Why Are We like This?: The AI Architecture of a Co-Creative Storytelling Game

Abstract

We present Why Are We Like This? (WAWLT), a mixed-initiative, co-creative storytelling game in which two players develop a story transcript by selecting and editing actions to perform and narrativize in an ongoing simulation. In this paper, we lay out the major technical features of WAWLT's AI architecture-including story sifting via Datalog queries, social simulation, action suggestions, and player-specified but system-understandable author goals-and discuss how these features work together to produce a play experience that facilitates player creativity.