Evaluating directorial control in a character-centric interactive narrative framework
Mei Si, Stacy Marsella, David V. Pynadath · 2010
Interactive narrative allows the user to play a role in a story and interact with other characters controlled by the system. Directorial control is a procedure for dynamically tuning the interaction towards the author’s desired effects. Most existing approaches for directorial control are built within plot-centric frameworks for interactive narrative and do not have a systematic way to ensure that the characters are always well-motivated during the interaction. Thespian is a character-centric framework for interactive narrative. In our previous work on Thespian, we presented an approach for applying directorial control while not affecting the consistency of characters ’ motivations. This work evaluates the effectiveness of our directorial control approach. Given the priority of generating only well-motivated characters ’ behaviors, we empirically evaluate how often the author’s desired effects are achieved. We also discuss how the directorial control procedure can save the author effort in configuring the characters.