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expressiveintelligencestudio Noah Wardrip-Fruin Computational Media Toward Deeper Interdisciplinary Engagement Associate Professor, Computer Science
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Computation is shaping every discipline’s work — including arts & humanities
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Arts work done faster
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? expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Humanities work done faster
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz But doing existing work faster is just scratching the surface
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Fundamentally new approaches ++ = Bioinformatics = Computational Media
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Big data @ Santa Cruz EISBot WoWSpyder
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Content and rule generation @ Santa Cruz Polymorph Variations Forever
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Authoring tools @ Santa Cruz Story Canvas Tanagra
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz How do we get truly interactive stories? A deep, unsolved question Why aren’t computer games already there?
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Failures and fantasies
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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?
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Humanities-style interpretation of the media surface can be confusing Software studies Interpretation of the media-making processes is revealing
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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
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz What about The Sims?
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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
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz... and so we’ve identified some key challenges
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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
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Two projects addressing these challenges
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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)
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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
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Debbie and Edward’s Angry Breakup
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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…
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz The Social Facts Database
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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
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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) > 70 -15
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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
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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) > 60 -20
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Choosing an Outcome Reject: Flavorless: romance/buddy down Karen has low confidence: Accept: Flavorless: Robert is a pacifist:
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa CruzexpressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz CiF’s Flow: Social Game Play
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Through these and other projects we are approaching the field’s grand challenges
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expressiveintelligencestudioUC Santa Cruz Combining CS with arts & humanities opens powerful possibilities for our century’s defining new medium Thanks! nwf@soe.ucsc.edu
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