More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/

research-article

Towards consistency in interactive storytelling: Tension arcs and dead-ends

Authors:

Leandro Motta Barros,

Soraia Raupp MusseAuthors Info & Claims

Computers in Entertainment (CIE), Volume 6, Issue 3

Article No.: 43, Pages 1 - 17

https://doi.org/10.1145/1394021.1394036

Published: 06 November 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Interactive storytelling (IS) systems are an emerging class of interactive entertainment applications with an emphasis on narrative aspects. One of the approaches used to develop IS applications is based on planning algorithms. This article describes two mechanisms that can be introduced to planning-based IS in order to solve two problems that are inherent in this approach. The first is a technique to control the pace at which a story evolves, so that the story that is generated follows a specific tension arc. The second is a method that makes it possible to avoid dead-ends in a story by intervening to justify previous events. These mechanisms help to produce a more enjoyable user experience, since their use tends to result in stories with higher narrative consistency. Results from experiments with users suggest that the proposed mechanisms improve both of the aspects addressed by this article.

References

[1]

Bal, M. 1997. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (2nd ed.). University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ont.

[2]

Barros, L. M. and Musse, S. R. 2005. Introducing narrative principles into planning-based interactive storytelling. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE 2005), ACM, New York, 35--42.

Digital Library

[3]

Barros, L. M. and Musse, S. R. 2007. Improving narrative consistency in planning-based interactive storytelling. In Proceedings of the Third Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE 07).

[4]

Charles, F., Lozano, M., Mead, S. J., Bisquerra, A. F., and Cavazza, M. 2003. Planning formalisms and authoring in interactive storytelling. In Proceedings of TIDSE '03: Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment.

[5]

Crawford, C. 2004. Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. New Riders Games, Indianapolis, IN.

Digital Library

[6]

Glassner, A. 2004. Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction. AK Peters.

Digital Library

[7]

Hoffmann, J. 2003. The Metric-FF planning system: Translating “ignoring delete lists” to numeric state variables. J. AI Research 20, 291--341. Special issue on the Third International Planning Competition.

Digital Library

[8]

Lebowitz, M. 1985. Story-telling as planning and learning. Poetics 14, 483--502.

[9]

Magerko, B. 2005. Mediating the tension between plot and interaction. In Imagina 2005.

[10]

Mateas, M. and Stern, A. 2003. Façade: An experiment in building a fully-realized interactive drama. In Game Developers Conference, Game Design track.

[11]

Murray, J. H. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Free Press, New York.

Digital Library

[12]

Riedl, M. O., Saretto, C. J., and Young, R. M. 2003. Managing interaction between users and agents in a multi-agent storytelling environment. In Proceedings of the AAMAS'03: The Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

Digital Library

[13]

Russell, S. and Norvig, P. 2002. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

Digital Library

[14]

Tobias, R. B. 1993. 20 Master Plots: And How to Build Them. Writer's Digest Books, Cincinnati, OH.

[15]

Zagalo, N., Barker, A., and Branco, V. 2004. Story reaction structures to emotion detection. In Proceedings of the SRMC'04, ACM Multimedia 2004 Workshop on Story Representation, Mechanism, Context, 33--38.

Digital Library

Cited By

Khalpada PGarg S(2021)Simple Automated Narrative Generator (SANG)2021 IEEE 11th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC)10.1109/CCWC51732.2021.9375954(0909-0915)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/CCWC51732.2021.9375954
Mienhardt LVolpe M(2021)Enhancing Interactivity in Propp-Based Narrative GenerationInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_24(260-265)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_24
Tanjung MSitompul O(2020)“Kian Santang” game as historical educational media using digital storytelling conceptEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-020-10209-025:6(5379-5388)Online publication date: 25-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-020-10209-0
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Towards consistency in interactive storytelling: Tension arcs and dead-ends
1. Applied computing
  1. Arts and humanities

Recommendations

Applying planning to interactive storytelling: Narrative control using state constraints

We have seen ten years of the application of AI planning to the problem of narrative generation in Interactive Storytelling (IS). In that time planning has emerged as the dominant technology and has featured in a number of prototype systems. ...
Introducing narrative principles into planning-based interactive storytelling
ACE '05: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology

There is a growing interest for interactive computational systems with emphasis in dramatic and narrative aspects, for artistic and entertainment applications. Interactive Storytelling (IS) is the research area that intends to allow the use of ...
The experience of interactive storytelling: comparing “fahrenheit” with “façade”
ICEC'11: Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Entertainment Computing

At the intersection of multimedia, artificial intelligence, and gaming technology, new visions of future entertainment media arise that approximate the “Holodeck” ® idea of interactive storytelling. We report exploratory experiments on the user ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Computers in Entertainment

Computers in Entertainment Volume 6, Issue 3

SPECIAL ISSUE: Media Arts

October 2008

256 pages

EISSN:1544-3574

DOI:10.1145/1394021

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 06 November 2008

Accepted: 01 June 2008

Revised: 01 May 2008

Received: 01 November 2007

Published in CIE Volume 6, Issue 3

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

15
Total Citations
View Citations
772
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)27
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 13 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Khalpada PGarg S(2021)Simple Automated Narrative Generator (SANG)2021 IEEE 11th Annual Computing and Communication Workshop and Conference (CCWC)10.1109/CCWC51732.2021.9375954(0909-0915)Online publication date: 27-Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/CCWC51732.2021.9375954
Mienhardt LVolpe M(2021)Enhancing Interactivity in Propp-Based Narrative GenerationInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_24(260-265)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_24
Tanjung MSitompul O(2020)“Kian Santang” game as historical educational media using digital storytelling conceptEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-020-10209-025:6(5379-5388)Online publication date: 25-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10639-020-10209-0
Khalpada PGarg S(2019)Balancing Consistency and Plot Structure in Computational Storytelling2019 IEEE 10th Annual Information Technology, Electronics and Mobile Communication Conference (IEMCON)10.1109/IEMCON.2019.8936138(0550-0555)Online publication date: Oct-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/IEMCON.2019.8936138
Kybartas BBidarra R(2017)A Survey on Story Generation Techniques for Authoring Computational NarrativesIEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games10.1109/TCIAIG.2016.25460639:3(239-253)Online publication date: Sep-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TCIAIG.2016.2546063
Porteous J(2016)Planning Technologies for Interactive StorytellingHandbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_71-1(1-21)Online publication date: 18-Feb-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_71-1
Porteous J(2016)Planning Technologies for Interactive StorytellingHandbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies10.1007/978-981-4560-50-4_71(393-413)Online publication date: 10-Aug-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-50-4_71
Akimoto TOno JOgata T(2012)Narrative Forest: An automatic narrative generation system with a visual narrative operation mechanismThe 6th International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems, and The 13th International Symposium on Advanced Intelligence Systems10.1109/SCIS-ISIS.2012.6505319(2164-2167)Online publication date: Nov-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCIS-ISIS.2012.6505319
Akimoto TOgata T(2012)Macro structure and basic methods in the integrated narrative generation system by introducing narratological knowledge2012 IEEE 11th International Conference on Cognitive Informatics and Cognitive Computing10.1109/ICCI-CC.2012.6311156(253-262)Online publication date: Aug-2012
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCI-CC.2012.6311156
Cao YKlamma RJarke M(2011)The Hero’s Journey - Template-Based Storytelling for Ubiquitous Multimedia ManagementJournal of Multimedia10.4304/jmm.6.2.156-1696:2Online publication date: 8-Apr-2011
https://doi.org/10.4304/jmm.6.2.156-169
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Article

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents