Story pacing in interactive storytelling

Abstract

This paper discusses timing and pacing issues in Interactive Storytelling applications at the conceptual level. Herein, aspects of both, the authoring process and the experiencing of interactive stories are considered. Undoubtedly, interactive stories and Interactive Storytelling applications provide a huge potential as basis for any kind of dialogue based, game based, or 'serious' edutainment application. On the other hand - and in contrast to linear, pre-scripted and less interactive applications, such as films, books or life performances - the challenge of developing applications based on interactive stories lies in the interactivity and possible 'free scenes'. By free scenes we refer to interactive elements such as chatting with a virtual character, 'playing' with an interactive installation in a museum, or performing on-site rallies ('un-guided' tours), enabling users to interactively explore the content space and acquire knowledge in their individual style and pace. Hereby, these free scenes might disturb the fluent continuation of the underlying story plot, and harmfully influence the dramaturgy and suspense of the story model. Chapter 1 further introduces and motivates the topic, while Chapter 2 provides a comprehensive overview of related research work along with some examples from the edutainment domain. Chapter 3 and 4 introduce a new approach conceptualized by the authors of this paper in the context of the EU funded project INSCAPE1. Finally the main aspects are summarized and an outlook indicates open issues to be addressed in future research. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.