Developing Emergent Play in Collaborative Online Experiences - Entertainment Computing-ICEC 2014 - page 119

A study of situated and embodied cognition can provide design clues for how
players may perceive certain affordances. One such view explains how our tendency
to side with simple narrative explanations for complex emergent behavior. However
there is an inherent disconnect between the causal relationships at the emergent level,
and the eventual narrative that is extracted [36]. From this view the possibility is that
layering top down approaches, such as drama management over the emergent
behavioral layer (agent behaviors) only serves to replace or simplify a chaotic system
of possible micro-stories rendering the system sparse of creative possibilities.
One possible solution suggested in the paper is an interface that invites play as an
improvisational actor with shared goals that are developed by visible and real
embodied action of the players. This is facilitated by a set of clearly defined and
simplified affordances that provide recognisable metaphors for collaboration.
In terms of narrative generation, this system model is clearly hit and miss and may
not be applicable for a game market that requires player expectations to be met in
most, if not all circumstances. However with online web applications this is perhaps
not such a great requirement as players attitudes to gaming may very well shift with
respect to browser based and casual games. For this reason emergence in online web
applications may provide an interesting area for further research.
References
1. Marrin, C.: Webgl specification. Khronos WebGL Working Group (2011)
2. Hills, D., Van, T., Edmonds, E., Knight, A.: Collaborative Systems for Narrative
Construction (2011)
3. Juul, J.: The Open and the Closed: Games of Emergence and Games of Progression (2006)
4. Ryan, M.-L.: From Narrative Games to Playable Stories: Toward a Poetics of Interactive
Narrative. StoryWorlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies 1, 43-59 (2009)
5. Louchart, S., Aylett, R.: Emergent narrative, requirements and high-level architecture. In:
Proceedings of the 3rd Hellenic Conference (2004)
6. Swartjes, I., Theune, M.: A Fabula Model for Emergent Narrative. In: Göbel, S.,
Malkewitz, R., Iurgel, I. (eds.) TIDSE 2006. LNCS, vol. 4326, pp. 49-60. Springer,
Heidelberg (2006)
7. Juul, J.: Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press
(2011)
8. Jenkins, H.: Game design as narrative architecture. Computer (2004)
9. Suttie, N., Louchart, S., Aylett, R., Lim, T.: Theoretical Considerations towards Authoring
Emergent Narrative. In: Koenitz, H., Sezen, T.I., Ferri, G., Haahr, M., Sezen, D., C ̨ atak, G.
(eds.) ICIDS 2013. LNCS, vol. 8230, pp. 205-216. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
10. Pearce, C.: A study of emergent behaviour in online games and virtual worlds (2007)
11. Salen, K., Zimmerman, E.: Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press (2004)
12. Suits, B., Hurka, T.: The grasshopper: Games, life and utopia (2005)
13. Eladhari, M.P.: AI-Based Game Design: Enabling New Playable Experiences (2011)
14. Spierling, U.: Adding Aspects of “Implicit Creation” to the Authoring Process in
Interactive Storytelling. In: Cavazza, M., Donikian, S. (eds.) ICVS 2007. LNCS, vol. 4871,
pp. 13-25. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
15. Persson, M.: Minecraft (2009)