Mutual Implicit Question Answering for Shared Authorship: A Pilot Study on Player Expectations

Abstract

The typical goal of an experience manager in an interactive narrative is to create a sense of shared authorship that lends the player freedom to personalize the experience while still meeting the author's constraints on structure. This can be difficult when the player and author only communicate with one another through their actions. Each new action causes new questions to arise, assumptions to be made, and old questions to be answered. In this paper, I propose a technique called Mutual Implicit Question Answering, or MIQA, designed to allow an experience manager to both perceive and influence the momentum of an interactive story. It combines a generative model of narrative planning with analytical models of question answering and salience. I also present the results of a small, qualitative study of how people construct interactive narratives that lends insight for the eventual evaluation of a MIQA experience manager.