SAGA: A DSL for Story Management

Video game development is currently a very labour-intensive endeavour. Furthermore it involves multi-disciplinary teams of artistic content creators and programmers, whose typical working patterns are not easily meshed. SAGA is our first effort at augmenting the productivity of such teams. Already convinced of the benefits of DSLs, we set out to analyze the domains present in games in order to find out which would be most amenable to the DSL approach. Based on previous work, we thus sought those sub-parts that already had a partially established vocabulary and at the same time could be well modeled using classical computer science structures. We settled on the 'story' aspect of video games as the best candidate domain, which can be modeled using state transition systems. As we are working with a specific company as the ultimate customer for this work, an additional requirement was that our DSL should produce code that can be used within a pre-existing framework. We developed a full system (SAGA) comprised of a parser for a human-friendly language for 'story events', an internal representation of design patterns for implementing object-oriented state-transitions systems, an instantiator for these patterns for a specific 'story', and three renderers (for C++, C# and Java) for the instantiated abstract code.Comment: In Proceedings DSL 2011, arXiv:1109.032

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

Looking at the Interactive Narrative Experience through the Eyes of the Participants.

The topic of interactive narrative has been under research for many years. While there has been much research exploring the development of new algorithms that enable and enhance interactive narratives, there has been little research focusing on the question of how players understand and internalize their interactive narrative experiences. This paper addresses this problem through conducting a phenomenological study on participants playing Façade; we specifically chose a phenomenological methodology due to its emphasis on the participants‟ lived experience from the participants‟ viewpoint. We chose Façade, because it is the only accessible example of an experience that revolves around social relationships, conflict, and drama as its core mechanics. In this paper, we discuss sixteen themes that resulted from the analysis of the data gathered through the study. In addition, we reflect on these themes discussing their relationship to participants‟ backgrounds, and project implications on the design of future interactive narratives

Authoring Edutainment Stories for Online Players (AESOP): Introducing Gameplay into Interactive Dramas

The video gaming industry has experienced extraordinary technological growth in the recent past, causing a boom in both the quality and revenue of these games. Educational games, on the other hand, have lagged behind this trend, as their creation presents major creative and pedagogical challenges in addition to technological ones. By providing the technological advances of the entertainment genres in a coherent, accessible format to teams of educators, and developing an interactive drama generator, we believe that the full potential of educational games can be realized. Section 1 postulates three goals for reaching that objective: a toolset for interactive drama authoring, ways to insulate authors from game engines, and reusable digital casts to facilitate composability. Sections 2 and 3 present progress on simple versions of those tools and a case study that made use of the resulting toolset to create an interactive drama

2013-2014 Course Catalog

2013-2014 Course Catalo

Telling interactive stories: A practice-based investigation into new media interactive storytelling

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Telling Interactive Stories is a practice-based thesis, which theoretically and practically probes the field of digital fictional interactive storytelling. The submission takes the form of the interactive cinema installation Crossed Lines together with a written element of the thesis which interrogates historical, contextual, theoretical, technical and critical aspects of the field of interactive narrative using new media. Crossed Lines is an original fictional interactive AV piece, amalgamating multiform plots, a multi-screen viewing environment, an interactive interface and an interactive story navigation form. The installation tells the stories of nine characters in a way that the viewer can constantly explore and switch between all nine forms, using a telephone keypad and handset as an interface, and can simultaneously observe all characters’ presence between the nine remote locations. Several research methodologies are utilised to analyse and evaluate the installation. Quantitative methodologies include the use of user tracking systems where the computational output of the installation provides measurements and timings of user choices and behaviours. Qualitative methodologies include theoretical and visual analysis, and in depth analysis of user responses using interviews, questionnaires, video recordings and cuttingedge eye-tracking technologies

2023-2024 Course Catalog

2023-2024 Course Catalo

2016-2017 Course Catalog

2016-2017 Course Catalo