Narratives in Video Games and User Experience

This presentation will discuss how the narratives within video games create a better gaming experience for the player. Specifically, this presentation addresses user experience based on interactive and immersive narratives within the game. A narrative is a story or event presented in sequence; a narrative within a video game is the interactive storyline presented by the game designer. The key components of this paper rely heavily on user experience research done on video game interaction. This topic will cover human-computer interaction and immersion models which take into account interface interaction, user-defined tasking, and narrative building within video games. The importance of intuitive interface interaction between the game design and the player facilitates a better gameplay experience as well as user-defined tasking, such as being assigned quests and goals to achieve in the game. The dialogue built between the player and game utilizes certain tools to increase immersion and thus bettering the gaming experience. The user experience is a major factor which comes into play when discussing player and game interaction. As stated by Ermi and Mayra, the essence of a game is rooted in its interactive nature, and there is no game without a player (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005). Research on this topic is progressing as technology in “Interactive Storytelling” grows and moves in the direction of dynamic user interaction (e.g., Cavazza, Lugrin, Pizzi, and Charles, 2002). This presentation will elaborate on the need for further research by expanding on already researched foundations within the topic of user experience and video game research

Storytelling Through Design: Using Elements of Storytelling to Inform Architectural Narratives

Architecture along with other types of media, like films, novels, and games are all representational art forms that incorporate storytelling. However, in the field of architecture the art of storytelling could suggest a transformation into an idea of possibly making grand and shallow statements, and not taking into account the engagement between the user and the design. In recent time there have been architects who have addressed this issue and established standards of how architecture weaves in narrative and have even made comparisons to the other types of media. An example would be Narrative Architecture by Nigel Coates where he discusses how architecture is able to express movement and be arranged in a sequence like a story. In Amy Spaulding’s The Art of Storytelling, she notes how the storyteller who oversees setting the tone, pace, immersion, and more acts just like an architect. However, there should be further exploration into the general analysis of storytelling and how it compares overall across different media to help influence architectural design. In this thesis, a new approach to the architectural design process will be explored, combining the multiple processes of storytelling with that of architecture, highlighting the interactivity between the story, place, design, and user. The process involves analyzing the storytelling medias of narrative architecture, films, novels, and games, and then applying aspects of each into the architectural design process to create a framework for how a story can be interpreted into architecture. The architecture being designed for the narrative being investigated is a memorial center for the Chattahoochee Brick Factory in Atlanta, Georgia. The architectural design created functions to honor and tell the story of the lives lost on the site and introduces the memorial program in an elevated way that calls for action to be had on the site. The end goal would not just be bringing the story of a place to life, it would establish a developed way of thinking about architecture and the variations a story could take and elevate user experience with the space

Designing Children’s Interactive Pop-up Books: Creating enhanced experiences through the incorporation of animation principles and interactive design.

This thesis, Designing Children’s Interactive Pop-up Books: Creating enhanced experiences through the incorporation of animation principles and interactive design, created by Michael Begay, explores how interactive design and computer graphics can be used to create enhanced user experiences in children’s book design. Key factors taken into consideration during the creation of this thesis include children’s book design, typography, storytelling, animation principles, and interactive design principles. In order to explore the effect computer graphic design has on creating an enhanced user experience in pop-up book design, this project starts with research on writing a compelling, age appropriate story for children between the ages of three and six. After the story is complete, the next step of this project is the creation of a traditional printed pop-up book. This printed pop-up book is then used to inform design decisions around the creation of the interactive pop-up book, such as the types of interactions to use (e.g., pull tabs, drag and drops, and simple clicks) as well as how the pages animate. The interactive pop-up book uses full-screen display and sound to help further create an immersive environment and enhanced reading experience. After finishing the creation of the traditional printed pop-up book and the interactive pop-up book, both books are tested with a group of participants (consisting of parents, caretakers, older siblings, and teachers) who interact with children between the ages of three and six. The tests contain questions related to the story’s comprehensiveness, the overall aesthetic of the illustration style, ease of use, and format preference—printed versus digital. While the findings from these tests suggest that there is a still a wonderment for watching folder paper come to life in three-dimensional forms, the interactive pop-up book has more potential in creating an enhanced reading experience

Where Story Resides: New applications of enduring concepts

This paper argues that by re-thinking our conception of story and narrative, particularly in light of emerging transmedia practices, we can better understand what it is that happens when we create or engage with a work. The emergence of such practices has created new opportunities for original research, allowing us to revisit and challenge previously held notions of story and narrative as fixed and determined concepts. Far from being ‘the lowest and simplest of literary organisms,’1 I argue that story is not found within the narrative structure of a work, but is instead its vital aesthetic function: the result of a user engaging with a narrative. With examples from The Wire and The Matrix, I will demonstrate how ‘drillability’ and ‘spreadability’ (concepts from the broader praxis of transmedia) can enhance the story experience, and how a cross-disciplinary approach is best suited to enhancing scholarly knowledge in this field

Cinematic Narratives of Product Interaction Experiences: Methods for Cross-Media Fertilisation of the Design Process

This paper outlines the initial phases of a practice-based PhD research project; it outlines methods that will be used to analyse the role of objects within cinematic narratives and how these narrative roles could be translated into methods for designing products to enrich the experience of using the products. The starting point for this project is the hypothesis that any interaction between a user and an object will be remembered and interpreted in a user's mind as a form of narrative. This project therefore tries to harness narrative structures and devices from other media to inform the design of products that can specifically cater to these narrative qualities inherent in the way we experience products. This paper outlines methods for opening up the dialogue about these cross-media narrative comparisons, to assist in generating design work which focuses on the narrative qualities of product experience

The Ta-Da Series: A Technique for Generating Surprising Designs Based on Opposites and Gut Reactions

Chapter in an edited collection, originally presented at the 5th international Design and Emotion Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden

Interactive Narrative in Virtual Reality

Interactive fiction is a literary genre that is rapidly gaining popularity. In this genre, readers are able to explicitly take actions in order to guide the course of the story. With the recent popularity of narrative focused games, we propose to design and develop an interactive narrative tool for content creators. In this extended abstract, we show how we leverage this interactive medium to present a tool for interactive storytelling in virtual reality. Using a simple markup language, content creators and researchers are now able to create interactive narratives in a virtual reality environment. We further discuss the potential future directions for a virtual reality storytelling engine

Narrative Generation in Entertainment: Using Artificial Intelligence Planning

From the field of artificial intelligence (AI) there is a growing stream of technology capable of being embedded in software that will reshape the way we interact with our environment in our everyday lives. This ‘AI software’ is often used to tackle more mundane tasks that are otherwise dangerous or meticulous for a human to accomplish. One particular area, explored in this paper, is for AI software to assist in supporting the enjoyable aspects of the lives of humans. Entertainment is one of these aspects, and often includes storytelling in some form no matter what the type of media, including television, films, video games, etc. This paper aims to explore the ability of AI software to automate the story-creation and story-telling process. This is part of the field of Automatic Narrative Generator (ANG), which aims to produce intuitive interfaces to support people (without any previous programming experience) to use tools to generate stories, based on their ideas of the kind of characters, intentions, events and spaces they want to be in the story. The paper includes details of such AI software created by the author that can be downloaded and used by the reader for this purpose. Applications of this kind of technology include the automatic generation of story lines for ‘soap operas’

Story of Use: Analysis of Film Narratives to Inform the Design of Object Interactions

Not only is using a product an experience, it is an interaction and it is narrative in nature. This work in progress paper describes the narrative theory background for this statement, in particular schemata theory and the concepts of agency, tellability and narrativity, then describes methods that are being used in the project to analyse film narratives and apply these to the design of tellable physical products

Merging Special Collections with GIS Technology to Enhance the User Experience

This analysis evaluates how PhillyHistory.org merged their unique special collection materials with geospatial-based progressive technology to challenge and educate the global community. A new generation of technologically savvy researchers has emerged that expect a more enhanced user experience than earlier generations. To meet these needs, collection managers are collaborating with community and local institutions to increase online access to materials; mixing best metadata practices with custom elements to create map mashups; and merging progressive GIS technology and geospatial based applications with their collections to enhance the user experience. The PhillyHistory.org website was analyzed to explore how they used various geospatial technology to create a new type of digital content management system based on geographical information and make their collections accessible via online software and mobile applications