1. Interactive Stories
and Serious Games
for Social Interaction
Jeroen Linssen | PhD student
Human Media Interaction
University of Twente

2. Part 1: The VST
• The Virtual Storyteller:
• Story generation
• Interactive stories
• In-character and out-of-character
Outline
Part 2: Serious games
• Training through gaming
• Socially intelligent agents
• Meta-techniques
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3. PART 1
The Virtual Storyteller
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4. • Story generation through simulation [http://vimeo.com/11836534]
• Emergent narrative in a multi-agent system
• From simulation for story generation to interactive stories
The Virtual Storyteller
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5. • Story emerges from characters’ actions
• Inspiration: improvisational theatre
• Offers & accepts
Emergent narrative
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6. • Plot Agent: assigns roles
• World Agent: objective world knowledge
• Character Agents
• Virtual characters
• Plan towards their own goals
VST’s agents
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7. Fabula
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8. • Actor vs. character distinction
• Out-of-character techniques
Character Actor
I am a typical
teenager
In-character &
out-of-character
Whatever,
just leave
me alone!
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9. Pirate domain
Scurvy wants to get the piece of cheese.
Scurvy assumes the cheese is in the
galley.
Scurvy walks to the cargo hold via the
door.
Scurvy walks to the gun deck via the
ladder.
Scurvy opens the door to the galley.
Scurvy can see the cheese is not in the
galley.
O’Malley sees Scurvy.
O’Malley wants to catch Scurvy.
O’Malley walks to the gun deck via the
door.
Princess domain
Once upon a time, there was a
beautiful princess called
Amalia. A knight from a far
way country was in love with
her and she was in love with a
young prince. The knight was
jealous, so he wished to
kidnap her. Because the
princess lived in a large castle,
he went to the castle. He tried
to open the heavy gate. The
knight climbed into a high
tree. [..]
Generated stories
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10. • Authoring is an iterative process
• Examples of ‘mis-generated’ stories:
• A pirate wants to go to an island...
• A pirate wants to send someone to hell...
• Authoring: specifying the story world
Authoring for emergence
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11. • Little Red Riding Hood [http://vimeo.com/68865491]
• Co-creation
• Discovering the story world
The Interactive Storyteller
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12. PART 2
Serious games
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13. • Stories with morals: they tell something
• Obey the gods, or woe will befall you
• Respect your elders
• Think about them, reflect on the events
• “Narrative is read approximately twice as fast as
informational text but remembered twice as well.” (Graesser et
al., 2002)
Serious stories?
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14. • “All games revolve around learning.” (Erik van der Spek)
• Super Mario Bros. World 1-1
Games and learning
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15. • Domain: law enforcement (interviews, street intervention)
• Police officers need to resolve conflicts peacefully
• Improve social awareness
Serious games for
social awareness
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16. • Interaction with virtual characters
• Accessible
• Focus not on performing,
but experiencing
• Clear goals, clear feedback
Training through gaming
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17. • Focus on learning goals
• Insight in procedure
• Improving awareness
• Interaction in a system
• Don’t simulate, exaggerate
• Playful interaction
• Abstract from real world
• Convey knowledge using metaphors
Serious game design
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18. • Board game
by T-Xchange
• Police vs.
juveniles
• Police trainees
act as juveniles
• Evokes
discussion
Example: ‘Samen Hangend’
(Sequacious)
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19. • Interaction with virtual agents
• Let agents use theories on social interaction
• Again, an emergent narrative
LOITER: Interaction with
virtual characters
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20. Accessible, 2D Immersive, multi-modal
Interfaces
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21. • Analysed behaviour (corpus)
• Semantic frame
• Which factors play an important
role?
• From practice to theory
Modelling social interaction
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22. • Stance: the interpersonal circumplex
(Leary, 1957)
• Face (Goffman, 1955)
• Need for autonomy
• Need for approval
• Rapport: feeling ‘in sync’ with someone (Tickle-Degnen & Rosenthal,
1992)
• From theory to practice
Social interaction
Dominance
Affection
Aggressive Leading
Introverted Following
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23. • Learning goals based on theories from social psychology
• Examples: recognise stance and adopt a stance
• Feedback
• Explainable AI
• Supports the learning goals
Learning goals and feedback
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24. Game Learning
• Play cycle, learning cycle (Koops & Hoevenaar, 2012)
• Experiencing, then reflecting
• At which moments?
Lemniscate model
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25. • (Nordic) live action role play
• Meta-technique: communicating
out-of-character information
• Examples: inner monologue,
flashback/forwards
Meta-techniques
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26. • Complexity levels of interaction/learning goals
• Between interactions, feedback through discussion
between character and player
• Lemniscate model: play and reflect
• Use to automatically adapt next interaction
Meta-technique:
‘Act break’
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27. • Provide insight into characters’ minds
• Inspiration: thought bubbles
from comics, games
• Less intrusive to story flow,
still play/reflect cycle
Meta-technique:
‘Inner monologue’
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28. • How much do these meta-techniques contribute to
learning?
• How do different interfaces influence learning?
• Story structure: toward emergent narrative
• OOC adaptation to player: adaptive difficulty
LOITER: Next steps
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29. Take Home Message
Be meta
Get inspired by other fields
Don’t take everything too seriously
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30. Thanks Thanks for
listening!
listening!
Let’s Let’s discuss...
mail j.m.linssen@utwente.nl
blog jmlin.eu/phd
Virtual Storyteller virtualstoryteller.info
commit-nl.nl
And they learned happily ever after...
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31. • Theune, M., Linssen, J.M., & Alofs, T. (2013). Acting, Playing or Talking about the
Story: Children’s Communication during Interactive Digital Storytelling. In Proceedings of
the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling.
• Bruijnes, M., Linssen, J.M., op den Akker, H.J.A., Theune, M., Wapperom, S., Broekema,
C., & Heylen, D.K.J. (2014). Social Behaviour in Police Interviews: Relating Data to
Theories, in Poggi, I., Vincze, L., & Vinciarelli, A. (eds.) Conflict and Negotiation: Social
Research and Machine Intelligence, Springer, Berlin.
• Linssen, J.M., Theune, M., & de Groot, T.F. (2013). What Is at Play? Meta-techniques in
Serious Games and Their Effects on Social Believability and Learning. In Proceedings of the
Social Believability in Games Workshop.
• Linssen, J.M., de Groot, T.F., & Theune, M. (In press). Beyond Simulations: Serious Games
for Training Interpersonal Skills in Law Enforcement. In Proceedings of the International
Conference of the European Social Simulation Association.
• van Oostendorp, H., van der Spek, E.D., & Linssen, J.M. (2014). Adapting the Complexity
Level of a Serious Game to the Proficiency of Players. EAI Endorsed Transactions on
Serious Games, 14(2).
Publications
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32. • Belarbi, S., Bergström, K., Ebbehøj, S. L., Hansen, E. E., Fatland, E.,
Giæver, O. P., … Westlund, A. (2010). Nordic larp. (J. Stenros & M.
Montola, Eds.).
• Swartjes, I. M. T. (2010). Whose story is it anyway? How improv
informs agency and authorship of emergent narrative. Centre for
Telematics and Information Technology University of Twente.
• XKCD.com, comic 1089
• Graesser, A.C., Olde, B., and Klettke, B. (2002). How does the mind
construct and represent stories? In M.C. Green, J.J. Strange & T.C.
Brock (Eds.), Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations
(231-263). Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Koops, M., & Hoevenaar, M. (2012). Conceptual Change During a
Serious Game: Using a Lemniscate Model to Compare Strategies in a
Physics Game. Simulation & Gaming, 44(4), 544–561.
References
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33. • Human Media Interaction: http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl
• T-Xchange: http://www.txchange.nl
• re-lion: http://www.re-lion.com
Links
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34. • Mariët Theune, coordinator (2002 – now)
• Hans ten Brinke, perceptions and assumptions (2014)
• Thijs Alofs, Interactive Storyteller (2012)
• Ivo Swartjes, lead designer (2006 – 2010)
• Pjotter Tommassen, plot control (2009)
• Nanda Slabbers, language generation (2006)
Virtual Storyteller credits
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