, culture, and film. Oxford University Press. Handrahan, M. (2016). VR devs call for restraint on horror games and jump scares. Retrieved from https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-­03­14-­vr-­developers-­advise-­caution-­on-­horror-­games-­and-­jump-­scares Heller-Nicholas, A. (2014). Found footage horror films: Fear and the appearance of reality. McFarland & Company. Hilgert, F., & Sümmermann, P. (n.d.). Age rating in virtual reality environments. Retrieved from https://gameslaw.org/age-­rating-­in-­virtual-­reality-­environments/ Hill, M. (2015, November 4). PlayStation VR chief: Virtual reality games need their own rating system. Digital Spy. Retrieved from https://www.digitalspy.c om/videogames/a677156/playstation-­vr-­chief-­virtual-­reality-­games-­need-­the ir-­own-­rating-­system/ Horowitz, M.  J. (1975). Intrusive and repetitive thoughts after experimental stress. A summary. Archives of General Psychiatry, 32(11), 1457–1463. Johnson, E. (2015, August 11). Legal danger: What we don’t know about virtual reality today might hurt companies tomorrow. Retrieved from https://www.vox .com/2015/8/11/11615490/legal-­d anger-­w hat-­w e-­d ont-­k now-­a bout-­ virtual-­reality-­today-­might-­hurt Kain, E. (2018). 3 reasons why it’s silly to say that VR games help train mass shooters. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/eri kkain/2018/03/08/no-­v irtual-­r eality-­g ames-­a re-­n ot-­v irtual-­b ootcamps -­for-­mass-­shooters/ Kaplan, A. E. (2005). Trauma culture: The politics of terror and loss in media and literature. Rutgers University Press. Kaplan, I. (2017). The gut-wrenching VR work that’s got the art world talking about violence. Retrieved from https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-­editorial-­gut-­ wrenching-­vr-­work-­art-­talking-­violence

194 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Kontour, K. (2009). Revisiting violent videogames research: Game studies perspectives on aggression, violence, immersion, interaction and textual analysis. Digital Culture and Education, 1(1), 6–30. Kramer, P. (2001). ‘Clean, dependable slapstick’: Comic violence and the emergence of classical Hollywood cinema. In D.  Slocum (Ed.), Violence and American cinema (pp. 103–116). Routledge. Krohner, J. (2016). Does VR need regulation? Medium. Retrieved from https:// medium.com/@juliekrohner/does-­vr-­need-­ Kuhn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K., Weichenberger, M., Witt, C., & Gallinat, J. (2018). The myth of blunted gamers: No evidence for desensitization in empathy for pain after a violent video game intervention in a longitudinal fmri study on non-gamers. Neurosignals, 26(1), 22–30. https://doi.org/10.1159/ 000487217 Kuo, M. (2017). Jordan Wolfson. Retrieved from https://www.artforum.com/pr int/201709/jordan-­wolfson-­71776 Lazarus, R.  S. (n.d.). A laboratory approach to the dynamics of psychological stress. The American Psychologist, 19(6), 400–411. Leah, A. (2017). @mollzlollz and @htenzer ready to face off #jordanwolfson #whitneybiennial [Instagram photo]. Retrieved from https://www.instagram. com/p/BRuV8jKAh_m/ Lewis, J. (1991). The ideological octopus: An exploration of television and its audiences. Routledge. Lin, J.-H. T. (2017). Fear in virtual reality (VR): Fear elements, coping reactions, immediate and next-day fright responses toward a survival horror zombie virtual reality game. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 350–361. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.02.057 Lull, J. (1990). Inside family viewing: Ethnographic research on television’s audiences. Routledge. Lynn, R., Hampson, S., & Agahi, E. (1989). Television violence and aggression: A genotype-environment, correlation and interaction theory. Social Behavior and Personality: An International Journal, 17(2), 143–164. Madary, M., & Metzinger, T. K. (2016). Real virtuality: A code of ethical conduct. Recommendations for good scientific practice and the consumers of VR-technology. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 3, 3. Maloney, M. (2016). Ambivalent violence in contemporary game design. Games and Culture, 14(1), 26–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412016647848 McAndrew, F. T. (2020). The psychology, geography, and architecture of horror: How places creep us out. Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, 4(1). Meyer, M. (2016). Virtual reality will change the world. Here’s what parents need to know. The Conversation. Retrieved from http://theconversation.com/virt ual-­reality-­will-­change-­the-­world-­heres-­what-­parents-­need-­to-­know-­64641

6  REGULATION OF VIOLENT CONTENT IN VIRTUAL REALITY 

195

Milk, C. (Producer). (2015, March 16). TED: How virtual reality can create the ultimate empathy machine [Online video] Retrieved from https://www.ted. com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_ empathy_machine Mueller, C. W., Donnerstein, E., & Hallam, J. (1983). Violent films and prosocial behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9(1), 83–89. O’Brien, S. A. (2016, October 25). Developer on VR sexual assault: ‘My heart sank’. CNN Business. Retrieved from https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/25/ technology/developer-­sexual-­assault-­virtual-­reality/index.html Oh, S. Y., Bailenson, J., Weisz, E., & Zaki, J. (2016). Virtually old: Embodied perspective taking and the reduction of ageism under threat. Computers in Human Behavior, 60, 398–410. Phillips, A. (2015). Shooting to kill. Games and Culture, 13(2), 136–152. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1555412015612611 Pinchevski, A. (2019). Transferred wounds: Media and the mediation of trauma. Oxford University Press. Plantinga, C. (2018). Screen stories: Emotion and the ethics of engagement. Oxford University Press. Prince, S. (2009). Firestorm: American film in the age of terrorism. Columbia University Press. Rothe, A. (2011). Popular trauma culture: Selling the pain of others in the mass media. Rutgers University Press. Schneider, S. (2004). New Hollywood violence. University of Manchester Press. Schrøder, K. C. (2018). Audience reception. In P. M. Napoli (Ed.), Mediated communication: Handbook of communication science, Vol 7 (pp.  105–128). De Gruyter Mouton. Schwartz, A. (2017, March 20). Confronting the ‘shocking’ virtual-reality artwork at the Whitney Biennial. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.n ewyorker.com/culture/cultural-­comment/confronting-­the-­shocking-­virtual-­r eality-­artwork-­at-­the-­whitney-­biennial Shalev, A.  Y. (2007). PTSD: A disorder of recovery? In L.  J. Kirmayer (Ed.), Understanding trauma: Integrating biological, clinical, and cultural perspectives (Vol. 519, pp. 207–223). Cambridge University Press. Sharrett, C. (Ed.). (1999). Mythologies of violence in postmodern media. Wayne State University Press. Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everyday life. Routledge. Slocum, J. D. (2005). Cinema and the civilizing process: Rethinking violence in the World War II combat film. Cinema Journal, 44(3), 35–63. Smith, M. (1999). Gangsters, cannibals, aesthetes, or apparently perverse allegiances. In C. Plantinga & M. Smith (Eds.), Passionate views: Film, cognition, and emotion (pp. 217–238). Johns Hopkins University Press.

196 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Sparrow, R., Harrison, R., Oakley, R., & Keogh, B. (2018). Playing for fun, training for war. Games and Culture, 13(2), 174–192. https://doi. org/10.1177/1555412015615025 Sullender, R.  S. (2010). Vicarious grieving and the media. Pastoral Psychology, 59(2), 191–200. Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behavior. (1972). Television and growing up: The impact of televised violence: Report to the Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service. National Institutes of Mental Health. Ward, J. (2016). Virtual reality—Real law issues. VR Today. Retrieved from https: //vrtodaymagazine.com/virtual-­reality-­law/ Weidmann, A., Conradi, A., Gröger, K., Fehm, L., & Fydrich, T. (2009). Using stressful films to analyze risk factors for PTSD in analogue experimental studies—Which film works best? Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 22(5), 549–569. Wilson, G., & McGill, M. (2018). Violent video games in virtual reality: Re-evaluating the impact and rating of interactive experiences. Proceedings of the 2018 Annual Symposium on Computer–Human Interaction in Play, 535–548. Wong, J.  C. (2016). Sexual harassment in virtual reality feels all too real—‘It’s creepy beyond creepy’. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardia n.com/technology/2016/oct/26/virtual-­r eality-­s exual-­h arassment-­ online-­groping-­quivr

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

The ‘Unknowability’ of VR This book began with an overview of what we believe to be the current problems with approaches to VR by industry, academia and screen studies particularly. These included the paradoxical friction between evangelical and sceptical views of the medium’s immersive power, but also the primary issue of how we can develop an appropriate language and research methodology to explore and articulate what it feels like to encounter a VR experience. Through the first three chapters we proposed a mixed-­methods position which draws heavily upon film phenomenology (e.g. Sobchack, 1992, 2004, 2009), but also textual analysis, cognitive media theory, empirical psychophysiology and wider cultural studies understandings of media more generally. This position can be labelled VR phenomenology, and it offers a paradigm of research into VR that is sensitive to the subjective user experience; however, it requires an informed researcher–critic to undertake the rich analysis. Furthermore, a central part of the problem in this endeavour is thrown into sharp relief by examining how far our understanding of VR has not come. As contemporary scholars are quick to remind us, VR is not a ‘new’ medium, and has been through a number of waves of almost-becoming-­ popular over many decades (Lanier, 2018). Against this background, compare the following two statements, written a quarter of a century apart. First by a computer science researcher in 1992: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8_7

197

198 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

The public is beginning to understand that virtual reality portends a new medium, new entertainment, a new and very powerful type of art. It has a potential that beckons to the average person, as well as to the scientists developing the technology. (Bates, 1992, p. 133)

Bates was writing about the early 1990s’ mode of VR, which was neither portable nor accessible—nor anywhere near as sophisticated as current VR headsets. Yet there is the sensation in Bates’ writing that the medium offers something new, exciting and with serious novel potential. Now let us consider another piece by a business and technology writer at the online publication Daily Herald in 2018: The new medium [of VR] promises to make a static experience more interactive. But to do so it must walk a line between the passive consumption of a movie and the fully immersive experience of a video game, and creators haven’t decided how much control they want to give up and consumers seem ambivalent about how much of it they want. (Zeitchik, 2018)

In the 26 years between the two statements above, the technology and experiences available in VR have changed; however, the apparent unknowability of the medium’s artistic and expressive capacities is echoed across this quarter century gap. Bates was interested in how researchers can move beyond their interest in “virtual reality as a human–computer interface technology”, likening this “focus on interface as something like studying celluloid instead of cinema, paper instead of novels, cathode ray tubes instead of television” (Bates, 1992, p. 137). Yet, in Zeitchik’s 2018 article, there is a reprised claim for no less than the “long-sought ideal of a reinvented cinema itself”. Zeitchik does not explain what this reinvented cinema might be—since nobody seems to know—nor is there an explanation of who has been long-seeking it. It is therefore important at the conclusion of this book to examine some of the concepts from current scholarship and industry practice around the apparent novelty, uniqueness and unknowability of VR. Indeed, the stark contrast between Bates’ and Zeitchik’s statements above call to mind the contemporary scholarship claim that there is a need for filmmakers and academics to identify the ‘new’ grammar of VR. For example, in his recent book Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson (2018) writes with enthusiasm that Silicon Valley and Hollywood creatives are now about to begin undertaking exploratory work on what might be

7 CONCLUSION 

199

this new grammar of VR.  Dooley openly points to screen grammar, acknowledging that even though “one can observe a trend in regards to the typical length of VR narratives”, it is important to note that “the screen grammar of narrative virtual reality is still very much in the process of being developed (Dooley, 2017, p. 164). In each case, the technology is held up as being intrinsically different to traditional screen experiences, yet for somewhat vague reasons, this difference is problematised and mystified as being presently unknowable. Certainly there are antecedents of the concept of a grammar in the Russian Formalist work on literature (Lemon & Reis, 1965), the cinematic works of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov, and the fundamental text Film As Art by Rudolph Arnheim (Arnheim, 1957). However, the clearest concept of what is meant when referring to screen works having a grammar can perhaps be gleaned from the contents list of Raymond Spottiswoode’s A Grammar of the Film: An Analysis of Film Technique (Spottiswoode, 1951, pp. 15–16): Chapter II—Definitions The Total Film (C) Comprises a Visual Film (A) and a Sound-­ Factor (B). A. The Visual Film. a. The film material […]: the mechanical principle, speeds, cutting, dissolves, fades b. The camera […]: positions and movements c. Illusion […]: filmic space and time; trick processes d. Description […]: titles of various types B. The Sound-Factor. a. Speech […]: realistic and unrealistic uses b. Sound […]: realistic and unrealistic uses c. Music […]: realistic and unrealistic uses C. The Total Film. a. Construction […]: different types of montage b. Categories […]: different types of film c. Effect […]: different types of effect produced by the film and its component parts

Thus, the grammar of a film appears to describe the various ways in which cinematic vision can be articulated via recording, creation and post-­ production combined with the discrete combinations of human speech, environmental sounds and music that may be naturalistic or not.

200 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Importantly, the grammar of a film accounts for the varying ways in which the cinematic vision and cinematic sound can be comingled according to multiple types of film and in order to create specific effects. It may well be that all the possibilities of the construction of a VR experience are encompassed within this same formulation. Spottiswoode explicates each of these aspects throughout his book and, of course, film studies would continue to develop these in a variety of different directions throughout the subsequent decades. These include, for example, the semiotic approach exploring screen grammar’s relationship to language (Metz, 1974) and the psychoanalytic turn (Mulvey, 1975; Silverman, 1983). However, the current questions about a VR grammar owe a great deal—whether directly or indirectly—from the development of Spottiswoode’s approach as refracted through the 1960s’ translation into English of the Russian Formalists’ 1917–27 work on literature (Lemon & Reis, 1965), which would lead to David Bordwell’s Narration and the Fiction Film (Bordwell, 1985) and Kristin Thompson’s development of a neoformalist film analysis (Thompson, 1981). Against this background, it is worth reflecting on the ways that earlier changes in audio-visual art technology have produced similar problems. Consider Rudolph Arnheim’s anxiety around the transition from silent cinema to sound, then colour filmmaking: We know what we shall lose artistically by abandoning the black-and-white film. Will color ever allow us to achieve a similar compositional precision, a similar independence of “reality”? (Arnheim, 1957, p. 155)

Here, Arnheim is really agonising about what semiotics would later term ‘indexicality’, and he is concerned that the artistic and expressive capacities of the earlier forms of filmmaking, with their black-and-white (and silent) “independence of ‘reality’” were never fully explored before the colour image and synchronous sound would take cinema in a more realistic direction. Indeed, Arnheim worries about the coming of widescreen and stereoscopic cinema in language that is worth quoting at length in the present context of VR: But if the film image becomes stereoscopic there is no longer a plane surface within the confines of the screen, and therefore there can be no composition of that surface; what remains will be effects that are also possible on the stage. The increased size of the screen will render any two-dimensional or

7 CONCLUSION 

201

three-dimensional composition less compelling; and formative devices such as montage and changing camera angles will become unusable if the illusion of reality is so enormously strengthened. Obviously, montage will seem an intolerable accumulation of heterogeneous settings if the illusion of reality is very strong. Obviously also a change in the position of the camera will now be felt as an actual displacement within the space of the picture. The camera will have to become an immobile recording machine, every cut in the film strip will be mutilation. Scenes will have to be taken in their entire length and with a stationary camera, and they will have to be shown as they are. The artistic potentialities of this form of film will be exactly those of the stage. Film will no longer be able in any sense to be considered as a separate art. (Arnheim, 1957, pp. 156–57)

In the recent calls for a new grammar of VR, it is evident that the highly limited evangelical and sceptical modes of VR reception remain dominant. As outlined in Chap. 1, each of these positions can be understood as operating from the same assumption that VR is somehow fundamentally different to existing forms of screen texts. In the evangelical view, this difference is exciting and offers new and unique ways of telling stories that promote a rich and rewarding screen experience that is immersive and personal to the viewer. That a new grammar would be necessary for such a medium makes sense. From the sceptical view, it is not so much a scepticism of whether or not the medium is different to traditional screen texts, but rather a scepticism of the positive aspects of this new medium. Thus, unlike Arnheim’s concern that colour cinema will result in a loss of some artistic achievements only possible in black-and-white film, the VR sceptics’ concerns are marked by an assumption that the overwhelming immersive nature of VR will bring with it new and dangerous addictions and developmental problems as well as ideological and psychological problems for audiences caught up in its compulsive qualities. Thus, the sceptics are not interested in a new grammar; rather, they are interested in extra-textual impacts of the medium. This book thus proposes that a reconciling of the two viewpoints enables us to understand the medium in a more holistic fashion. Screen grammar certainly is a factor, but so is the user’s singular and collective experience/s of the medium itself. It is important to note that whatever the new, or continuous, or redundant forms of storytelling may be in VR, AR and other emerging immersive media, the concept of a ‘grammar’ may turn out to be limiting. Rather, it is far more important to consider the

202 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

variety of extra-textual components of the immersive experience that make it not cinema, not television and not internet video. We contend, and have demonstrated in the case studies throughout this book, that the dominant screen studies approach to VR is perhaps looking at the wrong aspects of the medium. While it is definitely screen studies’ strong purview to examine the content and the specific audio-visual construction of a text, in the case of VR at this point in time there is perhaps much more to be learned by refocusing the analysis onto the audience. Furthermore, the analysis can indeed be narrowed to the point of examining the experience of the audience. As argued in Chap. 2, if traditional films are experienced in the process of watching and listening to them then perhaps VR works should be understood as being watched in the process of experiencing them. By taking this approach, the textual construction can be analysed as something that has created an effect; indeed, this is an approach that has a long and productive tradition in screen studies through the field of neopoetics (Bordwell, 2012). Throughout this book, the VR phenomenology utilised has focused on the experience of VR users— sometimes the subjective experience of the authors—as the dominant point of analysis. From this starting point, the works studied have been analysed to examine how the text creates the experience–effect (and affect), and how the user’s engagement with the technological medium is a component of this experience. As the technology of VR becomes more available to consumers and researchers alike, taking this position will enable screen studies to begin looking at how it affects viewers, rather than simply “fetishizing” the “newness” of the apparatus (see Golding, 2019, p. 342).

Contribution and Limitations The emphasis in this book has been on violent and traumatic VR experiences. This has been for three reasons. First, from zombie shooters, to social issues documentary productions, through to military training, many popular VR experiences have utilised these themes as an essential part of their content and/or use cases. Therefore, the focus is sensible in terms of exploring the state of current VR screen works. Second, both authors have previously published extensively in the areas of violence, aggressive media and representations of trauma. Thus, we are in an ideal position to explore how the new(er) mode of immersive media has worked with and against such traditional media forms. Third, and related to the previous point, the

7 CONCLUSION 

203

methodology of VR phenomenology presented in this book demands an informed researcher–critic. The case studies here are not intended to provide justification for endless subjective readings without there being rigorous background research into the subject matter, relevant theory and criticism of the particular representations at stake, nor honest and direct experience with the texts being studied. As indicated earlier in the book, much more so than a traditional film analysis, the scholarship of VR works requires the demonstration of the critic’s research bona fides. Since 2014, both authors have worked closely and directly in the area of immersive representations of trauma and violent subject matter. To explore these areas, Chaps. 1, 2 and 3 outlined our methodological approach. Chapter 1 established the appropriate frame of reference for the later analyses; first, acknowledging the two paradoxical positions of VR evangelism and scepticism and, secondly, summarising the current debates about immersion. Chapter 2 developed the methodology of VR phenomenology, drawing upon the exciting field of film phenomenology with its rich tradition of privileging a specific subjective approach to the movie experience. The chapter demonstrated VR phenomenology as a means of understanding the experience of a VR military simulator game experience, showcasing the approach’s sensitivity to how the player’s sense of immersion can be influenced by a range of textual and extra-textual properties. Chapter 3 operated as a primer on relevant psychological-based research methodologies that are currently in vogue in VR research being undertaken outside of screen studies. The chapter then demonstrated how VR phenomenology benefits those methodologies in its high sensitivity to the experience of the user. The second half of the book focused on detailed case studies which demonstrate the viability of VR phenomenology in a range of VR experience types. Chapter 4 explored the fascinating topic of VRET for PTSD and other anxiety-based mental issues; these are very well-funded and thoroughly researched applications of VR. The chapter’s emphasis was on using VR phenomenology as a mode to read the psychological literature, and experience the VRET applications, in order to reflect on what they can tell us about VR more generally. Chapter 5, in two parts, provides very detailed case study examples of multiple ways of deploying a subjective approach to VR, at times reflecting on the subjective experiences of other users via the crowd-sourced research resource of internet screen capture videos, and at other times fully embracing the researcher– critic’s own ability to think through their embodied encounter with the VR experience. Chapter 6 addressed the wider cultural and social

204 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

implications of violent VR, an area in which the familiar debate of media effects has resurfaced. The primary goal of the chapter was to indicate that, without substantial effort from screen studies and the humanities more generally, there is the risk of this debate being colonised by quite reductive approaches from the fields of psychology and human–computer interaction studies.

Future Research With the above limitations and foci in mind, it is important to acknowledge and gesture towards some of the many other areas in which a VR phenomenology could be applied. Aside from the obvious implications and benefits for screen studies’ aesthetic explorations of different types of VR productions—for example, the use of spatial audio, pornography, entertainment gaming, documentary and sports broadcasting—one of the most obvious areas for future work is in relation to the numerous, seemingly endless, number of projects which overtly attempt to use immersive media to generate empathy. Aside from the many grant applications and projects that Authors 1 and 2 have been invited to take part in, a Google Scholar search for ‘VR empathy training’ yields vast numbers of studies (Ventura et al., 2020). These include, for example, applications of VR to train healthcare students in empathising with patients (Bertrand et  al., 2018; Kleinsmith et al., 2015; Louie et al., 2018; Schutte & Stilinović, 2017) and caregivers’ ability to empathise with dementia patients (Jütten et  al., 2018), various applications to address inequalities about racism, inequality and the impact of climate change on different populations (Roswell et al., 2020), and others designed to assist in pre-service teacher training (Stavroulia & Lanitis, 2019). There are also many intervention-­ based approaches such as utilising VR scenarios to assess and enhance empathy in domestic violence offenders (Seinfeld et al., 2018). Through the various case studies and critical commentary throughout this book, it should be clear where the current limitations lie in such applications of VR designed to enhance empathy. Most of these interventions are produced outside of the humanities, for example in the health sciences or by collaboration between professional screen practitioners and a relevant community group. Certainly, these are promising endeavours to develop immersive media applications that aim to raise awareness of an issue or develop some form of cultural awareness. However, in each case, a VR phenomenology would be highly advantageous to offer a critical eye

7 CONCLUSION 

205

towards the project’s aims and production processes, and to critically engage with the definitions of empathy being used. In addition, as sophisticated as many of the self-report surveys can be, at this point they do not fully capture the relevance of the novelty factor inherent to putting on a VR headset. The dominant mode used by screen studies’ analysis of VR seems to emphasise the apparent unknowability of the medium and/or its effects. Therefore, a VR phenomenology would provide a useful starting point for researchers eager to explore the possibilities of film grammar as applied to and/or developed in VR.  While these approaches are highly enthusiastic, and promise great productive potential for the field (Dooley, 2017; Lescop, 2017; Palombini, 2017; Pillai et al., 2017; Pillai & Verma, 2019), they would benefit from a VR phenomenology which would consider the extent to which questions about narrative and storytelling with 360-degree VR are similar to the problems explored and addressed by the videogame industry for decades (Clarke & Mitchell, 2000; Lebowitz & Klug, 2011; Parkes, 1994; Tyndale & Ramsoomair, 2016). VR phenomenology would posit that a story told in 360-degrees has a tremendous amount in common with flat-screen videogame narratives which—since the advent of 3D gaming such as Wolfenstein 3D (id Software, 1992), Doom (id Software, 1993), and Quake (id Software, 1996)—have essentially created 360-degree environments for the player to navigate in and around. The player has thus always been able to look behind them by moving the mouse or game controller. This points directly to the true distinction between such videogames and a 360-degree VR experience—the wrap-around all-­encompassing VR headset. VR phenomenology would foreground this as the basis of an analysis of how film—and videogame— narrative grammar and narration ought to be examined, as something to be taken in tandem with utilising the language of early film grammar scholars (Arnheim, 1957, pp. 156–57; Spottiswoode, 1951). There are of course many other avenues where this approach will be of benefit, and it is outside the scope of this concluding chapter to outline them all. Consider, for example, training applications, safety induction videos, or even virtual tourism and real estate. These are all areas of excitement for VR evangelists, in some cases expecting that the VR presentation methods will enable viewpoints that are otherwise difficult to show to audiences (Shafi et al., 2020). Nonetheless, if VR is increasingly utilised in such situations, it will become necessary to monitor the extent to which the novelty of the technology influences the level of attention,

206 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

engagement and information retained. For instance, VR phenomenology would likely generate the hypothesis that a key factor in any increased attention and positive attitude towards training is the novelty of using a new technology. Indeed, as shown in Chap. 4, this is a central component of the “face-validity” of VRET systems for treating military PTSD. Therefore, in the case of VR training in the workplace, there may be a point at which the novelty factor loses impact. Many of the assumptions about the viewer experience of VR are rooted in the idea of it being a ‘first-person’ experience. This is indeed one of the fundamental issues addressed in the creative work Gone in 360 Seconds (Dir., Bender & D’Silva, 2016) in which the viewer is verbally and non-­ verbally addressed by characters, yet the viewer is unable to interact with them in return because the experience is simply a 360-degree video. Thus the narrative was designed around the limitation of non-interactivity, with the character/viewer being instructed by other characters to stay still and be quiet (Bender, 2019). In examining this process, and discussing viewer responses, it was determined that, ultimately, a non-interactive VR film— also known as CVR—is not a first-person experience at all but rather a second-person experience. Thus, there is substantial existing research that can be drawn upon dealing with interactive and non-linear fiction, both in print and in various non-print media (Fludernik, 1994; Richardson, 1991). Future work can benefit by examining the limits and applications of second-person narration theory to generating immersive and involving CVR narratives. One area of substantial concern for screen studies scholars should be to generate some debate about the appropriate way(s) to describe the critic’s engagement and response with a VR work. Specifically, is it best to refer to ‘my’ encounter with a VR experience, or should authors write ‘the user/ viewer’, or would it be more appropriate to adopt the rhetorical ‘we’, as in “via the VR headset, we experience the world of such and such character”? Throughout the writing of this book, both authors noticed the tendency to favour one or another of these rhetorical approaches in any given case study. This was not simply a case of Author 1 deferring to one use of pronouns and Author 2 choosing another. Rather, there was slippage from one chapter to another, and even during discussion and analysis between both authors. For example, in writing of the FRVR experience in Chap. 2, it seemed natural to write about ‘the user’, whereas in discussing the 360-degree video Collisions in Chap. 5, it felt intuitively more appropriate

7 CONCLUSION 

207

to use ‘we’. While it may seem to be a superfluous point, there is something phenomenologically significant in the fact that there was an unintended slippage in the use of each term—we/me/I/user/player/ viewer—throughout the writing. Each author intuitively adopted a different term as it seemed appropriate for any given case study. If screen studies is to continue pursuing VR, then it may be important to determine some standards around this type of analytic writing. Or perhaps not; perhaps part of the productive process of such writing is in the inevitable rhetorical discoveries that occur along the way as the field develops. We thus turn over to the scholarly community the question and debate around how the spectator is referred to in relation to VR works.

Conclusion This book has demonstrated that, for the screen studies scholar, understanding VR begins with fully embracing immersion. The case studies here are borne out of the authors being immersed at a number of levels, and in a number of ways. The first step was to try multiple VR headsets and spend a great deal of time, over a number of years, exploring different types of content. At the same time, we undertook the standard research practice of being immersed in the relevant reading and literature, both from within and outside of screen studies. This was supplemented with a process of being immersed in the production of a number of creative projects utilising VR technology, adopting an agnostic and open attitude towards how these projects would be received, and user-testing their assumptions. In doing this, the authors immersed themselves to the point that the novelty of immersion in VR, and in any given experience, was no longer a dominant factor. This is no different, ultimately, to how screen scholars approach the analysis of a film or television show. Typically, the scholar has been immersed in the type of media to the point that they are able to maintain a critical distance—the technology is no longer fantastical nor a curiosity. In taking this approach to immersive media, rather than becoming inured to the impact of VR, both authors have gained a surprising appreciation for the medium. VR experiences continue to surprise; moreover, they continue to provide unique pleasures as well as predictable frustrations. We have found that the approach of VR phenomenology has proven to be highly valuable as a way of engaging with the medium. It is hoped that this book will provide a fruitful starting point for future research programmes

208 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

by scholars seeking to understand how this exciting medium of immersive technology can be utilised, critiqued and engaged with on both creative and intellectual terms.

References Arnheim, R. (1957). Film as art. University of California Press. Bailenson, J. (2018). Experience on demand: What virtual reality is, how it works, and what it can do. W. W. Norton & Company. Bates, J. (1992). Virtual reality, art, and entertainment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1), 133–138. Bender & D’Silva. (2016). Gone in 360 Seconds. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=itWJ221IBrU Bender, S. (2019). Headset attentional synchrony: Tracking the gaze of viewers watching narrative virtual reality. Media Practice and Education, 20(3), 277–296. Bertrand, P., Guegan, J., Robieux, L., McCall, C.  A., & Zenasni, F. (2018). Learning empathy through virtual reality: Multiple strategies for training empathy-­related abilities using body ownership illusions in embodied virtual reality. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5, 26. Bordwell, D. (1985). Narration in the fiction film. Methuen. Bordwell, D. (2012). Poetics of Cinema. Routledge. Clarke, A., & Mitchell, G. (2000). Playing with film language. The Visual-­ Narrative Matrix, Southampton Institute. http://transformreality.com/downloads/papers/Playing%20with%20Film%20Language.pdf Dooley, K. (2017). Storytelling with virtual reality in 360-degrees: A new screen grammar. Studies in Australasian Cinema, 11(3), 161–171. Fludernik, M. (1994). Second-person narrative as a test case for narratology: The limits of realism. Style, 28(3), 445–479. Golding, D. (2019). Far from paradise: The body, the apparatus and the image of contemporary virtual reality. Convergence: The International Journal of Research Into New Media, 25(2), 340–353. Jütten, L. H., Mark, R. E., & Sitskoorn, M. M. (2018). Can the mixed virtual reality simulator into dementia enhance empathy and understanding and decrease burden in informal dementia caregivers? Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders Extra, 8(3), 453–466. Kleinsmith, A., Rivera-Gutierrez, D., Finney, G., Cendan, J., & Lok, B. (2015). Understanding empathy training with virtual patients. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 151–158. Lanier, J. (2018). Dawn of the new everything: Encounters with reality and virtual reality. Picador.

7 CONCLUSION 

209

Lebowitz, J., & Klug, C. (2011). Interactive storytelling for video games: A player-­ centered approach to creating memorable characters and stories. Taylor & Francis. Lemon, L.  T., & Reis, M.  J. (1965). Russian formalist criticism: Four essays. University of Nebraska Press. Lescop, L. (2017). Narrative grammar in 360. 2017 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR-Adjunct), 254–257. Louie, A. K., Coverdale, J. H., Balon, R., Beresin, E. V., Brenner, A. M., Guerrero, A. P. S., & Roberts, L. W. (2018). Enhancing empathy: A role for virtual teality? Academic Psychiatry: The Journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry, 42(6), 747–752. Metz, C. (1974). Film language: A semiotics of the cinema. Oxford University Press. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screening: Journal of the International Society of Neonatal Screening, 16(3), 6–18. Palombini, A. (2017). Storytelling and telling history. Towards a grammar of narratives for cultural heritage dissemination in the Digital Era. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 24, 134–139. Parkes, W. (1994, January). Random access, remote control: The evolution of storytelling. Omni, 16, 48+. Pillai, J.  S., Ismail, A., & Charles, H.  P. (2017). Grammar of VR storytelling: Visual cues. In Proceedings of the virtual reality international conference – Laval Virtual 2017 (pp. 1–4). Pillai, J. S., & Verma, M. (2019). Grammar of VR storytelling: Narrative immersion and experiential fidelity in VR cinema. Paper presented at the The 17th International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry, 1–6. Richardson, B. (1991). The poetics and politics of second person narrative. Genre, 24, 309–330. Roswell, R.  O., Cogburn, C.  D., Tocco, J., Martinez, J., Bangeranye, C., Bailenson, J. N., Wright, M., Mieres, J. H., & Smith, L. (2020). Cultivating empathy through virtual reality: Advancing conversations about racism, inequity, and climate in medicine. Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 95(12), 1882–1886. Schutte, N.  S., & Stilinović, E.  J. (2017). Facilitating empathy through virtual reality. Motivation and Emotion, 41(6), 708–712. Seinfeld, S., Arroyo-Palacios, J., Iruretagoyena, G., Hortensius, R., Zapata, L. E., Borland, D., de Gelder, B., Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M.  V. (2018). Offenders become the victim in virtual reality: Impact of changing perspective in domestic violence. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 2692. https://doi.org/10.1038/ s41598-­018-­19987-­7 Shafi, R., Shuai, W., & Younus, M.  U. (2020). 360-degree video streaming: A survey of the state of the art. Symmetry, 12(9), 1491.

210 

S. M. BENDER AND M. BRODERICK

Silverman, K. (1983). The subject of semiotics. Oxford University Press. Sobchack, V. (1992). The address of the eye: a phenomenology of film experience. Princeton University Press. Sobchack, V. (2004). Carnal thoughts: Embodiment and moving image culture. University of California Press. Sobchack, V. (2009). The active eye: A phenomenology of cinematic vision. Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 12(3), 21–36. https://doi. org/10.1080/10509209009361350 Spottiswoode, R.  A. (1951). Grammar of The Film University of California. University of California Press. Stavroulia, K. E., & Lanitis, A. (2019). Enhancing reflection and empathy skills via using a virtual reality based learning framework. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 14(07), 18–36. Thompson, K. (1981). Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible: A neoformalist analysis. Princeton University Press. Tyndale, E., & Ramsoomair, F. (2016). Keys to successful interactive storytelling: A study of the booming “choose-your-own-adventure” video game industry. I-Manager’s Journal of Educational Technology, 13(3), 28–34. Ventura, S., Badenes-Ribera, L., Herrero, R., Cebolla, A., Galiana, L., & Baños, R. (2020). Virtual reality as a medium to elicit empathy: A meta-analysis. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 23(10), 667–676. Zeitchik, S. (2018, March 31). Cinematic VR could be a game changer – If anyone will pay for it. Daily Herald. https://www.dailyherald.com/business/20180331/cinematic-­vr-­could-­be-­a-­game-­changer-­x2014-­if-­anyonewill-­pay-­for-­it

Index

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS [08:46] (VR experience), 20, 110, 116, 118–120, 132, 140, 141, 150, 152, 160 360-degree video, 9–11, 28, 60, 62, 93, 133, 135, 137, 139, 140, 150, 151, 153–156, 160–162, 181, 188, 206 A Anxiety and heights, 99 music performance anxiety, 91, 94 speech anxiety, 93 VR and, 19, 78, 90, 92–100 Arizona Sunshine (VR game), 68, 94, 177 B Bailenson, Jeremy, 21, 22, 99–101, 172, 174, 177, 183–186, 190, 198 Biometrics, 56, 58, 61–64, 70 See also Psychophysiological measurement

Bravemind (VR application), 81, 82, 85, 86, 91, 96, 97, 101 C Call of Duty (videogame), 36, 37, 45, 86, 172 Carne y Arena (Flesh and Sand, VR experience), 95, 182, 183 Chernobyl (VR experience), 21, 100, 132, 149–163 Clouds Over Sidra (360-degree video documentary), 4, 5, 139 Collisions (360-degree video documentary), 20, 132, 133, 140–149, 156, 206 E Embodiment, 13, 15–18, 28, 31–34, 39, 48, 97, 127, 146, 156, 173, 178, 179 and disembodiment in Collisions, 147 See also Phenomenology

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 S. M. Bender, M. Broderick, Virtual Realities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82547-8

211

212 

INDEX

Empathy criticisms of empathy and virtual reality, 5 empathy and virtual reality, 4, 5, 9, 17, 18, 20, 109–164, 172, 174, 204 empty empathy, 21, 109 Enjoyment (and VR), 32, 67 Exposure therapy, 44, 77–102, 181 See also Virtual reality exposure therapy Eye-tracking virtual reality viewer, 61, 62, 117 See also Psychophysiological measurement F Fear of heights, 80, 99, 100, 159 VR and, 63, 159 in zombie games, 63, 177 Free-roam virtual reality (FRVR), 13–15, 206 Future shock, 7 G Gone in 360 Seconds (360-degree video), 10, 11, 30, 31, 33, 93, 206 Guns in VR, 37, 185 H Hype and virtual reality, 3, 8, 40 Hypothesis generation, 56, 58–59, 70, 71 I Immersion, 3, 6, 17, 18, 20, 21, 29, 33, 34, 44, 55, 59, 60, 79, 83, 84, 87, 89–90, 92, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 109, 110, 118, 121, 129, 130, 132–163, 173, 177–179, 190, 203, 207

See also Phenomenology Interaction, 10, 17, 19, 20, 31, 39, 60, 79, 85, 89–90, 94, 97, 109, 116–119, 125, 127, 128, 137, 138, 141, 156, 178, 186, 188, 189 K Kiya (VR experience), 20, 132–141, 150, 153, 156, 160 L Lady in the Lake (film), 12, 30, 31 Lanier, Jaron, 89, 101, 197 Last Goodbye, The (360-degree video documentary), 20, 131 M Marnie (film), 92 Media effects research (and violence), 174–176, 186 Military simulation (mil-sim), 14, 18, 19, 35, 37, 39, 45, 48, 78, 177, 185, 188, 203 Milk, Chris, 4, 5, 7, 109, 174, 184 N New Dimensions in Testimony (holographic exhibit), 20, 127–132 O One Dark Night (VR experience), 133 Onward (VR game), 34–48, 177, 185, 188 P Phenomenology embodiment and virtual reality, 15–18, 127, 146

 INDEX 

film phenomenology, 10, 15, 16, 18, 27–31, 41, 48, 53, 64, 70, 119, 197, 203 presence and virtual reality, 10–15, 146 VR phenomenology, 9, 18–21, 28–34, 41, 48, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64, 67–71, 79, 92–101, 109, 110, 118, 127, 128, 130, 132, 147, 164, 174, 176, 185–190, 197, 202–207 Place illusion (PI), 19, 32, 33, 36, 43, 65, 68, 83, 85, 87, 88, 92–95, 97, 129, 130, 153, 156, 158 Plausibility illusion (PSI), 19, 32–34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 65, 68, 83, 85–88, 93, 94, 98, 129, 130, 156, 158, 185 Point of view (first-person), 12, 30 Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) combat trauma, 80 military sexual trauma (MST), 92, 93, 96–98, 101 Presence, 5, 8, 10–15, 18, 29, 32, 33, 58, 79, 83, 84, 87, 89–90, 100, 116, 122, 127, 128, 131, 138, 140, 146, 149, 153, 154, 177 See also Phenomenology Psychophysiological measurement eye-tracking, 19, 61, 62 facial electromyography (fEMG), 67 skin conductance level (SCL), 61, 62, 66, 67 Q Quantified-self movement, 71 R Ready Player One (film), 1–3, 6 Realism, 19, 21, 43, 79, 81–92, 97, 101, 102, 130, 153, 176, 178, 181, 187, 190

213

photorealism, 79, 83–87, 92, 101, 139, 150 S Self-report surveys, 56, 59–61, 65, 70, 93, 205 September 11 terror attacks, 111, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124–126 Skin conductance level (SCL), 61, 62, 66, 67 See also Psychophysiological measurement Sobchack, Vivian, 10, 15, 16, 27, 28, 30, 31, 37, 48, 70, 197 T Trauma, 5, 18–21, 78, 81, 83, 92, 96, 97, 109–164, 174, 178–181, 188, 202, 203 vicarious trauma, 174, 180 Trauma film paradigm, 180, 181 V Violence aesthetics of, 187 regulation of, 190 Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), 18–20, 44, 77–102, 181, 188, 203, 206 See also Exposure therapy W Walking the plank VR scenario, 101 Z Zombie games, 56, 64–70, 186