Working with Intelligent Narrative Technologies

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence systems have been used to generate narrative structures and simulate virtual story characters at a variety of different scales, across both academia and industry. Such systems are often built from specialized components known as intelligent narrative technologies. The goal of this chapter is to highlight some of the challenges that can arise when such technologies are used as part of authoring or executing an interactive story. Authoring in a way that works with these technologies often requires a host of technical skills, such as writing computer code, building mathematical models, or predicting the effect of a simple change on a large, complex system. In addition to explaining why these skills are needed and the problems that they help to solve, this chapter will highlight recent and ongoing efforts to make authoring for intelligent narrative technologies more accessible to those with fewer technical skills.