Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari

Stockholm University | SU · Department of Computer and Systems Sciences

We present a mixed initiative method for comics and visual narrative creation which can be used in an artistic practice and beyond. Mixing analogue human hand drawings with a generative AI tool, this method suggests a way for generative AI to be incorporated in a turn-taking manner into an existing comic making practice by creating a short comic. T...

Zines are small-circulation magazines that creators make themselves, often through simple means. Zines and zine creation are linked to marginalized voices, and have historically amplified the voices and perspectives of these communities. Their very design is personal, reflective and beginner friendly. Zines have also been used as, and alongside, re...

When thinking of arts in HCI, one might be tempted to keep one’s eyes focused on prominent realms such as sketching for UX Design and design probes from participants. A closer look shows that practices go beyond this, involving a variety of arts-based expressions by researchers, the researched and third parties, e.g. graphic facilitators. Inspired...

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...

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...

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...

This paper presents a study of retellings about Genshin Impact, exploring how the game’s narrative design inspires players to create fiction and art based on the game’s universe. A questionnaire sent to players rendered 1606 replies. Based on the findings in this corpus, eight players and creators of retellings were interviewed in-depth. Among our...

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 papers in this special section focus on user experiences of artificial intelligence in games.

EyeCompass is a novel free-eye drawing system enabling high-fidelity and efficient free-eye drawing through unimodal gaze control, addressing the bottlenecks of gaze-control drawing. EyeCompass helps people to draw using only their eyes, which is of value to people with motor disabilities. Currently, there is no effective gaze-control drawing appli...

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...

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 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...

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...

Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) and procedural content generators can both be understood as systems of rules for producing content. In this paper, we argue that TTRPG design can usefully be viewed as procedural content generator design. We present several case studies linking key concepts from PCG research -- including possibility spaces, expre...

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...

The fourth layer of narrative in Interactive Narrative Systems (INS), such as games, is the players’ re-tellings of the stories they have experienced when playing. The occurrence of re-tellings can be considered as an indicator for a well designed INS and as an instrument of critique - the experiences of play are important and memorable to such a d...

Tarot has been used for centuries as a method to give structure to storytelling, both in game and fortune-telling settings. As such, tarot cards have developed over time, expanding the symbolism and depth of meaning associated with each card. This provides a corpus for a large number of possible stories, making tarot a rich area of exploration for...

People enjoy encounters with generative software, but rarely are they encouraged to interact with, understand or engage with it. In this paper we define the term 'PCG-based game', and explain how this concept follows on from the idea of an AI-based game. We look at existing examples of games which foreground their AI, put forward a methodology for...

The workshop program at the 11th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment was held November 14-15, 2015, at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA. The program included four workshops (one of which was a joint workshop): Artificial Intelligence in Adversarial Real-Time Games, Experimental AI in...

This paper proposes a model for designing games around Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based games put AI in the foreground of the player experience rather than in a supporting role as is often the case in many commercial games. We analyze the use of AI in a number of existing games and identify design patterns for AI in games. We propose a genera...

AI-based games foreground interaction with an artificial intelligence system as the core of gameplay. We present AI-based games—Contrabot and What Did You Do?—that use machine learning for novel play experiences.

In story-making games, players create stories together by using narrative tokens. Often there is a tension between players playing to win using the rules of a story-making game, and collaboratively creating a good story. In this paper, we introduce a competitive story-making game prototype coupled with computational methods intended to be used for...

This paper describes the Mind Module (MM) which can be used in game worlds to assign avatars and autonomous characters personality traits, emotions, emotional attachments and moods which together form finely granulated states which are especially appropriate in systems where individualized play experiences are desired. The MM is implemented as a sp...

The Social Believability in Games Workshop intends to be a point of interaction for researchers and game developers interested in different aspects of modelling, discussing, and developing believable social agents and Non-Player Characters (NPCs). This can include discussions around behaviour based on social and behavioural science theories and mod...

Resumo This article discusses how components in a game world can carry meaning relevant to individual players. The discussion is grounded in work with a massively multi-player online (MMO) proto- type where players in guided play-tests created their own opponents that they battled in groups of three. The opponents are called Manifestations, and ca...

In this article, the authors examine iterative design methods for experimental game prototype development. They recognize the area of game design as a wicked problem space, that is, an area where attempts at producing solutions change the understanding of the problems. They argue that it is vital in game-design research to build and test designs in...

This paper explores the possibilities for believable game agents (NPCs) through the implementation of a Model Social Game Agent (MSGA). We present a high level model focusing on the conceptual framework for implementing MSGAs on a Second Life server.

In the virtual game world prototype World of Minds that uses the Mind Module, a semi-autonomous agent architec- ture, the notion of sentiments, or emotional attachments be- tween objects, is what constitutes the deep structure in the game world. In this paper a play test is presented where sen- timents are instantiated in three dierent ways; random...

This paper describes the social actions called 'affective actions' that are implemented in the prototype multiplayer game world The Pataphysic Institute (PI). An aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a game mechanic can result in a certain set of dynamics or play patterns. Affective actions are but one feature of the many that make up the game wo...

The Pataphysic Institute (PI) is a research prototype multi-player game world. In PI, the personalities of the inhabitants are the base for the game mechanics. When interacting with other characters the potential emotional reactions depend upon avatars' current mood and personality. PI is built with inspiration from personality psychology and affec...

Role-playing games form one of the major genres of games and exist across all hardware platforms as well outside of the technology domain in a huge variety of forms and formats. Role-playing oriented research has focused on culture, storytelling, game processes as well as e.g. user interaction, play experience and character design. Today role-playi...

Because games set in persistent virtual game worlds (VGWs) have massive numbers of players, these games need methods of characterisation for playable characters (PCs) that differ from the methods used in traditional narrative media. VGWs have a number of particularly interesting qualities. Firstly, VGWs are places where players interact with and cr...

In this paper we describe the Mind Module (MM), a technical framework for modeling personality and emotion for both player and non-player characters, and describe the World of Minds (WoM), an MMORPG that employs an AI-based game mechanic designed around the MM. Where most research on character AI has focused on autonomous characters, the focus of t...

In this paper we describe two systems for autonomous characters intended to simulate the minds of characters in virtual game worlds. These systems, the Dynemotion People Engine (DPE) and the Mind Module (MM), are here presented with special focus placed on the design and implementation of the parts of the architecture that simulate what is colloqui...

In this paper we describe an experimental application for individualized adaptive music for games. Expression of emotion is crucial for increasing believability. Since a fundamental aspect of music is it's ability to express emotions research into the area of believable agents can benefit from exploring how music can be used. In our experiment we u...

We have evaluated a game called Garden of Earthly Delights (or GED) with a paper prototype and players. GED is a concept for the extension of conventional Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) mechanics to integrate pervasive, mobile, and location-based play. A pervasive game can be defined as "a game that is always present, avail...

Trans-reality role-playing games are conceived of as a form of role-playing game evolving from and integrating established table-top, live-action and computer-based role-playing forms. Each of these established forms has specific strengths and modalities for the ongoing articulation of the history of a game world regarded as an unfolding story. Int...

How can we create computer games facilitating emotional depth in the playing experience? When entering into a persistent virtual game world the player leaves the body behind. It is up to the game designer to create a virtual body with skills, needs and drives necessary for survival and pleasure in the game world. Would it be sensible also to create...

A common experience in playing computer role-playing games, ad- venture games, and action games, is to move through a complex environment only to discover that a quest cannot be completed, a barrier cannot be passed, or a goal cannot be achieved without reloading an earlier game state and trying different paths through the story. This is typically...

researcher at Zero-Game Studio, Interactive Institute, Sweden. Currently, in April 2003, there are 51 MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) available and about 120 MMOGs are in development. This article is based on a survey of these games and addresses the questions of what trends there are in type of gameplay and fictional world themes. We wi...

With the current set of design tools and methods available to game designers, vast portions of the space of possible games are not currently reachable. In the past, technological advances such as improved graphics and new controllers have driven the creation of new forms of gameplay, but games have still not made great strides into new gameplay exp...