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1. Mimesis: An Integrated Social Networking Application and Computer Game for Exploring Social Discrimination

   Game characters and social networking profiles potentially can be used to help people better
   understand others’ experiences. However, merely customizing graphical representations and text
   fields is insufficient to convey actual identity experiences. As a step toward conveying richer
   identity experiences, we implemented an interactive narrative game for iOS called Mimesis to
   allow players to explore identity phenomena associated with discrimination. Mimesis is an
   outcome of the NSF-supported Advanced Identity Representation (AIR) Project (Harrell,
   Principal Investigator) to develop new computational identity technologies informed by theories
   of cognitive categorization and social classification. An ICE Lab interactive narrative platform
   called GeNIE is used to implement the game. We propose to present and discuss Mimesis.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 20.06.2012 - 15:10

2. Digging For The Roots Of Interactive Storytelling

   This paper is a writer's reflections on the pre-computer origins of interactive narrative. It seeks out forms of human expression dating back to prehistory that can viewed as the precursors of contemporary interactive storytelling and contemplates what can be learned from these forms that can be applied to contemporary works of interactive storytelling. The examined forms include the participatory myth-based dramas of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks; coming of age rituals in traditional societies; games that blend spiritual beliefs and athleticism; and various Judeo-Christian and pagan religious practices.

   Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 11:46

3. Avatars Sharing Agency: Metaphor in Interactive Narrative Environments

   This paper considers how the avatar focuses the metaphor of interactivity in video games and interactive narrative environments. It argues that, despite serving as the on-screen representation of user input, the avatar has some independent agency (whether through design or representational practice) that influences its behavior. Thus, rather than merely relying upon it as her transparent stand-in, the player must negotiate with the avatar to achieve her goals. The negotiation serves to dramatize interactivity as an imperfect conduit between the textual and extra-textual worlds. While not so evident in video games, this imperfection sustains the metaphor of interactivity, deepening expressivity in interactive narrative environments.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference site)

   Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 16:32

4. The Machinimatic Moment

   "The Machinimatic Moment" discusses a type of filmmaking that uses videogame engines (commonly referred to as machinima). I contend machinima exists within a liminal space between a number of diapoles including: production/consumption, play/cognition, and synthesis/critique. While much of machinima can be considered self-referential in that it consistently remarks upon the game itself and, in many ways, its limitations, other productions reveal sophisticated, compelling stories that are neither game nor traditional filmic narrative. I conclude by arguing that its liminality gives machinima distinctive and interesting qualities.

   (Source: Author's abstract, 2008 ELO Conference)

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 14:41

5. Blue Lacuna: Lessons Learned Writing the World's Longest Interactive Fiction

   Blue Lacuna is an ambitious new long form interactive fiction comprising nearly 400,000 words of prose and natural language source code. The longest work yet produced in the Inform 7 language, it is also among the most substantial text-based story games in existence, an interactive novel with an average play time of fifteen to twenty hours. In development between 2006 and 2009, Blue Lacuna features several experiments of interest to creators of long-form interactive stories. This paper describes these experiments and performs an anecdotal post-mortem on what succeeded and failed in the project's realization. I focus on how successful I was at achieving my three principal goals: 1) simplifying the IF interface so those unfamiliar with the medium can easily participate, 2) telling a story which revolves around the player's ability to make choices with real dramatic repercussions, and 3) creating a character able to form a complex relationship with the player across the span of a novel-length story.

   Audun Andreassen - 10.04.2013 - 11:24

6. Game-Based Digitally Mediated Narrative Construction

   There are various ways of constructing a short story or a novel ranging from detailed planning of characters, back story, and plot before beginning to write to fluid writing. Somewhere in the middle, but near fluid writing, is the approach taken by the late television writer Sydney Sheldon who visualized the flow of the story and narrated what he saw and heard to a secretary. The paper surveys practices in narrative construction both current and speculative, such as a possible future use of advanced functional brain imaging, but emphasizes a particular game-based approach currently being attempted in a pilot project.

 At the Virtual Environments Lab researchers are developing a system that generates a text based on game play. The game has two purposes: entertainment for the player and generation of a work of fiction that describes the experiences of the player. Many of the characters and situations come from Through the Looking Glass. The player character, as Alice, explores an 8x8 grid and interacts with non player characters. The NPCs ask questions, and the PC gives free response answers. The PC can also ask the NPCs questions.

   Audun Andreassen - 10.04.2013 - 13:09

7. "A Machine Made of Words by a Machine Made of Numbers"- Authorial Presence in Niemi’s Stud Poetry

   Primary Text: Marko Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a demo of which would run during the presentation.

   The paper opens with a brief discussion of the inherently conservative nature of the ELO’s definition of electronic-literature and the critical tendencies which this encourages. It has a strong focus on those critics who identify the forms which electronic literature has taken as an extension of modernist experimentation in the Twentieth Century, while disregarding the new possibilities which programmable media furnishes the poet with.

   These possibilities are manifest in Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a text which has been consistently overlooked since its publication, perhaps because it presents a challenge to the dominant critical trends. Stud Poetry cannot fully be understood in terms of print-based modernist experimentation, Dada or Burroughs, because it would be impossible to achieve without a computer program. Niemi wrote the code which ‘writes’ each poem/game.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 23.08.2013 - 12:24

8. Captivating Choices: Reconciling Agency and Immersion

   Captivating Choices: Reconciling Agency and Immersion was a presentation held at the 2012 ELO conference under the category: Games, Algorithms and Processes

   Ole Samdal - 24.11.2019 - 19:26