Game Story Research Articles

Bringing Interactive Storytelling to Industry: Designing a Reactive Narrative Encounter System

The commercial games industry is struggling to find a form of narrative for single-player story-based games that takes advantage of the medium. Current methods are limited to structured narrative or simulation, both of which have serious game design constraints. Drama Management represents a potential new model. This talk will cover the author's research into bringing interactive storytelling to single-player story games. Focusing on the design and production needs of current titles, different groups of pen-and-paper RPG Game Masters were studied, and their interactive narrative approach was algorithmically replicated for video game storytelling on a per-encounter level. To verify these results, an “Encounter Manager” pen-and-paper algorithm was tested in place of a human Game Master, achieving similar storytelling results and exposing new conclusions. Implementing these techniques in several video game projects has shown diverse payoffs, not just in narrative, replayability, and pacing but also in risk-reduction, art production, open world and linear level design, and new game genres. However, the uncertainty and risk of a new model of game production combined with the lack of a driving need in commercial games has so far proven a major hurdle for this approach. Looking forward, similarities with other procedural narrative efforts are explored, and future steps are proposed.

중세 판타지 게임의 세계관 연구

우리나라 온라인게임 중 약 73%가 중세배경의 세계관을 갖고 있다. 역사에서 암흑과 야만의 시기로 종종 점하되었던 중세 천년이 디지털 가상세계에서 새롭게 부활하고 있는 것이다. 첨단 테크놀로지로 시현되는 온라인게임에서 '중세'라는 전근대적인 세계가 빈번하게 등장하는 현상은 역설적 이며 의미심장하다. 본 연구는 이러한 문제의식에 기반해 온라인게임에서 중세 세계관이 등장하게 된 배경과 구현양상을 살펴보고자 했다. 이에 중세 판타지 게임의 등장은 현대인들의 전근대에 대한 탈출과 동경 때문이며, 이러한 중세 판타지 세계관은 게임 스토리텔링의 기반 서사와 퀘스트 스토리, 캐릭터 설정 등에 많은 영향을 끼치고 있음을 알 수 있었다. 자연과 초자연의 공존이라는 이중 구조는 중세 판타지 게임의 기반 서사를 설정하는데 중요한 축으로 작용하고 있으며, "목표설정-모험과 투쟁-목표달성"이라는 3단계의 추구서사(quest narrative)를 가진 중세 로망스문학은 중세 판타지 게임에 이르러 퀘스트 스토리에 반영되고 있다. 봉건제로 대표되는 중세의 엄격한 피라미드적 위계질서는 캐릭터 디자인에 의미 있는 메타포를 형성하고 있으며, 플레이어들은 이러한 수직적 구조 속에서 동시에 수평적 연대의식을 통해 온라인게임의 커퓨니티를 구성하고 있음을 확인할 수 있었다. 73 percent of online games in Korea hold perspectives of medieval times in them. So far in history, about a millennium in medieval times is said to be a period of darkness and savagery, but it is newly revived in the digital virtual world. Such phenomenon is paradoxical and meaningful to often bring out 'medieval times' as a theme for online games, which are revealed by up-to-date technologies in present days. This research examines the background of views of medieval times appeared in online games and how they are realized. Medieval fantasy games have appeared because people dream about escaping from pre-modem times and have fantasy about medieval times. Moreover, perspectives of medieval times have enormously influenced background epics, quest stories, creation of characters in a game scenario. The dual structure having coexistence of nature and super naturalness acts an important role to set up the epic for medieval fantasy games. And medieval romance literature, which has a three-step quest narrative of 'targeting - adventure and fight - achievement' is reflected in a quest story of medieval fantasy games. The strict pyramid system represented by feudalism forms a meaningful metaphor for designing characters, and players organize communities for online games through horizontal collective consciousness in such vertical system of history at the same time.

"Second person: Role-playing and story in games and playable media," edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin

Review of Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, eds. Second person: Role-playing and story in games and playable media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Hardcover, $40 (432p) ISBN 978-0-262-08356-0.

Measuring Player Immersion in the Computer Game Narrative

In order to measure player immersion in the computer game narrative, this study explores and analyzes factors of the computer game narrative that influence players who are immersed in the game story world. Originally a questionnaire consisting of six dimensions—Curiosity, Concentration, Challenge, Control, Comprehension, and Empathy—was proposed. To evaluate the questionnaire, two surveys were conducted on the Internet, and data were collected from 734 respondents. After exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the dimensions were modified to Curiosity, Concentration, Challenge and Skills, Control, Comprehension, Empathy, and Familiarity.

Aesthetic experience as an aspect of embodied learning: stories from physical education student teachers

In this article we explore aesthetic experience as an aspect of embodied learning with focus on the moving body. Our theoretical framework is mainly based on the work of John Dewey. In the first part of the article we identify our understanding of central concepts and draw some lines to their implication for physical education (PE). In the second part we then use the theoretical framework in an empirical study inspired by the tradition of pragmatism. The aim is to study how physical education student teachers (PETE students) feel when participating in ball game, and how their feelings are related to the moving activity. Empirical data were mainly generated through observations from two ball game lessons and stories written by 16 PETE students. All stories were subjected to a categorical analysis of content. After analysing the empirical material, four categories emerged built on two pair of words: familiar or unfamiliar, and pleased or displeased. In the discussing section of this article, we put forward that moving activities in PE often are regarded as being technical or instrumental. By using an aesthetic perspective on embodied learning, however, we can go beyond that impression and show other dimensions of participation in ball game. It may become an important shift from exploring performance only to studying learning connected to feelings.

Teaching Joyce

Teaching Joyce Ed Madden (bio) Yeah, they say, clay's the title, but what'sreally in the plate? They take to the game, puicini, proposing nasty things shuffledand placed before her blind palms—soft and wet, probably brown, given Joyce'scolor choices of the dull and dank. The story's game is the same: somethingunnamed at the heart, something dark. Someone says something about a garden,and there's a mom saying throw it out at once—suggesting repugnant stuff or somethingwrong. "Something the dog did," laughs one. The class likes that one. It's a do over,second chance, second verse, better even than a prayer book in dingy hands. [End Page 133] Ed Madden University of South Carolina Ed Madden Ed Madden is Associate Professor of English and Director of the undergraduate program in Women's and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He is the author of Tiresian Poetics: Modernism, Sexuality, Voice 1888-2001, a cultural history of the figure of Tiresias as a third-sex figure in modernism, and a book of poetry entitled Signals. Copyright © 2008 The University of Tulsa

Well Played

This article engages in an in-depth close reading of the game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time to parse out various meanings to be found in the experience of playing the game. The experience is approached from the perspective of its narrative development and its game design. This enables an analysis of the relationship between the game's story and its game play. Sequences in the game are analyzed in detail to illustrate and interpret how these various components of a game can come together to create a fulfilling playing experience unique to this medium.

A case study of computer gaming for math: Engaged learning from gameplay?

Employing mixed-method approach, this case study examined the in situ use of educational computer games in a summer math program to facilitate 4th and 5th graders’ cognitive math achievement, metacognitive awareness, and positive attitudes toward math learning. The results indicated that students developed more positive attitudes toward math learning through five-week computer math gaming, but there was no significant effect of computer gaming on students’ cognitive test performance or metacognitive awareness development. The in-field observation and students’ think-aloud protocol informed that not every computer math drill game would engage children in committed learning. The study findings have highlighted the value of situating learning activities within the game story, making games pleasantly challenging, scaffolding reflections, and designing suitable off-computer activities.

Just working with the cellular machine

Molecular biology is a difficult comprehension subject due to its high complexity, thus requiring new teaching approaches. Herein, we developed an interdisciplinary board game involving the human immune system response against a bacterial infection for teaching molecular biology at high school. Initially, we created a database with several questions and a game story that invites the students for helping the human immunological system to produce antibodies (IgG) and fight back a pathogenic bacterium second-time invasion. The game involves answering questions completing the game board in which the antibodies "are synthesized" through the molecular biology process. At the end, a problem-based learning approach is used, and a last question is raised about proteins. Biology teachers and high school students evaluated the game and considered it an easy and interesting tool for teaching the theme. An increase of about 5-30% in answering molecular biology questions revealed that the game improves learning and induced a more engaged and proactive learning profile in the high school students.

Second person: role-playing and story in games and playable media

Shortlisted for the 2008 Diana Jones Award. and Finalist, 2007 Front Line Awards, given by Game Developer Magazine. Games and other playable forms, from interactive fictions to improvisational theater, involve role playing and storysomething played and something told. In Second Person, game designers, authors, artists, and scholars examine the different ways in which these two elements work together in tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), computer games, board games, card games, electronic literature, political simulations, locative media, massively multiplayer games, and other forms that invite and structure play. Second Personso called because in these games and playable media it is you who plays the roles, you for whom the story is being toldfirst considers tabletop games ranging from Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs with an explicit social component to Kim Newman's Choose Your Own Adventure-style novel Life's Lottery and its more traditional author-reader interaction. Contributors then examine computer-based playable structures that are designed for solo interactionfor the singular youincluding the mainstream hit Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the genre-defining independent production Faade. Finally, contributors look at the intersection of the social spaces of play and the real world, considering, among other topics, the virtual communities of such Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) as World of Warcraft and the political uses of digital gaming and role-playing techniques (as in The Howard Dean for Iowa Game, the first U.S. presidential campaign game). In engaging essays that range in tone from the informal to the technical, these writers offer a variety of approaches for the examination of an emerging field that includes works as diverse as George R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series and the classic Infocom game Planetfall. Second Person features three complete tabletop role-playing games that demonstrate some of the variations possible in the form: in John Tynes's Puppetland, players take on the roles of puppets in a land ruled by the villainous Punch; Greg Costikyan's Bestial Acts imports the techniques of Bertolt Brecht's theater of alienation into a dark role-playing structure; and in James Wallis's The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the gameplay revolves around spinning elaborate tales in the style of the famous raconteur. Contributors: Ian Bogost, Rebecca Borgstrom, Greg Costikyan, Chris Crawford, Paul Czege, Jeremy Douglass, Bruno Faidutti, Nick Fortugno, Gonzalo Frasca, Fox Harrell, Pat Harrigan, Keith Herber, Will Hindmarch, Kenneth Hite, Adriene Jenik, Mark Keavney, Eric Lang, Lev Manovich, Mark Marino, George R. R. Martin, Michael Mateas, Jane McGonigal, Jordan Mechner, Talan Memmott, Steve Meretzky, Erik Mona, Nick Montfort, Torill Mortensen, Stuart Moulthrop, Kim Newman, Robert Nideffer, Celia Pearce, Teri Rueb, Marie-Laure Ryan, Joseph Scrimshaw, Lee Sheldon, Emily Short, Andrew Stern, Helen Thorington, Sean Thorne, Jonathan Tweet, John Tynes, Tim Uren, James Wallis, Jill Walker, Kevin Whelan, Kevin Wilson, Adrianne Wortzel, Eric Zimmerman, Robert Zubek

From game studies to bibliographic gaming: Libraries tap into the video game culture

From game studies to bibliographic gaming: Libraries tap into the video game culture

Interactive story authoring: A viable form of creative expression for the classroom

The unprecedented growth in numbers of children playing computer games has stimulated discussion and research regarding what, if any, educational value these games have for teaching and learning. The research on this topic has primarily focused on children as players of computer games rather than builders/constructors of computer games. Recently, several game companies, such as BioWare Corp. and Bethesda Softworks, have released game story creation tools to the public, along with their games. However, a major obstacle to using these commercial tools is the level of programming experience required to create interactive game stories. In this paper, we demonstrate that a commercial game story construction tool, BioWare Corp.’s Aurora Toolset, can be augmented by our new tool, ScriptEase, to enable students in two grade ten English classes to successfully construct interactive game stories. We present evidence that describes the relationship between interactive story authoring and traditional story authoring, along with a series of factors that can potentially affect success at these activities: gender, creativity, intellectual ability, previous experiences with programming, time playing computer games, and time spent online. Results indicate that students can successfully construct sophisticated interactive stories with very little training. The results also show no gender differences in the quality of these interactive stories, regardless of programming experience or the amount of time per week playing computer games or participating in general online activities, although a subset of female students did show a slightly higher level of performance on interactive story authoring. In the educational context of this study, we show that ScriptEase provides an easy-to-use tool for interactive story authoring in a constructionist learning environment.

(Re)presenting experience: a comparison of Australian Aboriginal children's sand play in two settings

AbstractThis paper examines how Australian Aboriginal children present and re‐present experience in their symbolic play. Based on anthropological field research in one location and therapeutic work in another, it reports from a psychodynamic perspective how the Indigenous children create meaning on the personal and social level in two distinctive play forms. These are a traditional sand story game played by Anangu Pitjantjatjara girls in a remote Western Desert community in Central Australia, and the European sand play therapy that was introduced as part of an intervention program in a Tiwi Islands community off the northern coast. In phenomenological terms, both techniques draw on the symbolizing activity of the lived body (Schilder, 1950, 1951; Merleau‐Ponty, 1961; Scheler, 1973) or, in the language of organismic‐developmental theory, physiognomizing processes (Werner and Kaplan, 1984). These processes are seen to rest on the primary human capacity for imagination (Castoriadis, 1987). However, the schematizing activity that creates a meaningful relationship between symbol and referent (Werner and Kaplan, 1984) is specific to each play form. Set up retrospectively as a comparison, the discussion leads to the observation that the self‐directed play in the natural social setting is of a higher symbolic order (re‐presentational) than the externally induced play in the artificial social setting that indicates spontaneous linkages between symbol and referent (presentational). It is suggested that this raises certain questions about the potentially therapeutic effect of children's symbolic play. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hitler's Olympics: the story of the 1936 Nazi games

For two weeks in August 1936, Nazi Germany achieved an astonishing propaganda coup when it staged the Olympic Games in Berlin. Hiding their anti-Semitism and plans for territorial expansion, the Nazis exploited the Olympic ideal, dazzling visiting spectators and journalists alike with an image of a tolerant country. Thousands of foreigners went away wondering why the Hitler regime had been vilified, unaware that not far from the stunning Olympic Stadium lay a concentration camp full of 'enemies of the state'. In Hitler's Olympics, Anton Rippon tells the story of those remarkable Games, the first to overtly use the Olympic festival for political purposes. His account looks at how the rise of the Nazis affected German sportsmen and women in the early 1930s. And it reveals how the rest of the world allowed the Berlin Olympics to go ahead despite the knowledge that Nazi Germany was a police state.The Nazis threw all their resources into staging the most remarkable Olympics seen so far. Hitler was closely involved in the grandiose planning of an event that was designed to glorify the new Nazi state, and this book describes the process in fascinating detail. The political drama of the event is matched by the intense competition of the athletes on the field and track. Here the two sides of the story come together, most famously in the person of Jessie Owens, the black quadruple gold medal winner.Hitler's Olympics is featured on the Sports Journalists' Association website:www.sportsjournalists.co.uk/olympics/should-we-send-a-jew-to-cover-the-berlin-olympics/

ScriptEase: A generative/adaptive programming paradigm for game scripting

The traditional approach to implementing interactions between a player character (PC) and objects in computer games is to write scripts in a procedural scripting language. These scripts are usually so complex that they must be written by a computer programmer rather than by the author of the game story. This interruption in the game story authoring process has two distinct disadvantages: it increases the cost of game production and it introduces a disconnect between the author’s intentions and the interactions produced from the programmer’s written scripts. We introduce a mechanism to solve these problems. We show that game authors (non-programmers) can generate the necessary scripts for implementing meaningful interactions between the PC and game objects using a three-step process. In the first step, the author uses a generative pattern (concept) to create a high-level description of a commonly occurring game scenario. In the second step, the author uses a standard set of adaptation operations to customize the high-level description to the particular circumstances of the story that is being told. In the third step, the author presses a button that automatically generates scripting code from the adapted pattern. We describe the results of three studies in which a combined total of 56 game story authors used this three-step process to construct Neverwinter Nights game stories, using a tool called ScriptEase. We believe that this generative/adaptive process is the key to future game story scripting. More generally, this article advocates the development of adaptive programming as an alternative to current constructive programming techniques, as well as the application of adaptive programming in many domains.

Take Me Out (review)

Reviewed by: Take Me Out Mary Groebner (bio) Take Me Out. Written by Richard Greenberg, directed by Joe Mantello. Bagley Wright Theatre, Seattle WA. 11 12, 2004. Last spring I read Richard Greenberg's play "Take Me Out" and was captivated. I hoped to someday get a chance to see the play performed, and not merely because of the promise of male nudity. Reading a play, no matter how well-written, cannot capture the highs and lows of comedy and drama, or the effect of pacing on either. In the same way, reading a box score or game story (no matter how well-written) cannot capture the beauty of a well-turned double play, the excitement of fans screaming in unison as the runner rounds third, or the tense battle between pitcher and batter. When I saw "Take Me Out" it was the second "game" of the season at the Seattle Repertory Theater. Though the on-stage cast differed from those who had performed in the Tony award–winning Broadway production (with the exception of Gene Gabriel, an original cast member and the "baseball movement consultant"), the actors in the Seattle production were up to the task. The performances of Doug Wert, as Kippy Sunderstrom, and of T. Scott Cunningham, as Mason Marzac, were especially memorable. Director Joe Mantello, who won a Tony award for "Take Me Out" on Broadway, along with set designer Scott Pask, costume designer Jess Goldstein, and sound designer Janet Kalas all reprised their Broadway roles. They created believable clubhouse, shower, and on-the-field scenes with a set so well designed that it never has to physically change. A plot synopsis would go something like this: star biracial baseball player announces that he is homosexual, setting in motion a particular chain of events among his fans, friends, and teammates. Professional team sports have long struggled with the idea of having homosexual teammates. Billy Bean, for [End Page 189]example, "came out" only after he retired from the game, having played his career under a sort of de facto "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Any work involving unresolved issues surrounding homosexuality will necessarily touch on questions of tolerance, bigotry, and even religion. But categorizing "Take Me Out" as a play written solely to grapple with these issues (though important) minimizes it. It is also a story of friendship, of acknowledging and accepting who we are both privately and publicly. But most of all, it is a story of an unabashed, unadulterated love for baseball. Greenberg's play does engage in some stereotypes of its own in the sketches of the minor characters: the dumb jock (the catcher, probably the position least likely to be the dumb jock), the macho Latino ballplayers, and the too-intense Japanese pitcher. But Greenberg's main characters are more deeply, if subtly, drawn, inviting us to want to learn more about them. Even the John Rocker–like character of Shane Mungitt intrigues us as we learn about his troubled childhood and his anguished need for baseball. Production notes from the program tell us that Greenberg came to love baseball recently as an adult. His newfound passion for the game flows from his characters' voices in a variety of ways. After the main character (Darren Lemming) has made his big announcement, he tells his closest friend on the team (Kippy) that, sexuality aside, he'd "rather just play ball." Japanese pitcher Kawabata tells us that "baseball is everything." Shane Mungitt screams, "I just want to throw." Nothing means more to these players than the game, and for some it is a salvation of sorts. Kippy notes that clubhouse tension dissipates in the face of memories of "Dad and the Wiffle ball." Baseball, Kippy says, has "too much emotion." This may be why baseball players, more than players of other sports, try to control those emotions and avoid extreme highs or lows. It is, after all, a long season. Most vividly and beautifully of all, Greenberg speaks his love for the game through the character of Mason (Mars) Marzac. After Darren's announcement, his previous financial manager dumps Darren's account on Marzac, who is also (not coincidentally) gay. And as...

To enter the castle of fear: engendering children's story writing from home to school at KS2

This paper describes a small‐scale writing project in which a class of KS 2 primary pupils were invited to import their own narrative interests into a task designed by their teacher and the researcher within the constraints of the National Literacy Strategy. By employing an adventure genre, based on problem and puzzle solving, pupils were encouraged to introduce familiar scenarios and characters from their favourite stories in books, comics, videos or computer games. The work produced has been analyzed to highlight the different ways in which boys and girls engaged with key aspects of narrative and how this enabled discussion of gendered literacy practices in which boys and girls held an equal stake. The author discusses the importance of developing strategies by means of which children's understanding and transformations of their preferred modes of narrative pleasures can be housed within the current literacy framework.

The naked Olympics: the true story of the ancient games

The naked Olympics: the true story of the ancient games

A word from the editor

Welcome to the fourth issue of the ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine! In this exciting new issue, we publish six interesting papers on entertainment technologies from authors around the world including Greece, Malaysia, Portugal, UK, and USA. Two papers were selected for revision from four best winning papers at the ACM SIGCHI 2004 International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. We will present the other two winning papers in the next issue. Three of the papers in this issue have accompanying videos for lively demonstrations. To get started, the Interviews column features video interviews with our distinguished advisory board members Cynthia Breazeal and Karlheinz Brandenburg. Prof. Dr. Breazeal, Director of the Robotic Life Group at the MIT Media Lab, talks about her sociable robot Kismet, her role in Steven Spielberg's movie "Artificial Intelligence: AI," and the future of robotics. Prof. Dr. Brandenburg, inventor of the MP3 music format, shares with us the history of MP3, the new spatial audio technology called Wave Field Synthesis, and other fascinating research at the Fraunhofer Institute. In the Sociable Robot section, Andrew G. Brooks et al. from the MIT Media Lab's Robotic Life Group describe socially interactive game playing with personal robots for human entertainment, a step towards lifelike, expressive, and autonomous humanoid robot. Be sure to watch the fascinating human-robot interaction in their 5-minute demonstration video. In the Wireless Game and Game Story section, Josephine Reid et al. from the HP Labs in UK document on paper and a 2-minute video about a week long public field trial of a spontaneous, wireless networked musical game in a cafe setting. Luis Romero et al. from New University of Lisbon and Viana do Castelo Polytechnic Institute in Portugal describe gaming and storytelling activities in a mixed environment that integrates the real and virtual worlds. In the 3D Animation and iTV section, Belinda Teoh Soo Phing et al. from Multimedia University in Malaysia discuss the potential of adapting moveable pop-up technique as a continuity element for the entire flow in 3D animation, and present a 3-minute video demonstration. Konstantinos Chorianopoulos et al. from Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece explore the use of an animated character and dynamic insertion of advertising for an interactive music television channel. In the Synopsis - Book column, David Freeman talks about the art and craft of Emotioneering - and presents 32 categories of creating emotion in games. Before diving into the exciting content, I would like to take a moment to congratulate two of our distinguished editorial board advisors: (1) Bob Lambert has been named in July 2004 the senior vice president for worldwide media technology and development at the Walt Disney Company. Mr. Lambert also serves on the boards of USC and the American Film Institute, and has served as an advisor to the National Academy of Science, the USC Entertainment Technology Center, and the US FIRST program. (2) Masa Inakage, a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, along with other committee members, conference chair Dena Slothower, and ACM volunteers, had done an outstanding job in bringing 27,825 professionals from nearly 90 countries to the annual conference and exhibition of SIGGRAPH 2004 in August. It exceeded all expectations with an overall 14 percent increase in attendance over last year. Finally, ACM Computers in Entertainment is a proud co-sponsor of the University Project at Digital Hollywood Fall 2004 in September. Our distinguished editorial board advisors Adrian Cheok, Charles Swartz, Glenda Revelle, and Richard Weinberg will join Athomas Goldberg, Celia Pearce, and Dana Plautz on the panel "Research, Development and Investment in Entertainment Technologies and Media Studies Innovation: From the University to Industry Application." We will bring you the details in the next issue of ACM Computers in Entertainment. Please enjoy reading this online magazine and spread the words that we are planning for a special issue on Digital Cinema. Thank you very much for your continuing support!

OPENING UP A NEW WORLD: Reluctant readers' use of The Game and other stories

OPENING UP A NEW WORLD: Reluctant readers' use of The Game and other stories