Emotion-driven interactive digital storytelling

Abstract

Interactive digital storytelling has attracted a great deal of research interest in recent years. However, most interactive stories are told following a goal-oriented and task-based mode, which motivates the player to interact with stories by achieving the goals rather than empathizing with the characters and experience the enriched emotions. Given this fact, we propose an emotion-driven interactive digital storytelling approach based on Smith and Lazarus' cognitive theory of emotion. In this approach, the player's emotions, as a driving force, motivate the story forward and contribute to their experience directly and explicitly. To evaluate this approach, an interactive video was made by re-editing existing footage of the TV comedy Ugly Betty and ten players were interviewed afterwards. The results reveal that the interviewees' experience is largely influenced by their gender and favorite media entertainment. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.