Influencing User Choices in Interactive Narratives using Indexter’s Pairwise Event Salience Hypothesis

Indexter is a plan-based model of narrative that incorporates cognitive scientific theories about the salience—or prominence in memory—of narrative events. A pair of Indexter events can share up to five indices with one another: protagonist, time, space, causality, and intentionality. The pairwise event salience hypothesis states that a past event is more salient if it shares one or more of these indices with the most recently narrated event. In a previous study we used this model to predict users’ choices in an interactive story based on the indices of prior events. We now show that we can use the same method to influence them to make certain choices. In this study, participants read an interactive story with two possible endings. We influenced them to choose a particular ending by manipulating the salience of story events. We showed that users significantly favored the targeted ending.

Full Paper:

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Playable:

Play the story here.

Citation:

Rachelyn Farrell, Stephen G. Ware. Influencing user choices in interactive narratives using Indexter’s pairwise event salience hypothesis. In Proceedings of the 13th AAAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, pp. 37-42, 2017.
[bibtex]

A Possible Worlds Model of Belief for State-Space Narrative Planning

Abstract:

What characters believe, how they act based on those beliefs, and how their beliefs are updated is an essential element of many stories. State-space narrative planning algorithms treat their search spaces like a set of temporally possible worlds. We present an extension that models character beliefs as epistemically possible worlds and describe how such a space is generated. We also present the results of an experiment which demonstrates that the model meets the expectations of a human audience.

Full Paper:

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Citation:

Alireza Shirvani, Stephen G. Ware, Rachelyn Farrell. A possible worlds model of belief for state-space narrative planning. In Proceedings of the 13th AAAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, pp. 101-107, 2017.

[bibtex]

Comic Zoomer

A fun tool for reading comics 🙂 (This doesn’t work great on mobile, but it’s better if you’re in  landscape mode) Click on the comics to begin.

Writers’ Kitchen

by Caroline Catlett Gates

The Window Unit, Part 1

by Caroline Catlett Gates

Lumberjack Sarah vs Jackhammer Penny

by Caroline Catlett Gates
This one is longer and might take a minute to load. Wait for it!



We Wish Hugh a Merry Christmas

Written and filmed in one glorious day! With Missy Green, as Pachamamacitas.

C      Em             G7 Am    C7 Dm
I’ll be home for Christmas, Hugh can plan on me
Fm        G7                    C              Am
Please have Stu… Make my wish come true
D                   G C
All I want for Christmas is Hugh *
F                        Em F                C
Whoa oh the mistel toe hung where Hugh can see
Dm            Am       D7       G
Somebody waits for Hugh, and that somebody is me.
F         C G
Ho ho ho, Hugh wouldn’t know
F          G
Ho HO HO, Hugh wouldn’t know, I…
A               D
see Hugh when Hugh sleeping
A               D
I knows when Hugh’s awake
E            E
I’m dreaming of a hwhite christmas
E…
And the babies Hugh and I could make
F                Em
Hugh will get a sentimental feeling… dat’s right
Am
I am still a round young virgin,
G
Won’t Hugh guide my sleigh tonight
C                    G7
Have a holly jolly Christmas and in case Hugh didn’t hear
G7                C               B7
though it’s been said many times many waaaaays
F    C     G7 C
Merry xmas to hugh.

Asking Hypothetical Questions about Stories using QUEST

Many computational models of narrative include representations of possible worlds—events that never actually occur in the story but that are planned or perceived by the story’s characters. Psychological tools such as QUEST are often used to validate computational models of narrative, but they only represent events which are explicitly narrated in the story. In this paper, we demonstrate that audiences can and do reason about other possible worlds when experiencing a narrative, and that the Quest knowledge structures for each possible world can be treated as a single data structure. Participants read a short text story and were asked hypothetical questions that prompted them to consider alternative endings. When asked about events that needed to change as a result of the hypothetical, they produced answers that were consistent with answers generated by QUEST from a different version of the story.  When asked about unrelated events, their answers matched those generated by QUEST from the version of the story they read.

Full Paper:

PDF

Citation:

Rachelyn Farrell, Scott Robertson, Stephen G. Ware. Asking hypothetical questions about stories using QUEST. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, pp. 136-146, 2016.

[bibtex]

Predicting User Choices in Interactive Narratives using Indexter’s Pairwise Event Salience Hypothesis

Indexter is a plan-based model of narrative that incorporates cognitive scientific theories about the salience of narrative events. A pair of Indexter events can share up to five indices with one another: protagonist, time, space, causality, and intentionality. The pairwise event salience hypothesis states that when a past event shares one or more of these indices with the most recently narrated event, that past event is more salient, or easier to recall, than an event which shares none of them. In this study we demonstrate that we can predict user choices based on the salience of past events. Specifically, we investigate the hypothesis that when users are given a choice between two events in an interactive narrative, they are more likely to choose the one which makes the previous events in the story more salient according to this theory.

Full Paper:

PDF

Playable:

The story used for this study is here!

Citation:

Rachelyn Farrell, Stephen G. Ware. Predicting user choices in interactive narratives using Indexter’s pairwise event salience hypothesis. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, pp. 147-155, 2016.

[bibtex]

Fast and Diverse Narrative Planning through Novelty Pruning

Novelty pruning is a simple enhancement that can be added to most planners. A node is removed unless it is possible to find a set of n literals which are true in the current state and have never all been true in any of that plan’s previous states. Expanding on the success of the Iterated Width algorithm in classical planning and general game playing, we apply this technique to narrative planning. Using a suite of 8 benchmark narrative planning problems, we demonstrate that novelty pruning can be used with breadth-first search to solve smaller problems optimally and combined with heuristic search to solve larger problems faster. We also demonstrate that when many solutions to the same problem are generated, novelty pruning can produce a wider variety of solutions in some domains.

Full Paper:

PDF

Citation:

Rachelyn Farrell, Stephen G. Ware. Fast and diverse narrative planning through novelty pruning. In Proceedings of the 12th AAAI International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, pp. 37-43, 2016.

[bibtex]

Honest Abe

Honest Abe is a 2D beat ’em up style game made with Unity by a team of 9 students in one semester. I was one of 6 developers and one of 4 game designers. As a developer I mainly worked on the enemy AI. There are three levels, several different kinds of baddies, three bosses, and even a perk system! All fully implemented… but I challenge you to even reach the final boss!

Best played with a mouse, not a trackpad. Unless you just want to die.

When You’re Dead

Song by Pachamamacitas
Produced by LongLiveLunacy

C                         C         F                    F

I feel the warmth on our sheets each time I make our bed.

C                                         C         G                    G

Cause I know that it won’t feel the same way once

               

you are dead                                               

   C                    C F                         F

I pour two cups of coffee and butter two pieces of bread,

              C             G   C

Knowing half of this won’t happen when you’re dead.

C                                   Em F                       E7

So when you think life is going slow, just remember how much slower it will go when you’re

C            C7 F          … G

lying beneath the green

C                             F

I say this because I love you and I

F                         G C

Hope you’ll stay beside me till you’re dead.

C               C                  F F

I clean the sink and wipe away your spit and shaven hair…

C                         C G                 G

Treasures I’ll no longer know once you’re not there

C                                               C F                 F

You’re always hurried and you get so worried when our plans are in the air

C                                                G C

But rest assured, when you’re dead you will not care

C                                   Em F                       E7

So when you think life is going slow, just remember how much slower it will go when you’re

C            C7 F          … G

lying six feet deep

C                             F

I say this because I love you and I

F                         G C

Hope you’ll stay beside me till you’re dead.

C                           C F                       F

You look at me so dearly It makes me feel I’m nearly

C                                         C         G                    G

Already in heaven,            already gone.

   C                    C F                         F

I”ll savor all your kisses cause I know how much I’ll miss this

C                           G  C

when you have tragically passed on…

C                                   E7 F                       E7

So when you think life is going slow, just remember how much slower it will go when you’re

C            C7 F          … G

lying in eternal sleep

C                             F

And I say this because I love you

F                                E7

And I don’t ever want to see you dead

         C                 F

but since we’ll someday both be,    

F                             G               C

I hope you’ll remain beside me when we’re dead