Saturday, December 12

Location:

CCG

CCG

CCG

CCG (DSI)

09:00-09:15
Registration

09:15-11:00
Workshops

Authoring Methods and Conception in Interactive Storytelling

Ulrike Spierling, Ido Iurgel, Urs Richle and Nicolas Szilas

(Whole day workshop)

Do we Need a new Narratology for Interactive Digital Storytelling?

Hartmut Koenitz, Mads Haahr, Gabriele Ferri, Tonguc Ibrahim Sezen

(Whole day workshop)

Creating the Goodies and Baddies of the Story: Specification of an Interoperable and Reusable Avatar Identity

David Oyarzun, Amalia Ortiz, María del Puy Carretero, Alex García-Alonso

(Half day workshop)

Hands-on Interactive Storytelling Techniques

Florian Berger, Alexander Marbach and Jana Jevická

(Half day workshop)

Coffee

11:30-13:00
Workshops

Lunch

14:30-16:30
Workshops

(Continuation of whole day workshop)

(Continuation of whole day workshop)

Creating 3D Virtual Characters for Games and Storytelling Applications in a Few Easy Steps

Cyril Brom, Michal Bída

(Half day workshop)

Coffee

17:00-18:30
Workshops

Workshop: Authoring Methods and Conception in Interactive Storytelling

Description

At this workshop on authoring and conception, ´authors/writers´ and ´engine providers´ will meet and compare their submitted ideas of storyworlds and story engines. In exemplary conception phases, we discuss the abstraction process that is necessary in order to make interactive story content run on IS systems. Further, we discuss the concrete authoring process for each available system in small groups. For ideal cases, we see ´hands-on´ demonstrations. In plenary presentations, we compare the approaches and generalize the findings.

Important: This workshop has a preparation phase before the event! Early registration is required, as well as submission of some descriptions (of either story engines or story content ideas). Please follow the link and consult the detailed CALL FOR PARTICIPATION.

Please do not hesitate in contacting the workshop organisers in case of questions!

Contact email of this workshop: authoring [AT[ interactive-storytelling.com.

Detailed call for participation: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION.

Redcap website: presentation and discussion of interactive story engines, authoring tools and the state of the art of the authoring process in Interactive Digital Storytelling. (http://redcap.interactive-storytelling.de/)

About the organisers

Ulrike Spierling is a professor of Media Design at the University of Applied Sciences (FHE) in Erfurt, Germany. About 10 years ago, she started to research Interactive Storytelling (IS), after working and teaching in the design of computer animation and of interactive virtual worlds. Her special interest lies in authoring methods and interaction techniques for IS. She co-organised previous authoring workshops at TIDSE 2006 and ICIDS 2008.

Ido Iurgel is a senior scientist at the University of Minho and the CCG – Center for Computer Graphics in Guimarães, Portugal. He also teaches storytelling and virtual and augmented reality, at this university. He made his PhD on an authoring framework for interactive storytelling and is conducting R&D in these areas for more than 10 years. Besides degrees in Computer Science, he also holds a Master in Philosophy. He is currently leading a research project on an authoring framework for virtual actors.

Urs Richle is a Swiss novelist and media engineer. Coming into traditional story telling using a typewriter, he began writing screenplays and producing videos. After 5 novels published in the nineties, he studied media engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Lausanne, Switzerland, from 2002 to 2006. Today he combines writing with informatics at the Berne University of the Arts and at the University of Geneva.

Nicolas Szilas has been working in the field of Computer Science and Cognitive Science for fifteen years till now. After the completion of his Ph.D in 1995, and two postdoctoral positions in Montreal, he entered a video game studio in 1997, working on AI for video games. Between 1999 and 2001, within a software integration company, he developed new ideas and business in the field of search engines, web personalisation, linguistics based applications and ergonomics. In parallel, he conducted his own research program on Interactive Drama called IDtension. Since 2003, he has been working on his project in French, Australian and Swiss Universities. He is now associate professor at TECFA, University of Geneva, working at the intersection of games, narrative, learning and technology.

Workshop: Do we Need a new Narratology for Interactive Digital Storytelling?

A Workshop on Theory at ICIDS09

Description

The Workshop will explore Narratology as applied to Interactive Digital Storytelling. While many researchers will agree that some of the principles guiding established Narratology change in Interactive Digital Storytelling, the exact nature and degree of the changes are much less clear. The workshop is designed to expose these differences and open up a discussion of theory that is mindful of diverse approaches and integrates practical considerations.

The full-day workshop will start with arguments for a new Narratology centering on issues of media specificity of established theories, the available canon of works, and phenomena in digital media not covered by existing approaches, followed by short presentations on different approaches in Narratology and related fields.

The bulk of the workshop is in the form of group discussions in which the participants discuss specific approaches to the problem. Examples include Michael Mateas´ combination of Janet Murray´s affordances of Digital Media and Brenda Laurel´s Neo-Aristotelism, Pamela Jenning´s combination of African narration and Umberto Eco´s concept of Openness , Marie-Laure Ryan´s Digital Textuality, Jay Bolter´s concept of serious hypertext and Espen Aarseth´s Ergodic Literature. After the lunch break the workshop will continue in groups by applying the concept to an analysis of specific Interactive Storytelling artifacts. All participants gather again after a coffee break and the results of the groups´ discussions are presented to all. Next, a panel of experts representing different approaches of reconciling Narratology and Interactive Digital Storytelling react to the results and present their take on the problem. Finally the workshop organizers wrap up the workshop.

Contact email of this workshop:

Hartmut.koenitz@lcc.gatech.edu

About the organizers

Hartmut Koenitz is a PhD candidate in Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research is in interactive narrative theory and practice. The object of his PhD thesis An Open-ended system for Interactive Narrative is the combination of an evolutionary approach towards narrative theory and a software tool able to integrate many existing approaches in Interactive Storytelling. He has shown the authoring part of his software tool at ICIDS 08.

Mads Haahr is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Trinity College Dublin. He holds degrees in Computer Science and English Literature and is currently researching methods for highly immersive location-aware story-driven games.  He holds many other research interests, most of which are multidisciplinary.  He also edits Crossings: Electronic Journal of Art and Technology.

Gabriele Ferri is a PhD student in Semiotics at University of Bologna, Italy. His ongoing research, an attempt to enrich the notion of narration with algorithms and pragmatist habits to account for interactive practices, has been recently discussed both at the DiGRA 2009 Conference and at the 10^th World Congress of Semiotics (IASS09).

Tonguc Ibrahim Sezen is a PhD student in Communications at Istanbul University Graduate School of Social Sciences, and a Fulbright alumni. His research interests include Cross-Media Narration, Digital Gaming, and Interactive Storytelling. He has presented papers at various conferences, including MiT5 in 2007 and MiT6 in 2009. He is also working with various local institutions including DiGRA Turkish Chapter to improve digital game and digital media research in Turkey.

Workshop: Creating the Goodies and Baddies of the Story: Specification of an Interoperable and Reusable Avatar Identity

Description

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss and define the specification of a high-level and interoperable virtual character identity that can be used in the storytelling field. That is, an identity that allows authors to reusing an existing character and being able to load it onto different storytelling tools taking into account aspects like its personality.

Moreover, this specification would make easier the creation of stories. For example, if the character´s personality is defined independently of the story itself, its reactions to the real time story events and interactions could be automatically processed in a coherent way with its personality.

The workshop expects to gather researchers and students from different storytelling fields to work together in the definition of this identity.

The starting tool for the workshop is a high-level XML-based language called ADML – Avatar Definition Markup Language –, accepted in the pre-proposal of the new MPEG-V standard, and created by the workshop organizers. It defines communication skills, appearance and personality features for an avatar. The result of the workshop could be modifications in the language or a complete new specification; or the conclusion could just be that it is not necessary to create a high-level identity.

So, the main objective of this workshop is triple:

• On the one hand the discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of having a high-level identity for virtual characters.

• On the other hand, uncovering the minimum set of features that would be necessary for the specification of the identity. In order to be interoperable and reusable, these features should be independent of concrete application events or story interactions.

• Finally, the best way for coding the decided features in a high-level language should be discussed and specified.

The result of this workshop is a draft document defining the specific language for creating avatar identity.

Contact email of this workshop: doyarzun@vicomtech.org

About the main organiser

David Oyarzun studied Computer Science in the University of the Basque Country (1997-2002). From July 2001 to October 2001 he was practice student at LANIK S.A. modifying and improving the application which is the base of the production process. From October 2002 to April 2003 he gave coaching about Artificial Intelligence. From December 2002 to March 2003 he worked for SINTEC developing biometric access control systems for networks. At present time he is working in VICOMTech as project leader in Interaction for Education, Leisure and e-Inclusion department and he is PhD candidate in the area of avatar animation and interaction in virtual environments in the University of the Basque Country.

Workshop: Creating 3D Virtual Characters for Games and Storytelling Applications in a Few Easy Steps

Description

Despite rapid progress in the fields of virtual storytelling (VS) and virtual characters (VC) over the last decade, educational issues seem to remain largely unaddressed in these disciplines. The lack of tools supporting education of beginners seems to be an issue of high priority. In particular, while tools for authoring 3D graphics that can be used for education exist, tools for teaching programming of behaviour for VC are almost missing. Even though many VS authoring toolkits emerged recently, they tend to provide very limited or no support for teachers and learners and many of them are not downloadable.

The aim of this workshop is twofold. The first goal is to introduce the open source toolkit Pogamut we have created for developing control mechanisms of VCs and to introduce the audience practical aspects of this development. Pogamut has been intentionally crated to faciliate this development to newcomers and it is now used by many students world-wide.

The second goal is to discuss whether and how education in the fields of VC and VS can be improved if this is really needed. Besides other things, we will try to answer the question whether a virtual storytelling student or researcher needs knowledge of development of control mechanisms for virtual characters.

The first part of the workshop will be given as a show-by-example tutorial. The topics covered include reactive rules, finite state machines, perception, navigation, appraisal-driven control, and coordination of VCs in acting out a simple narrative. The participants, if they wish, will also have the opportunity to download Pogamut in advance and to follow the examples on their notebooks during the tutorial.

The second part of the workshop has a format of discussion.

More information about the workshop, including registration information, is available at: http://artemis.ms.mff.cuni.cz/ICIDS09.

Contact email of this workshop: brom [at] ksvi [dot] mff [d o t] cuni -dot- cz

Please, include [ICIDS2009] in the subject.

Home page of the workshop: http://artemis.ms.mff.cuni.cz/ICIDS09.

About the organisers

The tutorial will be given by Cyril Brom and Michal Bída from Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic.

Cyril is active in the field of virtual storytelling and virtual characters from 2005. His other research activities relates to serious games and computational neuroscience. He teaches courses on “Human-like artificial agents” and “Computational cognitive science” and co-teaches a course on “Computer games development”. He is a supervisor of about 20 students, including 4 PhD students.

Michal is Cyril´s PhD student. He is one of the authors of Pogamut toolkit.

Workshop: Hands-on Interactive Storytelling Techniques

At ICIDS 2008, the organisers introduced the attendees to the methods and procedures of pen and paper role-playing games (RPGs) as a form of human-to-human interactive storytelling.

Building on that experience this workshop will provide a hands-on approach to creating comparable stories using three different techniques in parallel: pen and paper role-playing, live action role-playing (larp) and digital storytelling using a digital game environment.

Attendees can participate as active players or observers. The games will be followed by a discussion of the hands-on interactive experience, and how to transfer them to the domain of digital interactive storytelling.

Contact email of this workshop: icidsworkshop@fbmd.de

Home page of the workshop: http://fbmd.de/icidsworkshop/

About the organisers

Alexander Marbach is a media-technology-engineer and has worked in the CG and Design-industry for 5 years. As professional CG-Artist he has specialized in Automotive Design and design for Realtime Game-Engines.

Florian Berger has run annual pen-and-paper game mastering workshops at the biggest independent German RPG convention since 2003. He recently published the first German book on dramatic tabletop game mastering techniques.

Jana Jevická graduated as a Bachelor in the field of study of Dramatic Arts at the Theatre Faculty of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno. In her spare time she leads children´s theatre ensemble and from time to time she organizes workshops for larp players, where they can be helped with creating their characters and playing them.