The concept of Interactive Storytelling has gained popularity in recent years as one which can characterise the future of gameplay. Current research in the field aim at producing specific technologies for narrative generation, which would make Interactive Storytelling more than a high-level design concept. These techniques can be seen as extending procedural generation to the game actions themselves. Furthermore, Interactive Storytelling demands sophisticated interaction and I/O mechanisms and bears strong relationships to dialogue understanding and generation.
This talk will present State-of-the-Art research in the field, illustrating the most promising directions and also the technical challenges to be overcome. It will review the origins and main approaches to Interactive Storytelling, from the “Holodeck” metaphor to desktop games, and introduce key concepts and vocabulary. It will describe candidate technologies for implementing narrative generation and will relate them to recent trends in game AI. We will discuss also the relationship between narrative generation and other forms of dynamic content generation, in particular for NPC dialogues. In addition, the presentation will include insight on relevant interaction techniques and the synergies between Interactive Storytelling and language-based interfaces, from chatterbots to dialogue and speech recognition systems.
These different aspects will be illustrated by results from research prototypes, some of which have been developed in partnership with industry, showing State-of-the-Art techniques in operation as well as discussing how these can be integrated at various stages of the games production process.
Finally, it will discuss how Interactive Storytelling can benefit existing game genres but also how it can extend the existing genres to provide new sorts of player experience and attract new audience to computer games.
The presentation is primarily aimed at AI developers but will also be of interest to producers, game designers, investors and studio managers.