Producing Immersive Interactive Narratives in Complex 3D Open Worlds

Interactive virtual worlds present a unique opportunity for simulation, training, and entertainment in settings that are otherwise prohibitive to recreate or control. In order to produce a truly immersive experience, it is important to populate these 3D environments with fully articulated virtual humans capable of exhibiting functional, purposeful behavior and complex interactions with other objects in the environment. In this paper, we discuss the challenges inherent in conducting interactive narratives in rich virtual worlds with autonomous characters, and present our ongoing work on dynamic story generation using the event-centric authoring paradigm. Unlike traditional character behavior systems, events enable an author to design character interactions using a centralized control structure that temporarily co-opts character autonomy and treats participants as limbs of the same entity. This allows us to create a narrative action space based on complex occurrences an author would like to see in the world, like a riot or protest, rather than in the space of individual character actions like opening a door.