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The Authoring Problem pp 47–63Cite as

Authorial Burden

Part of the Human–Computer Interaction Series book series (HCIS)

Abstract

Limits that emerge out of the interactive nature of interactive digital narrative make authoring it challenging. These limits include exponential branching, where branches in the narrative increase the amount of content needed to be written progressively throughout the work; combinatorial explosion, where increasing combinations of possible game states makes writing additional content complex, as well as programming scope problems that are seen in any digital project, wherein the range of features or game interactions that could be implemented is infinite but development time finite. These limits place on the authors of interactive digital narrative an authorial burden, increasing the amount of content needed to be written, states managed or features programmed. Multiple strategies exist for tackling the burden, from reducing or reusing content, to decontextualising and generating content.

Keywords

  • Authorial burden
  • Interactive narrative
  • Authoring goals
  • Storygames
  • Choice poetics
  • Narrative structure
  • Authoring strategies
  • Interactive narrative design

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The first appearance of this term appears to be by Mateas and Sterne in 2002 when discussing the authoring of their story-game, Façade, [38] though the problem clearly predates the term. This term has appeared regularly in the literature since then [16, 19, 28, 42, 44, 49, 50, 53,54,55,56, 62].

  2. 2.

    Such as Choice of Robots, [25] Créme de la Créme, [48] Trials of the Thief-Taker [32] and so on.

  3. 3.

    See https://twitter.com/catacalypto/status/1470893540964134913.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southampton, Southampton, England

    Joey Donald Jones

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  1. Joey Donald Jones
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK

    Charlie Hargood

  2. University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    David E. Millard

  3. National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Alex Mitchell

  4. Hochschule RheinMain, Wiesbaden, Hessen, Germany

    Ulrike Spierling

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Jones, J.D. (2022). Authorial Burden. In: Hargood, C., Millard, D.E., Mitchell, A., Spierling, U. (eds) The Authoring Problem. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05214-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05214-9_4

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