Interactive Storytelling

We are at a milestone moment in the development of the cultural form of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN), and in the development of the study of IDN as a field of academic research and graduate education. We can date the beginning of the field to the late 1960s with the release of Joseph Weizenbaum’s Eliza in 1966, and recognize the late 1990s as another turning point when 30 years of diverse development began to coalesce into a recognizable new media practice. For the past 20 years we have seen accelerated growth in theory and practice, but the discourse has been split among contributory fields. With the convening of IDN as the focus of study in its own right, we can address key questions, such as its distinct history, taxonomy, and aesthetics. We can also recognize more clearly our unique challenges in studying a field that is evolving rapidly, and from multiple intersecting genetic strains. We can also articulate and investigate the potential of IDN as an expressive framework for engaging with the most pressing themes of human culture of the 21st century, and as a cognitive scaffold for increasing our individual and collective understanding of complex systems.

As the interactive narrative community continues to mature, discussions are beginning in which we debate the relative merits of differing methodologies, discuss priorities around classes of problems and look at epistemological questions that arise from what we perceive as limitations of our work. Horswill’s Science Considered Harmful initiated a conversation around the role of science in the advancement of knowledge in our field, putting forward the idea that a scientific mindset restricts our ability to progress. In this paper, I respond, arguing that science, and more generally scientific rigor and the kind of results that it produces, are well served by a discourse that makes productive distinctions between such things as science and not science. In particular, I argue that such a thing as a science of narrative exists, that scientific work is an important way to advance our knowledge of computational models of narrative and that scholarly practice around interactive narrative research does not need to be viewed as only scientific or as only artistic/aesthetic.

This paper presents arguments for the creation of an academic discipline concerned with the analysis and design of interactive digital narratives, akin to game studies. I analyse the status quo as the result of foundational aspects and the effects of the historical development of games studies before identifying a range of problems that have their root cause in the lack of an academic home and the support structures that come with it. In particular, the lack of a legitimizing framework translates into difficulties with academic recognition, reduced opportunities for grants and scholarships, scarcity of academic positions, and discontinuity of research which amounts to academic memory loss. In order to understand where the field stands, I apply three perspectives on requirements for an academic discipline from outside the field and come to the conclusion that while much progress has been made, there are areas in need of further attention, in particular when it comes to formal programs of study. Conversely, I identify the development of degree programs as an area needing particular attention in order to create an academic discipline.

If we have not yet achieved planetary super-villainy on the desktop, it may be feasible to fit it into a suburban office suite. The familiar perils of fiction and deceit can now be augmented by mass customization, allowing powerful malefactors to shape perceived reality to suit their preferences. Social media permit the modern villain to deploy traditional cruelties to great and surprising effect. Interactive digital storytelling lets us exploit weakness and illness for profit and help us normalize wickedness. Because the impact of villainous techniques is radically asymmetric, our fetid plots are difficult and costly to foil.

The fourth layer of narrative in Interactive Narrative Systems (INS), such as games, is the players’ re-tellings of the stories they have experienced when playing. The occurrence of re-tellings can be considered as an indicator for a well designed INS and as an instrument of critique - the experiences of play are important and memorable to such a degree to the players that they find them worthy to tell others about. The notion of the fourth layer is added to the structural model of IN Systems having (1) a base architectural layer giving conditions for a (2) second layer of narrative design, while a (3) third layer is the narrative discourse - eg. the unique, session-specific played or traversed sequences of events. In relation to this, the Story Construction model is described.

Interactive storytelling balances the desire to create dynamic, engaging experiences around characters and situations with the practical considerations of the cost of producing content. We describe a method for assessing player experience by analyzing player facial expressions following key content events in The Wolf Among Us by Telltale Games. Two metrics, engagement and valence, are extracted for six participants who play the first episode of the game. An analysis of the variance and distribution of responses relative to emotionally charged content events and choices suggests that content is designed around events that serve to anchor player emotions while providing the freedom to respond through emotionally-motivated choice selections and content elicitors.

The practice of designing Interactive Digital Narratives [IDN] is often described as a challenge facing issues such as the “narrative paradox” and avoiding the unintentional creation of “ludonarrative dissonance”. These terms are expressions of a perspective that takes narrative and interactivity as dichotomic ends of a design trajectory, mirroring an enduring discussion in game studies between positions often cast as ludologists and narratologists. The dichotomy of ludo versus narrative is, in itself, problematic and is often the source of the very conflict it describes. In this paper, we investigate this issue through the example of the cooperative game A Way Out, in which two players team up to break out of prison. The game is designed with a narrative twist, involving the escalation and final resolution of the game’s competitive motif in the final scene. To understand the user experiences of this reveal, and the concomitant consequences, we engage in a discursive analysis of “Let’s Play” videos as a largely untapped resource for research. By analyzing the interactions and performances in these videos, we can more clearly understand player responses to unsatisfying IDN design. As a result we introduce the notion of a ‘hermeneutic strip’, extending Koenitz’ SPP model to locate and describe the involved processes of narrative cognition in IDN work.

In narrative game design and related practices, the role and function of narrative models is described as predominantly pragmatic. However, we see that many interactive digital narratives (IDN) including narrative video games derive their story structures from the same formulas connected to Joseph Campbell and Aristotle, adhering to the trajectory of the Hero’s Journey and the dramatic arc. We engage with scholarly criticism exposing the supposed ubiquity of these structures and agree that the question of narrative models in interactive digital media requires both further exploration and intervention. We follow up on some proposed solutions by looking at non-Western narrative traditions to expand the corpus of narrative structures available to game designers and other narrative developers. With this paper we raise awareness of alternative structures and simultaneously introduce implementable narrative structures with the aim to expand the design space and range of analytical models for IDN.

It is a common assumption that subjects unconsciously construct storyworlds in their minds when experiencing a narrative. In this article we suggest that this construction includes imagined rules and constraints that if violated may affect the subjects’ suspension of disbelief. In this direction, we examine whether the cognitive processing of people experiencing interactive narratives varies based on whether the outcomes of their actions are perceived to be predictable and plausible, according to the narrative context. In order to explore this hypothesis, we devised an event-related-potential experiment and created a video game featuring a number of player-instigated narrative events within three different categories: (a) predictable-plausible, (b) unpredictable-plausible, and (c) unpredictable-implausible. Based on the analysis of the N400 and P600 ERP components, our results show that there is a significant detectable difference between the three categories. Additionally, the results strongly indicate that experiencers of interactive narratives do indeed create storyworlds’ rules and constraints in their minds, and that the imagined rules of these worlds can be felt to be broken by implausible events.

This study addresses a typically silent dimension of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) theory and practice – meta-communication between designer and player. Meta-communication involves directly sharing thoughts and feelings the designer and player have during the development process. We refer to this interaction as “meta-communication” to distinguish it from comments about behavior, such as mentioning options chosen and evaluations of the IDN product. To address foundational questions about meta-communication in the IDN process, we conducted a research workshop with undergraduate novice IDN designers. Participants worked through a series of Twine IDN design-play sessions and made their meta-communication explicit using a think-aloud protocol. Transcriptions of the think-aloud sessions and notes made by designers and players during the IDN design process were analyzed for expressive functions, such as stating confusion or emotion. Analyses of the IDN designs identified structural features such as nodes and connections. Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the frequency and type of meta-communications relate to the complexity of the final product (connection density). This study contributes a practice-based research approach accounting for inter-subjective dimensions of the IDN experience, thereby adding measurable psychological constructs to IDN theory.

Interactive digital narratives (IDNs) have been widely studied in the format of video games and in the fiction genre, but less attention has been focused on the creative process and non-fiction. There are many IDN formats such as interactive cinema and transmedia stories and with these increasingly complex narrative forms, there are more people involved in the creation beyond the author of the text, such as graphic designers, programmers, curators, photographers and other specialists. Considering the affordances and limitations of new media is also increasingly important for IDN creation. This article takes a media-centred approach and adapts the principles of rhetoric to create a framework that aims to support the process of collaborative authorship of non-fiction IDNs in different formats.

This article approaches the question of choice in interactive narratives and presents a multidimensional classification model based on a selection and characterization of 31 existing works. The methodology for establishing such a classification is detailed, which considers composing elements, functions, aesthetic considerations, and mechanics for choice presentation. This article uses an observational approach for analyzing interactive narratives based in theoretical considerations.

Studies showing the influence of pro-social interactive digital narratives on their participants’ appreciation of the modelled situations are subject to having the participants perceiving their interaction as meaningful and being able to clearly understand the consequences of their actions. This paper suggests the supplementary use of the Narrative Consistency criterion to assess the participants’ understanding of the modelled social context by measuring how the interactive narrative’s outcomes meet their expectations across replays.

Linear and branching narrative structures are widespread in games, but limited in their dynamism and expressiveness. We consider the alternative storylets model of interactive narrative content, in which a game’s narrative is assembled from a database of discrete, reorderable narrative “chunks” or “modules” known as storylets. This paper represents a first attempt to map out the design space of storylet-based narrative systems in games. We define the common elements of storylet-based systems; categorize such systems along several distinct dimensions; and survey implementations of such systems in existing games.

When it comes to interactive digital narrative design, there is both a lack of formal training and formal knowledge. Yet, at the same time, the job title of “narrative designer” exists in many places, and many critically and commercially successful interactive digital narratives (IDN) have been realized during the past three decades. This means that interactive narrative design knowledge is mostly private, earned “the hard way” through trial, error, and intuition. The problem with this state of affairs is that design knowledge can be shared only with great difficulty, due to its use of private – and therefore inaccessible – vocabulary. In this paper, we describe a multipronged approach to the creation and sharing of formal design knowledge. We reference our empirically-based method to identify and verify design conventions, outline a formal vocabulary (an ontology), describe an online platform for the collection of convention candidates and associated events to foster collaboration between scholars and practitioners.

Prior work has called for Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives to be incorporated in educational games, but little research has explored how to achieve this within a generative context. We formalize aspects of Bloom’s taxonomy as logical assertions, thereby enabling metaphorical bridges to be generated between learning objectives and narrative elements. Through this lens, we present an example of a dynamic narrative framework driven by Bloom’s cognitive model.

Authoring for Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) requires reasoning in formal paradigms which has proven to be a difficult task. One of such paradigms is the narrative act, understood as “actions on actions”. We compiled a catalog of narrative acts and made it publicly available as an online interactive visualization tool. A preliminary evaluation deemed this ‘living’ tool as useful for inspiring authors of IDS systems.

Interactive documentary is a new genre that narrates the real and enables audience interact with reality through interactive digital technologies. This genre has grown with the development of interactive digital technology and documentary practice. It indicates a need to understand the various new perceptions of interactive documentary storytelling not only for theoretical value but also for practical guide use. However, relatively, existed studies are not comprehensive in this field, even the definition and boundary of this category are still blurry. Interactive documentary, as a wide and independent genre, demands its own storytelling system and philosophy to break through the fog and remedy the gap. My doctoral research divides this wide genre into two streams: interactive documentary film (I-Doc Film) and interactive documentation, offering some important insights into storytelling of these two compositions and aiming to build new systematic theory. Currently, my research seeks to address questions in two preliminary directions: (1) The current storytelling features and system of western and eastern I-Doc film practice; (2) The storytelling of interactive documentation as curating method and digital heritage. Based on literature review in relevant field and case studies of representative artworks and projects, a series of interviews from related artists, scholars, research group and practitioners in the industry, as well as empirical study will be conducted to enrich this research.

The evolution of new media forms in the context of contemporary ‘convergence culture’ [7] renders the entertainment industry increasingly interactive and participatory, encouraging ‘gamelike’ narrative forms that rely on the audience’s participation and agency [11, p. 3]. This doctoral research investigates choice-making in ludic environments – here, video games and transmedia storytelling – as spatial practice, in which the virtual and physical structures of the text allow the player/participant’s navigation, orientation, and (physical and mental) self-positioning within a choice-based system. Choice-making practices will be addressed through textual analysis and ethnographic research.

A considerable number of survival horror titles use the modification of sight and seeing, in particular the disruption and enhancement of the same, as important elements in relation to story and game mechanics. Examples range from simple obscuration of the gameworld by mist and darkness to highly sophisticated approaches that direct break the fourth wall with visual effects that belong not to the game world but to the player’s reality. Grouping the approaches under five headings—obscuration, distortion, mediation, perspectivity and disruption—this paper presents a comparative analysis of ten survival horror titles with a view to understanding how sight and seeing are used as story elements and narrative mechanics across the genre.

In this paper, we take up the subject of epiphany in digital games, inspired by Espen Aarseth’s claim in Cybertext that epiphany serves as one half of a “pair of master tropes [that] constitutes the dynamic of hypertext discourse: the dialectic between searching and finding typical of games in general”. This article investigates the continuities and discontinuities between the literary epiphany and the hypertext epiphany, and subsequently theorizes the different types of epiphanies that occur in various digital games. We argue that epiphany in digital games is experienced by the player instead of the fictional protagonist, and that this experience can be brought about by ludic or narrative elements (making either a ‘ludic’ or a ‘narrative epiphany’), or by the collaboration of those elements (a ‘ludonarrative epiphany’). In addition, we distinguish between epiphany on a ‘local’, meaning small-scale and context-specific, and a ‘global’ scale, pertaining to the entirety of the game system. We conclude that an improved understanding of epiphany in digital games contributes to the maturation of digital games as a medium, since it allows both designers and scholars to better understand the medium-specific ways in which games can evoke certain feelings and emotions within their players.

Despite the efforts of game companies to cut production costs, they spent more resources on developing items, animations, and special effects each year. One way to reuse game characters’ animations is to change the interaction techniques that trigger such game actions. An interaction technique is a specific way to use an interaction device to perform an interaction task. Our research focused on eight interaction techniques for the digital button: Press, Rhythmic Press, Hold, Hold and Release, Opportunity Press, Quick Press, Time-Limited Hold, and Pump. To make these changes significant for the player, the game narrative must support them. We defined a model to guide game designers in making these modifications based on the interaction techniques’ characteristics. This model offers two possibilities, increasing or decreasing the interaction techniques’ complexity. As we did not find existing cases on the market nor in the literature, we developed a game and used the decreasing complexity approach as a proof of concept. In this way, we demonstrate how it is possible to change interaction techniques without adding new animations or items to the game. We hope that game designers can use our model to change interaction techniques while keeping the game narrative coherent and refreshing the player’s experience.

Academic discussion about agency has shifted towards agency as something the player perceives, rather than necessarily involving visible and lasting effects within a storygame. Existing work suggests players experience perceived agency even when no consequences result from their choices, due to various features and techniques used in storygames. This paper aims to understand the experience players have when engaging with choices and playable characters when playing storygames that produce a sense of perceived agency. We conducted retrospective protocol analysis and interviews with 15 players who played one of three games, The Wolf Among Us, Oxenfree and Kentucky Route Zero. Our findings suggest that perceived agency arises both from the player’s ability and willingness to engage in meaningful expression of the playable character’s personality within constraints, resulting in the creation of a unique playable character, and from the system’s recognition of this expression of the playable character’s personality through appropriate feedback.

In this paper we propose a new character type, the “shell” playable character, which differs from the standard playable character types of avatars or “rich” characters. These “shell” characters are neither complete “blank slates” for the players to project themselves onto, nor do they provide enough information to be considered “well-rounded” characters with complete personalities and backstories. Drawing on the concepts of leerstellen and ambiguity, we explore this new playable character type through comparative close readings of three games: INSIDE, Emporium, and The Stanley Parable. Our findings suggest that “shell” playable characters are characters that encourage players to develop their own understanding of the character, enabled through gaps and ambiguities that allow players the space to “fill” up the character with an interpretation of who the character could be, and to view the character as a separate entity rather than simply an extension of the player.

Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are a form of transmedia storytelling that are difficult to describe and analyse due to their inherent ephemerality and use of multiple media channels. But critical analyses of ARGs and a deeper understanding of how they work are needed for both improvements in ARG design theory, and to aid in the preservation of ARG content and structure. This paper presents a way to describe and analyse ARGs, the ARG Descriptive Model (ADM), that combines together features from several existing approaches to create a more holistic description of an ARG. The ADM is then applied to two case studies to demonstrate how it can be used to model the media channels, potential navigation routes between these channels, and how these channels evolve over time. The paper shows that this approach can be applied to create a basis for a common methodology for ARG analyses.

“Frammenti” was released in 2009 and it was Italy’s first Alternate Reality Game. It consisted of a television series and an online game of solving enigmas collaboratively. The development of the project is here retraced basing on interviews lead with its director, screenwriter, game designer. Since the budget was limited, production had to get creative and resourceful in the way they strengthened the emergent narrative by getting involved in first person with the players, both in the virtual and real world.

This paper describes ongoing research towards a new model of video game storytelling involving structural manipulation of space and interactivity.

Video games are a suitable territory to experiment and play with identity, thanks to the use of avatars, which let players put themselves in someone else’s shoes, project values on blank slates or bond with virtual characters upon which they have a partial agency. Through the case study of Hotline Miami, this paper aims to examine how games can push players to actively question their identity, agency and role in the game’s systems and narrative. The end point of the paper is defining a new category of avatar, the meta-avatar, which elicits a sense of identity instability in the players, leading them to have a more conscious approach to the gameplay experience.

We present Throwing Bottles at God, an experimental interactive narrative game that makes use of a predictive text writing interface as both a game mechanic and a means by which to deliver narrative content. The player steps into the role of @dril, a well-known pseudonymous social media personality with a distinctive writing style, and authors short snippets of text while receiving suggestions from the game as to which word @dril might use next – suggestions supported by word pair frequency data extracted from the corpus of all existing tweets by the actual @dril. The game represents a first attempt to use AI-based game design to heighten the player’s awareness of AI algorithms, specifically predictive text algorithms, as they play a role in the player’s day-to-day life. It also blurs the line between player-authored and developer-authored narrative content by inviting players to freely mix snippets of developer-authored text into their own in-game social media posts as they compose them, resulting in player-assembled messages that embed sequences of words drawn both from an external corpus (the @dril corpus) and from developer-authored narrative content.

Mind Shadows illustrates how story can be represented in board games. Here, the game is described, along with design considerations regarding event documentation and co-authoring. In analog games these activities, needs to be designed in a manner that integrate them into game-play, in a manner that is not too cumbersome for the players.

Margaret opened her hair salon in Ballymoney, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1959. It’s still there.In recent years, despite dwindling customers and limited opening hours, Margaret’s remains a bustling community hub for an aging clientele.Yet during the Troubles (Northern Ireland Conflict) of the late 20th century Margaret’s was an important, non-sectarian feminist centre for Catholic and Protestant women to meet, talk and most crucially, hold their town together.

This doctoral research aims to develop the ongoing understanding of narrative game mechanics and establish its presence within interactive fiction. Research to define and understand the narrative effects of game mechanics is a current topic of academic debate [4–7] and relates to the question of ‘how do games tell stories’ [8]. Building on this work from key researchers [4–8], this study aims to carry out several textual analyses to identify potential narrative producing game mechanics. In addition, an interactive fiction game using the platform Twine has been created. Feedback will be collected from the Twine game and used to enhance further iterations of it. As part of the study an analytical structure has been developed which has drawn upon several theoretical approaches [14–21]. This framework, in its preliminary stages, has four levels: Actions, Aesthetics, Mechanics and Narration to identify and analyze potential narrative game mechanics present within interactive fiction. Currently, two textual analyses have been carried out and these have been supplemented with Youtube ‘Let’s Play’ videos. The first and second versions of the interactive fiction game have been launched and feedback gathered. Preliminary conclusions indicate that narrative game mechanics require further defining. The information mechanic identified as part of this study, and its relationship to how it progresses a narrative, requires further examination. The framework designed has also shown the potential to be applied to both interactive fiction and video games.

This paper proposes a methodology to measure User Experience (UX) dimensions on Interactive Fiction in Cinematic Virtual Reality (IFcVR), in order to evaluate the effectiveness of IFcVR as a narrative form and as a vehicle for different types of messages. The presented methodology merges Human Computer Interface (HCI) evaluation techniques with Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) user dimensions, and gathers both qualitative and quantitative data by mixing different types of instruments. An experimental evaluation of an interactive VR fiction film functional prototype demonstrates the viability of the proposed methodology while gathered data shows a positive acceptance by the participants to IFcVR as an entertaining and immersive experience.

To explore methods that are currently used by professional virtual reality (VR) filmmakers to tell their stories and guide users, we analyze how end-users view $$360^\circ $$ video in the presence of directional cues and evaluate if they are able to follow the actual story of narrative $$360^\circ $$ films. In this context, we first collected data from five professional VR filmmakers. The data contains eight $$360^\circ $$ videos, the directors cut, which is the intended viewing direction of the director, plot points and directional cues used for user guidance. Then, we performed a subjective experiment with 20 test subjects viewing the videos while their head orientation was recorded. Finally, we present and discuss the experimental results and show, among others, that visual discomfort and disorientation on part of the viewer not only lessen the immersive quality of the films but also cause difficulties in the viewer gaining a full understanding of the narrative that the director wished them to view.

This paper is part of an ongoing transdisciplinary research into immersion. In specific, it focuses on Spatial Storytelling to examine the narrative technique in conjunction with Spatial Presence, a commonly accepted subtype of Presence. How our real-life occupation is a constant narrative making exercise and how storytelling is ingrained in our movement in space. It is argued here that immersion and presence models stand to benefit from spatial theory, particularly, the body of work surrounding spatial practices and narratives. Further, that the incorporation of spatial theory adds to the necessary versatility required in approaching immersion, which has been thus far dominated by positivist empiricism. Contributions of a theorized space are also found missing from interactive storytelling and videogames where subject/object interactivity is seen as mere actions performed inside a given space whereas the paper argues that space is learnt through such involvement.

In the 360 $$^\circ $$ videos, the role of sound became crucial as it not only contributes to the participant’s level of Presence (the feeling of being in the virtual environment) but can also provide viewers with a periodical awareness of their surroundings; therefore, audio can guide user attention toward desired points. In this sense, the sonic elements of a 360 $$^\circ $$ video assume an interactive role, as sounds become notifying elements or icons. In the paper, we describe Cue Control, an audio editor that facilitates the creation of soundtracks for 360 $$^\circ $$ videos. The user can control the location of the sonic elements by positioning the sounds in the virtual 3D space following the desired timeline; Cue Control automatically creates a cue list of the spatial soundtrack events for playback. The software also allows for different interactive modalities of playback, adapting the cue list to the viewpoint of the user. We conducted a small pilot study where Cue Control was used to assemble the soundtrack of two 360 $$^\circ $$ videos. According to the data gathered, we present some preliminary reflections about the use of sound to guide users’ attention in 360 $$^\circ $$ videos towards points of interest.

Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) has been increasing in popularity in the last years. However, viewers can feel isolated when watching 360° movies with a Head-Mounted Display. Since watching movies is a social experience for most people, we investigate if the use of Head Mounted Displays is appropriate for enabling shared CVR experiences. In this context, even if viewers are watching the movie simultaneously, they do not automatically see the same field of view, since they can freely choose the viewing direction. Based on the literature and experiences from past user studies, we identify seven challenges. To address these challenges, we present and discuss design ideas for a CVR social movie player and highlight directions for future work.

With an advent of the VR market, using 360-degree cameras to create Cinematic VR (CVR) experiences opened up a prominent question that can challenge the traditional film narratology. Additional fields of view are allowed so the viewers in CVR can move their heads to choose more attentive and informative scenes, but frequent scene changes are not welcomed due to VR nausea. These technical drawbacks (and/or advantages) demand a new narratology for CVR, in particular, how the director of CVR can convey certain narratives to the viewers in conjunction with how he/she can attract the viewers to look at the acting persons in the 360-degree scenes. In this study, we employed well-established underpinnings of both eye contact and gaze, by which the acting persons in CVR can effectively convey the narrative structure, and, at the same time, more attentiveness from the viewer in CVR can be ensured. We completed two versions of CVR, one with the traditional film narratology and the other for the new CVR narratology (i.e., eye contact and gaze) proposed in this article, and are now in the stage of evaluation. Our preliminary results showed that the viewers in the CVR film with more eye contact and gazes effectively presented the narratives of the film and also were more satisfied with the CVR environment.

This demo paper describes a project that engages cutting-edge free viewpoint video (FVV) techniques for developing content for an augmented reality prototype. The article traces the evolutionary process from concept, through narrative development, to completed AR prototypes for the HoloLens and handheld mobile devices. It concludes with some reflections on the affordances of the various hardware formats and posits future directions for the research.

This paper describes a demo of a Virtual Reality simulation of an interactable news service for Augmented Reality. The aim of the prototype is to implement it for user testing of new forms of news-interaction, leaving the small screen of mobile applications and entering into a ‘virtual’ world instead. This system can potentially be used for subjects other than news interactions and would be suitable as a test-platform for other kinds of AR-based digital storytelling. An advantage for a VR simulation is that current AR technology in the form of AR headsets/glasses are still in technical infancy, and therefore they are quite limited, both when it comes to field of view and for handling dynamic outdoor environments.

For this summer school project, four student teams in different cities across the world worked simultaneously on the same VR assignment, about visualizing the role of digital technology in society in the year 2030.

Portraying traditional cinematic narratives in virtual reality (VR) is an emerging practice where often the methods normally associated with cinematic storytelling need to be adapted to the $$360^\circ $$ format. In this paper we investigate some proposed cinematic practices for narrative storytelling in a cinematic VR film set in late 9th century Ireland that follows the perilous journey young Celt as he evades being captured by Viking raiders. From this we will analyze the fidelity of those practices with results collected from YouTube Analytics.

This practice-based research aims to develop cinematic VR as a reflexive device for exploring critical empathy. Critical empathy is a concept that emphasizes the limitations and complications of empathy from reflexive perspectives. Many artists and filmmakers have become increasingly interested in using VR as a creative medium for evoking empathy. However, the complexity of the empathic process in reflexive contexts has not been considered sufficiently. Current cinematic VR is focused on creating an immersive illusion to induce a sense of presence or embodied experience rather than eliciting reflection. Although VR technologies have been developing rapidly, there are obvious gaps between physical reality and virtual reality in terms of embodiment and bodily presence. Those gaps do not necessarily need to be erased to create immersive illusions; rather, they can be used effectively as a new method of storytelling and as aesthetic techniques for promoting self and social reflection. The practical exploration of the creation of a new method of immersive storytelling could add substantive insight to understanding cinematic VR, which can be seen as a reflexive device as well as a sociocultural tool for critical empathy.

Media performance scholarship has largely not engaged with innovative work in the incorporation of technology in mainstream theater, pursuing instead a nearly exclusive focus on non-narrative works of media performance such as electronic music, dance, and installation art. This article provides a corrective to this absence, and highlights creative work from the 19th century onward with technologies in service of interactive storytelling in theater. Cornerstone concepts in the media performance field are examined, as well as possible anxieties behind the relative exclusion of narrative theater from the field. The concept of partnership is put forth as a way of understanding human and non-human performer relationships in postdigital culture, and a call for collaboration across disciplines including interactive narrative, games, electronic literature, artificial intelligence, and architecture is discussed. The practice-theory divide is bridged with a closing discussion of the author’s work in creative practice in the field.

This paper focuses on issues arising from the making of an experimental interactive 360-degree video that emerged from a relational ‘immersive’ site-specific theatre project for a public audience that was staged in historic grounds in South Florida, USA in April 2017. This work was undertaken with academics from University of Miami, Kim Grinfeder and Stephen Di Benedetto. The specific nature of the performance event, the filming of aspects of this experience and the post-production processes each raise significant questions relating to the development of methods of ‘interactive’ digital storytelling for ‘immersive’ audience experience. The role of theatre practice and performance design in developing these mediated experiences seems to be an important element that has largely been ignored in thinking about how digital immersive experiences might be created.The video Estate 360° was first published on-line in January 2018 and is freely available to download: https://interactive.miami.edu/estate/ .

For this study we investigated if and how the merging of VR with radio drama can provide general insights into storytelling for VR. In order to present the student project The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet as a case study, we discuss environmental storytelling, and storytelling in relation to VR and radioplay. We conclude that the traditional lean back medium that is radio drama may benefit from the lean in quality of VR and we discuss a number of strong concepts that can be explored in order to gain further knowledge about storytelling for VR.

This paper explores how theatrical and performative practices inform interactive digital narratives. It does this through a case study of Looking for Love, a new piece by fanSHEN. The creative process used to create Looking for Love is analysed in terms of its roots in theatrical processes, particularly in terms of characterization, the relationship between structure and improvisation, dramatic arc and the role of the spectator.

The Vox Populi demo is a prototype for an interactive narrative design which functions as a playful simulation of the creation of media narratives. The prototype is part of the European ‘Borderline Offensive’ project and the Professorship Interactive Narrative Design at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht.

The central notion of conflict in drama is well-acknowledged but not properly formalized. Computational models of conflict tend to target one specific type of conflict and consequently lose the global point of view on the story. Using a model of dramatic structure, this article specifies a number of conflict types within a unified model and proposes an algorithm to automatically extract all conflicts within a narrative structure. The algorithm is then tested on a storyworld that shows as many as 31 coexisting conflicts. Finally, a cluster analysis on these conflicts is performed, showing that in the considered case, conflicts can be reduced to three main “conflict groups.”

Any computer game with a strong story has difficulty balancing the tension between narrative and agency. Strong narrative usually results in weak agency, and strong agency can weaken narrative structure. Narrative improvisation, adapting the story based on player reactions, is a difficult task for a game designer. Narrative improvisation, however, is regularly practised by the human game masters (GMs) of tabletop roleplaying games. As the first stage of building a game master agent (GMA), this paper examines the moment in which GMs decide if and how to alter their storyline due to player action. GMs were interviewed to discover their reactions when players make unexpected choices. Ten themes emerged from analysis of the interviews, we examined these themes to determine the thought processes that took place in the GMs’ minds, and we represented the processes as flow charts. These decision charts are a first step in the construction of a GMA that could assist in the development of more responsive interactive narrative in computer games.

Social robots have been used to perform the role of storytellers in areas like education and pediatric rehabilitation. With the use of this technology, it is possible to setup different voices, simulate emotional states and even personalities for the same robot. However, finding the best setting that might define a trait for a storyteller robot, is not an easy task. What elements should be manipulated? Should it have a personality? If yes, which one? In this work, we try to answer these questions by studying several setups that will allow us to create an assertive social robot to act as a storyteller. We evaluate the assertiveness impression by manipulating three robot characteristics: posture, pitch, and speech rate. A within-subject study was conducted with 37 participants watching eight videos in which a social robot tells a short story. In each video, the robot presents a different setup, and the participant reports the level of assertiveness of that robot. We found a significant difference between the setups of pitch and posture as well as an acceptable assertive robot’s configuration using a combination of those three characteristics.

Recently, the need for scenarios is increasing due to the increasing number of large-scale games, and the development of an automatic plot generation framework is needed to reduce a scenario writer’s workload. In previous studies, the main focus was to output the complete scenario from scratch. However, there is a problem in that the story does not have a degree of freedom and loses diversity, which is needed to avoid the breakdown of a story. In this study, we aim to generate stories with a high degree of freedom without any breakdown. We regard a story as a hierarchical structure and use a structural theory method to gradually generate the scenario. We performed an evaluation experiment where we generated the plot, which is the first stage of scenario generation, automatically using the thirteen-phase theory, which is a type of scenario structure. The results of the evaluation demonstrate that it was possible to automatically generate something close to a plot created by a scenario writer.

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in generating dialogues for narratives. Within narrative dialogues, their structure and content are essential, though style holds an important role as a mean to express narrative dialogue through telling stories. Most existing approaches of narrative dialogue generation tend to leverage hand-crafted rules and linguistic-level styles, which lead to limitations in their expressivity and issues with scalability. We aim to investigate the potential of generating more stylistic dialogues within the context of narratives. To reach this, we propose a new approach and demonstrate its feasibility through the support of deep learning. We also describe this approach using examples, where story-level features are analysed and modelled based on a classification of characters and genres.

Analyzing the potential and affordances of emergent narrative systems is an ongoing challenge, especially in novel or experimental systems. In this poster we explore the use of expressive range analysis (ERA) [1] to analyze an emergent system based upon the possible worlds model of Ryan [2]. We introduce the system and the properties of conflict that can be identified in a given work made in the system. The ERA analysis is performed by treating an emergent system as an exploration of a conflict space through actions. This paper serves as a foundation for deeper exploration of possible worlds narrative systems and quantifiable means for understanding them.

Story Creation Games, such as Rory’s Story Cubes and the Tell Tale card game, require players to invent creative and coherent narratives from a set of unconnected elements assembled by random chance, e.g., the throw of a die or the draw of a card. We model this human ability as a process of logical abduction, where the reasoning task is to identify a set of assumptions about a fictional world that logically entail the elements depicted on the dice or on the cards. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by hand-authoring a knowledge base of axioms that is sufficient to generate eight creative narratives each related to three Tell Tale cards, depicting a baseball player, a heart, and a train.

Narrative and storytelling have played an important role in communication. In this work, we demonstrate that the techniques of storytelling, and in particular raising attention to abnormality, can be used to add interestingness and memorability to descriptions of time-series data. A computational system has been developed for automatically generating descriptions for data graphs. The system identifies visual patterns in the graph, and treats the graph’s deviations from corresponding ideal patterns as abnormal events. It then uses storytelling templates to generate a graph description with the abnormal events highlighted.

This work describes a study in development that uses an autonomous social robot to act as storyteller and persuader in an interactive storytelling scenario. The robot employs techniques of persuasion to try to convince the audience to take a specific path in the story. The autonomous storyteller robot performs facial expression and head movements to express emotions regarding the story flow and the person’s decisions. Through a pilot study with four participants, we were able to identify the improvements needed. The findings revealed that the robot could give better suggestions to try to persuade a person before s/he makes a final decision. At the same time, we believe that some interaction changes could potentially increase the motivation, interest and engagement of users in the task.

My project aims at conceptualizing and implementing a computational storytelling system that derives creativity from an iterative cycle of simulation-based engagement and constraint-modifying reflection. It approaches this problem by first developing a computational model of stories that is grounded in narratological research, more specifically in mimetic, post-structuralist approaches centered around fictional characters. In the second stage, this narratological grounding will allow to measure and reason about the quality of a modeled story based on a formal notion called tellability. In the last stage, the parameter space that is set up by this representation can be explored in search for tellable stories, which are hypothesized to be of higher quality. Currently, the project is in the second stage.

Authoring tools for interactive narrative abstract underlying data models to allow authors to write creative works. Understanding how our program and interface design decisions alter the User Experience design could lead to more robust authoring experiences. We contribute a taxonomy of authoring tools with identified program and User Experience observations with discussion into their impact on the authoring experience as well as reflection on two detailed experiments. We then present our own authoring tool, Novella, and discuss how it has implemented the lessons learned from the analysis and how it approaches solving the identified challenges.

Interactive Digital Storytelling is a diverse field, with a variety of different tools and platforms, many of them bespoke. Understanding how these tools effect the stories created using them would allow authors to better select tools for projects, and help developers understand the consequences of their design decisions. We present an initial exploration of this question, using a critical reflection method to analyze the process of adapting a story from StoryPlaces into both Twine and Inform 7. We report four significant differences that posed challenges for adaptation: support for rewinding and/or revisiting, the definition and description of locations, the way in which text is delivered to the reader, and how navigational cues are provided to help readers progress the story. Our observations show that tools impact the stories created using them in ways that are not obvious when working with one platform alone.

Authoring tools are a crucial component in the practice and research of interactive digital narrative design, yet no recent meta-analysis or mapping of such tools exists that would make it possible to comparatively study their defining qualities and characteristics and their effects on the artefacts produced with them. As a first step towards this goal, we created an online resource [1] in which we surveyed and classified over 300 tools. This paper lays out our proposed categorisation and description framework for IDN authoring tools. After exploring our definition of authoring tools and research methodology, we describe 9 categories and 38 descriptors for tool analysis and comparison. We conclude with a sample analysis of Twine [2].

Multiplayer Interactive Narrative Experiences (MINEs) are interactive authored narratives in which multiple players experience distinct narratives (multiplayer differentiability) and their actions influence the storylines of both themselves and others (inter-player agency). Little research has been done to explore the possibilities of this type of narrative, and no complete model nor system exists. In this paper we introduce a model for MINEs based on sculptural hypertext and describe its implementation in a prototype system: StoryMINE. Then using a number of working narrative scenarios we demonstrate that the model and system supports a variety of inter-player interactions. It is our hope that this system provides a platform for the creation and reading of MINEs, and that this in turn creates opportunities for further research into this novel form of digital storytelling.

One of the most significant challenges facing narrative systems research is the authoring of interactive stories, and the processes and technologies to support it. In this workshop we host a discussion and present new work in this space from researchers in creative and technical domains from both the Hypertext and Interactive Storytelling communities and explore the question: When, why, and do we actually need authoring tools?

This workshop aims at exploring and addressing the challenges of creating interactive adaptive real-time story worlds. Participants will through various activities create their own concept of such experiences while investigating the potential of the field. The workshop will furthermore invite for international collaborations focusing of creating novel formats for interactive adaptive real-time digital storytelling.

Paper prototyping plays an important role in the creation of interactive digital narratives (IDN). A structured prototyping approach can help improve the process of making IDNs. In particular, pre-made, specialized card designs can speed up the process considerably and also help in the transition to digital prototypes. In this workshop, we will introduce structured methods and use pre-made cards in successive rounds of working towards a detailed prototype. Participant’s feedback by means of questionnaires will also be used as a basis for future research.

This research focuses on authoring tools and narrative models for interactive storytelling, in particular for video games. Specifically, it looks at developing a genre-independent model of interactive narrative for games, implementing such a model into an authoring tool, and identifying the impact of various interface paradigms on the authoring experience and resulting narratives.

This article draws on a historical need to use locative media to understand information in order to offer a critical conceptual perspective on those who do not have the means to create locative storytelling as a result of what is called participation gap. By drawing on two case studies with ethnographical data, one in Austin, Texas, US, and another in Monmouth, Wales, UK, I discuss the use of mobile interfaces such as QRcodes and the creation of location-based storytelling. Finally, the article introduces the notion of ‘spatial participation gap’, which is the unequal access to spaces and hybrid spaces.

A number of VR storytelling experiences transport their users to representations of real world sites in which there has been death, pain, suffering, and tragedy. Much of the current scholarship regarding these VR experiences grapples with their technical success or failure. Less explored are the philosophical and ethical implications of transporting users to such dark sites. In an effort to fill in a knowledge gap, research from the field of dark tourism studies will be used to inform how VR stories might morally construct their representations. For over two decades, the field of dark tourism has grappled with the ethical planning, managing, and facilitating of tours at sites where atrocities, crimes, disaster, tragedy, and death have occurred. Dark tourism tour guides, interactive storytellers in their own right, have negotiated these dark narratives for centuries. This paper proposes that visits to dark tourism sites in VR should not just parallel current models of dark tourism but utilize the affordances of the medium to facilitate new opportunities for ethical compassion and understanding in the mediation of mortality. A foundational step toward an ethics for these kinds of dark VR experiences is put forward for future discussion.

This paper shares the results of an interactive digital narrative (IDN) project, conducted at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. We consider the potential of ‘IDN for change’, before we describe the project, the underlying design approach and the educational approaches. A particular focus of this paper is on pedagogical considerations. We describe the educational challenges we have encountered during the project as well as the pedagogical interventions we have implemented to counter these difficulties. On this basis, we discuss a more general perspective on the state and issues in IDN-focused pedagogy.

Digital storytelling in cultural heritage contexts has been recognized as a direction that cultural heritage institutions, including museums and historical sites, need to invest in to attract and engage their audiences. The term “interactive storytelling” is often used to characterize existing digital applications, whether these incorporate narrative structures or not. However, is “interactive storytelling” with its strict definition actually strongly present as an art form within the domain of cultural heritage, especially for on-site mobile experiences? In this work, we report on our experience and lessons learnt during our efforts to apply the genre of interactive storytelling in the heritage sector with the aim to more effectively support both authors and users of mobile interactive storytelling apps.

To deepen the engagement of exhibition visitors with cultural heritage, we develop an interactive design approach to storytelling in which users can act both as co-curators and co-authors through a multitouch interface.

This paper describes Communics, a digital tool aimed at producing interactive digital storytelling in form of comics to facilitate self-expression. In particular, we investigated how Communics can support young male migrants to reflect on situations involving discrimination by elaborating digital narratives in counterstory. In this first stage, we built a set of graphical and textual content to be included in the software involving NGO operators and young migrants providing the users with elements to compose the visual story. Furthermore, we initially assessed the narrative approach. General considerations on this process and implications for the future user study are presented.

In 2020 the RheijnLand.Xperiences project will connect 8 museums along the Dutch-German border by a network using a story-driven application for mobile devices for an audience between the ages of 14 and 22. While the project foresees the design of individually tailored experiences for each museum, an overarching narrative and experience structure is also required to establish connections between the museums. This structure relies heavily on the concepts of interactive digital storytelling and is required to compensate the environmental and thematic diversity of each museum while also enriching the overall experience of visiting multiple museums in the network. In this regard in this poster, we summarize our approach and core elements of the “universal” narrative and experience design.

This paper discusses the use of Digital Storytelling (DST) as an innovative educational approach in teaching and learning English as a second language. Specifically, it deals with English phraseology, focusing on the teaching and learning of Multi-word expressions, in particular Phrasal Verbs (PVs), usually a challenging feature for Italian learners of English, who find them hard to understand and memorize.Motivated by Constructivist principles, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) Theory, the Narrative paradigm, The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and also growing developments in neuroscience and neuropsychology, this paper argues that, by combining the visual and the verbal, DST has the potential to make students better process, understand, and recall even difficult instructional content. Finally, it presents preliminary results of a first exploratory implementation of DST in an L2 secondary classroom of Italian learners of English. They show that DST could be a meaningful technology tool to enhance students’ critical thinking, motivation and collaboration.This paper also aims to shed new light on educational strategies in the context of Second Language Acquisition (SLA).

Leveraging librarians’ expertise in the design and support of literacy programs, this workshop will provide a forum for educators and practitioners to critically examine the nature and role of interactive digital narrative literacy. Workshop participants will collaborate in the development of a framework of interactive digital narrative literacy competencies through critical examination of representative case studies.

Cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), educators, and the creative industries are increasingly using digital media to engage audiences in new ways such as through edutainment and gamification. The Internet and social media have increased access to information and public participation in digital narratives, and CHIs are beginning to increase their focus on storytelling. This PhD explores how digital media can be used not only to engage and educate, but to foster the co-construction of cultural heritage narratives. Two key challenges are which media and modalities can/should be used to create a purposeful non-fiction IDN and how can public participation be incorporated while avoiding the issue of ludonarrative dissonance. A transdisciplinary approach is used to develop creation and evaluation frameworks for non-fiction IDNs which will be tested on the use case of the UNESCO World Heritage Australia Convict Sites.

Stories are increasingly becoming an important technique to engage, inspire and gather audiences online and offline. Interactive technologies provide the tools to empower audiences to participate in new interactive storytelling experiences applied to tourism. We envisage that in this context transmedia entertainment-education experiences combining a compelling story with engaging technologies can expose tourists towards local pressing issues and social good while providing them with a rich entertaining and educating experience. We describe the research approach that leads to design and implementation of a bespoke transmedia entertainment education experience: Fragments of Laura. The experience was designed to encourage visitors to learn about Madeira’s rich natural heritage and develop knowledge and awareness about its history and biodiversity.

This research investigates how digital folklore and digital media can be used as a method to unpack the meaning of place and to discover personal geographies of place. The research focuses on Wester Hailes, a deprived area to the West of Edinburgh. This research combines a critical heritage approach with psychogeography to elicit folklore from Wester Hailes school children. The paper argues that this inter-disciplinary approach affords children with competencies to create their own stories through physical computing and digital storytelling techniques.

The Ph.D. project explores how a digital tool for comic-based storytelling can support young migrants and teenagers in producing and elaborating narratives for self-expression in the form of counterstories. Migrants and teen-agers are two communities that have few outlets to express themselves when discriminant situations occur. On one hand, migrants who arrive in a host country often experience episodes in which they are stereotyped and discriminated, and not many supports assist them in reflecting on their condition. On the other hand, teenagers have few means to critically structure their reality prospective regarding discriminant situations. In this stage of the research project, we investigate how a digital system can support self-expression and counterstory elaboration, using comic-based storytelling and the use of predefined text and incipits to facilitate this process.

Over one in five cancer patients are affected by feelings of loneliness [1]. This paper proposes a text-based game aimed at affected cancer patients, in which the player develops relationships with non-player characters in the context of a fictitious cancer support group. This would be designed with the aim of alleviating patient loneliness and fostering a sense of companionship. This work is part of an interdisciplinary project led by Abertay University and partnered with Macmillan Cancer Support, exploring the ways in which interactive storytelling can be used to support cancer patients. The game’s narrative and characters will be designed drawing on real patient experiences gathered in interviews. The game will go through several iterations of feedback and rewriting in response to focus groups held with patients and healthcare professionals.