A Formal Game for Eliciting Story Structure from Authors

Abstract

We address the problem of determining the structure of a set of plot points for an interactive narrative. To do so, we define a formal two-player game where a computer can play with an author to learn the structural representation of the story. This technique will allow for authors unfamiliar, or uncomfortable, with mathematical structures to create the inputs interactive narrative algorithms require. We include the underlying mathematical theory as a foundation of our approach, and characterize it's effectiveness through a series of simulation experiments. Results indicate there is promise in using formal games to aid in authoring interactive narrative structures.