INDCOR white paper 3: Interactive Digital Narratives and Interaction

The nature of interaction within Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) is inherently complex. This is due, in part, to the wide range of potential interaction modes through which IDNs can be conceptualised, produced and deployed and the complex dynamics this might entail. The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide IDN practitioners with the essential knowledge on the nature of interaction in IDNs and allow them to make informed design decisions that lead to the incorporation of complexity thinking throughout the design pipeline, the implementation of the work, and the ways its audience perceives it. This white paper is concerned with the complexities of authoring, delivering and processing dynamic interactive contents from the perspectives of both creators and audiences. This white paper is part of a series of publications by the INDCOR COST Action 18230 (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations), which all clarify how IDNs representing complexity can be understood and applied (INDCOR WP 0 - 5, 2023).Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Practicalities and Ideologies, (Re)-Considering the Interactive Digital Narrative Authoring Paradigm

In this paper, we discuss the hypothetical nature of authoring Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) and the formal authorial process for this medium. We explore the current state-of-the-Art in IDN authorial approaches and consider the perspective of a traditional and technologically naïve author. We propose a combination of meta-narrative and autonomous agent approaches in a quest to democratize IDN authoring to a wider, less technically oriented audience. In doing so, we ask fundamental questions with regards to how the user experience can be expressed within the authorial process. We also, as part of this discussion, reflect on the nature of authoring IDNs and the author him/herself

INDCOR white paper 1: A shared vocabulary for IDN (Interactive Digital Narratives)

COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these advantages in broad usage by media producers and the general public. The lack of a shared vocabulary is a crucial obstacle on the path to a generalized, accessible body of IDN knowledge. This white paper frames the situation from the perspective of INDCOR and describes the creation of an online encyclopedia as a means to overcome this issue. Two similar and successful projects (The Living Handbook of Narratology and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) serve as examples for this effort, showing how community-authored encyclopedias can provide high-quality content. The authors introduce a taxonomy based on an overarching analytical framework (SPP model) as the foundational element of the encyclopedia, and detail editorial procedures for the project, including a peer-review process, designed to assure high academic quality and relevance of encyclopedia entries. Also, a sample entry provides guidance for authors

Employing branching comics to design, visualise and evaluate interactive stories

This thesis presents the case for adopting comics in the design, visualisation and evaluation of interactive stories. The potential for comics to be employed in the representation of interactive story-driven material has been identified in previous work. However, there is a lack of theory or evidence upon which an informed approach can be based. Consequently, this thesis contributes a process for employing branching comics to design and visualise interactive stories informed by previous approaches to stories, interactive stories and visualisations. It is argued that comics have several advantages over previous methods of designing interactive stories due to their inherent structural compatibility with visualising hierarchies of abstraction of story content. A series of studies are conducted to demonstrate how comics can be employed to visualise abstraction levels, and how branching comics can be employed to evaluate interactive stories. Qualitative and quantitative methods related to both user experience and comprehension are employed, which demonstrate the advantages in the use of comics to explore a range of different phenomena related to creating, interpreting and using interactive stories