University of California Santa Cruz Telltale Hearts
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ TELLTALE HEARTS: ENCODING CINEMATIC CHOICE-BASED ADVENTURE GAMES A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in COMPUTER SCIENCE by John T. Murray September 2018 The Dissertation of John T. Murray is approved: Professor Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Chair Professor Michael Mateas Professor Katherine Isbister Lori Kletzer Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by John T. Murray 2018 Table of Contents Title i Table of Contents iii List of Figures viii List of Tables xi Abstract xiii Dedication xv Acknowledgments xvi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Interactive Digital Narratives . .4 1.1.1 Telltale-Style Adventure Games . .9 1.1.2 The Wolf Among Us . 14 1.1.3 TWAU Summary . 16 1.1.4 Computational Modeling . 19 1.2 Research Questions . 21 1.3 Contributions . 25 1.4 Overall Methodology . 27 1.4.1 Systems as Hypotheses . 29 1.4.2 Systems as Platforms . 31 1.4.3 Observation and Interpretation . 33 1.4.4 Storygames as Intersection . 37 1.5 Dissertation Outline . 38 2 Related Works 40 2.1 Computers and Narrative . 42 2.1.1 Narratology . 43 iii 2.1.2 Computational Models of Narrative . 44 2.1.3 Annotation-based Approaches . 46 2.1.4 Communication and Film . 50 2.1.5 Storywriting Craft Advice . 51 2.2 Interactive Digital Narratives . 52 2.2.1 Interactive Drama . 53 2.2.2 Simulation . 53 2.2.3 Craft Knowledge for IDN . 54 2.2.4 Narrative Research Systems . 55 2.2.5 Revisiting Cinematic Choice-Based Adventure Games . 56 2.3 Affect . 57 2.3.1 Emotion . 58 2.3.2 Player Experience . 61 2.3.3 Games User Research . 62 2.4 Summary . 63 3 Player Experience Study 64 3.1 Summary and Overview . 64 3.1.1 Measuring Affect . 65 3.1.2 Facial Action Units . 66 3.1.3 Measuring Body Responses . 68 3.1.4 Heart Rate . 68 3.1.5 Skin Conductivity . 69 3.2 Study Design . 70 3.3 Sensual Evaluation Instruments . 70 3.3.1 Protocol . 73 3.3.2 Expected Results . 76 3.4 Narratologically-inspired Annotation Schema . 77 3.4.1 Beats . 78 3.5 Choices . 82 3.5.1 Story Events . 83 3.5.2 Lenses . 84 3.6 Results . 86 3.6.1 Normalization . 87 3.6.2 Participants . 91 3.6.3 Emotional Signals . 91 3.6.4 Story Elements . 92 3.7 Summary . 102 3.8 Conclusions . 104 iv 4 Relating Content to Experience 107 4.1 Content and Storygames . 110 4.1.1 Storygame Content . 111 4.1.2 Revisiting Façade ....................... 113 4.1.3 Challenges for Analysis . 114 4.2 Semantic Web Technologies . 116 4.3 Interactive Cinematic Experience Schemata . 119 4.3.1 ICE Overview . 121 4.3.2 Layers . 123 4.3.3 Data Layer . 135 4.4 ICE Patterns . 139 4.4.1 Protostory Patterns . 140 4.4.2 Instantial Patterns . 143 4.5 Conclusion . 143 5 Toward Medium Reading 148 5.1 Questioning Faith . 149 5.1.1 Notes on the Transcript . 150 5.1.2 Faith and Bigby Transcript . 153 5.2 ICE Encoding . 160 5.2.1 ICE Encoding Process . 161 5.2.2 Context Analysis . 166 5.2.3 Action Decomposition . 167 5.2.4 Beat Segmentation . 167 5.2.5 Story Value Assignment . 172 5.2.6 Story Value Charge Estimation . 173 5.2.7 Discussion . 178 5.3 Comparison to Other Models . 179 5.3.1 Story Intention Graph Encoding . 179 5.3.2 Choice Poetics Encoding . 183 5.3.3 Discussion . 189 5.4 Toward Medium Reading . 192 5.5 Conclusion . 197 6 Sherlock 200 6.1 Positioning Sherlock ........................ 203 6.1.1 Tools and Visualizations . 204 6.1.2 Visualization in the Digital Humanities . 209 6.2 Design Process . 211 6.2.1 User Profiles . 211 6.2.2 Design Goals . 213 6.3 Architecture and Data Structures . 213 v 6.4 Visualizing Player Response . 215 6.4.1 Visualizing Biometrics . 217 6.4.2 Visualizing Facial Measures of Affect . 218 6.4.3 Comparing Game and Player Data . 219 6.4.4 Combining Visualizations . 220 6.5 User Interface . 222 6.5.1 Videos . 223 6.5.2 Timelines . 224 6.5.3 Synchronizing Videos . 225 6.5.4 Protoline . 226 6.5.5 Querying and Filtering . 227 6.5.6 Rendering Results . 230 6.6 Sherlock User Study . 231 6.6.1 Study Setup . 231 6.6.2 General Feedback . 234 6.6.3 Visualizations . 234 6.6.4 Core Interface . 235 6.6.5 Bugs and Issues . 236 6.6.6 Selected Quotations . 237 6.6.7 Discussion . 237 6.7 Feedback and Iterations . 238 6.8 Summary . 239 7 Analyzing Content and Experience Encodings 240 7.1 Encoding Details . 243 7.1.1 Scenes . 244 7.1.2 Story Value Definitions . 246 7.1.3 Facial Expression Measurements . 246 7.2 Results . 247 7.2.1 Story Values . 248 7.2.2 Player Responses . 252 7.3 Discussion . 259 7.3.1 Content Variations . 260 7.3.2 Context Effects . 261 7.3.3 Emotional Content Anchors . 263 7.3.4 Future Work . 267 7.4 Comparison to the Previous Method . 268 7.5 Summary . 269 8 Conclusions 272 8.1 The Telltale Effect . 274 8.2 A Preliminary Agenda . 278 vi 8.3 Summary of Contributions . 280 8.4 Concluding Thoughts . ..