Skip to main content

The Story We Cannot See: On How a Retelling Relates to Its Afterstory

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Interactive Storytelling (ICIDS 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11869))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The field of Emergent Narrative in digital narrative studies has seen a lot of research since its inception in 1999, and a lot of it is helpful, but also there has been confusion in terms and a lack of focus on the specifics of how the narrative is shaped in the mind of the player. The term itself has been used to both describe the ensuing field, the concept, the process, and the resulting narrative experience. This paper aims to clarify these misunderstandings by investigating the field and defining the term “afterstory” to help solidify the relationship between the differing aspects of Emergent Narrative. Afterstory is specifically defined as the virtual, mental story that exists in the player’s mind after play and informed by the interactions and their perspective on them. Then, using previous work on retellings, the paper will relate afterstory to how people retell their afterstories, and what we can use those retellings for in relation to the system that helped form them. In conclusion, some examples will be brought forth that showcase the difficult nature of extrapolating a retelling’s quality to its interactive narrative system’s quality, but how it can still be done with careful, purposeful analysis.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    We say often attributed because an older source is Galyean III, who coined the term in their PhD thesis on Narrative Guidance of Interactivity, from 1995 [8]. However, while their use and definition is interesting, they do not have a focus on emergence the same way Aylett had.

  2. 2.

    This inherently assumes that the system is capable of creating emergent behaviour.

  3. 3.

    An argument can be made that a more involved (or elaborate, or deep) discourse shows an effort to want to tell a story well because it is an interesting story, but one can still tell a bad story well.

References

  1. Abbott, H.P.: Story, plot, and narration. In: Herman, D. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. Cambridge Companions to Literature, p. 39–51. Cambridge University Press (2007). https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521856965.003

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Aylett, R.: Narrative in virtual environments-towards emergent narrative. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, pp. 83–86 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Bois, J.: Breaking madden (2013–2015). https://www.sbnation.com/a/breaking-madden. Specific episode referenced is at https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2013/9/5/4691010/breaking-madden-clarence-beeftank-jaguars

  4. Bruni, L.E., Baceviciute, S.: Narrative intelligibility and closure in interactive systems. In: Koenitz, H., Sezen, T.I., Ferri, G., Haahr, M., Sezen, D., C̨atak, G. (eds.) ICIDS 2013. LNCS, vol. 8230, pp. 13–24. Springer, Cham (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02756-2_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  5. CCP Games: Eve Online (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Tiburon, E.A., Sports, E.A.: NFL Madden 25 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Eladhari, M.P.: Re-Tellings: the fourth layer of narrative as an instrument for critique. In: Rouse, R., Koenitz, H., Haahr, M. (eds.) ICIDS 2018. LNCS, vol. 11318, pp. 65–78. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_5

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  8. Galyean III, T.A.: Narrative guidance of interactivity. Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Groen, A.: Empires of Eve. Self published (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Jenkins, H.: Game design as narrative architecture. In: The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology, chapter 4, pp. 118–130. MIT Press, Cambridge (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Koenitz, H.: Towards a theoretical framework for interactive digital narrative. In: Aylett, R., Lim, M.Y., Louchart, S., Petta, P., Riedl, M. (eds.) ICIDS 2010. LNCS, vol. 6432, pp. 176–185. Springer, Heidelberg (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16638-9_22

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Koenitz, H.: Towards a specific theory of interactive digital narrative. In: Interactive Digital Narrative, pp. 107–121. Routledge (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Larsen, B.A.: The narrative quality of games and play. Master’s thesis, Aalborg University, CPH (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Larsen, B.A., Schoenau-Fog, H.: The narrative quality of game mechanics. In: Nack, F., Gordon, A.S. (eds.) ICIDS 2016. LNCS, vol. 10045, pp. 61–72. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48279-8_6

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  15. Linden Lab: Second Life (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Louchart, S., Aylett, R.: The emergent narrative theoretical investigation. In: the 2004 Conference on Narrative and Interactive Learning Environments, pp. 21–28 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Louchart, S., Aylett, R.: Narrative theory and emergent interactive narrative. Int. J. Contin. Eng. Educ. Life Learn. 14(6), 506–518 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Louchart, S., Swartjes, I., Kriegel, M., Aylett, R.: Purposeful authoring for emergent narrative. In: Spierling, U., Szilas, N. (eds.) ICIDS 2008. LNCS, vol. 5334, pp. 273–284. Springer, Heidelberg (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89454-4_35

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  19. Louchart, S., Truesdale, J., Suttie, N., Aylett, R.: Emergent narrative, past, present and future of an interactive storytelling approach. In: Interactive Digital Narrative: History, Theory and Practice, pp. 185–199. Routledge (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Magnuson, J.: Loneliness (2010). http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash

  21. Montfort, N.: Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. MIT Press (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Murnane, E.: Emergent narrative: stories of play, playing with stories. Ph.D. thesis, University of Central Florida (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ringer, C., Nicolaou, M.A.: Deep unsupervised multi-view detection of video game stream highlights. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, p. 15. ACM (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Ryan, J.: Curating simulated storyworlds. Ph.D. thesis, UC Santa Cruz (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Ryan, J.O., Mateas, M., Wardrip-Fruin, N.: Open design challenges for interactive emergent narrative. In: Schoenau-Fog, H., Bruni, L.E., Louchart, S., Baceviciute, S. (eds.) ICIDS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9445, pp. 14–26. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27036-4_2

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  26. Ryan, M.L.: Avatars of Story. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  27. 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., C̨atak, G. (eds.) ICIDS 2013. LNCS, vol. 8230, pp. 205–216. Springer, Cham (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02756-2_25

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  28. Swartjes, I.M.T.: Whose story is it anyway? How improv informs agency and authorship of emergent narrative. Ph.D. thesis, University of Twente, The Netherlands (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Various: The Boatmurdered Let’s Play Archive. all entries archived at (2006). https://lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortress-Boatmurdered/

  30. Walsh, R.: Emergent narrative in interactive media. Narrative 19(1), 72–85 (2011)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bjarke Alexander Larsen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Larsen, B.A., Bruni, L.E., Schoenau-Fog, H. (2019). The Story We Cannot See: On How a Retelling Relates to Its Afterstory. In: Cardona-Rivera, R., Sullivan, A., Young, R. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11869. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33894-7_21

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33894-7_21

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33893-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-33894-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics