Defining Storyworlds for Emergent Narrative in Video Games

Abstract

In video games, the narrative is usually conveyed through the interactions of the player with non-player characters (NPCs). The NPCs’ believability is therefore essential to the player’s immersion. However, in most video games the NPCs’ behaviour consists of only a limited set of pre scripted sequences. This severely limits the replay value for the player.

A new approach treats NPCs as autonomous agents in a dynamic storyworld. However, as the course of events is not deterministic, creating an engaging storyworld is a non-trivial task.

This thesis introduces a graphical user interface to design storyworld domains, and aims at making the creation of engaging storyworlds a feasible and easy task for both experts and novice users.