Scenting Entertainment: Virtual Reality Storytelling, Theme Park Rides, Gambling, and Video-Gaming.

Charles Spence

doi:10.1177/20416695211034538

Abstract

There has long been interest in both the tonic and phasic release of scent across a wide range of entertainment settings. While the presentation of semantically congruent scent has often been used in order to enhance people’s immersion in a particular context, other generally less successful attempts have involved the pulsed presentation of a range of scents tied to specific events/scenes. Scents have even been released in the context of the casino to encourage the guests to linger for longer (and spend more), at least according to the results of one controversial study. In this narrative review, I want to take a closer look at the use of scent in a range of both physical and digital environments, highlighting the successes (as in the case of scented theme park rides) and frequent failures (as, seemingly, in the context of scent-enabled video games). While digitally inducing meaningful olfactory sensations is likely to remain a pipe dream for the foreseeable future, the digital control of scent release/delivery provides some limited opportunities to enhance the multisensory experience of entertainment. That said, it remains uncertain whether the general public will necessarily perceive the benefit, and hence be willing to pay for the privilege.

Highlights

It has been the various attempts to digitally control the release of scent in the context of the cinema that perhaps comes closest to use of scent in video games or other forms of digital home-entertainment, such as watching the TV, that are the focus of this narrative review
This review will focus on the costs and benefits of introducing scent in a variety of virtual reality (VR) storytelling applications (e.g., Delaunay, 2014; Park et al, 2002; Ranasinghe et al, 2018), in theme parks (Mack, 2014), in the casino, and in video-gaming (e.g., Ranasinghe et al, 2019)
One of the other challenges in a gaming context is that it can be hard to know when exactly a scent should be released, whereas in the setting of the cinema, theatre, or theme park ride it can be precisely controlled allowing time for one scent to clear before arrives, By contrast, a gamer’s progression is much less certain, and there might be a very real danger of olfactory overload or adaptation were a gamer to get stuck at a certain point in the game where there was a scented element to proceedings

Summary

Introduction

One of the other challenges in a gaming context is that it can be hard to know when exactly a scent should be released, whereas in the setting of the cinema, theatre, or theme park ride it can be precisely controlled allowing time for one scent to clear before arrives, By contrast, a gamer’s progression is much less certain, and there might be a very real danger of olfactory overload or adaptation were a gamer to get stuck at a certain point in the game where there was a scented element to proceedings (cf Kadowaki et al, 2007).

Results

Conclusion