A Novel Narrative Intelligence Structure for Interactive Drama in Computer Games Workflow

Interactive drama and storytelling applications have become major issues in video games development. Prior research in interactive storytelling identified that adding narrative in computer games is a challenging task because: (i) it may restrict player interactivity, (ii) narrative causality/control, (iii) the duality between characters and plot, and (iv) the trade-off between narrative progression and user interaction. This chapter attempts to solve these problems by proposing an integrated framework for deeply combining interactivity and narrative in computer games workflow. It presents state-of-the-art results with respect to interactive drama and Petri nets (PN), and highlights some petri-net-based workflow tools for game design and game rules principles. The idea is to compose the game rules in the game’s workflow environment by different triggers and effects; and separates the rules of the game environment into two parts: controllable and noncontrollable rules. The main contribution of this chapter is to show how workflow management concepts can be jointly utilized with Petri nets (PN) for modeling game systems and game workflow control. Evaluation and performance results supported by some case study called “crazy ball 2” are also demonstrated. “Crazy ball 2” is a platform-type genre, much like the worldwide-known game Mario and the Konami’s Castlevania series.