Collaborative narrative generation in persistent virtual environments

This thesis describes a multi-agent approach to generating narrative based on the activities of participants in large-scale persistent virtual environments, such as massivelymultiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These environments provide diverse interactive experiences for large numbers of simultaneous participants. Involving such participants in an overarching narrative experience has presented challenges due to the difficulty of incorporating the individual actions of so many participants into a single coherent storyline. Various approaches have been adopted in an attempt to solve this problem, such as guiding players to follow pre-designed storylines, or giving them goals to achieve that advance the storyline, or by having developers (‘dungeon masters’) adapt the narrative to the real-time actions of players. However these solutions can be inflexible, and/or fail to take player interaction into account, or do so only at the collective level, for groups of players. This thesis describes a different approach, in which embodied witness-narrator agents observe participants’ actions in a persistent virtual environment and generate narrative from reports of those actions. The generated narrative may be published to external audiences, e.g., via community websites, Internet chatrooms, or SMS text messages, or fed back into the environment in real-time to embellish and enhance the ongoing experience with new narrative elements derived from participants’ own achievements. The design and implementation of this framework is described in detail, and compared to related work. Results of evaluating the framework, both technically, and through a live study, are presented and discussed

Collaborative narrative generation in persistent virtual environments

This thesis describes a multi-agent approach to generating narrative based on the activities of participants in large-scale persistent virtual environments, such as massivelymultiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). These environments provide diverse interactive experiences for large numbers of simultaneous participants. Involving such participants in an overarching narrative experience has presented challenges due to the difficulty of incorporating the individual actions of so many participants into a single coherent storyline. Various approaches have been adopted in an attempt to solve this problem, such as guiding players to follow pre-designed storylines, or giving them goals to achieve that advance the storyline, or by having developers (‘dungeon masters’) adapt the narrative to the real-time actions of players. However these solutions can be inflexible, and/or fail to take player interaction into account, or do so only at the collective level, for groups of players. This thesis describes a different approach, in which embodied witness-narrator agents observe participants’ actions in a persistent virtual environment and generate narrative from reports of those actions. The generated narrative may be published to external audiences, e.g., via community websites, Internet chatrooms, or SMS text messages, or fed back into the environment in real-time to embellish and enhance the ongoing experience with new narrative elements derived from participants’ own achievements. The design and implementation of this framework is described in detail, and compared to related work. Results of evaluating the framework, both technically, and through a live study, are presented and discussed

Narrative Substrates: Reifying and Managing Emergent Narratives in Persistent Game Worlds

International audiencePlayers in modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games progress through ambitiously designed narratives, but have no real influence on the game, since only their characters' data, not the game environment, persists. Although earlier games supported player influence by persisting changes in the world, they relied on players' capacity to form their own stories and lacked guidance for character progression. We explore how persistence and narrative emergence let us build upon players' influence rather than restrict it. We ran four studies and found that players highly value first-time and unique events, and often externalize their experiences to the Web to collaborate and socialize, but unintentionally also disrupt some aspects of in-game play. We introduce Narrative Substrates, a theoretical framework for designing game architec-tures that represent, manage, and persist traces of player activity as unique, interactive content. To illustrate and test the theory, we developed the game We Ride and deployed it as a two-phase technology probe over one year. We identify key benefits and challenges of our approach, and argue that reification of emergent narratives offers new design opportunities for creating truly interactive games

The utilisation of games technology for environmental design education

In recent years, the architectural design process has witnessed a mounting demand for qualified practitioners who can resolve the highly complex social, cultural, technological, and economical issues associated with ‘Sustainability’. Designers are thus faced with wider pallet of challenges, developing conceptual designs that are sustainably effective. Pressure is mounting on educational institutions to prepare architects that are well accustomed to the environmental design concepts and parameters, aiming to reduce the impact on the environment and preserve valuable natural resources to bring the building’s interior to comfortable living conditions. However, architectural education has been notably slow to respond effectively to the requirements introduced by sustainability. Evidently there are a number of pedagogical challenges that clearly impede the consistent endorsement of sustainability in the design curricula and thus hinder any potential values and opportunities that can result from its effective integration. This research project examines these challenges and investigates more into their nature and attributes. Accordingly, it proposes a method that endeavours to overcome the noted challenge and attempts to improve the design students' motivation and acceptance to incorporate sustainability. In essence, this method aims to mould the technical nature of Building Performance Simulation applications into the cognitive design process. In order to achieve this, the proposed method utilizes 3D games technology, incorporating Multi-Agent System and Data Mining techniques, to assist design students in achieving higher levels of motivation, engagement, and comprehension of the environmental design concepts. The research discusses the rationale for electing the employed technologies and discusses the methodology for developing the proposed tool. Following its development, the tool is presented to number of stakeholders for evaluating the pedagogical and conceptual basis. The recorded results and the provided feedback from these sessions are presented to assess the potential effectiveness of this method for improving students' understanding of various concepts surrounding sustainable design

Los entornos virtuales de enseñanza aprendizaje como comunidades de conocimiento y práctica

[spa] Esta tesis tiene como objetivo el estudio sistemático de una comunidad virtual de aprendizaje; con el fin de caracterizarla como comunidad de conocimiento y práctica; destacando en ella los rasgos emergentes de la nueva cultura digital, que aparecen en su proceso de construcción. El referente empírico, lo constituye la comunidad virtual denominada Escuela Rural Virtual (ERV); integrada por maestros de 5 regiones de España (Cataluña, Galicia, Aragón, Canarias y Cantabria). Maestros de la escuela rural convocados -desde la Universidad de Barcelona- por el proyecto internacional Rural Wings; cuyo objetivo central fue atender las necesidades de aprendizaje de las comunidades rurales, sirviéndose de las comunicaciones vía satélite. Para interactuar entre sí, la ERV utilizó tres sitios web; estos fueron el sitio educativo (Moodle); el sitio archivo (Grupo Google) y el sitio weblog (Blog). Sitios web que en su conjunto he denominado espacio virtual. Mi trabajo se apoya en una estrategia metodológica desarrollada a partir de enfrentarme a un entorno virtual diferente al entorno of line al que, por mi propia formación profesional, estaba acostumbrada. Metodología que trabajé desde la perspectiva teórica de la etnografía virtual y la teoría social del aprendizaje de las comunidades de conocimiento y práctica . Esta estrategia, que me permitió realizar el análisis cualitativo de los datos vertidos en el Grupo Google, estuvo apoyada por una metodología para el análisis cuantitativo que, a su vez, permitió la organización y sistematización de los datos duros del espacio virtual utilizado por la ERV. La novedad de la metodología utilizada en este trabajo, radica en la importancia que tiene la etnografía virtual para contribuir a la investigación cualitativa de las comunidades virtuales desplegadas en diversos contextos educativos –por ejemplo, la enseñanza online, las comunidades virtuales de profesores, etc.- tan importantes en la sociedad digital de nuestros días. Desde mi propia experiencia, la etnografía aplicada a la investigación de los entornos virtuales de aprendizaje, tiene varias ventajas: van desde la incursión del investigador en el terreno de estudio hasta el análisis de datos; pasando por la flexibilidad que ofrece este espacio para trabajar con la información. Otro punto a destacar es que -a diferencia de la investigación tradicional- el Internet ha venido a trastocar los tradicionales referentes de espacio y tiempo; lo cual presenta nuevos retos, pero también nuevas ventajas. En cuanto a los resultados, tenemos que el análisis cualitativo permitió dar cuenta de aspectos tanto antropológicos como pedagógicos. De esta forma se pudo acceder a las características generales del espacio laboral de los maestros; abordar las diferentes dimensiones en la construcción de su identidad (cultural, gremial y virtual); establecer los rasgos que confieren legitimidad a su participación (roles asignados en la comunidad virtual); conocer las formas de trabajo colaborativo; plantear algunos usos que se dieron a las tecnologías (tanto en el aula, como en el intercambio de experiencias); acercarnos a su participación en un proyecto convocado por el Ministerio de Educación y Cultura (MEC); y, finalmente, analizar el impacto que tuvo, para la escuela y la comunidad rural, el participar en un proyecto internacional. Todo los cual nos llevó a conocer qué es y cómo se construye una comunidad virtual de aprendizaje. En cuanto al análisis cuantitativo, gracias a éste se pudieron conocer las características de los sitios web utilizados; así como dar cuenta de la trayectoria de los participantes en relación a su perfil de participación; establecer la tipología de los miembros del grupo y determinar la distribución y el éxito de los mensajes. El seguimiento de este proyecto, nos ofreció la oportunidad de estudiar cómo, la amplia gama de herramientas que hoy en día proporciona Internet, puede ser utilizada por los individuos para reforzar sus valores y ahondar en el conocimiento. Pero sobre todo, este trabajo permitió visualizar la importancia de los maestros de la escuela rural y de la escuela rural misma en el contexto de la dimensión territorial. La comunidad virtual estudiada, nos da una muestra de la capacidad que tiene la escuela rural para aprovechar las tecnologías. La ERV demostró que si al maestro frente a grupo se le da apoyo institucional (en términos de infraestructura); proyectos que los pongan en contacto (no que los aíslen, ni que los pongan a competir unos contra otros); pero sobre todo que se les valore y no se les meta miedo , ellos lo dan todo: son comprometidos, aman a sus alumnos, se involucran con su entorno y con la formación de sus niños. Maestros con estas características impactan, no solo a sus alumnos, sino al resto de la comunidad escolar y de la sociedad en que viven.[eng] This research aims to systematically study the formation of a virtual community of learning in order to characterize it as a community of knowledge and practice, highlighting the emerging features of the new digital culture that appear in its construction process. The empirical reference is the virtual community called Virtual Rural School (VRS), made up of teachers from 5 Spanish regions (Catalonia, Galicia, Aragon, Canary Islands and Cantabria), which are culturally different. The teachers from the rural schools were convened -from the University of Barcelona- by the international project Rural Wings, whose main objective was to meet the learning needs of rural communities, using satellite communications. The research is based on the methodological strategy named virtual ethnography and the social theory of learning of the communities of knowledge and practice . This strategy, allowed to carry out a qualitative analysis of the data dumped in the virtual spaces used by the VRS (a discussion group, a blog and a learning management system), was supported by a quantitative data analysis which, in turn, allowed the organization and systematization of the hard data of these digital spaces. As for results, the qualitative analysis allowed to report on both anthropological and pedagogical aspects: the general characteristics of the teachers' work space; the different dimensions in the construction of teachers’ identity (cultural, professional and virtual); the features that confer legitimacy to their roles assigned to them in the VRS). The quantitative analysis allowed to know the characteristics of the network, as well as to give an account of teachers’ trajectory in relation to their participation profile (essential participation, leadership and coordination), and determining the distribution and success of the messages. The study is completed with a set of conclusions and recommendations for the institutional action

The utilisation of games technology for environmental design education

In recent years, the architectural design process has witnessed a mounting demand for qualified practitioners who can resolve the highly complex social, cultural, technological, and economical issues associated with ‘Sustainability’. Designers are thus faced with wider pallet of challenges, developing conceptual designs that are sustainably effective. Pressure is mounting on educational institutions to prepare architects that are well accustomed to the environmental design concepts and parameters, aiming to reduce the impact on the environment and preserve valuable natural resources to bring the building’s interior to comfortable living conditions. However, architectural education has been notably slow to respond effectively to the requirements introduced by sustainability. Evidently there are a number of pedagogical challenges that clearly impede the consistent endorsement of sustainability in the design curricula and thus hinder any potential values and opportunities that can result from its effective integration. This research project examines these challenges and investigates more into their nature and attributes. Accordingly, it proposes a method that endeavours to overcome the noted challenge and attempts to improve the design students' motivation and acceptance to incorporate sustainability. In essence, this method aims to mould the technical nature of Building Performance Simulation applications into the cognitive design process. In order to achieve this, the proposed method utilizes 3D games technology, incorporating Multi-Agent System and Data Mining techniques, to assist design students in achieving higher levels of motivation, engagement, and comprehension of the environmental design concepts. The research discusses the rationale for electing the employed technologies and discusses the methodology for developing the proposed tool. Following its development, the tool is presented to number of stakeholders for evaluating the pedagogical and conceptual basis. The recorded results and the provided feedback from these sessions are presented to assess the potential effectiveness of this method for improving students' understanding of various concepts surrounding sustainable design