It’s been a while since I posted anything here, not because it has been quiet following the thesis defense, but because things have not slowed down at all in the last three months. Today I’m taking a bit of time to catch my breath, and to catch this blog up on the newest scheme concocted in the labs of Team Tanenbaum. Karen and I have been tossing this idea back and forth since early in the summer, but have recently resolved to try and run with it in earnest (note the copious use of ball-game metaphors). Below, you will find two versions of the TUNE documents. The first is a section out of a recent grant proposal I wrote. It is focused on one aspect of my research within TUNE. The second is an extended description of the project, which encompasses both my and Karen’s interests more fully. (more…)
I successfully defended my thesis today, which means I can finally post what I hope will be the final draft online. (I may still need to make some formatting changes for the library, but the content is now set.) I probably had too much fun at the defense, given that I was supposed to be defending my work, however the mood in the room remained one of congenial academic inquiry, rather than one of hostility. There was this sense that we were all exploring the problem space together, and that the conferring of a Masters degree was just a happy formality that emerged naturally from our conversation about Interactive Narrative. I am pleased with the outcome, and am grateful to the contributions of all of my committee members!
In this thesis I present a methodology for performing analyses of Interactive Narrative experiences, and use this technique both to explicate a particular game—The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion—and to demonstrate the utility of approaching the game via three different analytical perspectives. This methodology is a form of close reading, a technique which was developed in literary theory for the explication of narrative experiences, with roots in earlier epistemological practices such as theological exegesis and hermeneutics. I have focused this thesis on examining and clarifying a technique for reading and explicating these experiences. Interactive Narratives are problematic due to their indeterminate nature and often unwieldy scope; in this thesis I propose a solution to these two problems. My solution takes the form of a series of constrained readings, which I argue allows me to productively explicate specific aspects of my play experiences. By using the notion of analytical lenses to filter my playings, I hope to simultaneously overcome issues of indeterminacy by narrowing the focus of my playing to observations of specific phenomena within the game, and also address issues of scope by reducing the undifferentiated experience of the game to a series of more readily assimilated sub-experiences. I believe that the method demonstrated within this thesis has utility for theorists of Interactive Narrative and Games, and I contend that the lenses presented herein provide three good examples of possible “constrained close readings”.
Keywords:
Interactive Narrative; Game Studies; Close Reading; Believability; Adaptivity; Performativity
Subject Terms:
Storytelling; Computer games; Literature and technology; Belief, Problem of (Literature); Improvisation (Acting); Adaptive computing systems
I’ve finished a round of important revisions on the the thesis. In honor of this I am posting the two “take-away” chapters: the revised introduction, and the newly extended conclusion. These two chapters represent the core contributions of the work, although the intermediary stuff is also pretty fun. Ideally, however, these two chapters should stand on their own, and I’m happy enough with them at this point to post them.
In the previous post I presented a portion of my introduction to the thesis. In this post I reproduce the draft of my methods chapter in it’s entirety. Methodology is a hot topic at SIAT due to the interdisciplinary nature of the program: there is a notion that any “out-of-the-box” method is generally unsuitable to the work that we do. Most methodology at SIAT tends towards the phenomenological, the ethnographic, or the statistical, often combining the three. For my work I’ve had to make a claim for appropriating methods and techniques from the humanities–a tough sell in this social-science and computer-science heavy department. This chapter is perhaps one of the”loftiest” in the thesis, in the sense that it embraces the vocabulary of literary criticism from whence I draw my method.
I finished the first draft of the thesis this afternoon. While it is still very rough around the edges and will require significant revision the actual sustained act of creation that has driven me for the last three months is essentially done. I’m going to shift modes from writing to rewriting soon, but for the next day I wish to bask a bit in the realization that I will be finishing this degree on-time, and hopefully making a bit of a contribution to the field in the process. In honor of this occasion I’m going to be posting some excerpts from the writing over the next week, focusing on areas that I think might be of interest to others, and on sections that I think I need critique on. Feel free to sign-up for an account and comment on the material I’m posting here; I am eager for critiques and feedback, especially as I move into editing mode.
Today’s post is from the recently completed introduction:
In the months since my last post, the MA thesis has gone from a zygote, to a fully formed, and graspingly needy infant. Before I go back to changing diapers, and heating bottles,I figured I could stop by here and post the updated abstract:
Analytical Lenses for Interactive Narrative
Interactive Narrative research exists in a rich cross section of disciplines ranging from purely theoretical work arising out of the humanities tradition to the practical applied work arising out of artificial intelligence. There is an ongoing need in this domain to bridge theory and practice. This thesis presents a broad overview of the field in its current state, and proposes three analytical lenses: Believability, Adaptivity, and Performativity. These theoretical tools are intended to support the current generation of work in both sides of the discipline, and draw on ideas both common and uncommon to the domain of interactive narrative research. Using the methodology of close reading, this thesis demonstrates how these three lenses can be used to structure a discussion of the popular computer game, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Oblivion is a challenging game to discuss due to its expansive and open ended nature; it is unwieldy when compared to many of today’s games. This work uses these lenses to filter and narrow the discussion of Oblivion to a manageable scale, without robbing it of its richness and complexity.
Here is this week’s version of the Thesis Brief. My goal is to continue stripping the fat off of it until it is lean and to the point. I think that this version is a vast improvement over my last attempt, however, I do worry that it is overly vague. Have I actually streamlined my thesis, or have I just replaced lengthy specific discussions with more concise abstractions of the same basic content? I’m hoping the former, but I am also at a point where I’m second guessing everything I write.
Anyhow, on to the brief:
Analytical Frameworks for Intelligent Narrative Technologies
My research is a survey of the current “state-of-the-art” in intelligent narrative technologies. Taking an approach rooted in the humanities and media studies, this work proposes several analytical lenses for evaluating narrative artifacts in new media. Some of these lenses are already widely accepted, while others are the subject of ongoing debate within the field. I propose a pragmatic approach to new media scholarship that situates the understanding of any given artifact at the cross section of these varied approaches. (more…)
The following is a bit more rantlike than it was supposed to be. Bear with me, I’m blowing off steam.
We are in a fairly novel position, as researchers into Interactive Storytelling(IS). For the first time in history we are engaged in discourse around the future emergence of a narrative medium, rather than analysis of a pre-existing one. Other sophisticated narrative mediums did not have a community of theorists debating the potential narrative applications of their new technologies as they developed. Film, for instance, was a medium of cheap thrills and documentation for years before it became a narrative medium, and even then it took years before the narrative conventions adopted from theater gave way to the poetics of the new medium. These poetics grew out of the affordances and limitations of the emerging technology, when placed in the hands of a number of revolutionary filmmakers. As the early experimenters in the medium learned how to tell stories in a new way, the public slowly learned how to view those stories and enjoy them. The discourse of film studies and criticism grew up in order to describe this phenomenon, and understand it.
In a previous post, I laid out the basic definitions of user modeling for ubiquitous envifornments. In this followup post, I go into further details regarding how one actually goes about doing user modeling in ubiquitous environments. In an foundational work on user modeling, Adaptive User Support the editor Robert Oppermann identifies three parts of an adaptive system: “an afferential, an inferential and an efferential component”. While alliterative, these terms are somewhat obfuscatory, I find. I have come to think of them as “input, reasoning and output”. Not as catchy, I know. Here’s what the terms refer to:
My dissertation work is in the area of “user modeling for ubiquitous environments” and some days even I am not sure what that means. But I’ve been wrestling with it for about a year now, and I think I’m at the stage where I have a grasp of the basic idea and am beginning to get a handle on the areas of contention. In this post, I am attempting to formalize this knowledge as a way of doublechecking myself, and possibly getting some feedback on my understanding by showing the writeup to my supervisor and other interested parties. Let me begin by focusing on each of the components of the loaded phrase “user modeling for ubiquitous environments”.
It’s been a while since I posted anything here, not because it has been quiet following the thesis defense, but because things have not slowed down at all in the last three months. Today I’m taking a bit of time to catch my breath, and to catch this blog up on the newest scheme concocted in the labs of Team Tanenbaum. Karen and I have been tossing this idea back and forth since early in the summer, but have recently resolved to try and run with it in earnest (note the copious use of ball-game metaphors). Below, you will find two versions of the TUNE documents. The first is a section out of a recent grant proposal I wrote. It is focused on one aspect of my research within TUNE. The second is an extended description of the project, which encompasses both my and Karen’s interests more fully.