Interactive storytelling

Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act 'human,' alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly....hungry inhabitants could become thieves, guards could pursue the thieves, villagers could fall in love with others, or different war alliances could emerge. Interactive storytelling (also known as interactive drama) is a form of digital entertainment in which the storyline is not predetermined. The author creates the setting, characters, and situation which the narrative must address, but the user (also reader or player) experiences a unique story based on their interactions with the story world. The architecture of an interactive storytelling program includes a drama manager, user model, and agent model to control, respectively, aspects of narrative production, player uniqueness, and character knowledge and behavior. Together, these systems generate characters that act 'human,' alter the world in real-time reactions to the player, and ensure that new narrative events unfold comprehensibly. The field of study surrounding interactive storytelling encompasses many disparate fields, including psychology, sociology, cognitive science, linguistics, natural language processing, user interface design, computer science, and emergent intelligence. They fall under the umbrella term of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), at the intersection of hard science and the humanities. The difficulty of producing an effective interactive storytelling system is attributed to the ideological division between professionals in each field: artists have trouble constraining themselves to logical and linear systems and programmers are disinclined to appreciate or incorporate the abstract and unproven concepts of the humanities. What characteristics distinguish an interactive story from another form of interactive media is subject to much debate. Interactivity and storytelling are both polysemic terms, and the phrase 'interactive storytelling' does not inherently distinguish it from other kinds of storytelling, many of which are already interactive to some extent. Some of the literature associated with the term 'interactive storytelling' is actually about transmedia storytelling, which is not a form of entertainment, but a marketing strategy for building a compelling brand across digital platforms. Varying levels of interactivity are a function of the 'relatedness of transmitted messages with previous exchanges of information where sender and receiver roles become interchangeable.' Storytelling, in this case, refers to the process of active creation and authoring rather than the final product and its passive reception. Interactive storytelling by this definition can entail any media that allows the user to generate several unique dramatic narratives. Though its final goal is a fully unauthored AI environment with a comprehensive human-level understanding of narrative construction (i.e., the Holodeck), projects that use branching stories and variable gates are considered experimental prototypes in the same genre. Interactive storytelling is defined as distinct from interactive fiction (or IF), as well as video games with strong narrative focus (Mass Effect, BioShock, etc.), by user agency and open-ended narrative. David Gaider, an RPG developer at BioWare, stated that 'every possible branch needs to be written and fully realized, even if not every player sees it, and thus any game which allows for a lot of player choice becomes a much more expensive proposition for a developer.' IF and video games, to balance user choice with authorial effort, must constrain the directions the narrative can take with puzzles, battles, or unchangeable plot points and bottlenecks, all of which detract from a sense of immersion. Only the most critical of the user's narrative choices are used or remembered in narrative development, according to the need to fulfill specific player goals that define a 'gameplay' experience. A true IS system would incorporate all of them, as do living human agents, simultaneously and continuously - a task only artificial intelligence can meet. Sandbox games like The Sims and Spore, which do involve extensive AI-based social interaction, do not manage dramatic tension or produce a cohesive narrative . To Mateas and Stern, creators of Façade and The Party, interactive storytelling is best understood as interactive theater, in that its goal is dramatic meaning rather than fun. It was Chris Crawford who coined the term interactive storytelling in the 90s, arguing that IS is not a video game with a narrative, and that a game and IS cannot be combined successfully. Because of limited technology and the amount of work required, it is still difficult to combine a robust interactive storytelling system and a game engine without detracting from the effectiveness of both. Emerging voices in the field, however, argue for the possibilities of adding narrative complexity and realistic characters to existing video game genres. Using MADE (Massive Artificial Drama Engine), a team of AI researchers developed a genetic algorithm to guide emergent behavior for secondary non-player characters (NPCs) based on literary archetypes. In the open-source AI engine of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, this was tested to elaborate on the mechanistic behavior of townspeople: Early attempts to understand interactive storytelling date back to the 1970s with such efforts as Roger Schank's research at Northwestern University and the experimental program TaleSpin . In the early 1980s Michael Liebowitz developed 'Universe', a conceptual system for a kind of interactive storytelling. In 1986, Brenda Laurel published her PhD dissertation, 'Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System.' During the 1990s, a number of research projects began to appear, such as the Oz Project led by Dr. Joseph Bates and Carnegie Mellon University, the Software Agents group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Improv Project led by Ken Perlin at New York University, and the Virtual Theater group at Stanford, led by Dr. Barbara Hayes-Roth. There were also a number of conferences touching upon these subjects, such as the Workshop on Interactive Fiction & Synthetic Realities in 1990; Interactive Story Systems: Plot & Character at Stanford in 1995; the AAAI Workshop on AI and Entertainment, 1996; Lifelike Computer Characters, Snowbird, Utah, October 1996; the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents at Marina del Rey, CA. February 5–8, 1997.