Part II: There Is No Third Person
We’ve already discussed the distinct, dreamlike presence one feels inside a VR narrative; that feeling of being intimately present up until a point and then definitively detached. It’s a very special kind of presence and it can potentially lead to some very special kinds of stories. But frankly, the quality of the presence one feels in VR is secondary to the simple fact that you clearly have presence and that this presence is unavoidable.
“Clouds Over Sidra” is a virtual reality short film that takes us to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. We meet a young girl who describes for us both the harsh difficulties and small joys inside Sidra as we immerse ourselves in scenes of daily life there; school, soccer games, family dinners. It’s one of the more emotionally arresting VR films to have come out, mainly because of the subject matter (a homesick little girl quietly crying in front of your eyes is going to be arresting in any medium).
Nevertheless, our own virtual presence there serves to deepen those emotions. There’s a small moment midway through “Clouds Over Sidra” that occurs while the camera is in a kind of makeshift internet cafe where the camp’s teenage boys can come to play video games. At one point, a boy turns from his game and speaks directly to the camera in Arabic. He grins and raises up his index finger and I assume he’s boasting about his gameplay or his clique of friends. Or his country. It’s a throwaway moment except that he’s looking right at you. And remember: in this virtual world, where the view is yours and yours alone, when someone looks you in the eye, they’re looking you in the eye.
When a teenage Syrian refugee does it and does it in a way that reminds you of a million teenage boys, that reminds you of you, it leaves a mark. That mark is called empathy.
To empathize with another person is to internalize that person’s own experience. Storytelling basically exists to create empathy through the language of emotion. I may not have any idea what it’s like to live in a third-world refugee camp but I do know what it feels like to be homesick (and also what it feels like to be a cocky teenage boy) and I can recognize those emotions in another. Doing so gets me as close as I can to experiencing life in Sidra. Except now, we can get even closer. We can immerse ourselves in the virtual reality of that experience. Now, I don’t have to translate my own homesickness into hers. Now, her experience is my experience. I’m not sure if there’s a more conducive narrative environment to empathy than the one VR has created for us.
That degree of empathy creates a connection that in turn creates a sense of responsibility. This is a characteristic inherent to gaming, which gives you an avatar and allows you to control him or her, putting their fate, their hopes for happiness or success or whatever, directly in your hands. If I could have played “Clouds Over Sidra” as a game, then you better believe I would have worked very hard to get those people out of that terribly sad place. But I cannot. Realizing this gives way to another surge of emotion, a sense of helplessness followed by a real impulse to return to the real world and enact the change there that I could not do virtually. I kept thinking of those late-night infomercials where the big, burly guy with the white beard and the wobbly voice implores you, the viewer, to adopt a third world child by giving $5 a month, and how impactful his message would be in VR. Those kids would be raking it in.
We at VR Playhouse have begun to explore that unique kind of empathy with our forthcoming, original narrative series, First Person. In First Person, your avatar is a man trying to get back into the dating scene following a divorce. You don’t have any control over this avatar, apart from where he’s looking at any given moment. You are simply an observer as he goes on his journey. What he says, where he goes, the choices he makes are outside of your power. But you are watching through his eyes. You are there and so you are responsible. The need for control, coupled with the utter inability to have any, is a pretty good definition of a new kind of conflict, not one for our characters but one for our audience.