Design and Evaluation of Afterthought, A System that Automatically Creates Highlight Cinematics for 3D Games

Abstract

Online multiplayer gaming has emerged as a popular form of entertainment. the course of a multiplayer game, playerinteractions may result in interesting emer- gent narratives that go unnoticed. Afterthought is a system that monitors player activity, recognizes instances of story elements in gameplay and renders cinematic highlights of the story-oriented game play, allowing players to view these emergent narratives after completing their gameplay session. This paper describes Afterthought’s implementation as well as an empirical human-subjects evaluation of the effectiveness of the cinematics that it creates.