Dramatic Presence

Abstract

Let us consider the presentation by computers of rich, highly interactive worlds that are inhabited by dynamic and complex characters, and shaped by aesthetically pleasing stories. We shall call this interactive drama, and we believe that it requires strong characters, aesthetic presentation, and long-term dramatic structure. This paper describes an experiment designed to help us understand how to create interactive drama. Three principal questions are addressed. One, how does it feel to be immersed in a dramatic virtual world filled with characters and story? Two, what is required of the characters (actors) in such a virtual world? Three, what is required of the story and its director? We present an introduction to interactive drama, summarize the Oz system designed to create and present such experiences, and describe our experiment in detail. Finally, drawing from the experiment, we suggest several hypotheses about interactive drama.

Importance of Well-Motivated Characters in Interactive Narratives: An Empirical Evaluation

“…On the other hand, people are also known to be tolerant to broken characters [6]. People may either ignore the inconsistency in the characters or use their own imagination to bring the gap.…”

“…However, it is not uncommon for the audience to be tolerant to broken characters [6]. Therefore, the post-test survey tests whether the inconsistency is detected by the subjects.…”

Rich socio-cognitive agents for immersive training environments: case of NonKin Village

“…The idea of drama management is to provide the player a chance for free play while simultaneously exposing him/her to the intended plot points and story elements. This is often done with the aid of a drama manager or director agent that makes sure that the scenes and NPCs move to where the player is and try to involve the player in the intended plot regardless of what else the player is engaged in: eg, see Oz (Kelso et al, 1993)'s drama manager, Mateus and Stern (2003) with Façade and their beat architecture for managing storyline threads, or Sharma et al (2010) using a case based reasoner approach. Note, drama management does not require a natural language understanding, but an ability to have autonomous, interactive dialog in the form of contexttriggered questioning and answering.…”

From linear story generation to branching story graphs

“…Kelso, Weyhrauch, and Bates 1993;Weyhrauch, 1997;Magerko et al 2004) use drama managers. A drama manager (Kelso, Weyhrauch, and Bates 1993) is a process that monitors the activities of the autonomous characters and the user character relative to a partially ordered graph of events that move the story forward.…”

“…Kelso, Weyhrauch, and Bates 1993;Weyhrauch, 1997;Magerko et al 2004) use drama managers. A drama manager (Kelso, Weyhrauch, and Bates 1993) is a process that monitors the activities of the autonomous characters and the user character relative to a partially ordered graph of events that move the story forward. When more than one event is possible, the drama manager analyzes the tradeoff of having one or the other next and subtly manipulates the world and autonomous characters so that the event that leads to the more satisfying experience occurs.…”