‘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

Beyond a Fad: Why Video Games Should Be Part of 21st Century Libraries

We believe video games have a place in libraries. We start by describing two provocative video games. Next, we offer a framework for the general mission of libraries, including access, motivation, and guidance. As a medium, video games have some distinguishing traits: they are visual, interactive, and based on simulations. We explain how these traits require and reward some traditional and new literacies. Furthermore, people play video games for at least three reasons: immersion, challenge, and connection. Finally, we offer guidelines and examples for how librarians can integrate video games into library collections and programming

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference 4.0: The Interactive Course

Proceedings of the CUNY Games Conference, held from January 22-23, 2018, at the CUNY Graduate Center and Borough of Manhattan Community College. Critical Play with History (Panel) - Composition & Storytelling - Health & Cognitive Sciences - Gaming Anthropology: Teaching Culture and Power Through Games and Design (Panel) - Twine & Writing Games - Easy Ideas II - STEM Games - Global Games for Change Catalog (Panel) - Comics & Active Learning - Fact Checking & Research - Computer Science & Game Design - SimGlobal: Building a Serious Roleplay Course for the Social Sciences (Panel) - Role Playing Games, Narrative, & Story - Course Review Through Games - Business & Finance Games - Game Design and Programming in Unity - What’s Your Game Plan? - The Allure of Play in the Classroo

Authoring of Adaptive Single-Player Educational Games

Digital Educational Games, as one of the most important application areas of Serious Games, combine positive properties of digital games, such as strong motivation for players and inherent learning processes, with educational methods and technologies. Adaptive algorithms allow such games to be aligned automatically to the needs of different players, thereby increasing the learning efficacy. However, educational games are among the most complex game production endeavors, since they are often faced with small budget on the one hand and special requirements with impacts on all aspects of game development, from design through programming to asset production, on the other. Authoring tools have been successfully created and used in fields related to Serious Games and educational games, including e-Learning, multimedia, interactive storytelling and entertainment games. These tools incorporate parts of the production workflows in their respective areas and allow all authors, including non-programmers, to create applications. While it appears beneficial to create authoring tools for educational games, we find that authoring tools for educational games have to account for the higher complexity and interactivity of games compared to other forms of multimedia and that they have not been researched thoroughly in the past. These challenges are addressed in this thesis by presenting a concept for an authoring tool for adaptive educational single-player games that accounts for the specifics of educational game development. Major results are an educational game description model, concepts for adaptive control of educational games and author support mechanisms specifically for adaptive educational game authoring. These concepts are implemented in the authoring tool "StoryTec", which is validated in the course of a set of evaluation studies. The novel features of StoryTec include the specific support for adaptive educational games, a concept for structural and interaction templates shown to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the authoring tool, as well as the support for collaborative work. It builds the foundation for a number of current and future research and development projects, including the extension towards authoring of multiplayer games, and is tested and used by over 120 members of an open community

Engagement in independent video games through narrative and character development

Independent videogames (also known as “indie games”) have experienced an increasingly prominent role in the videogame industry. In the last decade, this particular genre has seen an exponential growth, filling its own niche in the market. Furthermore, the low level of investment required by this genre (both in terms of economical and human resources) makes it a favoured path for small companies to start producing videogames. This paradigm of low resources, allied with the technological limitations of mobile devices (this genre's most common platform) defines the “indie game's” playability and visual/narrative aesthetics; the result being a peculiar creative simplicity. We believe this simplicity to be the source of the independent videogames' appeal to the general playerbase. In other words, these videogames engage the player by presenting him/her with a simple yet rich storytelling experience, where complex elements such as long cinematics are eschewed in favor of a more primal and direct experience. Simply put, by investing on a solid narrative and fleshing out interesting, relatable characters, an independent videogame manages to achieve the engagement potential of its commercial counterparts, while doing so with a fraction of the cost. In this dissertation we aim to understand exactly how independent videogames achieve this phenomenon of player engagement through their narrative and characters. We will do so by allying theoretical research on these two creative resources with a the practical exercise of developing our own videogame concept (as a part of our Master's Degree project). Strictly speaking, we will study tools and techniques relating to achieving engagement through narrative and character development, subsequently testing them out in our own project and drawing conclusions on their effectiveness in the process

Performance Through an Avatar: Exploring Affect and Ideology Through Narrative in Videogames

Videogames are a major source of popular cultural narratives surpassing even Hollywood films. Videogames, however, cast the player as the active agent within the narrative as opposed to film, television, and traditional theatre where the separation between performer and audience is clearly demarcated. This dissertation investigates the affective potential of videogames realized through the relationship of the player and the avatar within the game world. Specifically, I look at the avatar as an affective conduit for the player, how the feedback between the player and avatar creates a cybernetic relationship, how this relationship changes the player, and how this change potentially augments the players interpretation of realityvirtual and otherwise. It is through this changed (and augmented) interpretation of reality that socio/political ideological meaningsintentional or notmay be absorbed by the player. Ethnographic research conducted with six volunteer participants combined with my own autoethnographic research into several recent popular videogames is intersected with theories of affect, embodiment, and ideology. My findings suggest that experience with the virtual realities of game worlds is one step removed from actual experience. Since videogames are composed of representations, the ideological positions embedded within those representations are not simply presented and understood like traditional theatre, film, and television, but are embodied by the player through the avatar as (nearly direct) experience. Theatre, film, and television have rich critical histories and this study of the players performance through the avatar as an affective conduit and receiver/transmitter of ideology joins the growing critical body of work regarding the newer storytelling medium of videogames

Lecture Notes on Interactive Storytelling

These lecture notes collect the material used in the advanced course 'Interactive Storytelling' organized biannually at the Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland. Its aim is to present the key concepts behind interactive digital storytelling (IDS) as well as to review proposed and existing IDS systems. The course focuses on the four partakers of IDS: the platform, the designer, the interactor, and the storyworld. When constructing a platform, the problem is to select an appropriate approach from tightly controlled to emergent storytelling. On this platform, the designer is then responsible for creating the content (e.g., characters, props, scenes and events) for the storyworld, which is then experienced and influenced by the interactor. The structure and relationships between these partakers is explained from a theoretical perspective as well as using existing IDS systems as examples.</p