Interactive Storytelling: People, Stories, and Games

Storytelling, people, computers, and digital communications are becoming increasingly interwoven. The idea of using procedural techniques to involve people in stories is enormously attractive, yet actually finding a way to create interactive fiction that achieves both artistic and commercial success remains elusive.In this short paper I will briefly discuss a few of the relevant issues for designing interactive fiction. I discuss the need for story structure, and the difficulties of asking people not trained in acting to become improvisational actors. I then present an idea called the story contract that describes some important traits of successful fictive experiences. Finally, I discuss some of the inherently contradictory needs of stories and games.