Interactive Narrative Design beyond the Secret Art Status: A Method to Verify Design Conventions for Interactive Narrative

In recent years, game narrative has emerged as an area for novel game concepts and as a strategy to distinguish a particular title. However, innovation in this area comes primarily from indie companies and individual efforts by noted designers. There is a lack of trained specialists ready to produce interactive narrative experiences. Many existing practitioners are self-trained and often rely on intuition in their design practice. A key element missing from the effort towards a more sustained development and improved professional training is a set of design conventions that fulfill a role comparable to cinematic conventions like continuity editing or montage. Therefore, our research focuses on identifying, verifying and collecting such design strategies. We describe an empirical method to verify candidate design conventions through the evaluation of user reaction to A/B prototypes, which improves upon the trial-and-error process of old

Lecture Notes on Interactive Storytelling

These lecture notes collect the material used in the advanced course 'Interactive Storytelling' organized biannually at the Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland. Its aim is to present the key concepts behind interactive digital storytelling (IDS) as well as to review proposed and existing IDS systems. The course focuses on the four partakers of IDS: the platform, the designer, the interactor, and the storyworld. When constructing a platform, the problem is to select an appropriate approach from tightly controlled to emergent storytelling. On this platform, the designer is then responsible for creating the content (e.g., characters, props, scenes and events) for the storyworld, which is then experienced and influenced by the interactor. The structure and relationships between these partakers is explained from a theoretical perspective as well as using existing IDS systems as examples.</p

Twitter and politics: a framing analysis of Maryam Nawaz and Imran Khan's social media discourse

This study explores the framing strategies employed by influential Pakistani political figures, Imran Khan, and Maryam Nawaz, on Twitter. By adopting Hallahan's framing theory as an analytical framework, we analyze their tweets to reveal how they strategically shape political narratives and influence public perceptions. The study enhances our understanding of the interplay between political communication and political identities, shedding light on the nuanced strategies used by political actors to construct persuasive narratives. Our findings provide evidence of Twitter's significant role as a powerful tool for political communication and discourse in the Pakistani context. This research contributes to the broader landscape of Pakistani political communication and the intersection between social media, politics, and framing strategies

Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

When videogames tell stories: A study about the influence of interactivity in narration

In recent years, the continuous technological evolution has led to the development of complex fictional stories in new potentially narrative media, such as videogames, whose characteristics are very different from other traditional narrative media, such as literature and cinema. The main defining attribute of videogames is interactivity. The objective of this paper is to study, through textual linguistics, how the interactive component affects the narrative plot in videogames and how, because of that, videogames open up new narrative experiences that are impossible in literature or cinemaEn los últimos años, la continua evolución tecnológica ha dado lugar al desarrollo de complejos argumentos ficcionales en nuevos medios potencialmente narrativos, como los videojuegos, con características muy distintas a las de otros medios narrativos tradicionales, como el literario o el cinematográfico. La principal característica definitoria de los videojuegos es la interactividad. El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar, a través de la lingüística textual, cómo afecta el componente interactivo al desarrollo de la narración en el videojuego y de qué manera propicia nuevas experiencias narrativas inalcanzables para la literatura o el cin