Session Name: | Procedural Narrative Generation |
Speaker(s): | Rogelio Cardona-Rivera, Chris Martens |
Company Name(s): | North Carolina State University, North Carolina State University |
Track / Format: | Game Narrative Summit |
Overview: | As storytelling becomes more central to modern games, writers must increasingly contend with the tension between permitting player autonomy and maintaining the beats of a handcrafted narrative arc. Procedural narrative generation offers computational techniques to address this challenge. Decades of research have brought about techniques such as social simulation, drama management, and data recombination, which can be used to create more believable non-player characters, provide players with more narrative agency, and extend story possibilities beyond the author's imagination. We survey this research and present the tools available to the modern-day game designer, while also identifying gaps between theory and practice. |