Interactive Storytelling

Most storytelling systems to date rely on manually coded knowledge, the cost of which usually restricts such systems to operate within a few domains where knowledge has been engineered.

Open Story Generation

systems are capable of learning knowledge necessary for telling stories in a given domain. In this paper, we describe a technique that generates and communicates stories in language with diverse styles and sentiments based on automatically learned narrative knowledge. Diversity in storytelling style may facilitate different communicative goals and focalization in narratives. Our approach learns from large-scale data sets such as the Google N-Gram Corpus and Project Gutenberg books in addition to crowdsourced stories to instill storytelling agents with linguistic and social behavioral knowledge. A user study shows our algorithm strongly agrees with human judgment on the interestingness, conciseness, and sentiments of the generated stories and outperforms existing algorithms.

We present an annotation scheme and combinatorial authoring procedure by which a small base of annotated human-authored dialogue exchanges can be exploited to automatically generate many new exchanges. The combinatorial procedure builds recombinant exchanges by reasoning about individual lines of dialogue in terms of their mark-up, which is attributed during annotation and captures what a line expresses about the story world and what it specifies about lines that may precede or succeed it in new contexts. From a human evaluation task, we find that while our computer-authored recombinant dialogue exchanges are not rated as highly as human-authored ones, they still rate quite well and show more than double the strength of the latter in expressing game state. We envision immediate practical use of our method in a collaborative authoring scheme in which, given a small database of annotated dialogue, the computer instantly generates many full exchanges that the human author then polishes, if necessary. We believe that combinatorial dialogue authoring represents an immediate and huge reduction in authorial burden relative to current authoring practice.

The use of storytelling for learning is widely approved and encouraged. Yet, in virtual environments for training, there are difficulties to build a story when there is no global control over the course of events. We present in this paper an approach called diegetization. Supported by structuralist narrative theories, this approach aims to dynamically match a sequence of events with sequence of narrative patterns. The pedagogical prescriptions are then extended to consolidate the recognized narrative sequences. The process uses semantic models to benefit from pattern matching algorithm and deep inferences. The proposition was implemented in the

Humans

platform and applied to a scenario for training in high-risk activities.

CHESS is a research prototype system aimed at enriching museum visits through personalized interactive storytelling. Aspiring to replace traditional exhibit-centric descriptions by story-centric cohesive narrations with carefully-designed references to the exhibits, CHESS follows a plot-based approach, where the story authors create stories around pre-selected museum themes. In this paper we place the CHESS system within the Interactive Digital Narrative field, describing the main objectives and requirements addressed. We present the system’s architecture and outline its overall functionality. We describe the underlying storytelling model using examples from the stories authored using the CHESS Authoring Tool. Finally, we report key results focusing on the authors’ perspective for the creation of personalized stories.

Seventy years ago, psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel described an influential study of the perception of intention, where a simple movie of animated geometric shapes evoked in their subjects rich narrative interpretations involving their psychology and social relationships. In this paper, we describe the Heider-Simmel Interactive Theater, a web application that allows authors to create their own movies in the style of Heider and Simmel’s original film, and associate with them a textual description of their narrative intentions. We describe an evaluation of our authoring tool in a classroom of 10th grade students, and an analysis of the movies and textual narratives that they created. Our results provide strong evidence that the authors of these films, as well as Heider and Simmel by extension, intended to convey narratives that are rich with social, cognitive, and emotional concerns.

We propose performative authoring, an approach for children to author digital animated stories using pretend play or story enactment. Using a systematic methodology, we designed and developed DiME, a prototype system to explore how children may make use of performative authoring to create stories. Findings showed that children greatly enjoyed the authoring approach, and that DiME supported the child’s imagination of characters, objects and environments during enactment. However, enactment for authoring lacked narrative structuring and the affordance for rapid iterative editing that is critical to creativity. We conclude that performative authoring has great potential to facilitate and even improve children’s storytelling.

In story-making games, players create stories together by using narrative tokens. Often there is a tension between players playing to win using the rules of a story-making game, and collaboratively creating a good story. In this paper, we introduce a competitive story-making game prototype coupled with computational methods intended to be used for both supporting players’ creativity and narrative coherence.

This research takes a closer look at online tools that anti-scam activists use when in contact with Internet scammers. These tools are used for defining one’s online character, for progressing the narrative or maintaining anonymity while uncovering the scammer’s identity. The tools are easy to use and, when combined together, they offer powerful methods to narrate stories online. This research draws mostly upon primary sources, like interviews with scambaiters or Internet forums, where scambaiters share their stories and discuss the authenticity of dubious online businesses. The discussed methods and tools are utilized while communicating with scammers. In conclusion, this paper illustrates how these tools can also used in other genres such as digital fiction, investigative journalism and advocacy.

This paper describes, implements and assesses a series of user-log indicators for automatic interactive narrative evaluation. The indicators include length and duration, diversity, renewal, choice range, choice frequency, and choice variety. Based on a laboratory experiment with players, a significant positive correlation has been observed between two indicators and some aspects of the interactive narrative experience measured by validated scales based on questionnaires.

This article presents the PC3 framework, an analytical lens for dissecting interactive narrative systems across different media forms, such as in theatre, digital media, and board games. It proposes the use of

process

,

content

,

control

, and

context

as the important components of an interactive system that must be considered when comparing it to the makeup of other systems. It describes each component, the rationale behind the component, and relates them to interactive narrative systems in a variety of media forms and contexts.

In this text, I investigate

storytelling artifacts

, virtual objects representing events in a game’s storyworld. I analyze the phenomenon using existing literary theory, propose a specific model of

ordering

,

availability

, and

mechanical significance

, and argue for the uniqueness of their narrative capabilities.

This paper attempts to frame a hermeneutic narratology of interactive digital storytelling in light of Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy and the narratology of the French New Rhetoric. For starters, I propose to bring to light an underlying rationale to demonstrate the significance of interactive storytelling in videogames that go beyond entertainment. This rationale rejoins the perennial ontological and epistemological questions. I will then analyze how the threefold mimesis functions

par excellence

in interactive storytelling. Lastly, my theoretical framing will be completed with the praxis dimension of mimesis, a discussion of semiotic and morphological orientation for emplotment, for future digital

poiesis

.

The field of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) can look back at more than 25 years of research. Considerable technical advances exist alongside open questions that still need full attention. With the discussion of five crucial aspects - narrative analysis, interoperability between different implementations, sustainability of digital artifacts, author-centered view, and user-focused perspective - the paper starts a conversation on successful methods and future goals in the research field.

Technologies that were initially developed to be applied within the domain of video games are currently being used in experiments to explore their meaning and possibilities for cinema and cinema audiences. In this position paper we examine how narrativity, interactivity and engagement are mutually reshaped within this new domain of media entertainment, addressing both the production and the user experience of new types of interactive cinematography. We work towards research questions that will direct our future studies and introduce the term

lean in

to address the kind of engagement style that applies to users within this new domain.

The found-footage YouTube series

Marble Hornets

(2009-2014) uses two YouTube channels and a Twitter account to create a transmediated Alternate Reality Game (ARG) experience, allowing users to communicate directly with both the diegetic characters and each other. While it is not revolutionary in how it approaches the use of ARG elements in its narrative, it marks a starting point in the creation of a definitive model for this mode of storytelling.

Interactive digital media have greatly affected the logics of production, exhibition and reception of non-fiction audiovisual works, leading to the emergence of a new area called "interactive non-fiction". One of its key points is that it can deal with factual material in such a way that it influences and transforms the real world around us. The present work gives a brief insight into the interactive non-fiction area and presents some trends/hypotheses obtained from studying one of its main formats: interactive documentary. The aim is to introduce new dynamics, logics and trends that could shape the interactive non-fiction field in forthcoming years.

In this article we explore some of the methodological problems related to characterizing cognitive aspects of involvement with interactive narratives using well known EEG/ERP techniques. To exemplify this, we construct an experimental EEG-ERP set-up with an interactive narrative that considers the dialectical relation between suspense and surprise as a function of expectancy, which in turn can be correlated to the P300-ERP component. We address the difficulties of designing a coherent narrative with a suitable level of closure while meeting the requirements of the ERP experimental procedures. We stress the necessity of fine-tuning the highly specific ERP paradigms necessary for the investigation of user experience in interactive narratives and storytelling.

The visualization of the characters’ intentions in a drama is of great importance for scholars and professionals. The characters’ intentions provide the motivations for the actions performed in a drama, and support its interpretation. This paper presents an interactive ontology–driven tool for the visualization of a drama analysis based on the mapping between the characters’ actions and intentions, respectively. An automatic mapping establishes the correspondence between the actions, distributed on the linear timeline of the drama, and the intentions that motivate such actions, which form a forest of trees, one tree per character, spanning portions of the timeline. A tool provides a graphical representation of such correspondences and an immediate appraisal of the motivations of the actions in terms of tree projections. The system was tested on the analysis of a scene from

Hamlet

and has been employed in support of drama studies and didactics.

Interactive storytelling in a mixed reality environment merges real and virtual worlds, and physically immerses the participant in a narrative. The participant is engaged to participate in an exploratory experience, which is influenced by personal and situational factors. We used three stages from the ALICE installation to investigate the effects of sound design and participants’ preknowledge of the background story. The study was carried out with 60 participants and the results show that immersiveness (presence) is influenced by both factors. Furthermore we discuss the user experience through observations and information gathered in interview sessions.

In the ongoing project SPIRIT, we design entertaining forms of heritage communications through mobile augmented reality. The SPIRIT concept is based upon a strong storytelling metaphor. By using mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) as ‘magic equipment’, users can meet the restless spirits of historical characters. The paper describes the overall narrative and technical concept. In particular, it explores the narrative structures that are specialized for the intended kind of experience. Further, we show our first use scenario and demonstrator.

This paper proposes the use of pervasive displays in location-based interactive story experiences. We’ve explored three distinct interaction techniques for linking a mobile story application with pervasive displays and implemented a prototype to demonstrate the interaction techniques as part of a story experience.

In this paper we compare how differently players and spectators comprehend narrative in a game, employing a story-driven indie game called Skyld. Our preliminary study results show that the players, compared to the spectators, had a tendency of being goal-oriented, being less willing to interpret and build possible worlds, and having hard time to reconstruct the story time.

In this paper, we model a set of narrative scenarios, taken from well known literary works, and show how they require the role of moral values to generate the appropriate emotions for the characters. For each example, we compare the generated emotions with and without moral values and show how the absence of moral values would lead to an insufficient moral range.

Interactive storytelling games can benefit from a century of film cinematography and established cinematic conventions. Conversation scenes in games are highly dynamic and pre-authored camera parameters impractical. We propose a combined theoretical and empirical approach towards an automatic Visual Director System focused on dynamic conversation scenes involving three characters and encoded as AI game component that selects suitable shots.

With the development of ubiquitous computing, the Web 3.0, and the so-called “internet of things,” the implications of augmented reality (AR) for our understanding of digital storytelling and posthuman subjectivity have begun to preoccupy a number of cultural theorists and artists. AR routinely elicits ambivalent responses of fascination and fear. This uneasiness recalls one that has been attached to the rhetorical trope of ekphrasis, the verbal representation of a visual representation. Augmented reality offers a platform for developing and understanding the complexities of what Cecilia Lindhé has termed digital ekphrasis, and the AR text Between Page and Screen, by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse, exploits this digital ekphrasis to examine the metamorphosis of posthuman subjectivity in an age of pervasive data.

There have been tremendous advances in video-game graphics leading to realistic looking characters in many modern AAA titles. Unfortunately, the realistic looks do not always come with believable behavior of non-playable character AI. In particular, AI-driven video-game characters do not show plausible emotional reactions to interactions with the player unless they are hand-scripted for the particular encounter. We propose a light-weight algorithm for automatic generation of NPC emotional reactions at the level of actions and at the level of appearances. To do so adapt a recent resource-driven emotion model to generate NPC actions and extend it with a simple appraisal mechanism to explicitly compute emotional descriptors.

This work presents a prototype of non-chronological open structure children narrative dedicated for tablets. How will young readers find themselves in this new environment and react to new kind of storytelling experience? Is the notion of “interactivity” just a marketing trick to sell more software and mobile apps or is it a tool that will really support a child’s development?

In this work, we present the CHESS research prototype system which offers personalized, interactive digital storytelling experiences to enhance museum visits, demonstrating the authoring and visiting experiences.

Unfinished Business is a transmedia project presented at the seventh International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling’s Demonstrations. It is an interactive Web platform based on a hybrid non-linear narrative available at the following link: http://www.unfinishedbusiness.com.br

In this paper we present a cartoon-like 2D storytelling game utilising metaphor and symbolism with a form of framing narrative. The game and the story were designed in an abstract and satirical manner, providing the player room for interpreting her gameplay in various ways.

K-Sketch gives novice animators an easy way to tell stories with animation sketches. It relies on users’ intuitive sense of space and time, and makes animation easy through the use of sketching and demonstration. Our studies have shown that people take naturally to telling stories with K-Sketch, and it is particularly helpful for exploring the timing of events. We also found that K-Sketch is a good collaborative medium for telling stories. In this demonstration we will show how K-Sketch works and explain how these advantages are realized in practice.

In this paper we present our effort to combine an internally focalized narration with simple game mechanics using a silent narrative game in which player interaction possibilities are connected to the protagonist’s state of mind and changing along with it as the story progresses. A preliminary user study indicates that our game successfully delivered a story during the activity of playing.