Communicating life-saving knowledge: The multimodal arrangement in Lifesaver VR

VR applications for medical simulations such as emergency situations offer new ways of providing knowledge and practical skills for saving a life and potentially represent a complex communicative environment. The communicative situations constructed by this environment bring with them an increasing level of interactivity and ergodicity and it is particularly challenging to address these analytically. We address this challenge by looking at Lifesaver VR and providing a foundational framework for the multimodal analysis of the communicative situations created in this application. We describe how information and content units of the game can be built and how these units can then be combined into complex discourse structures outlining the complexity and simultaneity of narrative, instructional, and interactive aspects of the game. •Offers a multimodal approach to VR game design and interactive complexity.•Takes a holistic perspective of the communicative richness of video games.•Study is rooted in formal discourse semantics and multimodal linguistics.•Lifesaver VR integrates narrative and instructional elements to teach CPR.