IS Systems
IRIS Wiki - IS Systems
IS Systems
We have put together a comprehensive list of existing Interactive Storytelling systems. The goal is to display each system, side by side, according to how they work technically, what the user gets to see or do, what is especially good and what is still a problem.
This section provides a colourful canvas of 20 tools that have emerged from the landscape of Interactive Storytelling. The tools vary immensely amongst themselves, from the audience they are intended for, to the type of story created or the roles to be assumed in the stories.
Interactive Storytelling is a new genre that is (continually) defining itself through the systems it produces. Certain systems might follow an Aristotelian arc or a 5 act model, use Bremondian role distribution and action decomposition, or Proppian function sequencing, follow a planning algorithm or set conditions for good emergent narrative. Each system proposes a solution set to the group of questions and obstacles facing IS.
For each system whenever possible we’ve provided a:
- Technical Description – mechanism that generates or unfolds the runtime story
- The end user perspective – what the end user sees and does
- Authoring Description – how are new stories created with the system
- Strong Points – what is particularly well accomplished
- Limitations – what aspect of the tool could be improved based on current field objectives
- Main Publications – links to articles covering the system or a link to the system itself
- Supporting Narrative Theories – did the system base its architecture on any specific theory?
- Computational Model – where applicable, the computational model driving the algorithm is provided
The section on supporting narrative theories is intended to anchor a system’s technical description against a theoretical description of how a story can unfold. The triplet is completed when a computational model exists (and was used) to express the narrative formalism. By understanding the different systems, the reader should understand the challenges still facing the field of IS and be inspired by the potential stories yet to be told.
