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A Neo-Aristotelian Theory of Interactive Drama
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In this article, a theory of interactive drama based on Aristotle's dramatic theory is proposed to address the interactivity added by player agency, and it is hoped that this theory will both provide design guidance for interactive dramatic experiences and technical direction for the AI work necessary to build the system (answering the question "How should I build it?").Abstract:
Interactive drama has been discussed for a number of years as a new form of AI-based interactive entertainment (Laurel 1986, Bates 1992). While there has been substantial technical progress in building believable agents (Bates, Loyall and Reilly 1992, Blumberg 1996, HayesRoth, van Gent and Huber 1996), and some technical progress in interactive plot (Weyhrauch 1997), no work has yet been completed which combines plot and character into a full-fledged dramatic experience. The game industry has been producing plot-based interactive experiences (adventure games) since the beginning of the industry, but only a few of them (such as The Last Express) begin to approach the status of interactive drama. Part of the difficulty in achieving true interactive drama is due to the lack of a theoretical framework guiding the exploration of the technological and design issues surrounding interactive drama. This paper proposes a theory of interactive drama based on Aristotle's dramatic theory (Aristotle 330 BC) but modified to address the interactivity added by player agency. It is hoped that this theory will both provide design guidance for interactive dramatic experiences (answering the question "What should I build?") and technical direction for the AI work necessary to build the system (answering the question "How should I build it?"). This Neo-Aristotelian theory borrows from Laurel's treatment of Aristotle in an interactive context (Laurel 1986, Laurel 1991), but extends it by situating user agency within the model; the new model provides specific design guidelines for maximizing user agency. First I will briefly describe what I mean by interactive drama, and how drama differs from narrative. Then I will briefly describe Murray's (Murray 1998) three categories for analyzing interactive story experiences. For our purposes, agency will be the most important of these three categories. Next I will describe Aristotle's theory of drama and the integration of user agency into this theory. Finally I will draw some design and technology guidelines from the new theory.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Character-based interactive storytelling
TL;DR: The authors introduce their character-based interactive storytelling prototype that uses hierarchical task network planning techniques, which support story generation and any-time user intervention.
Interactive drama, art and artificial intelligence
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present Facade, the first published interactive drama system that integrates character (believable agents), story (drama management) and shallow natural language processing into a complete system.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Madame bovary on the holodeck: immersive interactive storytelling
TL;DR: A small-scale, yet complete, integration of a real-time immersive interactive storytelling system that allows the user to play the role of one of the characters and influence the unfolding of the story by his actions.
Book ChapterDOI
Narratology for interactive storytelling: a critical introduction
Marc Cavazza,David Pizzi +1 more
TL;DR: The most frequently cited theories from the perspective of IS research are reviewed to discuss in particular the extent to which they can actually inspire IS technologies and highlight key issues for the effective use of narratology in IS.
Book ChapterDOI
Controlling Narrative Generation with Planning Trajectories: The Role of Constraints
Julie Porteous,Marc Cavazza +1 more
TL;DR: An approach to planning with trajectory constraints is developed that decomposes the problem into a set of smaller subproblems using the temporal orderings described by the constraints and then solves them incrementally.
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