A Call for Emotion Modeling in Interactive Storytelling

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques are widely used in video games. Recently, AI planning methods have been applied to maintain plot consistency in the face of player’s agency over the narrative. Combined with an automatically populated player model, such AI experience managers can dynamically create a consistent narrative tailored to a specific player. These tools help game narrative designers achieve narrative goals while affording players a choice. On the other hand, they increase the number of feasible plot branches making it more difficult for the author to ensure that each branch carries the player along a desired emotion arc. In this paper we discuss the problem and call for an extension of experience managers with player emotion models. When successful, interactive narrative can be then automatically produced to satisfy authorial goals not only in terms of specific events but also in terms of emotions evoked in the player.