Automatic Interactive Documentation for Emergent Story Discovery

Abstract

There is a distinct pleasure in the discovery of an emergent story while interacting with a digital game. Most game interfaces, however, only allow this to happen in the here and now of play, and do not afford the retrieval of potentially interesting events that might have happened outside the player's view, or that were missed as they were occurring. We present our project's Chronicles interface that automatically documents most of what has transpired in the game world in a form inspired by Wikipedia. This allows players to intuitively explore entities and past events, facilitating the discovery of emergent stories. Because this represents a daunting mass of information, we conceptualize the notion of designed “entry points” to the data, i.e. suggestions and motivations to consult specific content. We also propose a subjective mode, disclosing only the information the player-character is aware of in order to maintain a meaningful economy of knowledge.