The World Building Framework for Immersive Storytelling Projects

Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, NAD-UQAC, 2566 Rue de Bleury, 7e étage Montréal (Québec) H3A 2J2, Canada

Abstract

This article explores issues associated with immersive storytelling in order to examine how the field of World Building can constitute a theoretical framework for practice in the context of VR-based and Full Dome artistic projects. With respect to immersion, the intent will be to interpret the concept of storytelling in relation with the recent formulation of the concept of extended reality (XR). The very concept of World Building is transauthor and transmedia by nature. The transauthor dimension of World Building resides in the idea of subcreation, i.e., designing environments and interaction rules that help create a storytelling basis for generating multiple stories. Once the universe has been conceived, stories written by different authors take shape through transmedia processes across multiple distribution media (film, video games, web, etc.). The question then arises: How can the World Building approach shape the construction of immersive experiences? The article sets out to answer this question, and in doing so, to contribute to the research on environmental storytelling.