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action “unlocking” them over time, to create the illusion that the Babyz are
learning.) Over the course of several weeks, through the help of user encour-
agement, Babyz can advance from crawling on their stomachs to crawling on
all fours, to taking their first steps, to walking. When first adopted Babyz only
make simple cooing and gurgling sounds, but if stimulated by the user's voice,
they will begin trying to pronounce single syllables, and eventually become able
to say simple words in a baby-talk fashion. Over time Babyz can graduate from
exclusively suckling on a milk bottle for nourishment to eating food from a
spoon, and feeding themselves. At first Babyz will only timidly tap at a toy pi-
ano or drum, but with the user's encouragement they will begin playing simple
songs, eventually in synchrony with the user and each other.
Like the rivalry long-term narrative, the overall continuity of related short-
term narrative goals executed over time is what constitutes the long-term de-
velopment narrative. Each of these development stages are kept track of by a
simple set of persistent variables, to which the behavior and animation systems
constantly refer for modifying how goals and plans are performed.
Working towards “good” interactive stories
The experience of interacting with Babyz and Petz was made purposefully open
and unstructured, giving users the freedom to play and socialize in their own
way and at their own pace, encouraging them to come up with their own in-
terpretation of the characters' feelings and thoughts. This is unlike many video
and computer games which tend to overly restrict what the player can do at
any one time, requiring them to finish one “level” before advancing on to the
next. But this amount of freedom is also unlike the structure of most stories,
especially dramatic ones, which tend to carefully and tightly follow a narra-
tive arc from inciting incident to crisis to climax. How do the narratives from
a looser, more “character-centric” approach to story compare to those from a
more rigid “plot-centric” one?
A goal for many of us in the field of interactive virtual characters and nar-
rative intelligence is to eventually create interactive experiences as (or more!)
powerful than those in traditional story mediums such as topics, movies, TV,
and theater. Our favorite non-interactive stories from the past can serve as
examples of how “good” a story can theoretically be - that is, how engaging,
movingandaffectiveitcanbe.Ofcoursewewouldliketoachievethiskindof
affective power in our virtual worlds, but achieving it with non-trivial interac-
tivity is very difficult. Those carefully-crafted plot structures which contribute
