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Introduction to Interactive Storytelling

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Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies

Abstract

Interactive Storytelling is a new media endeavor, which aims at developing technology and content for a new kind of narrative experience, one in which a story’s unfolding can be influenced by its audience. The interdisciplinary nature of Interactive Storytelling (IS) has led it to revisit many issues such as narrative structure, visual discourse, role of characters, and emotion elicitation, from the perspective of its underlying techniques, artificial intelligence, 3D animation, and user interfaces. In this introductory chapter, we discuss core concepts around which the discipline has organized itself, which are both technical challenges as well as dividing lines between competing approaches. After introducing a framework characterizing user experience through a combination of immersion and involvement, we introduce the main concepts of IS that will be revisited throughout this section. Among these are longstanding discussions on the respective roles of characters and plot in narrative structure, as well as the relationship between story and discourse, both of which strongly determine the specific articulation of technology and content that constitutes an Interactive Narrative. Finally, we announce the various chapters composing this section and their objectives.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Marc Cavazza

  2. North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    R. Michael Young

Authors
  1. Marc Cavazza
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  2. R. Michael Young
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Correspondence to Marc Cavazza .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Interactive & Digital Media Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Ryohei Nakatsu

  2. Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Matthias Rauterberg

  3. Scienze dell'Informazione, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Paolo Ciancarini

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Cavazza, M., Young, R.M. (2016). Introduction to Interactive Storytelling. In: Nakatsu, R., Rauterberg, M., Ciancarini, P. (eds) Handbook of Digital Games and Entertainment Technologies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_55-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_55-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-4560-52-8

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