interactive narratives

This workshop will be offering the participants both a theoretical and practical introduction to interactive narratives in "419-fictional environments" created by scammers and scambaiters. We seek to understand different sides of online fraud and through creative storytelling reflect on issues like online privacy, virtual representation and trust within networks. We also draw parallels to other practices and cultures like: gaming, transmedia storytelling or creative activism. Through a participants take the first steps of creating their fictional characters and infiltrating a scammers storyworld to observe and interrupt their workflow.

We explore how persuasive narratives are setup, how characters are designed and how dialog is exchanged to build trust between the acting parties. We will use social media and various content generators and other tools to orchestrate internet fiction, creating entrance points to a story world and spreading traces of information online. By reflecting on scam bait experiences we enter a discussion around the topic of interactive narration connecting to the participants' and their general work in this field.

With the term "419-fictional environments" we refer to computer mediated story worlds where advance-fee fraud is used as a confidence trick to lure the victim into paying a fee in advance, with the future hopes of getting a larger amount of money in return. The origins of advance-fee fraud dates back to the 16th century and is known as the "Spanish prisoner", Internet and new communication systems have rapidly increased the opportunities for the scammers to reach victims. At the same time they have helped the scammers to hide their personalities and their working practices. Scammers can work with standard office computers on a global level, tricking their victims by impersonating: fundraising Charity NGO’s, State Lottery institutions, Conference/Art Festival organizers or as romance seeking lovers on Dating websites. These types of cyber crime are often called "419-scams", "419" referring to the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with cheating and fraud.

The workshop will give participants valuable first hand insights into raising awareness about online advance-fee fraud scams and to raises issues of trust betwixt and between real and virtual. This by exploring the practice's of scambaiters. Scambaiters are persons who reply to scam emails, being fully aware that the emails are written by scammers. "Scambaiting involves tricking Internet scammers into believing you are a potential victim". This means that the scambaiters turn the tables and lure the scammers into incredible story-plots, always giving the scammers the feeling that they will get a lot of money. Scambaiters do this for different reasons. Tuovinen et al. illustrate three possible motives: community service (social activism), status elevation and revenge. The workshop provides a base to discuss if components of scambaiting culture can be used in terms of community service in form of creative activism. We also welcome discussion around the game like interaction that takes place between the scammer and the scambaiter. How storyworlds are build, which tools to stay anonymous are used, how characters are designed and dialog exchanged to build trust between the actors.

(Source: ELO 2015 catalog)

Over the past year I have been exploring the creation and reception of dense, spatialized augmented reality novels that can be experienced via optical see-through glasses, like Goggle glass or Meta -- displays that finally allow a spectator/reader/viewer to wander hands-free though poems and secrets and dreamscapes while they also see and experience the analogue world.

I am interested in the idea that spatialized AR novels will be explored over days or weeks, not hours, with a granularity and density of text that we have not yet seen in in situ or mobile works - a new generation of electronic writing that combines the density of a novel alongside the rich linkages and possibilities for re-reading promised by early hypertext combined with the potent poetics of the interplay between real and fictional worlds and the bodies walking through them.

One of the things that has struck me over the past few years is that so much of our received knowledge about the ideal granularity for digital works – a preference for very small chunks of information and fleeting, easily intelligible experiences, for example - is so at odds now with the incredible density of information - both networked and non-networked - that is now possible to build into these experiences.

While I see these works relating to cinema and installation and theatre and gaming, my chief point of entry is decidedly literary - resonating strongly with the conference interest in "focusing on the meaning of electronic literature" in this moment of cultural shift. I will illustrate my work with examples from my own practice and student work undertaken in York University's Future Cinema Lab.

(Author's introduction)

Abstract Designing interactive narrative for children requires awareness of the cognitive abilities of young readers. In this paper, we present the lessons learned from two example interactive narrative systems, Baby Duck Takes a Bath and A Little Quiz for the Little Hare. Baby Duck is a multi-sequential narrative where the user can explore how a duckling can become dirty or clean by interacting with its habitat. The agency of the characters (including a mother duck and duck friends) result from manipulating elements within the small story world. The narrative changes according to the user's interactions, allowing for change in perspective, agency and attitude in real-time. The Little Quiz system aims to teach young children the concepts of measurement and comparison through the conversation between two characters. It explores the design space of enhancing interactive narrative using a commonsense knowledge database to understand players' intention and generate relevant narration. Both works target children from 1st to 3rd grade in the early stage of learning story construction. Our approach to designing children’s interactive narrative is based on considering how children can manipulate interactive content. The basic principles of this approach are to provide:

1) a small interactive world that involves simple spatial relationships and story elements. A small story world eases the cognitive load of navigating a virtual space. Instead of building multiple story spaces to explore, we propose that having one or few spaces populated with interactive elements (such as actors and objects) supports children's cognitive understanding and learning through real-time interaction, rather than focusing on memory and spatial skills;

2) Contextual interactive content allows players to communicate by means of short questions and answers. To engage children in the interrogative process, our systems prompt content for children to interact with using simple dialogue. The systems raise contextappropriate questions and show supportive information to both arouse children's interests and further assist them in thinking logically to achieve a task.

3) Simple flexible inputs allow freedom of exploration on the content level. Real-time reactions to a wide array of inputs create a supportive environment for exploration. For example, multisequential opportunities for interaction and suggesting a variety of commands encourage exploration by the user. In our systems, even when the input is out of the boundary of author’s story model, we use commonsense computing or graceful error handling to fill the gap between the authors’ story model and players’ model. Our research aims to make interactive narrative more accessible to young children by supporting learning, creativity and logical development. We provide a brief review of children's cognitive psychology research supporting the proposed design principles. Our principles demonstrate how a children's interactive narrative can allow for creative play and avoid frustration. Furthermore, our interaction design strategy is aimed to reduce memory load and focus on story understanding rather than puzzle solving. By using simple and encouraging discourse through short interactive prompts, electronic fiction can be used to craft delightful and interesting literature for children.

(Source: Authors' abstract for ELO_AI)

While few critics writing on readers and hypertext have focused on the affective pleasures of reading hypertext fiction or interactive narratives like Myst, those who assess the experience of reading them tend to assume interactive texts should be either immersive or engaging. This study uses schema theory to define the characteristics of immersion and engagement in both conventional and new media. After examining how readers' experiences of these two different aesthetics may be enhanced or diminished by interface design, options for navigation, and other features, the essay concludes by looking beyond immersion and engagement to “flow, ” a state in which readers are both immersed and engaged.

Source: ACM PublicationPaper presented at the Eleventh ACM on Hypertext and Hypermedia Conference and published in the proceedings.

Introduction to a special issue of the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.