Instructor: Michael Mateas
Email: michaelm at cs.ucsc.edu
Office: E2 373
Office hours: MF 3:30 - 4:30
TA: Sherol Chen
Email: ffpaladin@gmail.com
Office hours: TBA
Lecture: MWF 2:00-3:10 in Engineering 2, 194
Interactive Storytelling combines the pleasures of crafted story experiences, such as novels, cinema, TV shows, and plays, with the pleasures of interactivity, most evident in the contemporary scene in the popularity of video games. On the face of it, stories and interactive experiences seem at odds with each other; stories are commonly taken to require highly crafted, fixed sequences of events, while interaction is commonly taken to require allowing the player to do what they want, when they want. In this course we'll examine theoretical perspectives on both story and interactivity, with an eye towards developing a framework for integrating the two. We'll explore how story is incorporated into contemporary game designs. Students will have the opportunity to create their own interactive story using the Inform interactive fiction engine. Finally, we will examine AI systems that can generate and dynamically manage stories, with an eye towards how such systems can be used to create more richly interactive story experiences.
6 assignments: 30%
Inform storyworld: 20%
Midterm: 25%
Final: 25%
6 assignments: 30%
Inform storyworld: 15%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 20%
Paper: 15%
Readings will consist of research papers and book excerpts. Code and additional course materials are available here.
Virtual Reality, Art and Entertainment. Joe Bates. In Presence: The Journal of Telepoperators and Virtual Environments, 1(1):133-138, MIT Press, Winter 1992.
Lord Burleigh's Kiss. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Janet Murray. Chapter 1, pp. 13-26.
Before we can figure out what interactive narrative is, we need to know what narrative is.
The Structure Spectrum. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting. James McKee. Part of Chapter 1, pp. 31-47.
The Substance of Story. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and The Principles of Screenwriting. James McKee. Chapter 7, pp. 135-180.
Narrative, Media, and Modes. Avatars of Story. Marie-Laure Ryan. Chapter 1, pp. 3-30.
Before we can figure out what interactive storytelling is, we need to know what interactivity is.
Interactivity. Chris Crawford on Game Design. Chris Crawford. Chapter 6, pp. 71-92.
Assignment 1: Pick one of the games on course reserve (BioShock, Fable: The Lost Chapters, Final Fantasy XII, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half Life, Kingdom Hearts, Orange Box (Portal), Planescape Torment, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Sims 2, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Grim Fandango, Indigo Prophecy - if you want to play a different game, consult with me first) and play it for at least 8 hours. Games are available on course reserve in the science and engineering library. Answer the questions on this homework sheet: .doc, .txt.
A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games. Michael Mateas. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.
Introduction to the tension between interactivity and narrative. In academic circles, this tension manifested as the ludology vs. narratology debate.
Genre Trouble. Espen Aarseth. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Read the responses as well.
Towards Computer Game Studies. Markku Eskelinen. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Read the responses as well.
Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology. Gonzalo Frasca. In Video Game Theory. Edited by Mark J.P. Wolff and Bernard Peron.
Assignment 1 due by midnight. As described in the assignment sheet, email your completed assignment to the TA, Sherol Chen.
Readings
Game Design as Narrative Architecture. Henry Jenkins. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Game. Edited by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Read the responses as well.
Build It to Understand It: Ludology Meets Narratology in Game Design Space. Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. In Proceedings of the Digital Interactive Games Research Association Conference (DiGRA 2005), Vancouver B.C., June, 2005.
Beyond Myth and Metaphor - The Case of Narrative in Digital Media. Marie-Laure Ryan. Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, Volume 1, Issue 1, July 2001.
Assignment 2: Given the game you played for assignment 1, answer these questions, related to the ludology/narratology debate, on the homework sheet: .doc, .txt.
Project 1: Create an interactive story using Inform 7. The Inform development environment can be downloaded here.
Assignment 3: Play 3 IF works (Zork I, Photopia, Galatea) and write a 3 page short paper comparing the works with each other and with the game you played for assignment 1. Use the concepts and terminology from the readings (all the narrative, interaction and ludology/narratology readings). For Zork I, play for two hours (it's a big game - you probably won't finish in two hours). Photopia and Galatea are short - both should playable to (an) ending. For all the games you can find walkthroughs and hint guides online. Each of these IF pieces is an example of a different approach to IF (and, more generally, interactive narrative design). Playing a bit of Zork I provides a baseline for what early IF was like. If you are new to playing IF, this guide might be useful.
Downloads for IF
Download Zork. 1. The Win95 and Mac versions are stand-alone versions of Zork. The ZIP version is a Z-machine file that is interpreted by a Z-Machine interpreter.
Z-machine Interpreters. A Z-machine is a virtual machine (analogous to the Java VM) that Infocom developed for their interactive fiction products. Much of contemporary IF runs on the Z-machine (written using languages such as Inform that target the Z-machine) - all of the pieces we're looking at run on the Z-machine. On the PC, WinFrotz is a popular choice. On the Mac, Zip Infinity is a popular choice.
If you are new to interactive fiction, you may find these beginner's guides useful: Guide 1, Guide 2.
Assignment 2 due by midnight. As described in the assignment sheet, email your completed assignment to the TA, Sherol Chen.
Assignment: Write a short design document for your IF project. Use this design document form to structure your design document: .doc, .txt. The purpose of the design doc is to help you to think about all the design decisions you will need to make in the game.
Takehome midterm handed out.
Assignment 3 due by midnight. As described in the assignment sheet, email your completed assignment to the TA, Sherol Chen.
Assignment 4: Pick a genre serial story (e.g. H.P. Lovecraft horror stories, King of the Hill, Battlestar Galactica) and develop a paper-and-pencil grammar (morphemes plus rules) that generates new stories in the genre. Demonstrate your grammar by presenting three different stories generated by the grammar.
Narrative Intelligence. Narrative Intelligence, Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers (Ed.). 2003.
A Declarative Model for Simple Narratives. Raymond Lang. In Narrative Intelligence, Michael Mateas and Phoebe Sengers (Ed.). 2003.
Midterm due by midnight.
Story Telling as Planning and Learning. Lebowitz, M. Poetics 14, pp. 483-502. 1985.
The Creative Process. Scott R. Turner. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994. Chapter 2.
The Creative Process. Scott R. Turner. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1994. Chapter 3.
IF project design document due by midnight.
Assignment 5: Use the Universe-based story authoring tool to create a story-plan representation of the same serial story you picked for your story grammar analysis.
Assignment 4 due.
Tale Spin. James Meehan. Chapter 9 of Inside Computer Understanding: Five Programs Plus Miniatures. R.C. Shank and C.K. Riesbeck (Eds.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1981.
Planning Characters' Behavior in Interactive Storytelling. Marc Cavazza and Charles Mead. The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation. 13: pp. 121-131. 2002.
A micro implementation of Tale-Spin in Lisp
Facade: An Experiment in Building a Fully-Realized Interactive Drama. Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. Game Developers Conference. Game Design Track. 2003.
A Behavior Language: Joint Action and Behavioral Idioms. Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. In Life-like Characters: Tools, Affective Functions and Applications. H. Prendinger and M Ishizuka (Eds.). 2004.
Assignment 5 due.
Interactive fiction project due
Grad paper due.