Gaze-guided viewing of interactive movies

Narrative Structure and Player Experience in Role-Playing Games

“…In a comparison of viewer responses to branching narrative structures in television among solitary and coviewing settings, Lee, Heeter, and LaRose (2010) found a significant increase in feelings of joy within both the solitary and coviewing branching conditions. In contrast, Vesterby et al (2005) suggested that the novelty of "playing" with an interactive narrative system itself may overshadow the user's presence and engagement with the story and suggested that the "dream-like immersion" in interactive cinema is fatally disrupted by conscious user controls at salient decision points. Vesterby et al wondered if branching narratives can lead to a variety of engaging new cinematic forms without conscious narrative causal-agency.…”

“…Salient decision points in branching structures have been speculated to cause breaks in presence across media, especially within immersive virtual-reality simulations and interactive cinema (Vesterby et al, 2005). Research in game engagement suggests that salient decision points can potentially increase feelings of effectance (the experience of causal agency) and increase the perception of game complexity (Reidl & Young, 2006).…”

“…We can assume some transfer of one's real-world moral decision making into the game environment. Moral disengagement was not found to be common when players were given moral agency in an RPG with a branching structure (Vesterby et al, 2005). They reported making decisions as they would in real life, had high empathy for nonplayer characters (NPCs), and experienced emotions like those in actual interpersonal interactions.…”

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? An eye-tracking evaluation of dynamic scenes

“…Whilst it is undoubtedly true that filmmakers have a range of techniques through which they may attempt to impose an interpretation of an event (Bazin 1967), film technique, derived largely from experience and intuition, assumes a homogeneity of audience reception, rather than an understanding that the audience may not only create their own meaning through their interaction with the film (Allen 1990;Staiger 1992) but may also actually physically view it in different ways. Previous studies have shown that there is often a degree of common experience, where a range of viewers will focus their visual attention onto a common area (Itti 2004;Vesterby et al 2005;Goldstein et al 2007), however this seems highly dependent on the material being viewed and appears to be influenced by both low level sensory triggers such as motion and contrast (Stelmach et al 1991;Findlay 1984) and 'top down' conscious control mechanisms such as our attraction to the human face (Privitera and Stark 2000;Tosi, Mecacci and Pasquali 1997). There is as yet limited discussion regarding the effects of cinematic devices deliberately engineered to control the gaze of the viewer.…”

Eye-Tracking Film Music

“…7 Previous studies have shown that spectators typically focus their visual attention onto a particular common area. 8 This seems to be influenced by both low level sensory triggers such as contrast and motion, and 'top-down' conscious control mechanisms such as attraction to the human face. Music may be able to focus attention in multisensory moving images sequences, as Cohen suggested, because the gestural patterns and/or emotional associations generated by music attach themselves automatically to the visual focus of attention, but researchers have not as yet been able to prove this empirically.…”