Robust and Authorable Multiplayer Storytelling Experiences

Abstract

Interactive narrative systems attempt to tell stories to players capable of changing the direction and/or outcome of the story. Despite the growing importance of multiplayer social experiences in games, little research has focused on multiplayer interactive narrative experiences. We performed a preliminary study to determine how human directors design and execute multiplayer interactive story experiences in online and real world environments. Based on our observations, we developed the Multiplayer Storytelling Engine that manages a story world at the individual and group levels. Our flexible story representation enables human authors to naturally model multiplayer narrative experiences. An intelligent execution algorithm detects when the author's story representation fails to account for player behaviors and automatically generates a branch to restore the story to the authors' original intent, thus balancing authorability against robust multiplayer execution.