Temporal trajectories in shared interactive narratives

Abstract

Temporal trajectories can represent the complex mappings between story time and clock time that are to be found in shared interactive narratives such as computer games and interactive performances. There are three kinds. Canonical trajectories express an author's intended mapping of story time onto clock time as part of the plot and schedule of an experience. Participant trajectories reflect a participant's actual journey through story time and clock time as they interact with the experience. Historic trajectories represent the subsequent selection and reuse of segments of recorded participant trajectories to create histories of past events. We show how temporal trajectories help us analyse the nature of time in existing experiences and can also generate new approaches to dealing with temporal issues such as: disengagement and reengagement, adapting to different paces of interaction, synchronising different participants, and enabling encounters and travel across time.

A Survey of the Trajectories Conceptual Framework

“…We begin by introducing the three source publications [27,29,28] that, according to the originators of trajectories, constitute the authoritative source of the framework. We introduce the main concepts and vocabulary of the framework so that we can refer to it in later discussions.…”

“…The temporal trajectories framework [27] is based on the description of temporal structures in Day of the Figurines, a mixed-reality game by artist collective Blast Theory [10]. Temporal trajectories are defined the expression of a mapping between story time (as the game involves events unfolding over 24 hours in a fictional world) and clock time (the actual time in which the story is accessed).…”

Analysing the Playground: Sensitizing Concepts to Inform Systems That Promote Playful Interaction

“…For example, a slide has a fairly clear trajectory [32] in which a participant starts at the top and slides down, unless it is re-appropriated by children who wish to climb back up. Such a trajectory is likely to maintain a high throughput, as the duration of each experience is limited by the length of the slide.…”

Can an ARG run automatically?

“…To analyse the player's patterns of interaction the above study used 'Temporal Trajectories' [2] which maps the fictional 'story time' of the game against the real 'clock time' of the players, which was adopted within our study The Savvy group was motivated by being the first to solve the puzzles through effective collaboration yet the Random group was de-motivated when they found that all the puzzles had been solved and they could access all the answers. The respective temporal trajectories for the two groups are shown in Figure 3.…”