Abstract
We trace the history of emergent narrative as both a term and a concept, with a particular focus on interactive emergent narrative (IEN): the use of emergent narrative as an approach or solution to the problems presented by the combination of interactivity and narrativity. We argue that discussion of IEN—both historical and modern—often fails to distinguish between two contrasting uses of IEN: to enable player participation as a character in an authored storyworld, and to enable player authorship of new stories. We additionally advocate for a clearer distinction between these perspectives, so that IEN systems which aspire to enable player authorship can be developed, studied and evaluated on their own terms.
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Kreminski, M., Mateas, M. (2021). A Coauthorship-Centric History of Interactive Emergent Narrative. In: Mitchell, A., Vosmeer, M. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13138. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_21
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