Snoop Dogg's manager, Constance Schwartz, said she did not have a clue about virtual worlds when Virtual Greats approached her this year, so she and her team spent a week exploring Gaia Online.
Another kind of early nonlinear story was the so-called Easter egg model, in which users worked their way through a virtual environment, searching for clues and pieces of treasure hidden like Easter eggs in imaginary chambers.
Also interesting is the installation game Taphobos, a sort of buried alive simulator, where the Oculus wearer gets inside an actual coffin and must look around its virtual onscreen representation for clues, which will allow a companion working on a PC to locate where their friend is buried.
Recently, the virtual assistant has gotten clued into what the voice apps written for her platform can do, and will make suggestions if she thinks there's one that can help you with your question.
In short order, we're following Ellie on a mad dash across provincial China, from Beijing to Taiyuan, Pingyao, Xi'an and Chengdu, and watching her initiation into an online community called the Sword of Ill Repute, where, in the guise of the avatar Little Mountain Tiger, she's sent on a virtual wild goose chase for clues to the whereabouts of her artist friend, who seems to have disappeared.
This technology can help patients because our brains process clues in the virtual world that can affect us in the real world, Andrea Serino, head neuroscientist at MindMaze, says.
Those who solve the most clues will have their virtual icon woven into the story line of the TV show.
Dr Rowan said: "In using virtual objects there were no other clues that someone might use: for instance, the creaking as you move an object around or the wafting of air across their face as you move something around".
So what happens when the determination of context becomes almost entirely impossible, because speaker and listener are communicating in a virtual space within which most context clues are absent?
"We made a game called Save the World, in which players had to find ways to address global issues of pollution and poverty by engaging virtual characters in conversation in order to gather clues," he said.
