expressiveintelligencestudio Noah Wardrip-Fruin Computational Media Toward Deeper Interdisciplinary Engagement Associate Professor, Computer Science

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Computation is shaping every discipline’s work — including arts & humanities

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Arts work done faster

? expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Humanities work done faster

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz But doing existing work faster is just scratching the surface

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Fundamentally new approaches ++ = Bioinformatics = Computational Media

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Big Santa Cruz EISBot WoWSpyder

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Content and rule Santa Cruz Polymorph Variations Forever

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Authoring Santa Cruz Story Canvas Tanagra

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz How do we get truly interactive stories? A deep, unsolved question Why aren’t computer games already there?

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Failures and fantasies

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz In 50 years, why haven’t games done it? Spacewar!Mass Effect This looks like an interactive movie. So why is the ship the only place you can have a personal conversation?

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Humanities-style interpretation of the media surface can be confusing Software studies Interpretation of the media-making processes is revealing

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Logics of Spacewar! and Mass Effect  The world — physics and collision detection  Combat — world, projectiles, tactics  Character and story — basically CYOA  At the deep system level, not the leap we seek

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz What about The Sims?

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz What about The Sims?  No event specifics live on, no history & no story  All actions atomic — no connections, no telling  Almost everything stored as numbers  Focus on getting and maintaining

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz... and so we’ve identified some key challenges

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz  Playable models of character and social relations  Recording, accounting for, and referring to an ongoing gameplay-determined history  Plots with meaningful player choice, authorial control, and tractable creation  Dialogue systems that account for current state of characters, relationships, and plot — without hand-authoring each version  All require using how fictions communicate, and are authored, to design technical systems Key challenges for deep game fictions

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Two projects addressing these challenges

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz First project: “Comme il Faut” and The Prom With Josh McCoy°, Mike Treanor°*, Ben Samuel°*, Aaron Reed*, Kathleen Kralowec*, Ryan Andonian°, Michael Mateas° (*Arts °Engineering)

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz  Taking on the challenge of character and social “physics”  Social games change social state  Played differently depending on character personality, current state, relations with other characters, cultural knowledge, and specifics of history  Social games refer to past events and record new events “Comme il Faut” and The Prom

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Debbie and Edward’s Angry Breakup

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Why would Debbie want to break up with Edward?  She has the character trait of jealous  Her sense of romance is low with him  He did something that could be cheating  And possibly many more reasons…

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz The Social Facts Database

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Initiator’s Volition via Influence Rules For: Responder cheated on Initiator Responder cheated on Initiator with a friend Initiator is has low confidence Against: Initiator is a cheater Initiator is not confident Responder is aggressive Initiator thinks Responder is really cool

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Initiator’s Volition via Influence Rules For: Cheat(Responder) and Dating(Responder,Other) +20 Cheat(Responder) and Dating(Responder,Other) and Friend(Initiator, Other) +20 ~Trait(Initiator, Confidence) +20 Against: Status(Cheat, Initiator) -20 ~Trait(Initiator, Confidence) -20 Trait(Responder, Aggressive) -10 Cool(Initiator, Responder) >

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Responder’s Reaction For: Responder is inarticulate Initiator did something bad to responder in the past Responder is a pacifist Against: Responder is domineering Responder has strong romantic feelings for Initiator

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Responder’s Reaction For: Trait(Responder, inarticulate) +20 Trait(Responder, Pacifist) +10 SFDB(Negative, Initiator, Responder)+20 Against: Trait(Responder, Domineering) -10 Romance(Responder, Initiator) >

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Choosing an Outcome Reject: Flavorless: romance/buddy down Karen has low confidence: Accept: Flavorless: Robert is a pacifist:

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa CruzexpressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz CiF’s Flow: Social Game Play

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Second project: SpyFeet With Aaron Reed*, Ben Samuel°*, Anne Sullivan°, April Grow°, Jennifer Mahal*, Ricky Grant°, Sri Kurniawan°, Lyn Walker° (*Arts °Engineering)

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz  Taking on challenges of dynamic plot progression and dialogue generation  A discovery plot, though information can be discovered by multiple means and in multiple orders  Developing affinity with some characters, changing some character relationships, and playing outside!  Groundwork for generating dialogue specific to personality, information state, and relationship to character SpyFeet

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Playing the game  Choose a journey — has a type of movement (seek, evade, enclose) and a game goal (meeting a new character, gathering energy)  Speak to characters — about any information the player knows  Say we ask turtle why drivers have been acting suspiciously

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Plot Point Definition File Information conveyed, precondition information, types of characters that have information, etc We ask about Turtle is a We learn Opens possibility From animals that are Turtle suggests we seek someone sharp eared

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Presenting options to the player  We might go back to a sharp-eared character, or seek new  We might decide to pursue other leads, with turtle or others  We might take on a journey to deepen our relationship with turtle, or another character Importance filters GrailGM filter Informant filter World StatePlayer State All possible quests All sensical quests All interesting quests SpyFeet Checks pre-conditions on quests to see what quests are possible Checks NPCs and items involved for importance to storyline and player Checks quests against author goals and desired story development arc, picks best match and informs game

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Generating dialogue to match play  Human-authored utterances become Deep Syntactic Structure (DSyntS) representations  RPG-specific dictionary  Character personality files, three levels of friendship  First version will be evaluated later this year

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Through these and other projects we are approaching the field’s grand challenges

expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Combining CS with arts & humanities opens powerful possibilities for our century’s defining new medium Thanks!