Slides (without speaker notes) presenting the paper at the 11th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2018, Dublin, Ireland, December 5–8, 2018. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-04028-4_5 In book: Interactive Storytelling

1. RE-TELLINGS
THE FOURTH LAYER OF NARRATIVE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CRITIQUE
ICIDS, December 6 2018
Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari of Södertörn University and Otter Play

2. OVERVIEW
➤ Proposal: Re-tellings as an instrument of critique
➤ An example: “The Story of being homeless in Sims 3”
➤ Situating re-tellings as a text layer in story construction
➤ Ways forward

3. UNIQUE TRAVERSALS
.

4. RETELLINGS

5. PROPOSALThe occurrence of interactors’ re-tellings of
diverse forms of interactive narratives are
indicators of successful designs
since they indicate that the
underlying experiences were
important enough to re-tell them.
Interactors - Murray’s term (1997) for players/readers etc

6. SUGGESTION
Analyses of corpuses of re-
tellings can be used as
instruments for critique of
interactive narrative systems.

7. ALICE AND KEV
a story about two homeless characters in Sims 3, played and written about by Robin Burkinshaw.
http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com

8. “SELFLESSNESS”
Alice gets to work late, but not too late.
When her shift at the supermarket ends that evening, she has 100
hard-earned simoleons, but she is as exhausted as it is possible to
be. She wobbles slightly after walking out the door, and only just
manages to stop herself from losing consciousness there and then.
But she doesn’t want to rest now. She’s just come up with a new
wish. It’s a wish that would be easily fulfilled, but the idea scares
and horrifies me. I don’t want to grant it to her.
But it’s her life, and her choice. I reluctantly let her do it.
She takes all of the money she has just earned, places it into an
envelope, writes the name of a charity on the front, and puts it into
a mailbox.

9. Authorial stance:
Burkinshaw writes about what happens as he plays the game, each interpretation he makes in the
text is based on an event. Stance in playing: allowing Alice to act according to her character.

10. COMMENTARY
Another interpretation by the user Danuab:
“It doesn’t mean anything. Alice has likely internalised her father’s distaste and abuse and developed a negative self-
concept. She isn’t giving money away because she’s altruistic, she’s giving it away because she doesn’t think she’s worth it.”
About how real Alice
feels as a character,
and how beautiful her
gift of charity is.

11. WHY 4TH?

12. LENSES

13. Greimas1966
Chatman 1978
Genette 1983
Aarseth 1997
Murray1997
Ryan 2006
Budniakiewicz 1992
Cavazza 2008
Jenkins 2003
Wardrip Fruin 2009
Koenitz 2015

14. LENSES

15. LENSES

17. Narrative
Discourse
Story
Code
Text* layers
in Story
Construction
*Where “text” in Lotman’s
tradition is considered a
coherent set of signs that
transmits some kind of
informative message.
(where the message the
symbols convey is the
interesting part rather than
its physical form or the
medium in which it is
represented.)

18. Code
Layer
Engines, frameworks - creating conditions for deep
structure and world building
Engines constituting the world to be built
Engine
physics
system
graphics
rendering
system
dialog
system
media
storage
communication layer
INS system
Etc
Examples:
Unity, Renderware,
Inform7. Twine
…see yesterday’s
A Framework for Classifying and
Describing Authoring Tools for
Interactive Digital Narrative, Yotam
Shibolet, Noam Knoller, and Hartmut
Koenitz

19. INS system
Code
Layer
The framework(s) governing affordances of the entities
in the world
The glue between scripting and engine(s)
Abstract model of a world and system.
Examples:
Genre specific programming
or frameworks: RPG, RTS,
FPS etc.
Story structures; comedies,
strategies, murder mysteries
etc.
Framework(s)

20. INS system
Code
Layer
Detailed programming of objects specific to the game or INS.
Scripting

21. Scripting
Framework(s)
Engine(s)
Code
Layer
Engines, framework, and scripting together manifest the
geographic structure as well as the conditions for the deep
structure of the story and its construction.

22. Scripting
Framework(s)
Engine(s)
Code
Layer
Engines, framework, and scripting together manifest the
geographic structure as well as the conditions for the deep
structure of the story and its construction.
A foundational layer:
It could also be a tarot deck and a human card reader
picking different spreads

23. Story Elements
The specific setup of
expressive agents and
story elements that are to
be instantiated.
Goals, Driving Forces
Wills, motives,
aspirations, and goals of
the expressive agents.
Conditions
Causal
dependencies
governing relations
between specific
agents and objects
Story (Construction) Layer
The deep structure consisting of the individual expressive agents and the story elements.

24. Hence the creation of the overall story or back story.
At the discourse layer, story elements, conditions, driving forces and goals
manifest the overall story and possible side stories.

25. Discourse Layer - The continuum of play.
The current dynamic states, experienced events, movements, and actions of the
expressive agents that result in sequences of events: the actual story, or discourse.
Individual Story
Discourse
The past of the expressive
agent, a chronological
sequence of the actions
performed and the events
experienced. This is the
actual story of a specific
expressive agent.
State
The state of the expressive agent
in the moment of interaction,
defined by the construction of the
class the agent is instantiated
from, and from the agent’s
individual story discourse.

26. Narrative Layer - Tellings and re-tellings.
The narratives told about the actions and events in the game world or INS. The
narratives are told both in-world and out-of-world.
Recorded system output
Product in the form of narrative discourse, recorded
instantiated output from a system.
Simultaneous retellings. Ex: Streaming game play via Twitch or YouTube Gaming.
Narratives with artistic or authorial
intent. Avatar narratives, re-tellings
of simulations (ex. Alice and Kev),
fan-fiction.
Chronicles and Reporting.
Ex: guild scribes telling about
marriages or funerals in VGWs,
or reporters commissioned by
game companies.
Communicative re-
tellings. Ex: “You won’t
believe what happened
in the raid. We …”

27. Re-tellings
“You won’t believe what happened
in yesterdays raid!”
The now of the playing
- the unique traversals
Authoring the back story, designing
the game
Making the game/INS
Constructing game engines
and authoring tools
Acts of creation

28. Readers and Players
Readers, Players, Game Masters,
Authors, designers
Researchers and developers
Creators

29. Played Narrative Potential
* * *
* * *
*
* *
Designed Narrative Potential
*
***
**
*
*
*

30. Played Narrative Potential
* * *
* * *
*
* *
Designed Narrative Potential
*
***
**
*
*
* Co Creation

31. RE-TELLINGS AS A 4TH LAYER

32. RE-TELLINGS AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR CRITIQUE

33. WAYS FORWARD? MINE WHAT?

34. WAYS FORWARD: COLLECTING THE CORPORA. MINING?

35. WAYS FORWARD: COLLECTING THE CORPORA. MINING?

36. WAYS FORWARD: LENSES FOR CRITIQUE
Mine what? From whom?
Risk: Bluntness, and becoming blind
to that which cannot be “mined”.
Lenses and instruments for critique of INS - we need them

37. THE HIGHER EDUCATION PARADOX
Learn to become a researcher
-> to become a teacher
I didn’t choose!
SUMMARY
A Proposal: The occurrence of interactors’ re-
tellings of diverse forms of interactive narratives
are indicators of successful designs since they
indicate that the underlying experiences were
important enough to re-tell them.
A Suggestion: Analyses of corpuses of re-tellings
can be used as instruments for critique of
interactive narrative systems.
A Lens: Retellings as a 4th layer in a model for
understanding story construction in interactive
narrative.
mirjam.palosaari.eladhari@sh.se