Storytelling in video games

For a few decades now, scholars have tried to make mathematics education more meaningful and motivating by using narratives. However, there still remains a gap between the theory of narratives and classroom practice. In this paper we provide two design heuristics for teachers by which to bridge this gap. We discuss Dietiker's mathematical story framework, based on narratology, and present a design heuristic based on this framework by which to design mathematical stories. We extend this heuristic on the basis of the work of the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp, who analyzed Russian folktales. He found that 31 irreducible narrative elements, called functions or narratemes, can be distinguished. We exemplify our heuristics by means of two mathematical stories, one of which concerns Kepler's conjecture. The value of this approach is that it provides mathematics teachers with a heuristic story framework that is suitable for designing or redesigning mathematical stories.

This article considers several instances of biblical reception in the science-fiction role-playing game Horizon Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games/Sony, 2017). The game's characterisation of technology, science, and religion has led some commentators to understand Horizon Zero Dawn as presenting a firm rejection of religious narratives in favour of scientific perspectives. However, closer examination of the game's biblical influences reveals that Horizon Zero Dawn employs religious ideas of the past and present to articulate its vision of a post apocalyptic future. The integration of biblical material into the story, aesthetics, and gameplay of Horizon Zero Dawn provides multi-layered interactions with specific characters, images, and ideas from the Bible. The game engages with the narrative of David and Goliath, the plague imagery of the Exodus narrative, and New Testament apocalyptic imagery in order to tell a story of ecological collapse, global apocalypse, and technological re- ...

The semi-formal analysis of Russian folk tales carried out by Vladimir Propp has often been used as theoretical background for the automated generation of stories. Its rigour and its exhaustive description of the constituent elements of Russian folk tales, and the enumeration of the patterns they follow, have acted as inspiration for several story generation systems, both sequential and interactive. Yet most of these efforts have attempted to generalize Propp's account to types of stories beyond the corpus that it arose from. In the process, a number of the valuable intuitions present in the original work are lost. The present paper revisits Propp's morphology to build a system that generates instances of Russian folk tales. Propp's view of the folk tale as a rigid sequence of character functions is employed as a plot driver. Unification is used to incrementally build a conceptual representation of discourse by adding to an ongoing draft story actions that instantiate the character functions. Story actions are defined by pre and post conditions on the state of the plot to account for the causal relations crucial to narrative. The potential of the resulting system for providing a generic story generation system is discussed and possible lines of future work are discussed.

Computational generation of literary artifacts very often resorts to template-like schemas that can be instantiated into complex structures. With this view in mind, the present paper reviews a number of existing attempts to provide an elementary set of patterns for basic plots. An attempt is made to formulate these descriptions of possible plots in terms of character functions, an abstraction of plot-bearing elements of a story originally formulated by Vladimir Propp. These character functions act as the building blocks of the Propper system, an existing framework for computational story generation. The paper explores the set of extensions required to the original set of character functions to allow for a basic representation of the analysed schemata, and a solution for automatic generation of stories based on this formulation of the narrative schemas. This solution uncovers important insights on the relative expressive power of the representation of narrative in terms of character ...

In this paper, we investigate the use of narrative play as a means of encouraging rereading in interactive stories. To explore this, we created a storytelling game in which the reader/player takes on the role of a film director whose objective is to shoot a film in the face of a series of complications. We discuss the iterative design and playtesting of the prototype of our game, and argue that our design encourages a different type of rereading which involves a shift away from the usual concern for "narrative closure" and more towards a desire to do better. We also discuss the use of storytelling games as a way to explore new forms of interactive storytelling by focusing on the mechanics of interactive storytelling, rather than technical implementation details, without losing sight of the need for an eventual computer-based implementation.

Research on narrative generation needs to consider that a run-of-the-mill would-be novelist is usually much more concerned with getting the form of his output right than with finding new techniques or new materials. Resorting to prior techniques and materials is considered an acceptable practice, and rewrites of classic stories, sequels or series of novels set in an already described world are highly valued. In this light the need to produce outputs that are recognisable as instances of stories seems to have priority over other criteria for a narrative generation solution. The present paper follows accepted engineering practice in choosing this particular challenge as starting design goal for an initial module, to be later extended with solutions for selecting or achieving “good” or “novel” stories at a later stage. The paper proposes a representation of plot that captures both a surface structure in terms of adjacency in a discourse sequence and conceptual connections between eleme...

Research on narrative generation needs to consider that a run-of-the-mill would-be novelist is usually much more concerned with getting the form of his output right than with finding new techniques or new materials. Resorting to prior techniques and materials is considered an acceptable practice, and rewrites of classic stories, sequels or series of novels set in an already described world are highly valued. In this light the need to produce outputs that are recognisable as instances of stories seems to have priority over other criteria for a narrative generation solution. The present paper follows accepted engineering practice in choosing this particular challenge as starting design goal for an initial module, to be later extended with solutions for selecting or achieving “good” or “novel” stories at a later stage. The paper proposes a representation of plot that captures both a surface structure in terms of adjacency in a discourse sequence and conceptual connections between eleme...

Computational generation of literary artifacts very often resorts to template-like schemas that can be instantiated into complex structures. With this view in mind, the present paper reviews a number of existing attempts to provide an elementary set of patterns for basic plots. An attempt is made to formulate these descriptions of possible plots in terms of character functions, an abstraction of plot-bearing elements of a story originally formulated by Vladimir Propp. These character functions act as the building blocks of the Propper system, an existing framework for computational story generation. The paper explores the set of extensions required to the original set of character functions to allow for a basic representation of the analysed schemata, and a solution for automatic generation of stories based on this formulation of the narrative schemas. This solution uncovers important insights on the relative expressive power of the representation of narrative in terms of character ...

This paper presents an application that automati-cally generates plots for tales, using the narrative morphology of Vladimir Propp. The system op-erates with a representation in Description Logics, combining stored plots with the narrative knowl-edge implemented in a domain-specific ontology. The results are compared with the plots created by a random generator and the authors discuss about how to measure the results. 1

This paper presents an application that automatically generates basic stories: short texts that only narrate the main events of the plot. The system operates with a representation in Description Logics, combining stored fabulas with the narrative knowledge implemented in a domain-specific ontology. The domain of application is the traditional folk tale, using the well-known morphology of Vladimir Propp as narratological background. In order to evaluate the results, human judges blindly compared one of the generated basic stories to two alternatives: one rendered directly from a stored fabula of the knowledge base and another randomly generated. As a conclusion, possibilities of measuring the utility of the system in terms of quality and originality of the generated artifact are discussed.

This study analyzes the narrative structure of the mobile apps interactive story Kisah Lutung Kasarung, based on Vladimir Propp's morphological theory. The purpose of the study is to explore how the structure and moral values are based on the functions of the characters contained in the story. The study used the descriptive qualitative methods using the method of narrative analysis. Data collection techniques were carried out by a literature study and documentation. The result shows 27 main narrative functions, 5 plots, and 4 spheres of action contained in the mobile apps of the interactive story Kisah Lutung Kasarung. The positive moral values obtained from the story are stoicism, helpfulness, happiness, religious, dedication, forgiveness and fairness. Keywords narrative analysis, morphology, vladimir Propp, mobile apps, interactive stories, lutung kasarung

1 Introduction Content production is a major bottleneck in the entertain-ment industry. Whether in the development of websites, videogames or movies, companies employ large numbers of screen writers and content providers, sometimes devoting higher portions of their budgets ...

This paper presents an application that automatically generates plots for tales, using the narrative morphology of Vladimir Propp. The system operates with a representation in Description Logics, combining stored plots with the narrative knowledge implemented in a domain-specific ontology. The results are compared with the plots created by a random generator and the authors discuss about how to measure the results.

This paper presents an application that automatically generates basic stories: short texts that only narrate the main events of the plot. The system operates with a representation in Description Logics, combining stored fabulas with the narrative knowledge implemented in a domain-specific ontology. The domain of application is the traditional folk tale, using the well-known morphology of Vladimir Propp as narratological background. In order to evaluate the results, human judges blindly compared one of the generated basic stories to two alternatives: one rendered directly from a stored fabula of the knowledge base and another randomly generated. As a conclusion, possibilities of measuring the utility of the system in terms of quality and originality of the generated artifact are discussed.

The technique we practice to tell imagined stories among ourselves especially the construction and the preservation of the mythical stories is always important to our psychological development. Today, the world of digital games work as the foundation into artificial worlds, where the imagined stories are well maintained and prolonged. Mythic narratives have the power to develop above their standard and become "remediated" which means, they can stimulate, translate and adapt into other forms of media and afterwards create a life outside their original medium, where the artificial universe sustains, expands and grows in detail. (Bolter & Grusin, 5). Thus, the fictional world of the games exists beyond the game and have become more than the game. The mythic world has its own story to tell, its own metanarrative, framing and assistance of the game. The video game Asura's Wrath (2012) have advanced the borders of digital and narrative experiences and they merged the digital interaction with traditional notions of play and explained the mythological interaction. In other words, these games involve the activity of the play.

This paper is concerned with the following: (1) the applicability of Propp's morphology to game stories; (2) the identification of the required changes in the original framework to analyze game stories on an act/mission level; (3) the discovery of the logical sequence of story functions that form story patterns; (4) and the identification of commonly repeated story patterns as well as the cultural differences between American and Japanese game stories. The scope of this study is limited to Role-Playing Games (RPG); believing that the narrative value of RPGs coupled with the freedom of choice they offer, make this genre more suitable for a structural study of game narrative. To focus on the cultural differences and to identify repeating story patterns, three RPGs from the east and three RPGs from the west are selected. Each game's overall story is broken down into acts and then each act is mapped to Proppian functions.

What do stories in games have in common with political narratives?
This book identifies narrative strategies as mechanisms for meaning and manipulation in games and real life. It shows that the narrative mechanics so clearly identifiable in games are increasingly used (and abused) in politics and social life. They have »many faces«, displays and interfaces. They occur as texts, recipes, stories, dramas in three acts, movies, videos, tweets, journeys of heroes, but also as rewarding stories in games and as narratives in society – such as a career from rags to riches, the concept of modernity or market economy. Below their surface, however, narrative mechanics are a particular type of motivational design – of game mechanics.

We say "playing is learning"! Or "war is a cruel game"! No accident that war games are one of the most prolific strands. Maths has even a "game theory", which applies to complex phenomena, such as finance; more generally we could understand the whole social organization or the entire history or life itself as "games"! And not surprisingly, there are management Video Games like Civilization, Democracy, Sims,Tropico etc. where actually you manage complex organizations and relationships! We use the verb "to play" referring to actors performances, instead of "to take a role". The word "game" refers to an anthropological characteristic constitutive of our biological species. It is something that is intimately linked to human nature, a sort of projection or simulation practiced since an early age that has a certain importance in growing and learning; I think everyone played "doctor and patient" when he was child. We have never stopped to play, adults games have just become more sophisticated and serious, so that they sometime can also "degenerate": think of gambling and extreme sexual games. Obviously sports are games; we are wearing masks and playing roles also at work and in society. Etc. etc. Do you see? Gaming doesn't mean just playing with toys! Game is an experience in which the player immerse himself, usually different than his ordinary life. Playing means interpreting a role in a context other then the usual, with specific rules of its own.

This is a brief summary of a creative electronic artwork called the Unbearable Lightness of Meaning. The game is a playa-ble adaption of Kundera's literary work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The game attempts to explore heuristi-cally the ambiguity of meaning presented in making a playful experience through abstraction of meaning and representation. This brief summary explores the motivations, philosophical underpinnings, and resulting work as a first exploration into how such themes can be manifest in a creative electronic work. It is offered as a case study in meaning, perceived meaning and the translation of literary works into non-conventional play experiences.

Non mi sono avvicinato al video game storytelling da giocatore che ha deciso di dedicarsi a una propria passione. Character Develpoment and Storytelling for Games di Lee Sheldon parla della narrazione veicolata nei videogiochi. La lettura di quelle pagine ha fatto emergere in me il ricordo delle mie esperienze videoludiche di almeno una decina d’anni fa. A colpirmi è stata la rievocazione non soltanto del desiderio di mettermi a giocare, ma di quanto provavo allora. Non era raro che un “game over” mi facesse alterare tremendamente o che faticassi a darmi un limite temporale quando gli impegni lo consentivano. Ho presunto che ci fosse una grande potenza nel mezzo in questione il cui approfondimento avrebbe potuto mostrare dei risvolti non scontati.

Nel testo inizio trattando la narrazione transmediale ovvero come veicolare un contenuto (storia) attraverso diverse piattaforme (media).  La parte centrale esplora lo storytelling interattivo applicato ai videogiochi secondo Lee Sheldon. La terza parte analizza il caso videoludico, quasi senza necessità di presentazioni, di GTA V.