Foreseeing Meaningful Choices

Abstract A choice positively contributes to a player's sense of agency when it leads to meaningfully different content. We shed light on what a player may consider meaningfully different by developing a formalism for interactive stories in terms of the change in situational content across choices. We hypothesized that a player will feel a higher sense of agency when making a choice if they foresee the available actions lead to meaningfully different states. We experimentally tested our formalism's ability to characterize choices that elicit a higher sense of agency and present evidence that supports our claim. Study participants (n = 88) played a choose-your-ownadventure game and reported a higher sense of agency when faced with choices that differed in situational content over choices that didn't, despite these choices differing in non-situational ways. We contend our findings are a step toward principled approaches to the design of interactive stories that target specific cognitive and affective states

DAX: Data-Driven Audience Experiences in Esports

Esports(competitivevideogames)havegrownintoaglobalphenomenon with over 450m viewers and a 1.5bn USD market. Esports broadcasts follow a similar structure to traditional sports. However, due to their virtual nature, a large and detailed amount data is available about in-game actions not currently accessible in traditional sport. This provides an opportunity to incorporate novel insights about complex aspects of gameplay into the audience experience – enabling more in-depth coverage for experienced viewers, and increased accessibility for newcomers. Previous research has only explored a limited range of ways data could be incorporated into esports viewing (e.g. data visualizations post-match) and only a few studies have investigated how the presentation of statistics impacts spectators’ experiences and viewing behaviors. We present Weavr, a companion app that allows audiences to consume datadriven insights during and around esports broadcasts. We report on deployments at two major tournaments, that provide ecologically valid findings about how the app’s features were experienced by audiences and their impact on viewing behavior. We discuss implications for the design of second-screen apps for live esports events, and for traditional sports as similar data becomes available for them via improved tracking technologies

WARDS : Modelling the Worth of Vision in MOBA’s

Multiplayer strategy games are examples of imperfect information games, where information about the game state can be retrieved through in-game mechanics. One such mechanic is vision. Within esports titles of this genre, such as League of Legends (LoL) and Dota 2, players often gather map information through the use of friendly units called wards. In LoL, one of the most popular esports title worldwide, warding has hitherto been evaluated only using a heuristic called vision score, provided by Riot, the game’s developer. In this paper, we examine the accuracy at LoL’s vision score at predicting the overall game-winner within the context supported by the game. We have ported LoL’s vision score to Dota 2, a similarly popular esports title, and compared its performance against a novel warding model. We have compared both models not only at predicting the overall winner, but also the current state of the game and their ability to predict and reflect short term game advantage and events. We found our model significantly outperformed LoL’s vision score. Additionally, we trained and evaluated a model for predicting the value of wards in real-time through the use of a Neural Network

Metagaming and metagames in Esports

The metagame is a convoluted term with no unified definition despite its importance and its common occurrence across different fields such as game design and behavioural economics. In our paper we provide a unified and compact definition of the term metagame and metagaming by firstly highlighting their historical evolution. Although, the metagame meant multiple things such as the environment surrounding the game, it has come to mean a perceived optimal or dominant playing strategy that is usually popular with an esport at that specific point in time. "Metagaming" as a verb is distinct and refers to a number of ways a player can affect the outcome of a game that are external to the game’s environment. We focus on how these terms crystallised in the world of digital entertainment (esports) by providing multiple examples of metagames and metagaming in competitive settings. Finally, we provide a theoretical framework on the life cycles of metagames as well general guidelines of understanding the current metagame of LoL and Dota 2. We conclude that by understanding and cataloguing the highly fluctuating metagame(s) of an esport at specific points in time, researchers will gain a historical context of that game’s space which in turn will give them insight into the decision making of professional esports players along with a possible future understanding of how the game will progress

The galaxies missed by Hubble and ALMA: the contribution of extremely red galaxies to the cosmic census at 3<z<8

Using deep JWST imaging from JADES, JEMS and SMILES, we characterize optically-faint and extremely red galaxies at $z>3$ that were previously missing from galaxy census estimates. The data indicate the existence of abundant, dusty and post-starburst-like galaxies down to $10^8$M$_\odot$, below the sensitivity limit of Spitzer and ALMA. Modeling the NIRCam and HST photometry of these red sources can result in extreme, high values for both stellar mass and star formation rate (SFR); however, including 7 MIRI filters out to 21$\mu$m results in decreased mass (median 0.6 dex for log$_{10}$M$^*$/M$_{\odot}>$10), and SFR (median 10$\times$ for SFR$>$100 M$_{\odot}$/yr). At $z>6$, our sample includes a high fraction of little red dots (LRDs; NIRCam-selected dust-reddened AGN candidates). We significantly measure older stellar populations in the LRDs out to rest-frame 3$\mu$m (the stellar bump) and rule out a dominant contribution from hot dust emission, a signature of AGN contamination to stellar population measurements. This allows us to measure their contribution to the cosmic census at $z>3$, below the typical detection limits of ALMA ($L_{\rm IR}<10^{12}L_\odot$). We find that these sources, which are overwhelmingly missed by HST and ALMA, could effectively double the obscured fraction of the star formation rate density at $4<z<6$ compared to some estimates, showing that prior to JWST, the obscured contribution from fainter sources could be underestimated. Finally, we identify five sources with evidence for Balmer breaks and high stellar masses at $5.5<z<7.7$. While spectroscopy is required to determine their nature, we discuss possible measurement systematics to explore with future data.Comment: submitted to AAS Journals, comments welcome

Improving Plan-Based Interactive Narrative Generation

I am interested in algorithms that generate well structured interactive narratives that allow human participants to effect change in a story world. Narrative can be structured as a sequence of actions to be carried out by a set of characters in a particular environment. This narrative structure can be generated by AI planning. A process called accommodative mediation may be used on a single narrative plan to create a participatory experience that branches based on a human's interactions as a character within the story. However, accommodation is limited by search time and the number of plans the algorithm can possibly reach. In this paper, I discuss an initial modification of accommodative mediation that expands the space of plans the algorithm may search. I also identify several avenues by which the process may continue to be improved

Modelling Character Knowledge in Plan-Based Interactive Narrative to Extend Accomodative Mediation

In plan-based interactive narrative systems, user actions must be integrated with an ideal story structure in order to strike a reasonable balance between user agency and story quality. A process called mediation addresses this issue by selecting appropriate responses to possible detrimental user actions in a given interactive narrative plan. One way the algorithm mediates exceptional user activity is accommodation, the process of replanning future events to incorporate an unwanted action and accomplish the story's authorial goals. However, this approach is limited by an underlying assumption that the story world exists as an object outside the user's subjective experience. In this paper, we incorporate a model of user knowledge into plan-based mediation in order to widen the space of plans the algorithm may search during accommodation by allowing the process to replan past events that occur outside a user's imperfect knowledge of the story world

Story Quality as a Matter of Perception: Using Word Embeddings to Estimate Cognitive Interest

Storytelling is a capable tool for interactive agents and better stories can enable better interactions. Many existing automated evaluation techniques are either focused on textual features that are not necessarily reflective of perceived interestingness (e.g. coherence), or are domain-specific, relying on a priori semantics models (e.g. in a game). However, the effectiveness of storytelling depends both on its versatility to adapt to new domains and the perceived interestingness of its generated stories. In this paper, drawing from cognitive science literature, we propose and evaluate a method for estimating cognitive interest in stories based on the level of predictive inference they cause during perception

Evolving Interactive Narrative Worlds

An interactive narrative is bound by the context of the world where its story takes place. However, most work in interactive narrative generation takes its story world design and mechanics as given, which abdicates a large part of story generation to an external world designer. In this paper, we close the story world design gap with an evolutionary search framework for generating interactive narrative worlds and mechanics. Our framework finds story world designs that accommodate multiple distinct player roles. We evaluate our system with an action agreement ratio analysis that shows worlds generated by our framework provide a greater number of in-role action opportunities compared to story worlds randomly sampled from the generative space

Tuning the coordination structure of single atoms and their interaction with the support for carbon dioxide electroreduction

The combustion of fossil fuels increases atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, leading to adverse impacts on the planetary radiation balance and, consequently, on the climate. Fossil fuel utilization has contributed to a marked rise in global temperatures, now at least 1.2 ℃ above 'pre-industrial' levels. To meet the 2015 Paris Agreement target of 1.5 ℃ above pre-industrial levels, considerable efforts are required to efficiently capture and utilize CO2. Among the different strategies developed for converting CO2, electrochemical CO2 reduction (ECR) to valuable chemicals using renewable energy is expected to revolutionize the manufacture of sustainable "green" chemicals, thereby achieving a closed anthropogenic carbon cycle. However, CO2 is a thermodynamically stable and kinetically inert molecule that requires high electrical energy to bend the linear O＝C＝O bond by attacking the C atom. To facilitate the ECR with good energy efficiency, it is essential to lower the reaction overpotential as well as maintain a high current density and desirable product selectivity; therefore, the design and development of advanced electrocatalysts are crucial. A plethora of heterogeneous and homogeneous materials has been explored in the ECR. Among these materials, single-atom catalysts (SACs) have been the focus of most extensive research in the context of ECR. A SAC with isolated metal atoms dispersed on a supporting host exhibits a unique electronic structure, well-defined coordination environment, and an extremely high atom utilization maximum; thus, SACs have emerged as promising materials over the last two decades. Single-atom catalysis has covered the periodic table from d-block and ds-block metals to p-block metals. The types of support materials for SACs, ranging from metal oxides to tailored carbon materials, have also expanded. The adsorption strength and catalytic activity of SACs can be effectively tuned by modulating the central metal and local coordination structure of the SACs. In this article, we discuss the progress made to date in the field of single-atom catalysis for promoting ECR. We provide a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art SACs for the ECR in terms of product distribution, selectivity, partial current density, and performance stability. Special attention is paid to the modification of SACs to improve the ECR efficiency. This includes tailoring the coordination of the heteroatom, constructing bimetallic sites, engineering the morphologies and surface defects of supports, and regulating surface functional groups. The correlation of the coordination structure of SACs and metal-support interactions with ECR performance is analyzed. Finally, development opportunities and challenges for the application of SACs in the ECR, especially to form multi-carbon products, are presented