"we theorize the unique storytelling potential of
mobile games while describing our experience attempting to harness that potential through
the design and implementation of our hybrid-reality game University of Death."
"Roll20 is an online tabletop gaming platform with a focus on storytelling as opposed to game mechanics. This is NOT a video game, but instead a virtual "table" to gather around with friends in order to play any number of role playing games."
"construction
of a social cues and training demonstrator (a serious game) that enables its users to
improve their social behaviour. In this report, a distinction is made between strong
story and strong autonomy approaches to narrative management. The former rely on
central management of the narrative through drama managers, not giving their agents
much freedom. Inversely, the latter focus on the autonomy of agents, without explicit
top-down control over the narrative. The autonomy of such agents allows an unscripted
narrative to emerge from the user's interaction with the system. The trade-off between
a strict storyline and freedom of action in these approaches is called the narrative
paradox.
It is concluded that a strong autonomy approach can feature social behaviour of
agents more easily than a strong story one, because it is inherent with this approach
that its agents have more complex models. For the demonstrator, some control over the
narrative is required to let its users reach given goals in the created scenarios. Therefore,
our future work will focus on creating a hybrid approach that enables agents to direct
the story autonomously."
"Never mind that they're now among the most lucrative forms of entertainment in America, video games are juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy. At least that's what Jonathan Blow thinks. But the game industry's harshest critic is also its most cerebral developer, a maverick bent on changing the way we think about games and storytelling. With his next release, The Witness, Blow may cement his legacy-or end his career. In a multibillion-dollar industry addicted to laser guns and carnivorous aliens, can true art finally flourish?"
Abstract: "Game Artificial Intelligence (Game AI) is a subdiscipline
of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine
Learning (ML) that explores the ways in which AI
and ML can augment player experiences in computer
games. Storytelling is an integral part of many modern
computer games; within games stories create context,
motivate the player, and move the action forward. Interactive
Narrative is the use of AI to create and manage
stories within games, creating the perception that
the player is a character in a dynamically unfolding and
responsive story. This paper introduces Game AI and
focuses on the open research problems of Interactive Narrative."
"Create the Gotham for your Batman, the African savannah for your Simba, or the bustling newsroom for your Clark Kent. Background, setting, environment...whatever you call it, it is the silent character in the visual story, and a dynamic and compelling setting can define and hone the action and drama of your story."
The Zeitgeist that Teaches Geography Challenges of Learning Game Design Introducing the Story Engineand Learning Engine The FourStage Approach to JustinTime Personalization Meeting the Challenges of Gamebased Learning A Possibility to Reduce Costs of DEGs Learning Effectiveness Validation LEV Interactive Digital Storytelling Narrative GameBased Learning Objects Challenges in Realizing Personalized Digital Gamebased Learning Realtime Interaction Trajectory for Adaptivity Evaluation RITAE
"The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has launched the Center for Digital Games Research to study digital media and games from a multidisciplinary approach. Launched with seed funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the center brings together 30 faculty members with expertise in "human-computer interaction, virtual environments, simulations, social networks, data mining, interactive storytelling and narrative, media neuroscience and behavioral health," among others, according to a news release."
Abstract: "Games with a strong notion of story are increasingly popular.
With the increased amount of story content associated with games where
player decisions significantly change the course of the game (branching
games), comes an increase in the effort required to author those games.
Despite the increased popularity of these kinds of games, it is unclear if a
typical player is able to appreciate the rich content of these games, since
any given player typically only experiences a small amount of that content.
We create a non-branching game that simulates branching choices
by providing players with choices followed by immediate textual feedback.
We hypothesize that this game, where player decisions do not
significantly change the course of the game, will maintain the player's
sense of agency. Experimentation showed that in a text-based story with
forced-choice points there were in most cases no significant difference in
players' reported feelings of agency when they experience a branching
story vs. a linear story with explicit acknowledgement of their choices."
Abstract: "As computer games are an
increasingly large industry, it is becoming increasingly important
for people working in the eld to understand what
elements of the game engage the player so as to improve
the design of the game. By studying common techniques
used in modern games, this paper looks to highlight how
the techniques work and thereby provide developers and designers
with more information to improve the use of these
techniques in future games. The paper also re
ects upon
the applicability of these techniques outside of games specifically."
Abstract: ""Sequence
Breaking" is a type of feature interaction conflict that exists in video games
where the player gains access to a portion of a
game that should be inaccessible. In such
instances,
a
game's subsuming featur
e
-
its storylin
e
-
is
disrupted, as the predefined set
of valid
event sequences
-
event
s being
uninterruptable unit
s
of functionality that
further
the game's story
-
is
not honoured, as per the game
designer
s'
intentions.
We postulate
that sequence breaking
often arise
s
through
bypassing
g
eographic barriers, chea
ting, and
misunderstanding on the player's behalf.
Throughout this dissertation, we pre
sent an approach to preventing seque
nce breaking at
run
-
time
with the help of Use Case Maps.
We create a "narrative manager" and traversal
algorithm to monitor the playe
r's narrative progress and check the legality of attempted
event calls. We verify our solution through test cases and show its feasibility through a
game
, concluding
t
hat our solution is sufficient and feasible."
Abstract: Joseph Campbell's Monomyth not only provides a well-proven pattern for successful storytelling, it may also help to guide teams and team leaders through the challenges of change and innovation processes. In project "HELD: Innovationsdramaturgie nach dem Heldenprinzip" researchers of the University of the Arts Berlin and the Berlin Gameslab, part of the University of Applied Sciences HTW-Berlin, team up to examine the applicability of the Hero's Journey to change management using an adaptation of Campbell's pattern called „Heldenprinzip®". The project's goal is not to teach the stages of the Monomyth as mere facts but to enable participants of training courses and interventions to actually experience its concepts using a portfolio of creative and aesthetic methods. While a pool of aesthetic methods - like drawing, performing or role-playing - is already being used, the Gameslab subproject qualitatively researches the potentials for enriching and complementing these methods with interactive digital media and games. This paper discusses three types of game based learning treatments to be used in training and intervention sessions as well as teaching the Monomyth in a game based learning university course. The first option is providing participants with a game that follows the Hero's Journey and inducing them to reflect on the experience and its relation to the learning goal. An alternative strategy is to make participants go through a game sequence broaching issues that are relevant for a stage or the journey of change in general. Last but not least, digital equivalents of the non-digital aesthetic methods can be constructed using digital games or digitally enhanced set-ups for playful interactions. All three treatments have their merits and pitfalls, which are discussed in relation to the identified game-based learning scenarios: self-study, blended game-based learning and face-to-face sessions"
Abstract: "As computational capability continues to increase, the tools
available to designers of digital games have become more robust, allowing
high fidelity graphics and sound to become common, and resulting
in a market saturated with kinetic-based games. However, consumers
and educators are eschewing such games for more complex and
immersive stories, the creation of which has proven a difficult mountain
for designers to climb. A central reason is that story-immersive
games rely on dialogue between the player character (PC) and nonplayer
characters (NPCs), the writing and coding of which is time consuming
and inefficient. This paper documents the author's experiences
with complex, branching dialogue systems, and examines the possibility
of system automation through natural language processing (NLP)."
"This paper presents a design methodology that allows technical leads in the game industry to introduce story designers with low technical background to generative techniques for automatic plot creation, in particular to a specific method of AI-based planning. The approach provides support to convey necessary technical knowledge by paper prototyping. Further, it demonstrates that paper prototypes are not only useful to learn these concepts but also as tools of creation."
Collaboration among researchers at Duke, UChicago and University of Waterloo on an online alternate reality game with economic crisis as the subject, invitation to join the game community