Encoding Theory of Mind in Character Design for Pedagogical Interactive Narrative

Computer aided interactive narrative allows people to participate actively in a dynamically unfolding story, by playing a character or by exerting directorial control. Because of its potential for providing interesting stories as well as allowing user interaction, interactive narrative has been recognized as a promising tool for providing both education and entertainment. This paper discusses the challenges in creating interactive narratives for pedagogical applications and how the challenges can be addressed by using agent-based technologies. We argue that a rich model of characters and in particular a Theory of Mind capacity are needed. The character architect in the Thespian framework for interactive narrative is presented as an example of how decision-theoretic agents can be used for encoding Theory of Mind and for creating pedagogical interactive narratives

Director Agent Intervention Strategies for Interactive Narrative Environments

Abstract. Interactive narrative environments offer significant potential for creating engaging narrative experiences. Increasingly, applications in education, training, and entertainment are leveraging narrative to create rich interactive experiences in virtual storyworlds. A key challenge posed by these environments is building an effective model of the intervention strategies of director agents that craft customized story experiences for users. Identifying factors that contribute to determining when the next director agent decision should occur is critically important in optimizing narrative experiences. In this work, a dynamic Bayesian network framework was designed to model director agent intervention strategies. To create empirically informed models of director agent intervention decisions, we conducted a Wizard-of-Oz (WOZ) data collection with an interactive narrative-centered learning environment. Using the collected data, dynamic Bayesian network and naïve Bayes models were learned and compared. The performance of the resulting models was evaluated with respect to classification accuracy and produced promising results

Cinematic Competence and Directorial Persona in Film School: A Study of Socialization and Cultural Production

This thesis examines the role of professional socialization in cultural production, particularly in the popular arts. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a graduate program of narrative filmmaking, it asks what is taught and what is learned in film school? and answers those questions through an account of two critical domains in film school practice: aesthetic repertoires (including narrative and stylistic competence in cinema), and the social identity of the student director. It also considers the ideology of talent in the school community. Aesthetic practice in the school extends from classical to New Hollywood, the former based on narrative clarity, continuous space and time, and goaloriented protagonists, the latter varying those conventions through the limited use of ambiguity as a narrative and stylistic element. The ideal role of the director in the school and in student filmmaking is the auteur, the film artist who uses narrative and stylistic principles to express a personal vision , and who writes, directs and edits her or his own films in an otherwise collective production process. Beyond a set of tasks, the title director also connotes an identity--who you are as well as what you do. In coming to identify themselves as directors in the school, students cultivate persona, or distinctive personal styles. Through task set, vision and persona, and also through the attribution of talent as an intrapersonal trait, the film director as singular artist merges, despite the divided labor of film production and a populist aesthetic based on a large and heterogeneous commercial audience

Towards a crowdsourced solution for the authoring bottleneck in interactive narratives

Interactive Storytelling research has produced a wealth of technologies that can be employed to create personalised narrative experiences, in which the audience takes a participating rather than observing role. But so far this technology has not led to the production of large scale playable interactive story experiences that realise the ambitions of the field. One main reason for this state of affairs is the difficulty of authoring interactive stories, a task that requires describing a huge amount of story building blocks in a machine friendly fashion. This is not only technically and conceptually more challenging than traditional narrative authoring but also a scalability problem. This thesis examines the authoring bottleneck through a case study and a literature survey and advocates a solution based on crowdsourcing. Prior work has already shown that combining a large number of example stories collected from crowd workers with a system that merges these contributions into a single interactive story can be an effective way to reduce the authorial burden. As a refinement of such an approach, this thesis introduces the novel concept of Crowd Task Adaptation. It argues that in order to maximise the usefulness of the collected stories, a system should dynamically and intelligently analyse the corpus of collected stories and based on this analysis modify the tasks handed out to crowd workers. Two authoring systems, ENIGMA and CROSCAT, which show two radically different approaches of using the Crowd Task Adaptation paradigm have been implemented and are described in this thesis. While ENIGMA adapts tasks through a realtime dialog between crowd workers and the system that is based on what has been learned from previously collected stories, CROSCAT modifies the backstory given to crowd workers in order to optimise the distribution of branching points in the tree structure that combines all collected stories. Two experimental studies of crowdsourced authoring are also presented. They lead to guidelines on how to employ crowdsourced authoring effectively, but more importantly the results of one of the studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the Crowd Task Adaptation approach

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

Piglets and Perspectives: Exploring Sustainability Communication Through Participatory Filmmaking

The goal of this research was to conduct a qualitative study applying narrative theory to participatory video methodologies in order to better understand how the process of filmmaking can be used to create a method of sustainability communication. To do this, the study collaborated with individuals who are currently practicing different types of sustainable agriculture on small farms in southern New Hampshire. A group of five farms participated in a new method of filmmaking designed to blend specific elements of participatory video technique with principles of narrative theory. This method included camera training, filmed personal interviews, participants filming their own farming methods, a group editing session and public screenings of the group film. The filmmaking process resulted in the successful emergence of shared sustainability themes, documented through the on-camera interviews, participant narration and visual imagery. Participants reported increased confidence in communicating their sustainability practices. The use of film and visual narrative revealed the art of everyday life for the participants, creating a narrative intimacy and social connections within the group that are evident on viewing their filmed stories. The study yielded results that can be used by both participatory video and narrative inquiry practitioners, and successfully created a new method for sustainability communication. The study also resulted in the 42-minute documentary film Piglets and Perspectives; an emergent narrative revealing innovations in sustainability on small farms in southern New Hampshire, as told by the farmers themselves. This dissertation is accompanied by the documentary film [.mp4], the milkweed short film [.mp4], and the pilot project film [.mp4]. The electronic version of this Dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd

Piglets and Perspectives: Exploring Sustainability Communication Through Participatory Filmmaking

The goal of this research was to conduct a qualitative study applying narrative theory to participatory video methodologies in order to better understand how the process of filmmaking can be used to create a method of sustainability communication. To do this, the study collaborated with individuals who are currently practicing different types of sustainable agriculture on small farms in southern New Hampshire. A group of five farms participated in a new method of filmmaking designed to blend specific elements of participatory video technique with principles of narrative theory. This method included camera training, filmed personal interviews, participants filming their own farming methods, a group editing session and public screenings of the group film. The filmmaking process resulted in the successful emergence of shared sustainability themes, documented through the on-camera interviews, participant narration and visual imagery. Participants reported increased confidence in communicating their sustainability practices. The use of film and visual narrative revealed the art of everyday life for the participants, creating a narrative intimacy and social connections within the group that are evident on viewing their filmed stories. The study yielded results that can be used by both participatory video and narrative inquiry practitioners, and successfully created a new method for sustainability communication. The study also resulted in the 42-minute documentary film Piglets and Perspectives; an emergent narrative revealing innovations in sustainability on small farms in southern New Hampshire, as told by the farmers themselves. This dissertation is accompanied by the documentary film [.mp4], the milkweed short film [.mp4], and the pilot project film [.mp4]. The electronic version of this Dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd