Interactive cultural story-telling virtual environments using San stories

Abstract

Story-telling is being used for the preservation of culture, and interactive story-telling in particular is attractive for its ability to provide the user with a hands-on experience. We explored the feasibility of interactive story-telling in relation to the San culture of South Africa by investigating the effect of interactivity on users' perceived levels of presence. Presence refers to the feeling of being there in a virtual environment (VE presence). We also investigated the level of presence in the story (story presence). Priming as a contributor to presence, and the relationship between VE presence, story presence, and enjoyment were also investigated. These investigations were made based on two virtual environments (one allowing intcraction with the story and the other not interactive) and two priming materials (one relevant to San culture nnd the other not relevant).