A conceptual framework for interactive virtual storytelling

This paper presents a framework of an interactive storytelling system. It can integrate five components: management centre, evaluation centre, intelligent virtual agent, intelligent virtual environment, and users, making possible interactive solutions where the communication among these components is conducted in a rational and intelligent way. Environment plays an important role in providing heuristic information for agents through communicating with the management centre. The main idea is based on the principle of heuristic guiding of the behaviour of intelligent agents for guaranteeing the unexpectedness and consistent themes

Affect and believability in game characters:a review of the use of affective computing in games

Virtual agents are important in many digital environments. Designing a character that highly engages users in terms of interaction is an intricate task constrained by many requirements. One aspect that has gained more attention recently is the effective dimension of the agent. Several studies have addressed the possibility of developing an affect-aware system for a better user experience. Particularly in games, including emotional and social features in NPCs adds depth to the characters, enriches interaction possibilities, and combined with the basic level of competence, creates a more appealing game. Design requirements for emotionally intelligent NPCs differ from general autonomous agents with the main goal being a stronger player-agent relationship as opposed to problem solving and goal assessment. Nevertheless, deploying an affective module into NPCs adds to the complexity of the architecture and constraints. In addition, using such composite NPC in games seems beyond current technology, despite some brave attempts. However, a MARPO-type modular architecture would seem a useful starting point for adding emotions

Design Fiction Diegetic Prototyping: A Research Framework for Visualizing Service Innovations

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Purpose: This paper presents a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on speculative fiction, we propose a methodology that positions service innovations within a six-stage research development framework. We begin by reviewing and critiquing designerly approaches that have traditionally been associated with service innovations and futures literature. In presenting our framework, we provide an example of its application to the Internet of Things (IoT), illustrating the central tenets proposed and key issues identified. Findings: The research framework advances a methodology for visualizing future experiential service innovations, considering how realism may be integrated into a designerly approach. Research limitations/implications: Design fiction diegetic prototyping enables researchers to express a range of ‘what if’ or ‘what can it be’ research questions within service innovation contexts. However, the process encompasses degrees of subjectivity and relies on knowledge, judgment and projection. Practical implications: The paper presents an approach to devising future service scenarios incorporating new and emergent technologies in service contexts. The proposed framework may be used as part of a range of research designs, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed method investigations. Originality: Operationalizing an approach that generates and visualizes service futures from an experiential perspective contributes to the advancement of techniques that enables the exploration of new possibilities for service innovation research

Affective issues in learning technologies: emotional responses to technology and technology's role in supporting socio-emotional skills

This paper focuses on some of the author's research studies over the past thirty years and places these in a wider context to reflect on research into affective issues in learning technologies over this period, and to consider whether and how the issues uncovered by research have changed as technologies have developed over time. Three issues are given particular attention: firstly the reasons for learners' use or lack of use of technologies for their learning; secondly adult learners' attitudes towards using technology for learning and thirdly how technology might support socio-emotional development and expression in children. The discussion of these issues is framed by two of the author's research projects. For the first two issues this is an early study of students' perceptions and attitudes towards using computers for tutorial learning in 1980. The factors that influenced the students' use of the computer tutorials are discussed (including access, assessment and anxiety about using computers) and also the extent to which some of these factors persist for many learners using (or not using) technologies today. The discussion of the third issue draws on a series of studies conducted in the 1990s to investigate whether educational technology could support children and young people's emotional expression and communication and development of socio-emotional skills. Finally the paper considers how these kinds of issues have been taken forward and how they are represented in contemporary research and suggests that trust is an important factor in using learning technologies

Affective issues in learning technologies: emotional responses to technology and technology's role in supporting socio-emotional skills

This paper focuses on some of the author's research studies over the past thirty years and places these in a wider context to reflect on research into affective issues in learning technologies over this period, and to consider whether and how the issues uncovered by research have changed as technologies have developed over time. Three issues are given particular attention: firstly the reasons for learners' use or lack of use of technologies for their learning; secondly adult learners' attitudes towards using technology for learning and thirdly how technology might support socio-emotional development and expression in children. The discussion of these issues is framed by two of the author's research projects. For the first two issues this is an early study of students' perceptions and attitudes towards using computers for tutorial learning in 1980. The factors that influenced the students' use of the computer tutorials are discussed (including access, assessment and anxiety about using computers) and also the extent to which some of these factors persist for many learners using (or not using) technologies today. The discussion of the third issue draws on a series of studies conducted in the 1990s to investigate whether educational technology could support children and young people's emotional expression and communication and development of socio-emotional skills. Finally the paper considers how these kinds of issues have been taken forward and how they are represented in contemporary research and suggests that trust is an important factor in using learning technologies

Player agency in interactive narrative: audience, actor & author

The question motivating this review paper is, how can computer-based interactive narrative be used as a constructivist learn- ing activity? The paper proposes that player agency can be used to link interactive narrative to learner agency in constructivist theory, and to classify approaches to interactive narrative. The traditional question driving research in interactive narrative is, ‘how can an in- teractive narrative deal with a high degree of player agency, while maintaining a coherent and well-formed narrative?’ This question derives from an Aristotelian approach to interactive narrative that, as the question shows, is inherently antagonistic to player agency. Within this approach, player agency must be restricted and manip- ulated to maintain the narrative. Two alternative approaches based on Brecht’s Epic Theatre and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed are reviewed. If a Boalian approach to interactive narrative is taken the conflict between narrative and player agency dissolves. The question that emerges from this approach is quite different from the traditional question above, and presents a more useful approach to applying in- teractive narrative as a constructivist learning activity

Towards Learning ‘Self’ and Emotional Knowledge in Social and Cultural Human-Agent Interactions

Original article can be found at: http://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?ID=35052 Copyright IGI. Posted by permission of the publisher.This article presents research towards the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) inhabited by intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and modeling a scenario of inter-cultural interactions. The ultimate aim of this VLE is to allow users to reflect upon and learn about intercultural communication and collaboration. Rather than predefining the interactions among the virtual agents and scripting the possible interactions afforded by this environment, we pursue a bottomup approach whereby inter-cultural communication emerges from interactions with and among autonomous agents and the user(s). The intelligent virtual agents that are inhabiting this environment are expected to be able to broaden their knowledge about the world and other agents, which may be of different cultural backgrounds, through interactions. This work is part of a collaborative effort within a European research project called eCIRCUS. Specifically, this article focuses on our continuing research concerned with emotional knowledge learning in autobiographic social agents.Peer reviewe

Interactive Digital Storytelling: Towards a Hybrid Conceptual Approach

1 Introduction In this contribution, Interactive Digital Storytelling is viewed as a hybrid form of game design and cinematic storytelling for the understanding and making of future learning and entertainment applications. The paper shall present formal design models that provide a conceptual bridge between both traditional linear narrative techniques as well as agent-based emergent conversations with virtual characters. In summary, a theoretical classification of thinking models for authors and interactive experiences for users will be presented. The conceptual work is based upon practical experiments within several research projects on edutainment, which employ conversations with virtual characters to convey information and to entertain. By building several prototypes, two different approaches where explored to combine plot-based interactive storytelling with character-based emergent conversations. Visual impressions of the examples are shown in Fig. 1 and will be explained in more detail in the full paper. In both examples, several virtual animated characters converse digitally with each other and with a user who mainly types text with the keyboard, optionally complemented by choice functionality and special hardware interfaces. The resulting conversations differ in their direction of approaching a middle ground between predefined narrative presentations and emergent conversations with a user, by combining emerging chatterbot dialogues with a story structure. The user experiences a semi-autonomous behaviour of interacting agents. This paper is not about the difference between stories and games. The motivation is on the potential of both to offer structures for learning and entertainment. Instead of trying to draw a distinct line between them, conceptual models for authors have to be defined, who are responsible to flesh out a suitable design within a variability of forms. Design elements include aspects of drama and filmmaking, dialogue design, as well as game design and game tuning. The actual challenge for the design of learning applications with conversational agents is the necessity that authors have to take on responsibility concerning the intended outcome and effect. In fact, they have to balance the bias between a pre-structured storyline (and possibly a timeline) which they may have strictly defined, and the agency that users shall experience through the design of the author. However, there is no one-dimensional borderline between both. In the following, the paper presents a model with several levels which shall help to form a more differentiated picture. 2 Conceptual Models for Storytelling and Agency In Fig. 2, a traditional modus operandi is sketched at four abstract levels. The distinction between levels may vary from project to project. The four levels were found to be suitable for the addition of interaction at each of the levels to form a classification of genres. On the top level of highest story abstraction, the overall dramatic outline is sketched. For example, there may be a hero’s journey in 3 acts, or a Propp model. Further, authors break down the story into scenes which are handled at the next level. Each scene will be defined by a scene script. Within a scene, dialogues and interactions between actors are defined, and lead to stage directions. If producing for an animated film, these directions are strictly mapped onto virtual actors by a skilled animator, who defines the way the virtual actors move and behave. When storytelling gets interactive, the user can influence the storytelling. In fact, in games as well as in constructivist scenarios for learning, users need to experience agency within a story. However, there are different levels at which to affect the outcome. In Fig. 3, the first author model (compare Fig. 2) has been extrapolated according to the need of introducing agency at each level. Opposed to the author, a participant is modelled who now may contribute to each level. The first implication for the author is that it’s not enough to just model a database of descriptions, but to add rules and models, which control an autonomous behaviour at each level in reaction to the participants. Then, it is possible to think of gradations of granted agency versus authored determination. Within Fig. 3 this is indicated by the sliders between control and autonomy at each level. The levels rather represent conceptual stages for authoring than elements of software architecture, though there are parallels to architectures of a number of existing systems of game and story engines. Semi-autonomy occurs on the edge between predefined factual information and rules for each level. The more rules on one level, the more agency can be experienced by potentially affecting the respective level. For example: It is imaginable that participants only experience agency on the lowest level, as a feeling of presence in a scenario. In this case, everything is predefined, but avatars would still react with nonverbal cues to the visitor and recognize her, comparable to a virtual cursor that shows a live status. At the conversation level, participants can for example have agency in an entertaining and informative chatbot dialogue with the characters. They may even not be able to affect anything in the story logic, but participate at dialogue level with speech acts. Agency at scene level would mean to have real choices about the outcome of a scene, for example, the story of the game would have to change according to user’s actions. On the top level, players would influence the whole story of the application, if the "agency slider" would be at a 100% to the right. For example, a simulation such as "The Sims" (Electronic Arts) can be put into the classification here. For factual knowledge transfer in a didactic lesson situation, the highest level could stay predefined, while the lower levels allow for conversational interaction, however constrained. If authors only provide a rule base with little pre-scripted structuring, they achieve a conceptual model more like an exploration or gaming experience depending completely on the action of the player. While arranging the bias at each level to various slider positions, several abstract genres of Interactive Digital Storytelling can be rebuilt in the model, which helps to specify exactly what kind of user experience an application shall provide. It is a conceptual model that can be used to classify story-related games, and it particularly supports authors coming from linear media, stepping into interactive storytelling. 3 Further Work In the full paper, I will also tackle related work while comparing with other theoretical models between games and stories, including references of the taxonomies of C. Lindley, M. Leblanc, J. Klabbers, B. Laurel, C. Pearce, and traditional classifications such as of R. Caillois. I will give more examples how existing products of Interactive Storytelling fit into the classification, and raise the question if new genres have to be defined particularly for Interactive Digital Storytelling. Literature Caillois, Roger: Man, Play and Games. (orig.: Les Jeux Et Les Hommes 1958) University of Illinois Press, Reprint (2001) Hunicke, Robin; LeBlanc, Marc; Zubek, Robert: MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. In: Workshop Proceedings: Challenges in Game AI. 19th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence AAAI (2004) Klabbers, Jan H.G.: The gaming landscape: A taxonomy for classifying games and simulations. In Copier & Raessens (Eds.) Level up: Digital Games Research Conference. Utrecht University (2003) Lindley, Craig: Narrative, Game Play and Alternative Time Structures for Virtual Environments. In: Proc. TIDSE 2004, Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Darmstadt, Springer LNCS vol. 3105, 2004 Pearce, Celia: Emergent authorship: The next interactive revolution. In: Computers & Graphics 26, p. 21-29 (2002) Spierling, U.: Conceptual Models for Interactive Digital Storytelling in Knowledge Media Applications. In: Proc. TIDSE 2004, Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment, Darmstadt, Springer LNCS vol. 3105, 200