Yarncraft: Location Aware Narratives in Virtual Space

Location-aware narratives are a form of hypertext in which the path of the narrative is determined by the reader’s physical location. In this paper we adapt an existing model of location-aware sculptural hypertext to make it suitable for navigating in virtual space, and create an extension to an existing virtual world to demonstrate how hyper-narratives written in this framework may be consumed in both physical and virtual space. We demonstrate the unique potential of virtual spaces by not only adapting the narrative to match the reader’s location, but by adapting the reader’s location to match the narrative. In doing so, we lay the groundwork for an experiment into whether the immersive effects of location-aware hypernarratives can be heightened by leveraging the inherent benefits of virtual worlds.

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