Interactive Storytelling Systems Research Articles

Conversational agent in HCI a review

Nowadays, AI technology is developing rapidly and slowly covering all areas of life. AI facilitates different parts of our lives and provides us with a lot of help. For example, in learning, students can acquire knowledge more conveniently through AI, and buyers can find suitable goods more conveniently through AI when shopping. At the same time, more and more technology is used in the field of voice agents, which allows humans to enjoy a lot of better services. In this article, we will study to better understand "how to understand human natural language and how the repository of knowledge is built." In the article we build with examples and deep learning models (CNN and RNN) through databases. Through repeated research and analysis, we can find that there are some limitations in this paper, such as the single learning model and the insufficient elaboration of data analysis and signal system technology. But at the same time, we also found a lot of future application prospects that voice agents can develop, it can be applied in many fields, such as finance, medical care, education and so on. For example, in children's education, parents can use voice agents to set time limits and monitor their children's progress. Existing digital interactive storytelling systems have limitations in terms of available storybooks and hand-crafted issues. Voice agents are becoming more popular in everyday scenarios, and more users are adopting devices like Siri and Google Assistant. In the future, conversational agents are expected to play an important role in oral communication with users.

Characterizing the research-practice gap in children’s interactive storytelling systems

Storytelling support has been and continues to be a recurring theme in child–computer interaction research, especially as it pertains to education. This work has spilled over into practice, and, in the last few decades, a large number of storytelling systems for children have been developed—both as research prototypes and commercial applications. However, through a systematic analysis of 75 research-based storytelling systems and 39 commercial systems, we find that there remains a problematic gap between research and practice with respect to products in interactive storytelling and child–computer interaction, echoing the well-documented research-practice gap in the general HCI field. We characterize the nature of this gap, highlighting design themes promoted by research-based systems that are not as prevalent in commercial systems, such as tangibility and narrative scaffolds, and vice-versa. Understanding the main areas of discrepancy between research and practice can help focus efforts to close the research-practice gap in storytelling systems for children.

Interactive Storytelling: A Player Modelling Approach

In recent years, the fields of Interactive Storytelling and Player Modelling have independently enjoyed increased interest in both academia and the computer games industry. The combination of these technologies, however, remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we present PaSSAGE (Player-Specific Stories via Automatically Generated Events), an interactive storytelling system that uses player modelling to automatically learn a model of the player's preferred style of play, and then uses that model to dynamically select the content of an interactive story. Results from a user study evaluating the entertainment value of adaptive stories created by our system as well as two fixed, pre-authored stories indicate that automatically adapting a story based on learned player preferences can increase the enjoyment of playing a computer role-playing game for certain types of players.

Improving Narrative Consistency in Planning-Based Interactive Storytelling

Interactive Storytelling (IS) systems are an emerging class of interactive entertainment applications with emphasis in narrative aspects. This paper deals with stories that have plots centered on a riddle, and describes a mechanism that can be introduced to planning-based IS in order to make the generated stories follow a specified tension arc. Results from experiments with users suggest that the proposed method is capable to bring improvements to these systems.

Dialogue Generation in Character-Based Interactive Storytelling

In recent years, there has been significant progress in developing Interactive Storytelling systems, in particular in terms of the underlying AI techniques. There has been an emerging consensus on the AI approach, in particular the use of planning systems. However, these have concentrated on the generation of a sequence of narrative actions, staged through the behaviour of virtual actors. In order to achieve the long-term objective of implementing interactive media that would reproduce the aesthetic qualities of traditional films, most interactive storytelling systems are still missing the ability to generate dialogues between characters. We describe an extension of our Interactive Storytelling approach which integrates dialogue generation within narrative situations. Our unit of generation is the dialogue act (pair of utterances) and one main objective is to reproduce realistic dialogue phenomena based on implicit forms of expression. The emphasis is also on adopting a unified approach relating narrative representations to the linguistic form of the generated utterances. From a representation of active narrative goals and the emotional affinity between characters, our system is able to derive a set of parameters governing various aspects of the linguistic form to be generated. We illustrate this approach on several implemented examples.

A Nondeterministic Temporal Planning Model for Generating Narratives with Continuous Change in Interactive Storytelling

In this paper, we propose a temporal planning model for real-time generation of narratives in Interactive Storytelling systems. The model takes into account continuous branched time and the specification of constraints defined as temporal formulae over dramatic properties of the narrative (e.g. joy or tension). In order to address real-time generation, dramatic properties are modeled as varying linearly and events go through a preprocessing stage. As proof of concept, the model is incorporated into an existing storytelling system, LOGTELL, which provides a way to logically specify genres; allows user interaction to influence events in the unrolling narrative; and dramatizes the story in a 3D computer graphics world. To illustrate the generation of narratives, we present a simple narrative example in the Swords and Dragons genre.

Optimizing Players’ Expected Enjoyment in Interactive Stories

In interactive storytelling systems and other story-based computer games, a drama manager is a background agent that aims to bring about an enjoyable and coherent experience for the players. In this paper, we present a personalized drama manager that increases a player's expected enjoyment without removing player agency. Our personalized drama manager models a player's preference using data-driven techniques, predicts the probability the player transitioning to different story experiences, selects an objective experience that can maximize the player's expected enjoyment, and guides the player to the selected story experience. Human study results show that our drama manager can significantly increase players' enjoyment ratings in an interactive storytelling testbed, compared to drama managers in previous research.

An ACT-R Based Humanoid Social Robot to Manage Storytelling Activities

This paper describes an interactive storytelling system, accessible through the SoftBank robotic platforms NAO and Pepper. The main contribution consists of the interpretation of the story characters by humanoid robots, obtained through the definition of appropriate cognitive models, relying on the ACT-R cognitive architecture. The reasoning processes leading to the story evolution are based on the represented knowledge and the suggestions of the listener in critical points of the story. They are disclosed during the narration, to make clear the dynamics of the story and the feelings of the characters. We analyzed the impact of such externalization of the internal status of the characters to set the basis for future experimentation with primary school children.

Adaptive storytelling based on personality and preference modeling

In almost all forms of storytelling, the background and the current state of mind of the audience members predispose them to experience a given story from a uniquely personal perspective. However, traditional story writers usually construct their narratives based on the average preferences of their audience, which does not guarantee satisfying narrative experiences for its members. When a narrative aims at providing pleasurable entertainment, having some information about the preferences of the current user for the narrative’s content is vital to create satisfying experiences. This paper explores personality modeling and proposes a novel approach to generate individualized interactive narratives based on the preferences of users, which we model in terms of the Big Five factors. This paper presents and evaluates the proposed method in a web-based interactive storytelling system that explores the Little Red Riding Hood folktale. The results show that the proposed method is capable of correctly recognizing the preferences of users for story events (average accuracy of 91.9%) and positively improve user satisfaction and experience.

Screenwriting for new film mediums: Conceptualizing visual models for interactive storytelling

This article considers challenges specific to screenwriting for interactive storytelling in new film mediums, and proposes fifteen visual, conceptual models for interactive storytelling. The models are placed on a continuum with increasing degrees of interactivity. Three arguments are posed for the necessity of visual, conceptual models and a review of literature is presented that lends credence to these arguments. Though technology’s ability to provide interaction is an important factor, technology is not the focus of this article. Instead, the focus is on the need for authors to have a voice and a process in this new, interdisciplinary domain of interactive storytelling in new film mediums. The models proposed in this article help establish a common vernacular from which authors, programmers and others can communicate and direct interactive storytelling efforts towards the design of interactive storytelling systems.

AUTOMATIC VIDEO EDITING FOR VIDEO-BASED INTERACTIVE STORYTELLING

The development of interactive narratives with the quality of feature films is the central challenge of what we can name Video-Based Interactive Storytelling. A promising approach to this question is the use of prerecorded videos with real actors. Amongst several technical challenges, this approach firstly requires automatic video editing methods for interactive narratives. However, this is a critical issue not fully covered in the literature. In this paper, we present a real-time editing method for interactive storytelling systems, which automatically generates the most adequate shot transitions, swaps video segments to avoid jump cuts, and creates adequate looping scenes. Moreover, these features consider the characteristics of the ongoing story.

Video-based interactive storytelling using real-time video compositing techniques

Interactive storytelling systems usually adopt computer graphics to represent virtual story worlds, which facilitates the dynamic generation of visual content. However, the quality of the images and motion produced by these systems is still inferior compared to the high quality experience found in live-action films. Interactive rates in photorealistic rendering for the film industry will not be possible for decades to come. A promising alternative is the replacement of 3D virtual characters with video sequences with real actors. In this paper, we propose a new method for video-based interactive narratives that uses video compositing algorithms that run at truly interactive frame rates. The proposed method is consistent with plots that are generated by nondeterministic planning algorithms. Moreover, we propose a system of artificial intelligent agents that perform the same roles played by filmmaking professionals. A user evaluation of the proposed method is presented. We believe that future improvements of the techniques proposed in this paper represent an important contribution to the quest for new and more immersive forms of interactive cinema.

Madeira Story Generator: Prospecting serendipitous storytelling in public spaces

In the light of the increasing adoption of participatory culture means by general consumers, this paper describes the design process, evaluations and discussion on four studies on public interactive storytelling system addressing findings and limitations in regards of its participatory nature. Previous bodies of work within interactive artworks and public displays cite difficulty in attracting passersby attention. Through an iterative design process and refinements to the storytelling concept, we advanced our experience of the mechanics of digital storytelling’ and passersby engagement within each space studied. This paper aims to share our research highlights, encountered difficulties and how the applied evaluation methods stood up to the task within public spaces that aren’t as easily accessible for research, such as airport terminals. Our findings further seek to go beyond a traditional technology-centered approach while examining the relationship between individual, object, and public spaces.

A tabletop interactive storytelling system: designing for social interaction

This paper presents the Interactive Storyteller, a multi-user interface for AI-based interactive storytelling, where stories emerge from the interaction of human players with intelligent characters in a simulated story world. To support face-to-face contact and social interaction, we position users around a shared multi-touch table, which very much resembles the social setting of traditional tabletop board games. To our knowledge, the Interactive Storyteller is the first AI-based interactive storytelling system that combines an emergent narrative approach with the social aspects of traditional tabletop board games. We carried out user experiments to investigate to what extent our system supports social interaction. By analysing the interactions of pairs of children with the Interactive Storyteller, we determined which system aspects triggered cooperation and highly social behaviour and which aspects caused players to behave less socially. We also tried to find out whether the use of tangible playing pieces offered any advantages over touch-only interaction, but we did not find any differences between the two.

Unspoken Emotions in Movies

Stories are the core of many types of entertainment.Although developers and designers strive to develop new forms of entertainment that deliver richer audiovisual experiences to the audience, one of the key elements – a good story – remains the same. Storytelling is intertwined in people’s lives and has deeply influenced human societies for generations. It ranges from the simplest forms, such as bedtime stories for children, to more complex forms such as plays, movies, and games. Just as children love often-told bedtime stories, sometimes adults enjoy watching classic movies over and over again and never tire of them. Storytelling is not only a matter of how well the stories are memorized but also the overall emotional experience over the course of the storyline. The link between the story and the corresponding emotions is an intriguing topic for developing new interactive storytelling systems.

Interactive storytelling: interacting with people, environment, and technology

Stories are an important part of children’s social and cognitive development and can be an integral part of their lives. In this paper, we share a short synopsis of Mobile Stories, one of the narrative systems we have developed with and for children. We also share lessons we have learned while designing, developing, and evaluating Mobile Stories. In designing and developing narrative systems for children, we advocate using iterative co-design (specifically cooperative inquiry). While designing a product, it is important to keep in mind key characteristics of interactive storytelling systems; such systems should encourage and enable creativity, interactivity with the environment via movement and mobility, and interactivity between users. When evaluating interactive storytelling systems, evaluators should consider the different story tasks of reading, creating, and sharing.

A case study of intended versus actual experience of adaptivity in a tangible storytelling system

This article presents a case study of an adaptive, tangible storytelling system called “The Reading Glove”. The research addresses a gap in the field of adaptivity for ubiquitous systems by taking a critical look at the notion of “adaptivity” and how users experience it. The Reading Glove is an interactive storytelling system featuring a wearable, glove-based interface and a set of narratively rich objects. A tabletop display provides adaptive recommendations which highlight objects to select next, functioning as an expert storytelling system. The recommendation engine can be run in three different configurations to examine the effects of different adaptive methods. The study of the design process as well as the user experience of the Reading Glove allows us to develop a deeper understanding of the experience of adaptivity that is useful for designers of intelligent systems, particularly those with ubiquitous and tangible forms of interaction.

A Study on the Development of Intelligent Contents and Interactive Storytelling System

The development of information technology introduced digital contents and Social Network Services(SNS), and allowed virtual transaction and communication between users called the experience knowledge advanced from the objective knowledge. This paper will analyze interactive storytelling system creating different types of stories on narrative genre about family history, personal history and so on. Through analysis on narrative interviews, direct observations, documentations and visual records, contents about CEO story, corporate story, family story and especially family history will be categorized into sampleDB and informationDB. Accumulated contents will allow user to increase value and usage of contents through interactive storytelling system by restructuring contents on family history. This research has developed writing tool data model using different digital contents such as texts, images and pictures to encourage open communications between first generations and third generations in Korea. Furthermore, researched about connected system on interactive storytelling creation device using various genre of family story that has been data based.

AIBOStory – Autonomous Robots supporting Interactive, Collaborative Story-telling

AbstractThis article describes the design and evaluation of AIBOStory - a novel, remote interactive story telling system that allows users to create and share common stories through an integrated, autonomous robot companion acting as a social mediator between two remotely located people. The behaviour of the robot was inspired by dog behaviour, including a simple computational memory model. AIBOStory has been designed to work alongside online video communication software and aims to enrich remote communication experiences over the internet. An initial pilot study evaluated the proposed system’s use and acceptance by the users. Five pairs of participants were exposed to the system, with the robot acting as a social mediator, and the results suggested an overall positive acceptance response. The main study involved long-term interactions of 20 participants using AIBOStory in order to study their preferences between two modes: using the game enhanced with an autonomous robot and a non-robot mode which did not use the robot. Instruments used in this study include multiple questionnaires from different communication sessions, demographic forms and logged data from the robots and the system. The data was analysed using quantitative and qualitative techniques to measure user preference and human-robot interaction. The statistical analysis suggests user preferences towards the robot mode.

Say Anything

We describe Say Anything, a new interactive storytelling system that collaboratively writes textual narratives with human users. Unlike previous attempts, this interactive storytelling system places no restrictions on the content or direction of the user’s contribution to the emerging storyline. In response to these contributions, the computer continues the storyline with narration that is both coherent and entertaining. This capacity for open-domain interactive storytelling is enabled by an extremely large repository of nonfiction personal stories, which is used as a knowledge base in a case-based reasoning architecture. In this article, we describe the three main components of our case-based reasoning approach: a million-item corpus of personal stories mined from internet weblogs, a case retrieval strategy that is optimized for narrative coherence, and an adaptation strategy that ensures that repurposed sentences from the case base are appropriate for the user’s emerging fiction. We describe a series of evaluations of the system’s ability to produce coherent and entertaining stories, and we compare these narratives with single-author stories posted to internet weblogs.