Argax Project

Dissertation Outline

1. Abstract

1. Introduction: Interactive Narrative
   1. Interactive Narrative Domains and Examples.
      1. Non-digital Examples.
      2. Digital Examples.
   2. Early Visions
   3. Interactive Drama
   4. Motivations.
2. Theory: A Poetics of Interactive Narrative
   1. The Structure of Narrative.
      1. Evolution of the Current Poetics.
         1. Aristotle.
         2. Smiley.
         3. Laurel.
         4. Mateas.
         5. Problems within the Current Poetics.
      2. A Reconstructed Poetics.
         1. Medium.
         2. Object.
         3. Manner.
         4. Placement of User Interaction.
         5. Application to System Architectures.
         6. Parallels to Traditional Narratology.
      3. Conclusion: A New Poetics of Interactive Narrative.
   2. The Structure of Action.
      1. Aristotle.
      2. Freytag.
      3. Propp and Story Morphology.
      4. Chatman.
      5. Conclusion.
   3. Conclusion.
3. Producing the Action: Previous Approaches to Interactive Drama
   
   
4. Proposed Architecture: Marlinspike.
   1. Marlinspike Design.
      1. Story World: Characters and Objects.
      2. World-level Events: Verbs and Deeds.
      3. Story-Level Events: Actions.
      4. Story-Level Events: Scenes.
      5. Story Context: Triggers.
      6. Narrative Unity: Threads.
   2. Marlinspike Foundations
      1. Theoretical Foundations.
      2. Previous Work.
   3. Conclusion.
5. Prototype Game: Demeter.
   
   
6. Implementation: Lessons from the Trenches
   1. Inform as a Game Engine
   2. Drama Manager vs the World
   3. Characters
   4. Scenes
   5. Reincorporation as Scene Selection Criterion
   6. Resulting Stories
   7. The Authoring Experience
   8. Conclusion
7. Evaluation
   1. Claims to be Tested
      1. Narrative
      2. Interactivity
      3. User Experience
      4. Hypotheses
   2. Experimental Setup
      1. Reincorporation
      2. Experimental Process
      3. Pilot Study
8. Evaluation Results
   1. Recruitment
   2. Participant Backgrounds
   3. Game Data
   4. Participant Responses
      1. Open-ended Responses
   5. Discussion
9. Conclusions.
   1. Contributions
   2. Future Work

• Appendix 1: Example Scene: PC_Unconscious
• Appendix 2: Reincorporation in Demeter: Blood in the Sky
• Appendix 3: Participant Recruitment Email
• Appendix 4: Evaluation Survey: Background
• Appendix 5: Evaluation Survey: Response
• Appendix 6: Open-ended Responses

Argax Project : Dissertation : Outline http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ztomasze/argax

Last Edited: 18 Apr 2011 ©2006 by Z. Tomaszewski.