Hartmut Koenitz

Södertörn University | sh · Media Technology

In this article, we posit ‘game system building’ as a paradigm for game design. Inspired by earlier perspectives on cybernetic art, and current practices in game development and education, we consider the creation of dynamic game systems as a creativeartistic practice where the consideration of complex and often unpredictable behavior and effects a...

This paper discusses the application of decolonial thinking to Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) with the goal of creating a decolonial framework. We provide motivation for this endeavor, and report on a workshop we conducted called Time for Repositioning, aiming to start a decolonizing process in the EU COST Action INDCOR (Interactive Narrative...

Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) provides expressive opportunities that can be applied to many serious and non-fiction topics. Such applications, in particular, but also fictional IDN, have an ethical dimension, an aspect in need of increased attention as IDN matures and is more widely deployed. In this chapter, we identify aspects of IDN ethics...

Today, no generally accepted definition of video game narrative exists. The academic discourse has pointed out ontological and phenomenologi- cal differences to more traditional forms of narra- tive, and therefore, the relationship to established scholarship in narratology is complex. In the field of video game studies, narrative aspects of video g...

Scholarly work on Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) has long been communicated using the non-interactive format of the academic paper. Yet, when we only tell or show, we do not interact, which means that we lose the most important aspect of IDN–the interactive experience. In this article, we consider the limitations of traditional scholarly repre...

A bstract Interactive digital narratives (IDNs) create alternate realities using both fictional and non-fiction material. The interactive aspect of IDN turns audiences into participants and enables the exploration of alternative perspectives and actions within a single artifact. Such multifaceted representations make IDN a vehicle for representing...

In this paper, we discuss how theories can fail us in analysis and design of interactive digital narrative (IDN) works. We demonstrate a range of theoretical failures using the milestone IDN work Façade. To this end, we demonstrate the effect of different theoretical lenses, treating Façade as an interactive drama, as a game, as a work of hypertext...

This paper presents a pedagogical activity with 120 students from two higher education institutions, one in the Global South and the other in the Global North. The objective was to incorporate decolonial thinking into analysing IDN artifacts through cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration. To achieve this, students were randomly divided into 20 g...

Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) literacy and authoring skills are being gained too late along a typical student’s educational journey and only by a niche subset of learners while such skills are crucial to consume modern day media communications reporting on complex phenomena from multiple perspectives. This paper acknowledges the impact of tec...

Narrative has been central to psychoanalysis from its inception. What has been explored less is the relationship between psychotherapy and interactive narrative. In particular, narrative therapy is a well-established practice in psychotherapy which shares central concerns with interactive narrative research and practice. In this paper, we explore t...

Citizens everywhere have the right to be well-informed. Yet, with the high complexity of many contemporary issues, such as global warming and migration, our means of information need to mutually adapt. Narrative has always been at the core of information exchange - regardless of whether our ancestors sat around a fire and exchanged stories, or whet...

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring...

This white paper was written by the members of the Work Group focusing on design practices of the COST Action 18230 - Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representation (INDCOR, WG1). It presents an overview of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) design for complexity representations through IDN workflows and methodologies, IDN authoring...

In this overview paper, we consider interactive digital narratives (IDN) as a means to represent and enable understanding of complex topics both at the public level (e.g. global warming, the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, or e-mobility) and at the personal level (trauma and other mental health issues, interpersonal relationships). We discuss scholar...

The digital representation of our past has long been an important tool in the interpretation of cultural heritage in museums. The recent rise in the use of Augmented Reality (AR) has seen various approaches to adding dynamic information to existent artefacts. The challenge is even greater when uncertainty further complexifies the represented histor...

What happens when scholars approach novel phenomena such as Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN)? How can we be certain that theoretical frameworks, analytical approaches, and vocabulary are adequate,which means that they are able to fully describe the specific characteristics of the novel phenomena? The same goes for approaches in the practice - ho...

The design and study of interactive digital narratives (IDN) is a multidisciplinary field. Scholars and practitioners concerned with the topic originate from fields such as literary studies, computer sciences, games studies, media studies, fine art, filmmaking. Consequently, they not only bring a wealth of productive perspectives to the table, but...

In this overview paper, we consider interactive digital narratives (IDN) as a means to represent and enable understanding of complex topics both at the public level (e.g. global warming, the COVID-19 pandemic, migration, or e-mobility) and at the personal level (trauma and other mental health issues, interpersonal relationships). We discuss scholar...

As IDNs are used to represent complex phenomena, we are bound to assess the ethical dimension of these representations in order to help IDN mature as a practice and a discipline. In this paper, we consider ethical aspects arising from applications of IDN in VR for Cultural Heritage experiences. Using a discussion of ethical aspects of cultural heri...

This paper describes an approach to facilitate innovation in game design by increasing the designers’ palette of playable and participatory computational expressions. The TOG model (Technology, Ontology, and Game Genre) can be used in teaching game design and related practices, but is also applicable to prototyping in professional settings. TOG is...

In recent years, games with a focus on narrative have been a growing area. However, so far, interactive narrative aspects have not been the focus of video game education (with the noted exception of a small number of programs in game writing), which indicates that many narrative designers are self-trained. The insular status means that many designe...

COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these...

Building our discipline has been an ongoing discussion since the early days of ICIDS. From earlier international joint efforts to integrate research from multiple fields of study to today’s endeavours by researchers to provide scholarly works of reference, the discussion on how to continue building Interactive Digital Narratives as a discipline wit...

Media narratives inform our ideas of the future - and Games are currently making a significant contribution to this medial reservoir. On the one hand, Games demonstrate a particular propensity for fantastic and futuristic scenarios. On the other hand, they often serve as an experimental field for the latest media technologies. However, while dystop...

In this paper, we react to developments that frame research in interactive digital narrative (IDN) as a field of study and potential future academic discipline. We take stock of the current situation, identify issues with perception and point out achievements. On that basis we identify five critical challenges, areas in need of attention in order t...

Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) have the capacity to represent multiple, even competing perspectives and to allow audiences to change between them. Such meaningful changes have been defined as agency by Murray [1] transforming the audience into interactors. These experiential qualities of interactive digital narrative (IDN) define the potentia...

In recent years, interactive narrative design has become the main activity of a diverse group professionals working in video games, agencies, museums, at broadcasters, and online newspapers. At the same time, there has been no degree program in interactive narrative design, which indicates that many narrative designers are self-trained. By starting...

The Netflix production Bandersnatch represents a potentially crucial step for interactive digital narrative videos, due to the platform's reach, popularity, and ability to finance costly experimental productions. Indeed, Netflix has announced that it will invest more into interactive narratives-moving into romance and other genres-which makes Bande...

Ludonarrative aspects have not been the focus of video game studies. During the foundational phase of the discipline, the focus was placed on game mechanics and on understanding what distinguishes games from earlier forms like the movie or the novel. In recent years, however, the growing field of narrative-focused games (e.g. Dear Esther (The Chine...

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, s...

While there have been many discussions about the purpose of game studies programs over the years (e.g., the GDC games Educator summit, the teaching game studies workshops at past DIGRA conferences1 ), relatively few of those discussions resulted in publications on concrete pedagogical strategies. In fact, despite the broadly shared aim of educatin...

Authoring tools are a crucial component in the practice and research of interactive digital narrative design, yet no recent meta-analysis or mapping of such tools exists that would make it possible to comparatively study their defining qualities and characteristics and their effects on the artefacts produced with them. As a first step towards this...

In narrative game design and related practices, the role and function of narrative models is described as predominantly pragmatic. However, we see that many interactive digital narratives (IDN) including narrative video games derive their story structures from the same formulas connected to Joseph Campbell and Aristotle, adhering to the trajectory...

This paper shares the results of an interactive digital narrative (IDN) project, conducted at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. We consider the potential of ‘IDN for change’, before we describe the project, the underlying design approach and the educational approaches. A particularfocus of this paper is on pedagogical considerations. We describe...

The practice of designing Interactive Digital Narratives [IDN] is often described as a challenge facing issues such as the “narrative paradox” and avoid-ing the unintentional creation of “ludonarrative dissonance”. These terms are expressions of a perspective that takes narrative and interactivity as dichotomic ends of a design trajectory, mirrorin...

During the last three decades, many successful interactive narrative projects have been realized, including many games. However, the respective design knowledge mostly rests with individual designers, who are self-trained and use private, inaccessible vocabulary. This state of affairs is an obstacle to further development and a considerable challen...

There have been misunderstandings regarding “narrative” in relation to games, in part due to the lack of a shared understanding of “narrative” and related terms. Instead, many contrasting perspectives exist, and this state of affairs is an impediment for current and future research. To address this challenge, this article moves beyond contrasting d...

In recent years, game narrative has emerged as an area for novel game concepts and as a strategy to distinguish a particular title. However, innovation in this area comes primarily from indie companies and individual efforts by noted designers. There is a lack of trained specialists ready to produce interactive narrative experiences. Many existing...

In this paper, we describe narrative game design as an area for empirical research and aim to promote additional work in this area. The focus of our paper is therefore on the process. We start by discussing the relationship between the design of the narrative aspects of video games vs. non-narrative aspects, as well as in comparison to earlier narr...

This paper reports on an aspect of a long-term project to create a body of evidence-based interactive narrative design methods. In this context, we discuss aspects of formal design descriptions as a basis for a quantitative approach to verify the effects of design choices on the experience of audiences. Specifically, we discuss the notion of ‘desig...

With the renewed interest in VR, new questions arise for content creators, as existing cinematic practices cannot simply be transferred. In this paper, we describe two experiments investigating which voice-over perspective elicits the best sense of presence for viewers of cinematic VR content. For the first experiment different voice-over narration...

In the context of this paper we take design knowledge as the methods applied by the creators (for example game designers in the case of games) of interactive experiences in contrast to for example the design of authoring tools or the design of game engines and similar computational systems. Such knowledge about rule-based game design is widespread...

Video game narrative has come a long way from the antagonistic beginning of the narratology vs ludology debate. A range of recent games can be seen as the current narrative avant-garde that enable a novel narrative experience. After revisiting some of the challenges for the recognition of game narrative, this paper shifts perspective and describes...

In this paper, we present work on the data-driven interface for The Industry, an interactive documentary in development about the Dutch illicit drug industry. The motivation for the work was to provide a more complete overview of a highly complex matter using a form of interactive digital narratives (IDN). As it is with many complex issues, news re...

This paper builds on our analysis of interactive digital narrative (IDN) and traditional literary narrative (LN) to address issues relevant to theory and pedagogy of narrative technologies. We discuss pedagogical problems with narrative design and introduce an interdisciplinary experimental course (in computer science and psychology) to increase un...

This paper outlines a roadmap for interactive narrative research that integrates disparate parts while focusing on identifying and experimentally veri‐ fying IDN design conventions and on developing a pedagogy to further the devel‐ opment of a professional discipline of IDN creators. This effort connects several key areas, in which the authors have...

Many virtual and alternate reality projects create narrative experiences in the digital medium. These are Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN), a form of expression at the intersection of different artistic approaches, research fields (humanities, computer science), and emerging technologies (e.g., artificial intelligence, virtual reality, generati...

In iTV and online video, narrative interaction has long been a Holy Grail for both audiences and creators of these digital audiovisual works. On the one hand, interactive digital narrative promises interactors some exciting opportunities: to enter the world of the story, to affect the story and perhaps even to control its outcome, and in the proces...

Interactive Storytelling is an interdisciplinary field in which the humanities meet artificial intelligence. Collaborations between scholars rooted in the humanities and the computer sciences like the one between Brenda Laurel and the OZ group at Carnegie Mellon University have had a major influence on the field. At the same time, there are indicat...

Interactive Storytelling is an interdisciplinary field in which the humanities meet artificial intelligence. Collaborations between scholars rooted in the humanities and the computer sciences like the one between Brenda Laurel and the OZ group at Carnegie Mellon University have had a major influence on the field. At the same time, there are indicat...

In iTV and online video, narrative interaction has long been a Holy Grail for both audiences and creators of these digital audiovisual works. On the one hand, interactive digital narrative promises interactors some exciting opportunities: to enter the world of the story, to affect the story and perhaps even to control its outcome, and in the proces...

Creating interactive digital narrative (IDN) experiences means to overcome a tradition dominated by conventions for non-interactive, static and pre-fixed narrative. Instead of "interactivizing" legacy structures, a more productive avenue is in the focus on specific design strategies for IDN. These approaches do afford a a different view towards the...

The first part of the book is concerned with the history of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN). Its intention is to serve as a concise historical account of the development of IDN from its beginnings to recent works by means of representative and influential examples. The identification of distinct historical phases is problematic, given the many...

Interactive Digital Narrative is an ever-growing field that encompasses a number of diverse practices, from avant-garde art to interactive documentaries , electronic literature, video game design, applications of artificial intelligence (AI) research and ubiquitous computing. To provide a context for understanding today's practices, in this introdu...

The hybrid nature of interactive digital narratives-as narratives and procedural digital entities on software executed on computers-poses considerable challenges for analysis and categorisation. A further complication lies in the rapid evolvement of the underlying technologies for creation and dissemination as computing technology has developed dra...

While authoring has long been a concern for researchers engaged in interactive narrative, generalized design approaches have been less of a focus. At the same time, the need for design conventions to aid in the creation of artifacts has long been recognized, starting with Murray’s 1997 Hamlet on the Holodeck. However, unlike in the related field of...

In this paper, we discuss the hypothetical nature of authoring Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) and the formal authorial process for this medium. We explore the current state-of-the-Art in IDN authorial approaches and consider the perspective of a traditional and technologically naïve author. We propose a combination of meta-narrative and auto...

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 practi...

Interactive digital narrative (IDN) challenges basic assumptions about narrative in the western world—namely about the role of the author and the fixed state of content and structure as the audience takes on an active role and the narratives become malleable. 1 It seems quite clear that narrative theory—as is—cannot fully account for these changed...

The field of Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) can look back at more than 25 years of research. Considerable technical advances exist alongside open questions that still need full attention. With the discussion of five crucial aspects -narrative analysis, interoperability between different implementations, sustainability of digital artifacts, aut...

As the domain of Interactive Digital Narrative matures, it becomes increasingly important for researchers to understand the conceptual differences and underlying theories in the different approaches. This paper presents new theoretical perspectives on the fragmented theory and practice within the domain and proposes first steps towards a unified th...

Narrative has always played an important role in knowledge transfer between human beings. The Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System (ASAPS) was developed as the practical side to a research effort Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) that combines theory and practice in a tightly coupled relationship. The first implementation of ASAPS f...

Categorizing Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) works is challenging because artistic and technological approaches constantly evolve. At the same time, a range of theoretical approaches from neo-Aristotelian perspectives to applications of post-classical narratology have applied many markedly different analytical perspectives, making an overall co...

Breaking Points is an interactive digital narrative (IDN) that puts the user in the position of a young woman who feels trapped in a daily routine she would like to escape from. The narrative design connects more important decisions with seemingly trivial ones and presents the user with immediate and delayed consequence in the form of narrative fee...

This workshop explores future research directions towards a better categorization and comparison of IDN works, with the objective of a more adequate understanding of this evolving field. In such a multidisciplinary area, an effort is necessary to establish a shared space across different analytical perspectives and practical approaches. As a comple...

The theoretical understanding of interactive digital narrative must evolve in order to accommodate recent trends and development in the practice of this constantly evolving form of human expression. This edition of our workshop series at ICIDS concentrates on artifacts produced or released in the last two years. In addition, it broadens the perspec...

The Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System (ASAPS) has been used to build 60 interactive digital narratives (IDN) so far. The paper briefly discusses several salient aspects of the system, including the bottom-up approach of the project and observations from using the tool for teaching in an academic setting, as well as related work. Ne...

Research on the emerging form of interactive digital narrative (IDN) concerns both theory and practice. The approach discussed here combines a theoretical framework introduced previously with a concrete implementation in the form of the Advanced Stories Authoring and Presentation System (ASAPS), a software package that aims to foster experimentatio...

An important step towards a theoretical understanding of interactive digital narrative is a classification system for existing artifacts. Many artifacts in Interactive Digital Storytelling provide a challenge to taxonomies derived from literature or film. The lack of a thorough classification system is also a serious hindrance to theoretical work,...

As a new research domain matures, it becomes increasingly important for researchers to agree on a shared vocabulary. For researchers in Interactive Digital Storytelling, this is a particular challenge, because researchers come from many different domains and bring their own terminology with them. This workshop exposes and explores the differences i...

The emerging artistic practice of interactive narrative in digital media marks a profound departure from traditional narrative. The application of traditional narrative theory for interactive narrative is problematic, since the affordances of digital media challenge many underlying assumptions of theories related to non-digital media. This paper pr...

In more than two decades of research and practical experiments in interactive digital narrative (IDN), much insight about the relationship of narrative and digital media has been gained and many successful experiments have been undertaken, as a survey of the field illustrates. However, current approaches also limit the scope of experimentation and...

The workshop explores Narratology as applied to Interactive Digital Storytelling. It presents different strands in established Narratology and the foundations they are built on. Then it discusses different attempts to apply and reconcile Narratology with Interactive Digital Storytelling. The workshop is designed to expose these differences by apply...