Showing papers presented at "International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling in 2010"

Towards a theoretical framework for interactive digital narrative

Abstract: The emerging artistic practice of interactive narrative in digital media marks a profound departure from traditional narrative. The application of traditional narrative theory for interactive narrative is problematic, since the affordances of digital media challenge many underlying assumptions of theories related to non-digital media. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for interactive storytelling, which addresses these concerns by foregrounding system (the digital artifact) and process (the user interacting with the system) over the product-centered view of legacy media. On this basis, protostory, narrative design, and narrative vectors are proposed as new terms to more adequately describe the structure of narrative in interactive digital storytelling. This move is also relevant for practical design given the influence theoretical concepts have on concrete implementations.

Measuring user responses to interactive stories: towards a standardized assessment tool

Abstract: With the increasing number of prototypes and market applications of interactive storytelling, the understanding and optimization of how end users respond to computer-mediated interactive narratives is of growing importance. Based on a conceptual model of user experiences in interactive storytelling, a measurement instrument for empirical user-based research was developed. We report findings from an initial test of the self-report scales that was conducted with N=80 players of the adventure game "Fahrenheit". Interactivity was manipulated experimentally in order to validate the measures. Results suggest that the scales will be useful for comparing user responses to 'real' interactive storytelling systems.

The iLand of Madeira location aware multimedia stories

Abstract: This paper describes the initial stages for the iLand project, a Location Aware Multimedia Story project that captures and exposes the rich oral culture and traditions at the Island of Madeira, using the Madeira main city, Funchal, as a setting to bring a new level of engagement of the audience with the city and its traditional stories. We developed high quality content to be used in an already existing platform to deliver location aware stories. With the story experience carefully designed, an evaluation was carried out in order to expose the opportunities where such systems can be improved. Finally we discuss the results from the evaluation and explain how we will address them in the design of our new system.

An interactive documentary manifesto

Abstract: In the last few years the word "documentary" has been loosely used to describe multimedia pieces that incorporate video no matter its nature, technique, language or scope, taking advantage of the fuzzy and fragile boundaries of the documentary definition. The present manifesto aims to give a brief insight on the interactive documentary arena and also to sketch some production remarks for future interactive documentary productions.

I want to slay that dragon!: influencing choice in interactive storytelling

Abstract: In this paper we consider the issues involved in influencing a user in an interactive storytelling context using results from the social psychology's area of persuasion. We hypothesize that it is possible to use these results in order to influence the user in predictable ways. Several important concepts of persuasion, such as how people make decisions, and how can we influence that process are discussed. We describe a proposal on how to apply these results in an interactive storytelling setting and describe a small study were we have successfully influenced the players of a story in following a specific path by using an expert source manipulation.

MIST: an interactive storytelling system with variable character behavior

Abstract: Despite advances in game technology, most stories constructed by game designers remain inherently linear in nature, and player actions often have limited impact on the central story. In interactive storytelling approaches, an important challenge is the creation of stable yet dynamic environments to allow the emergence of unscripted stories involving both human-controlled characters and autonomous non-player characters (NPCs). In this paper, we present an architectural design for creating open-ended, interactive storytelling systems in which story structure emerges in real time and in response to player actions, thus providing a greater variety of game experiences than more scripted approaches. We present a partial implementation of the approach in a virtual environment populated by multiple NPCs that exhibit stable but interesting autonomous behavior. Finally, we present experimental results that demonstrate the scalability of the approach and variability of NPC behavior that it produces.

Player agency and the relevance of decisions

Abstract: While many forms of storytelling are well-suited to the domain of entertainment, interactive storytelling remains unique in its ability to also afford its audiences a sense of having influence over what will happen next. We propose that the key to encouraging such feelings of agency in interactive stories lies in managing the perceived relevance of the decisions that players make while they play. To this end, we present the design of a system which automatically estimates the relevance of in-game decisions for each particular player, based on a dynamically learned model of their preferences for story content. By actively choosing among several potential consequences of a given player decision, the proposed system highlights the relevance of each decision while accommodating for its players' preferences over potential story content.

An analysis of narrative moves in improvisational theatre

Abstract: Our continued investigation into the experience of improvisers as they construct narrative in improvisational theatre provides a meaningful decomposition of its atomic unit, the offer. Our study was conducted with improvisers performing improv "games" in their theatre with each performance video recorded. Individual participants were selectively shown individual performances before being interviewed. This process is meant to elicit deeper information into how the performer chooses specific narrative interactions to develop in an improvisation performance. This paper presents our ongoing findings related to narrative development in improvisational theatre and how they were used to create an improvisational micro-agent. These findings have demonstrated that the use of offers to construct a scene involves the offers' acceptance and augmentation in a scene more than just the strength of an offer.

Agency and the art of interactive digital storytelling

Abstract: Taking seriously Andrew Stern's aspiration that IDS become a premier art form for the 21st century, this paper re-examines agency, understood as the ability to freely control the plot, as a key concept in IDS aesthetics. Tracing the origins of this notion in IDS theory, this paper suggests that "true" agency is a myth, and that even restricted agency is too constrained to serve as a desirable goal for IDS-as-art.

Threading facts into a collective narrative world

Abstract: The paper presents a framework that allows the collection of multiple story fragments from several sources and/or authors, in the context of social networks, where story fragments tell facts about items that are ontologically modeled in the system. The framework provides tools for threading facts together into stories; by doing so, it shapes a new narratological model, that mixes emergent narrative and authored approaches, and that can be defined as "collective".

Crowd-sourced AI authoring with ENIGMA

Abstract: ENIGMA is an experimental platform for collaborative authoring of the behaviour of autonomous virtual characters in interactive narrative applications. The main objective of this system is to overcome the bottleneck of knowledge acquisition that exists in generative storytelling systems through a combination of crowd-sourcing and machine learning. While the authoring front-end of the application is used to create short example stories set in a specific story domain, the server side of the application collects many of those stories and derives behaviour models for autonomous virtual characters such as formal planning operator descriptions from them. A mixed initiative mode increases coherence by feeding already learnt character behaviour back into the client.

Enhancing real-time sports commentary generation with dramatic narrative devices

Abstract: This paper looks at the current state of the art of academic sports commentary generation systems. It then summarises work on how drama is created in professional broadcast commentary using dramatic devices. A novel computational architecture for sports commentary generation based on analyses of professional broadcast commentary is then presented. This work presents a first step towards realising a computational model of real-time sports commentary which explicitly incorporates dramatic narrative devices in the form of dramatic structure, themes and texturing.

Modeling of interactive storytelling and validation of scenario by means of linear logic

Abstract: Research on Interactive Storytelling has mainly focused on the opposition between a discourse point of view and a character point of view for a story. In this paper, we propose an approach to model Interactive Storytelling using Linear Logic, which is a support for reasoning on both points of view. Then we give an example on an educational game that shows the possibility of validating a scenario of a story, by applying the proof graph of a Linear Logic sequent. Finally we discuss about issues which should be settled and future works to be done on the Linear Logic approach for the IS modeling.

Zuzie: collaborative storytelling based on multiple compositions

Abstract: This paper presents an expressive activity program and a support system for collaborative storytelling based on multiple compositions: Zuzie. Zuzie's storytelling is designed so that people can experience rich expressions and extend their interpretation of them through creation of compositions. Each composition is a deliberate arrangement of a single set of figures on a background plane. Coupled with the expressive activity program, this research is intended to design and implement a system that supports multiple compositions. This report describes our Zuzie expressive activity and presents discussion of the expressions through the study and artworks.

Users and evaluation of interactive storytelling

Abstract: The manuscript includes information about the objectives, methods, participation requirements and references for the Users and Evaluation of Interactive Storytelling at the 3rd International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling - Edinburgh 2010.

First person victim: developing a 3D interactive dramatic experience

Abstract: Interactive Drama in 3D worlds has great potential for communicating serious themes, however it can become challenging to organize the content in such a way that the theme is communicated clearly while maintaining the feeling of free spatial navigation in the 3D world. In order to address this problem, and to propose a way to structure content, we have developed the Interactive Dramatic Experience Model, which attempts to organize narrative events in a 3D world while keeping the freedom of spatial interactivity. In order to exemplify this model, we have chosen to oppose the classic genre of violent interactive shooter experiences by allowing the participants to experience the feeling of being a victim of war. An evaluation of the implementation indicated that participants experienced free spatial interaction, while still being able to acquire an understanding of the theme being mediated.

Teaching English as a second language utilizing authoring tools for interactive digital storytelling

Abstract: This paper presents first results from an ongoing research initiative to develop an interactive storytelling application to support teaching English as a second language for children in schools. Considering the necessity to accommodate to both students' and teachers' needs, we provide a summarized review of relevant systems and discuss the envisioned challenges concerning the specific aim we are addressing. Furthermore, we present different usage scenarios closely related to the concept of role playing and its application within this problem space.

Automated storytelling in sports: a rich domain to be explored

Abstract: Sports broadcasting typically involves a play-by-play commentator and a color commentator. The color commentator's function is to entertain the viewer during the game. The prevalent way of doing so is by telling brief stories relevant to the game in progress. In this paper, we propose that storytelling in sports is a challenging and rich problem for Artificial Intelligence (AI) research for the following reasons. First, storytelling is considered to be a very "human" activity as it requires engaging the audience in a story and appealing to their factual as well as emotional sides. Thus, automating it will be an advance in AI. Second, while automated storytelling in general has received ample attention, storytelling in sports has seen much less research. Third, an AI storyteller can be used as an assistant to a human color commentator in a real game, or autonomously in the context of a sports video game. Fourth, the task is non-trivial as we demonstrate by applying off-the-shelf machine learning methods in an attempt to match baseball stories to baseball game states.

Tutorial: introduction to interactive story creation

Abstract: In the IRIS network of excellence [1], one work package ("Authoring Tools and Creation Methods") has been tackling accessibility issues of highly-interactive and generative Interactive Storytelling (IS) systems for story creators. While one problem is a current lack of well-designed tools, which needs improvement, the other side of the medal is that nevertheless, prospective interactive storyworld creators need basic knowledge in the currently available approaches. With the vision in mind that in the future, complex IS projects will be accomplished by an interdisciplinary team, future authors do not need to program a story engine, but they would indeed need to know about the characteristics of content conceptualization, knowledge modeling and forms of abstraction, which then are used in a collaborative production process with engineers. The tutorial covers basics of conception and processing of interactive stories. That way, it can also serve as a general introduction to Interactive Digital Storytelling. It focuses on creative principles that are different from traditional ways of storytelling, and further briefly explains specific approaches of selected story engines with short insights into practical examples. This material has been compiled during the year 2010 by the IRIS project, in an attempt to produce educational material for authors of Interactive Storytelling, in particular in genres using highly-interactive and generative story engines. It also draws from experiences of authoring workshops at previous conferences [2, 3]. The practical showcases include story engines with previously created example storyworlds from the IRIS project.

A data-driven case-based reasoning approach to interactive storytelling

Abstract: In this paper we describe a data-driven interactive storytelling system similar to previous work by Gordon & Swanson. We addresses some of the problems of their system, by combining information retrieval, machine learning and natural language processing. To evaluate our system, we leverage emerging crowd-sourcing communities to collect orders of magnitude more data and show statistical improvement over their system. The end result is a computer agent capable of contributing to stories that are nearly indistinguishable form entirely human written ones to outside observers.

A story to go, please

Abstract: In this paper we present an approach for an association-based story environment, in which a priori unrelated experiences represented in images, are stitched together to guide users through interesting city spaces. We describe the associative stories generated by this system, and outline how the notion of 'hypespot' facilitates linking the real world with the structure of the story. We outline the overall architecture of the system and provide a generated story example.

Storytelling within an internet of things

Abstract: The movement from a screen based experience of the internet to one in which everything is connected in the actual world is slowly becoming a reality. The advent of smart phones and data free contracts has provided a cultural context in Europe in which society will begin reading and writing stories to objects of their own. Digital Storytelling methodologies are required to understand how narratives between objects can be constructed as individual objects become connected with others. This workshop proposes research methods to carryout case studies and methods to understand the relationship between the objects and the participants. The implications for the knowledge to support this cultural / technical revolution are widespread - in particular of industry, but also leisure and the arts. We hope that storytellers, academics who are interested in social computing, and programmers will be interested in the workshop.

Narrative annotation and editing of video

Abstract: Narratives are widespread in multimedia, especially in linear audiovisuals. However, rare are the approaches that deal with video annotation and editing with respect to the narrative content. In this paper, we introduce an annotation schema for the narrative features of media objects, that relies on a formal theory of story and characters, and we describe a software tool, called Cinematic, for the annotation of video objects and the automatic editing of the annotated objects.

Motivations for rereading in interactive stories: a preliminary investigation

Abstract: This paper describes a preliminary investigation into the concept of rereadability in interactive stories. Through a close reading of the text-based interactive fiction Alabaster, seven possible motivations for rereading an interactive story are identified. This close reading suggests that, while there are many ways in which rereadability in interactive stories is similar to rereadability in traditional (non-interactive) fiction, there are also forms of rereadability that are unique to interactive storytelling.

Using highly interactive drama to help young people cope with traumatic situations

Abstract: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability and has a devastating impact on all family members. The goal of our project is to design, develop, and evaluate a pedagogical interactive drama to support uninjured youths aged 12 to 19 years who have a parent or sibling with a TBI. We used IDtension, a highly interactive drama engine, to develop a text-based interactive game, in which young users play the role of Frank, who has to prepare a dinner with Paul, his father, who suffers from a TBI.

Towards a shared vocabulary for interactive digital storytelling: a workshop at ICIDS 2010

Abstract: As a new research domain matures, it becomes increasingly important for researchers to agree on a shared vocabulary. For researchers in Interactive Digital Storytelling, this is a particular challenge, because researchers come from many different domains and bring their own terminology with them. This workshop exposes and explores the differences in meaning and terminology of key terms such as "story" in different academic disciplines related to Interactive Digital Storytelling. In order to minimize confusion and misunderstandings in the academic discussion within the field and with outside disciplines, the workshop explores ways towards a shared vocabulary for Interactive Digital Storytelling.

Importance of well-motivated characters in interactive narratives: an empirical evaluation

Abstract: In order for the author to create his/her intended effects using interactive narratives, the user has to be able to understand his/her experience as designed by the author. In this paper, we argue that a key desideratum for interactive narrative frameworks is to model the characters' motivational consistency during the interaction. This work reports an empirical study for evaluating the importance of using well-motivated characters in interactive narratives. The results demonstrate that inconsistency in the characters' motivations can confuse the user and affect the user's expectations and interpretations of the events in the story.

Emohawk: learning virtual characters by doing

Abstract: Emohawk is a narrative-based serious game designed to be a supportive tool for teaching basics of virtual agents development at universities and high-schools. Emohawk is built utilizing a free version of Unreal Engine 2 and it features an interactive scenario with four virtual agents controlled by an appraisal-driven architecture playing out a story approximately 5-10 minutes long. Students are engaged in solving game-based tasks with increasing complexity and simple programming tasks related to various parts of the virtual agents curricula. The Emohawk distribution includes documentation, graphical debugging tools and tutorials. The project is in continuous development and we plan a large evaluation for the 2010/2011 academic year.

Textual vs. graphical interaction in an interactive fiction game

Abstract: In this paper, we present a preliminary evaluation of a text-based and graphical version of an interactive fiction game that we created to look at how the user experience varies across the different mediums and modalities.

Exploring narrative interpretation and adaptation for interactive story creation

Abstract: Adaptation of stories - as a translation between media, such as literature and film - is explored for genres of interactive storytelling that make use of highly-interactive and user-adaptive technology. A concrete case study of transforming and abstracting a Hemingway short story is discussed in detail. The conclusion is that even though Interactive Storytelling content has to follow formal models, these cannot be derived from a written narrative alone and need story creators' input in order to work for interactivity.