1. Storytelling in a new media world:@ from broadcast to immersion Dan Pinchbeck Department of Creative Technologies University of Portsmouth 16 th March 2006

2. How do we increase interactivity without compromising the stories we want to tell? How do we enable audiences to interact with and even control the stories whilst protecting the core features and the authorial voice?> Are interactivity and narrative, as has been suggested, incompatible? Do we need new forms of storytelling, or new types of story?

3. Models Of narrative and story structure in interactive environments Techniques For maintaining narrative integrity in highly interactive scenarios Concepts Or, what is a story anyway?

4. Models

5. Linear broadcast Flow broken – choice of options, correct option re-engages story Block and Resolve

6. AVI: Footage from BBCi’s Pyramids – illustration of block & resolve interactivity

7. Branching Structure

8. AVI: from Deus Ex (Ion Storm 2000): Branch is set-up in non-interactive cut scene. Play then continues up to 2-option branch. Action is stopped again whilst the player chooses an option. Action then continues according to ] the selected branch.

9. Non-interactive cut-scene progresses story Interactive, goal-based episode with single exit point String of Pearls

10. AVI: From Myst V: End of Ages (Cyanworlds, 2004) – a typical string of pearls cut-scene. Action stops whilst the story is pushed forwards. Typically, this also includes setting up the goals of the following section of action.

11. More interactivity Less interactivity Funnel (or pyramid)

12. Funnel interactive episodes embedded within string-of-pearls Often used in combination with branches or enclosed modular branches

13. Corridor of Affect Narrative is more or less linear, with no major branches No cut-scenes and funnel sub-goals with embedded sub-branches create illusion of high impact upon overall story

14. AVI: A narrative sequence from Half Life 2 (Valve, 2004). The player is retains control over movement and observation, so there is no break from the experience of play, whilst the segments serves the same purpose as a non-interactive cut-scene.

15. Techniques

16. 1. Distributed Narrative Uses multi–sensory devices, embedded in landscape and action to build overall narrative: Devices can be passive, active, dynamic… Mix of agents, audio, architecture, objects, abstract transmissions. Central idea is to create sense of immersion in story without disrupting the experience of play.

17. AVI: Examples of distributed narrative devices from Doom 3 (id 2004). These include a cut-scene; integrated video screens within the action; ‘live’ radio transmissions during play; in-game avatars; and the PDA device containing emails, video and audio.

18. AVI: Overlaid radio transmissions in Deus Ex, enabling narrative to be delivered without disrupting play and manipulating the player’s actions in real time.

19. 2. Reactive environments Establish overall narrative as set of conditions and control deviations from these conditions, i.e. it doesn’t matter how it happens as long as it happens! Give system power to intervene in action to prevent disruptive events (intervene or accommodate) Story comprised of elements that can be re–arranged if necessary.

20. Emergent Narrative Theory (Louchart & Aylett) Low level (System / procedural constraints) High Level (Conceptual constraints / management) User actions

21. Liquid Narrative (Young) User actions Database of Story elements Discourse Generator Intervene Accomodate

22. 3. Understand player psychology better How do players ‘read’ the environment? How are they likely to behave in a given situation? Use dramatic techniques, empathy and schema to predict and manipulate behaviour – in other words, manage the expectations and outcomes of interactivity.

23. ICT SEE project PUSH PULL (Corroborative Detail – Coercive Narrative – Emotional Score)

24. UoP Obs. Behaviour study AVI: The sequence from Half Life 2 where players are instructed to ‘pile stuff up’ by an NPC, and subsequently missed a ladder in plain view.

25. Still image: from Half Life 2, showing different narrative devices, as part of the discussion about where players appear to get their narrative from (if anywhere…)

26. Concepts

27. Stories are codified sequences of events that yield meaning. The telling is split from the told (discourse and events) Fundamentally, it’s the predetermined meaning or Exit–state that really counts So what’s changed?

28. Environmental and distributed Robust and dynamic Supported by complex architecture Designed from client–end backwards Expanded Storytelling?

29. “While writing this chapter in Denmark, I had the chance to visit the great domed cathedral in the old capital city of Roskilde, where seven centuries of Danish royalty lie buried. Standing in the ancient church it became suddenly clear that it is not a building in the modern sense at all. The Domkirke is a many layered storytelling domain …” Bernard Baars, In the Theater of Consciousness 1997