Interactive storytelling
Encyclopedia
Interactive Storytelling [IS] is a form of digital entertainment in which users create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, either by issuing commands to the story's protagonist, or acting as a general director of events in the narrative. Interactive storytelling is a medium where the narrative, and its evolution, can be influenced in real-time by a user.
Unlike interactive fiction
, there is an open debate about nature of the relationship between interactive storytelling with computer games. Crawford states that "Interactive storytelling systems are not "Games with Stories"", whereas much research in the community focuses on applications to computer games. There are several key issues in interactive storytelling, for example: how to generate stories which are both interesting and coherent; and how to allow the user to intervene in the story, without violating any rules of the genre.
's research at Northwestern University and the experimental program TaleSpin. In the early 1980s Michael Liebowitz developed "Universe", a conceptual system for a kind of interactive storytelling. In 1986, Brenda Laurel
published her PhD dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System".
During the 1990s, a number of research projects began to appear, such as the Oz Project led by Dr. Joseph Bates and Carnegie-Mellon University, the Software Agents group at MIT, the Improv Project led by Ken Perlin at New York University, and the Virtual Theater group at Stanford, led by Dr. Barbara Hayes-Roth.
There were also a number of conferences touching upon these subjects, such as the Workshop on Interactive Fiction & Synthetic Realities in 1990; Interactive Story Systems: Plot & Character at Stanford in 1995; the AAAI Workshop on AI and Entertainment, 1996; Lifelike Computer Characters, Snowbird, Utah, October 1996; the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents at Marina del Rey, CA. February 5–8, 1997.
The first conference to directly address the research area was the 1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, which took place in March 2003 and focussed specifically on concepts and first prototypes for automated storytelling and autonomous characters, including modelling of emotions and the user experience. The concepts were developed by Chris Crawford
, in his 2004 book.
The 2000s saw a growth in work on interactive storytelling and related topics, presented at events which including the alternating bi-yearly conferences, TIDSE ICVS (International Conference on Virtual Storytelling) and hosted in German and France, respectively. TIDSE and ICVS were superseded by ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling), a yearly event established in 2008.
The first published interactive storytelling software that was widely recognized as the "real thing" was Façade
, created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. The system was publicly released in 2006, and was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival
Secondly, data-driven strategies have a library of "story components" which are sufficiently general that they can be combined smoothly in response to a user's actions (or lack thereof). This approach has the advantage of being more general that the directed environmental approach, at the cost of a much larger initial investment.
Finally, language-based approaches require that the user and system share some, very limited, domain-specific language so that they can react to each other and the system can 'understand' a greater proportion of the users actions, Crawford suggests approaches that only use, for example, pictorial languages or restricted versions of English.
From the background of a multimedia author, media director and designer Eku Wand describes further strategies which are related to structure, space, time and perspective.
(filmmakers), Marc Cavazza, Fred Charles, Chris Crawford
, Andrew Glassner
, Janet Murray
, Frank Nack, Barbara Hayes-Roth, Brenda Laurel, Pattie Maes, Brian Magerko, Michael Mateas, Mark O. Riedl, Greg Roach, Roger Schank, Ulrike Spierling, Andrew Stern, Nicolas Szilas, Eku Wand, Noah Wardrip-Fruin
, Peter Weyhrauch, and R. Michael Young.
, Interactive Narrative Design combines ludology, narratology
and game design
to form interactive entertainment development methodologies. Interactive entertainment experiences allow the player to witness data as navigable, participatory, and dramatic in real-time: “a narratological craft which focuses on the structuralist
, or literary semiotic creation of stories." Interactive Narrative design seeks to accomplish this via viewer/user/player (VUP) navigated dataspaces.
Interactive Narrative Design focuses on creating meaningful participatory story experiences with interactive systems. The aim is to transport the player through play into the videogame (dataspace) using their visual and auditory senses. When interactive narrative design is successful, the VUP (viewer/user/player) believes that they are experiencing a story.
Unlike interactive fiction
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
, there is an open debate about nature of the relationship between interactive storytelling with computer games. Crawford states that "Interactive storytelling systems are not "Games with Stories"", whereas much research in the community focuses on applications to computer games. There are several key issues in interactive storytelling, for example: how to generate stories which are both interesting and coherent; and how to allow the user to intervene in the story, without violating any rules of the genre.
History
Early attempts to understand interactive storytelling date back to the 1970s with such efforts as Roger SchankRoger Schank
Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur.-Academic career:...
's research at Northwestern University and the experimental program TaleSpin. In the early 1980s Michael Liebowitz developed "Universe", a conceptual system for a kind of interactive storytelling. In 1986, Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel is a pioneering writer, researcher, designer and entrepreneur in the fields of human-computer interaction, interactive narrative and cultural aspects of technology ....
published her PhD dissertation, "Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System".
During the 1990s, a number of research projects began to appear, such as the Oz Project led by Dr. Joseph Bates and Carnegie-Mellon University, the Software Agents group at MIT, the Improv Project led by Ken Perlin at New York University, and the Virtual Theater group at Stanford, led by Dr. Barbara Hayes-Roth.
There were also a number of conferences touching upon these subjects, such as the Workshop on Interactive Fiction & Synthetic Realities in 1990; Interactive Story Systems: Plot & Character at Stanford in 1995; the AAAI Workshop on AI and Entertainment, 1996; Lifelike Computer Characters, Snowbird, Utah, October 1996; the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents at Marina del Rey, CA. February 5–8, 1997.
The first conference to directly address the research area was the 1st International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, which took place in March 2003 and focussed specifically on concepts and first prototypes for automated storytelling and autonomous characters, including modelling of emotions and the user experience. The concepts were developed by Chris Crawford
Chris Crawford (game designer)
Christopher Crawford is a computer game designer and writer noted for creating a number of important games in the 1980s, founding The Journal of Computer Game Design, and organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference.- Biography :...
, in his 2004 book.
The 2000s saw a growth in work on interactive storytelling and related topics, presented at events which including the alternating bi-yearly conferences, TIDSE ICVS (International Conference on Virtual Storytelling) and hosted in German and France, respectively. TIDSE and ICVS were superseded by ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling), a yearly event established in 2008.
The first published interactive storytelling software that was widely recognized as the "real thing" was Façade
Façade (interactive story)
Façade is an artificial-intelligence-based interactive story created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. It was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival and has been exhibited at several international art shows...
, created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. The system was publicly released in 2006, and was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival
Strategies
Crawford discusses three potential strategies for developing interactive storytelling systems. Firstly, environmental approaches are those which take a interactive system, such as a computer game, and encourage the actions of a user in such a way as to form a coherent plot. With a sufficiently complex systems emergent behavior may form story-like behavior regardless of the users actions.Secondly, data-driven strategies have a library of "story components" which are sufficiently general that they can be combined smoothly in response to a user's actions (or lack thereof). This approach has the advantage of being more general that the directed environmental approach, at the cost of a much larger initial investment.
Finally, language-based approaches require that the user and system share some, very limited, domain-specific language so that they can react to each other and the system can 'understand' a greater proportion of the users actions, Crawford suggests approaches that only use, for example, pictorial languages or restricted versions of English.
From the background of a multimedia author, media director and designer Eku Wand describes further strategies which are related to structure, space, time and perspective.
The Oz project
The Oz project was an attempt in the early 1990s to use intelligent agent technology to attack the challenges in IS, the architecture included a simulated physical world, several characters, an interactor, a theory of presentation, and a drama manager. Users communicated with the system using either a text based or graphical interface.Façade
Façade is an artificial-intelligence-based approach created by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. It was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival and is recognised as the first true interactive storytelling software. It is text based and uses natural language processing and other artificial intelligence routines to direct the action.HEFTI
The Hybrid Evolutionary-Fuzzy Time-based Interactive (HEFTI) storytelling system was produced at the University of Texas and uses genetic algorithms to recombine and evaluate story components generated from a set of story templates Although Crawford described it as the "wrong approach to development systems... ...incomprehensible to the kind of creative talent needed for storytelling.", it continues to be discussed as a research and approach and genetic algorithm continue to be considered a potential tool for use in the area.Library of story traces
Figa and Tarau have used WordNet to build technologies useful to interactive storytelling. This approach defines 'story traces' as an abstract reduction (or skeleton) of a story, and 'story projection' as a fragment of a story that can be treated as a single dramatic building block. This work seeks to build up large repositories of narrative forms in such a way that these forms can later be combinedStorytron
Storytron is a Java based interactive story engine based around Chris Crawford's theory that creating interactive story is similar to creating a sentence with particular emphasis on the verb. Storytron includes a free authoring tool which is used to script actors, stages, props, and interactions known as verbs.Developers
An incomplete list of people who have published important work in this field includes Phil Agre, Joseph Bates, Chad, Matt & RobChad, Matt & Rob
Chad, Matt & Rob is a group of filmmakers based in Los Angeles. The group has created numerous shorts that often blend comedy with horror, adventure and fantasy. They coined the term "Interactive Adventure" to describe their 2008 film The Time Machine: An Interactive Adventure; the project was...
(filmmakers), Marc Cavazza, Fred Charles, Chris Crawford
Chris Crawford (game designer)
Christopher Crawford is a computer game designer and writer noted for creating a number of important games in the 1980s, founding The Journal of Computer Game Design, and organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference.- Biography :...
, Andrew Glassner
Andrew Glassner
Andrew S. Glassner is an American expert in computer graphics, well known in computer graphics community as the originator and editor of the Graphics Gems series and of An Introduction to Ray Tracing...
, Janet Murray
Janet Murray
Janet Murray is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she is the director of graduate studies in the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Before coming to Georgia Tech in 1999, she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Educational Computing Initiatives...
, Frank Nack, Barbara Hayes-Roth, Brenda Laurel, Pattie Maes, Brian Magerko, Michael Mateas, Mark O. Riedl, Greg Roach, Roger Schank, Ulrike Spierling, Andrew Stern, Nicolas Szilas, Eku Wand, Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is an advisor for the Expressive Intelligence Studio. He is an alumnus of the Literary Arts MFA program and Special Graduate Study PhD program at Brown University...
, Peter Weyhrauch, and R. Michael Young.
Interactive Narrative Design
As defined by Stephen DinehartStephen Dinehart
Stephen Erin Dinehart IV is a designer, writer, teacher, and artist, best known for his work in video games, more specifically transmedia storytelling and interactive storytelling...
, Interactive Narrative Design combines ludology, narratology
Narratology
Narratology denotes both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. While in principle the word may refer to any systematic study of narrative, in practice its usage is rather more restricted. It is an anglicisation of French...
and game design
Game design
Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as...
to form interactive entertainment development methodologies. Interactive entertainment experiences allow the player to witness data as navigable, participatory, and dramatic in real-time: “a narratological craft which focuses on the structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
, or literary semiotic creation of stories." Interactive Narrative design seeks to accomplish this via viewer/user/player (VUP) navigated dataspaces.
Interactive Narrative Design focuses on creating meaningful participatory story experiences with interactive systems. The aim is to transport the player through play into the videogame (dataspace) using their visual and auditory senses. When interactive narrative design is successful, the VUP (viewer/user/player) believes that they are experiencing a story.
External links
- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2722/video_games_are_dead_a_chat_with_ - "Video Games are Dead: A Chat with Storytronics Guru Chris Crawford"
- Erasmatazz - More information, by Chris Crawford.
- A comprehensive set of links on interactive storytelling
- http://icids.org Hub of the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling series (includes ICVS and TIDSE)
- http://icids2008.ning.com/ Companion website to the first International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling
- Interactive Storytelling and Narrative Theories wiki Grouping descriptions of various narrative theories, IS systems and the computational models behind the systems.