Scene-Driver: An Interactive Narrative Environment Using Content from an Animated Children’s Television Series

Abstract

Narrative theories are often employed to provide coherence to collections of resources as well as in the creation of models of interactive drama. Scene-Driver is an interactive narrative system which combines these two approaches in the form of a game. The game reuses scenes from a children’s animated television series called Tiny Planets. A child interacts with a Scene-Driver narrative by selecting “domino-like“ tiles, the right-hand side of which dictates certain properties of the next scene to be played. Narrative coherence is maintained by ensuring that a certain ordering of scenes is adhered to, regardless of a child’s choice of tile, e.g. a conflict resolution cannot be shown prior to that conflict being introduced. This ordering is based on narrative principles and analysis of the 65 episodes of Tiny Planets.