The IRIS network of excellence: future directions in interactive storytelling

The IRIS Network of Excellence (NoE) started its work in January 2009. In this paper we highlight some new research directions developing within the network: one is revisiting narrative formalisation through the use of Linear Logic and the other is challenging the conventional framework of basing Interactive Storytelling on computer graphics to explore the content-based recombination of video sequences

Interactive Narrative Design beyond the Secret Art Status: A Method to Verify Design Conventions for Interactive Narrative

In recent years, game narrative has emerged as an area for novel game concepts and as a strategy to distinguish a particular title. However, innovation in this area comes primarily from indie companies and individual efforts by noted designers. There is a lack of trained specialists ready to produce interactive narrative experiences. Many existing practitioners are self-trained and often rely on intuition in their design practice. A key element missing from the effort towards a more sustained development and improved professional training is a set of design conventions that fulfill a role comparable to cinematic conventions like continuity editing or montage. Therefore, our research focuses on identifying, verifying and collecting such design strategies. We describe an empirical method to verify candidate design conventions through the evaluation of user reaction to A/B prototypes, which improves upon the trial-and-error process of old

‘IMPLICIT CREATION’ – NON-PROGRAMMER CONCEPTUAL MODELS FOR AUTHORING IN INTERACTIVE DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Interactive Digital Storytelling (IDS) constitutes a research field that emerged from several areas of art, creation and computer science. It inquires technologies and possible artefacts that allow ‘highly-interactive’ experiences of digital worlds with compelling stories. However, the situation for story creators approaching ‘highly-interactive’ storytelling is complex. There is a gap between the available technology, which requires programming and prior knowledge in Artificial Intelligence, and established models of storytelling, which are too linear to have the potential to be highly interactive. This thesis reports on research that lays the ground for bridging this gap, leading to novel creation philosophies in future work. A design research process has been pursued, which centred on the suggestion of conceptual models, explaining a) process structures of interdisciplinary development, b) interactive story structures including the user of the interactive story system, and c) the positioning of human authors within semi-automated creative processes. By means of ‘implicit creation’, storytelling and modelling of simulated worlds are reconciled. The conceptual models are informed by exhaustive literature review in established neighbouring disciplines. These are a) creative principles in different storytelling domains, such as screenwriting, video game writing, role playing and improvisational theatre, b) narratological studies of story grammars and structures, and c) principles of designing interactive systems, in the areas of basic HCI design and models, discourse analysis in conversational systems, as well as game- and simulation design. In a case study of artefact building, the initial models have been put into practice, evaluated and extended. These artefacts are a) a conceived authoring tool (‘Scenejo’) for the creation of digital conversational stories, and b) the development of a serious game (‘The Killer Phrase Game’) as an application development. The study demonstrates how starting out from linear storytelling, iterative steps of ‘implicit creation’ can lead to more variability and interactivity in the designed interactive story. In the concrete case, the steps included abstraction of dialogues into conditional actions, and creating a dynamic world model of the conversation. This process and artefact can be used as a model illustrating non-programmer approaches to ‘implicit creation’ in a learning process. Research demonstrates that the field of Interactive Digital Storytelling still has to be further advanced until general creative principles can be fully established, which is a long-term endeavour, dependent upon environmental factors. It also requires further technological developments. The gap is not yet closed, but it can be better explained. The research results build groundwork for education of prospective authors. Concluding the thesis, IDS-specific creative principles have been proposed for evaluation in future work

How to design a digital storytelling authoring tool for developing pre-reading and pre-writing skills

In the paper we describe an exploration into the design of an authoring tool to support the creation of multimedia stories. We explicitly targeted children with no reading or writing skills and their educators. Children in this age group often enjoy reading and creating stories together with adults and in so doing develop important pre-literacy skills. Literature suggests that when children play an active role in these activities, with a high level of engagement and interaction, there is a significant increase in their vocabulary acquisition and an improvement in their communication skills. Thus, we investigated these issues by conducting an explorative study in a pre-school class with fifteen children and three teachers. Here, we describe the emerging challenges and provide design directions for an authoring system to support the co-creation of stories for pre-literate children

Autorenumgebung für Serious Games - StoryTec: Eine Autorenumgebung und narrative Objekte für personalisierte Serious Games

Serious Games vereinen die Charakteristik von Unterhaltungsspielen mit einem „characterizing goal“ und Spezifika dedizierter Serious Games Anwendungsbereiche. Das Potential von Serious Games ist groß, dennoch ist die Qualität oftmals nicht optimal und die Nutzerakzeptanz entsprechend gering. Auch gibt es oftmals eine falsche Erwartungshaltung gegenüber Serious Games im Hinblick auf das Kosten-Nutzenverhältnis und auf notwendige Entwicklungsbudgets für Serious Games. Daher sind innovative Methoden, Konzepte und Technologien erforderlich, die signifikant zur Qualitätssteigerung und der erfolgreichen Verbreitung von Serious Games beitragen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit werden hierfür mit der Autorenumgebung StoryTec und dem Modell für narrative Objekte eigene Forschungsbeiträge zur Erstellung, Steuerung und Evaluation von personalisierten, adaptiven Serious Games vorgestellt. Basierend auf dieser Ausgangssituation werden in Kapitel 2 Serious Games Technologien als Lösungsansätze zur Erstellung, Steuerung und Evaluation von Serious Games beschrieben und die eigene Arbeit in dieses komplexe Forschungsfeld eingeordnet. Kapitel 3 und 4 beschreiben die Autorenumgebung „StoryTec“ und das Modell der „Narrative Game-based Learning Objects“ (NGLOB). StoryTec fungiert als Rapid Prototyping Umgebung, bestehend aus dem Authoring Tool „StoryTec Editor“ und den beiden Abspielkomponenten (Player) „StoryPublish“ und „StoryPlay“, die speziell Autoren ohne Programmierkenntnisse bei der Entwicklung von Serious Games unterstützen. NGLOBs dienen als konzeptionelle Grundlage von personalisierten Story-basierten Lernspielen; sie vereinen narrative dramaturgische Aspekte mit benutzerindividuellen Spieler- und Lernermodellen. Das NGLOB-Konzept wurde prototypisch realisiert und vollständig in StoryTec integriert. In Kapitel 5 „Serious Games für Bildung und Gesundheit“ werden die erarbeiteten Methoden und Konzepte anhand des Geographie-Lernspiels „80Days“ und dem personalisierten Bewegungsspiel „ErgoActive“ validiert. Abschließend werden die wesentlichen Ergebnisse der Arbeit zusammengefasst und ein Ausblick für weiterführende Forschungsarbeiten skizziert – u.a. im Hinblick auf die Konzeption eines Metadaten-gestützten Informationssystems für Serious Games, das eine (standardisierte) Beschreibung und (individuelle) Suche nach (geeigneten) Serious Games ermöglicht

Entropia

O Volume III Entropia da Coleção InterLocuções apresenta quatro entrevistas de pesquisadores que fizeram parte da programação do Entropia 2022, que reuniu três eventos internacionais o IX SIIMI - Simpósio Internacional de Inovação em Mídias Interativas -, 21#ART - Encontro Internacional de Arte e Tecnologia -, e o 9th Balance- Unbalance - art + science x technology = environment / responsibility. Esse evento foi realizado no período de 3 a 5 de novembro de 2022, no Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidad de Chile, em Santiago. Entropia (SIIMI + ART + BunB) convidou pesquisadores a apresentarem suas pesquisas na edição 2022 dos eventos, no Chile. O vocábulo Entropia é originário da termodinâmica, o termo entropia expressa a medida de desordem das partículas de um sistema físico. Tomado de empréstimo por várias outras áreas de conhecimento, como as teorias hermenêuticas, estéticas e do caos, entropia passa a nomear a medida de desordem em vários outros sistemas, como da comunicação, da computação, da arte etc, alcançando a carga de subjetividade e a intencionalidade interpretativa. Após Entropia 2022, os pesquisadores Silvia Laurentiz (Brasil); Ricardo Dal Farra (Canadá); Rebecca Cummins (Estados Unidos da América); e Daniel Cruz (Chile) foram convidados para a realização de quatro entrevistas em suas línguas maternas, contemplando oito perguntas em cada entrevista, para a composição do terceiro volume da Coleção InterLocuções 2023. Desse modo, Entropia - III Volume dessa Coleção - é apresentado em três idiomas: português, espanhol e inglês. Recentemente, com a pandemia da Covid-19, a entropia foi largamente discutida, não apenas na propagação do vírus SARS CoV 2, mas também nas redes sociais e na proliferação de fake news, notadamente na política, alterando o comportamento social. Para tanto, a leitura desse volume estabelece um panorama internacional do estado da arte da pesquisa, em uma perspectiva dialógica. Fruídos (re)conhecimentos, a partir de fluidas reflexões dessa obra!Volume III Entropia from the InterLocuções Collection features four interviews by researchers who were part of the Entropia 2022 program, which brought together three international events: the IX SIIMI - International Symposium on Innovation in Interactive Media -, 21#ART - International Art and Technology Meeting - , and the 9th Balance-Unbalance - art + science x technology = environment / responsibility. This event was held from November 3 to 5, 2022, at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Universidad de Chile, in Santiago. Entropia (SIIMI + ART + BunB) invited researchers to present their research at the 2022 edition of the events in Chile. The word Entropy originates from thermodynamics, the term entropy expresses the measure of disorder of the particles of a physical system. Borrowed by several other areas of knowledge, such as hermeneutic, aesthetic and chaos theories, entropy starts to name the measure of disorder in several other systems, such as communication, computing, art, etc., reaching the charge of subjectivity and interpretive intentionality. After Entropy 2022, researchers Silvia Laurentiz (Brazil); Ricardo Dal Farra (Canada); Rebecca Cummins (United States of America); and Daniel Cruz (Chile) were invited to conduct four interviews in their mother tongues, including eight questions in each interview, for the composition of the third volume of the 2023 InterLocuções Collection. three languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English. Recently, with the Covid-19 pandemic, entropy was widely discussed, not only in the spread of the SARS CoV 2 virus, but also in social networks and in the proliferation of fake news, notably in politics, changing social behavior. Therefore, reading this volume establishes an international panorama of the state of the art of research, in a dialogic perspective. Fruitful (re)knowledge, from fluid reflections of this work

Learning Activities with Semantic. Hypermedia in Higher Education

The increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in diverse professional and personal contexts calls for new knowledge, and a set of abilities, competences and attitudes, for an active and participative citizenship. In this context it is acknowledged that universities have an important role innovating in the educational use of digital media to promote an inclusive digital literacy. The educational potential of digital technologies and resources has been recognized by both researchers and practitioners. Multiple pedagogical models and research approaches have already contributed to put in evidence the importance of adapting instructional and learning practices and processes to concrete contexts and educational goals. Still, academic and scientific communities believe further investments in ICT research is needed in higher education. This study focuses on educational models that may contribute to support digital technology uses, where these can have cognitive and educational relevance when compared to analogical technologies. A teaching and learning model, centered in the active role of the students in the exploration, production, presentation and discussion of interactive multimedia materials, was developed and applied using the internet and exploring emergent semantic hypermedia formats. The research approach focused on the definition of design principles for developing class activities that were applied in three different iterations in undergraduate courses from two institutions, namely the University of Texas at Austin, USA and the University of Lisbon, Portugal. The analysis of this study made possible to evaluate the potential and efficacy of the model proposed and the authoring tool chosen in the support of metacognitive skills and attitudes related to information structuring and management, storytelling and communication, using computers and the internet

Directed Emergent Drama

A fully interactive drama, where the player interacts with intelligent Non- Player Characters (NPCs), can revolutionise entertainment, gaming, education, and therapy. Creating such a genuinely interactive drama that is entertaining and gives players a sense of coherency as active participants in the unfolding drama has seen a substantial research effort. Authors have the power to shape dramatised stories for theatre or television at will. Conversely, the authors' ability to shape interactive drama is limited because the drama emerges from players' and NPCs actions during game-play, which significantly limits authoring control. A coherent drama has a recognisable dramatic structure. One philosophy is to use planning algorithms and narrative structures to reduce required authoring. However, planning algorithms are intractable for the large state-spaces intrinsic to interactive dramas, and they have not reduced the authoring problem sufficiently. A more straightforward and computationally feasible method is emergent interactive drama from players' and NPCs' actions. The main difficulty with this approach is maintaining a drama structure and theme, such as a mystery theme or a training scenario, that the player experiences while interacting with the game world. Therefore, it is necessary to impose some form of structure to guide or direct the unfolding drama. The solution introduced in this thesis is to distribute the computation among autonomous actors that are guided by goals and drama structures which a centralised autonomous director agent distributes among the actors, which comprises the following four main elements: a) autonomous rational actor agents that know they are acting and can negotiate dialogues between them to remain realistic while simultaneously progressing the drama, without the player knowing, b) Bayesian network to model the actors reasoning, including beliefs about other actors' mental states c) an autonomous director agent uses "schemas", conceptual structures based on motifs, to guide the actors