🤼Teaming Up

Wayfinding: Taxonomy > Virtual Reality Theatre > Teaming Up

Videogames created the foundation for both the software and the communities which are transitioning into the virtual reality space. Videogame graphics have pushed the limits of computing hardware for decades, which in turn has allowed Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs) and Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games to host more users and thus become social spaces. ‘Shared virtual environments support real-time interaction among participants involved in a collaborative activity, unlike single user virtual reality (VR) where the participants are isolated from each other’. Technology sociologist Sherry Turkle writes of the budding virtual communities forming through these online games: ‘Although the games most often took the form of quests, medieval and otherwise, the virtual environments were most compelling because they offered opportunities for a social life, for performing as the self you wanted to be’; she further relays an anecdote of a user who started playing a videogame for the 'hack and slash' but 'stayed for the chats'. Users could interact as their game characters, or avatars, which meant they were performing as that character – and, in turn, attaching their sense of self to that character. This level of performance borders on theatrical improvisation, with world-building rules around how users interact, the language used within the performance space, appropriate costumes and props available, and other signifiers.

Even in 2012, theatre makers acknowledged the potential of virtual spaces for social gathering and community-building via embodiment: ‘The avatar body is one of animation, in contrast to the transmission of the filmed body through the use of telepresence. … As an instrument for the growth of intercultural understanding through gesture exchange and chat (text and audio), it has no competition and today it is recognized as a distance bridger …’. An avatar is currently understood as the animated character embodied by a user to represent them in the virtual world, but the word originally comes from Sanskrit’s avatara, a physical manifestation of a deity on earth; Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is credited for popularising avatar in its current digital incarnation. This embodiment likely assists the mental and emotional transfer of one’s sense of self into a digital environment, allowing humans to be ourselves in a non-place. Brendan Bradley enthusiastically explained the phenomenon: ‘we're living a kind of shamanism in real-time, which is extraordinary. I mean, we're astral projecting, basically, it's insane’; later, though, Bradley described how using an avatar was similar to using a puppet, where the audience enjoys watching the puppeteer’s skill as much as the puppet’s physicality.

One of the first virtual social spaces with little gamification attached was Second Life, launched in 2003. Second Life built on graphic chats and message boards found online before it, but further fleshed out virtual avatars for more embodied user interactions. Theatre productions followed soon after, with the SL Shakespeare Company performing Hamlet in February 2008. Although Second Life has lost much of its popularity to Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and trendier virtual gathering spaces, it is still available and there are several virtual theatre spaces which are possible places of performance. For a few years, the Australian Film, Television, and Radio School even maintained a virtual island there, where its students could learn machinima filming techniques.