This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and application of interactive digital narrative (IDN) untangles the range of theories and arguments that have developed around IDN over the past three decades. Looking back over the past 30 years of theorizing around interactivity, storytelling, and the digital across the fields of game design/game studies, media studies, and narratology, as well as interactive documentary and other emerging forms, this text offers important and insightful correctives to common misunderstandings that pervade the field. This book also changes the perspective on IDN by introducing a comprehensive conceptual framework influenced by cybernetics and cognitive narratology, addressing limitations of perspectives originally developed for legacy media forms. Applying its framework, the book analyzes successful works and lays out concrete design advice, providing instructors, students, and practitioners with a more precise and specific understanding of IDN. This will be essential reading for courses in interactive narrative, interactive storytelling, and game writing, as well as digital media more generally.

The book is concerned with narrative in digital media that changes according to user input—Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN). It provides a broad overview of current issues and future directions in this multi-disciplinary field that includes humanities-based and computational perspectives. It assembles the voices of leading researchers and practitioners like Janet Murray, Marie-Laure Ryan, Scott Rettberg and Martin Rieser. In three sections, it covers history, theoretical perspectives and varieties of practice including narrative game design, with a special focus on changes in the power relationship between audience and author enabled by interactivity. After discussing the historical development of diverse forms, the book presents theoretical standpoints including a semiotic perspective, a proposal for a specific theoretical framework and an inquiry into the role of artificial intelligence. Finally, it analyses varieties of current practice from digital poetry to location-based applications, artistic experiments and expanded remakes of older narrative game titles.

This book offers insight and lessons learned from two pilot studies which used interactive digital narrative (IDN) as educational interventions to effect positive change regarding social issues, looking into interdisciplinary approaches to research and education methods, combining arts and science methodologies and science communication.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2018, held in Dublin, Ireland, in December 2018. The 20 revised full papers and 16 short papers presented together with 17 posters, 11 demos, and 4 workshops were carefully reviewed and selected from 56, respectively 29, submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: the future of the discipline; theory and analysis; practices and games; virtual reality; theater and performance; generative and assistive tools and techniques; development and analysis of authoring tools; and impact in culture and society.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2019, held in Little Cottonwood Canyon, UT, USA, in November 2019. The 14 revised full papers and 10 short papers presented together with 19 posters, 1 demo, and 3 doctoral consortiums were carefully reviewed and selected from 66 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Creating the Discipline: Interactive Digital Narrative Studies, Impacting Culture and Society, Interactive Digital Narrative Practices and Applications, Theoretical Foundations, Technologies, Human Factors, Doctoral Consortium, and Demonstrations.

The rich programme of ICIDS 2009, comprising invited talks, technical pres- tations and posters, demonstrations, and co-located post-conference workshops clearly underscores the event’s status as premier international meeting in the domain. It thereby con?rms the decision taken by the Constituting Committee of the conference series to take the step forward: out of the national cocoons of its precursors, ICVS and TIDSE, and towards an itinerant platform re?ecting its global constituency. This move re?ects the desire and the will to take on the challenge to stay on the lookout, critically re?ect upon and integrate views and ideas,?ndingsandexperiences,andtopromoteinterdisciplinaryexchange,while ensuring overall coherence and maintaining a sense of direction. This is a signi?cant enterprise: The challenges sought are multifarious and must be addressed consistently at all levels. The desire to involve all research communitiesandstakeholdersmustbematchedbyacknowledgingthedi?erences in established practises and by providing suitable means of guidance and int- duction, exposition and direct interaction at the event itself and of lasting (and increasingly:living) documentation, of which the present proceedings are but an important part.

As a game designer or new media storyteller, you know that the story is critical to the success of your project. Telling that story interactively is an even greater challenge, one that involves approaching the story from many angles. Here to help you navigate and open your mind to more creative ways of producing your stories is the authority on interactive design and a longtime game development guru, Chris Crawford. To help you in your quest for the truly interactive story, Crawford provides a solid sampling of what works and doesn't work, and how to apply the lessons to your own storytelling projects. After laying out the fundamental ideas behind interactive storytelling and explaining some of the misconceptions that have crippled past efforts, the book delves into all the major systems that go into interactive storytelling: personality models, actors, props, stages, fate, verbs, history books, and more. Crawford also covers the Storytron technology he has been working on for several years, an engine that runs interactive electonic storyworlds, giving readers a first-hand look into practical storytelling methods.

Digital Storytelling shows you how to create immersive, interactive narratives across a multitude of platforms, devices, and media. From age-old storytelling techniques to cutting-edge development processes, this book covers creating stories for all forms of New Media, including transmedia storytelling, video games, mobile apps, and second screen experiences. The way a story is told, a message is delivered, or a narrative is navigated has changed dramatically over the last few years. Stories are told through video games, interactive books, and social media. Stories are told on all sorts of different platforms and through all sorts of different devices. They’re immersive, letting the user interact with the story and letting the user enter the story and shape it themselves. This book features case studies that cover a great spectrum of platforms and different story genres. It also shows you how to plan processes for developing interactive narratives for all forms of entertainment and non-fiction purposes: education, training, information and promotion. Digital Storytelling features interviews with some of the industry’s biggest names, showing you how they build and tell their stories.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2021, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in December 2021. The 18 full papers and 17 short papers, presented together with 17 posters and demos, were carefully reviewed and selected from 99 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: Narrative Systems; Interactive Narrative Theory; Interactive Narrative Impact and Application; and the Interactive Narrative Research Discipline and Contemporary Practice.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Interactive Storytelling, ICIDS 2014, Singapore, Singapore, November 2014. The 20 revised full papers presented together with 8 short papers 7 posters, and 5 demonstration papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on story generation, authoring, evaluation and analysis, theory, retrospectives, and user experience.