Excessive media use has long been the focus of communication research. Yet most research focuses on the role of individual traits or technological affordances in explaining excessive media use (e.g., gaming), while overlooking the influence of contexts. Drawing on the social-ecological theory, we explore how contexts shape people’s excessive gaming and how players exercise their agency to navigate these contextual influences. Through in-depth interviews with 44 Chinese game players, our study suggests that people’s availability and access to games, social networks, and gameplay experiences dynamically shape their excessive gaming. People also proactively combat excessive gaming by altering their gameplay availability, negotiating with their social networks, and re-appropriating gameplay experiences. These findings highlight the contextual nature of excessive gaming, and the role of context transformation, in which people exercise agency in negotiating with contexts to counter the downsides of media use.

A distinctive aspect of interactive stories is how they enable players to impact the story based on their choices, with repeated playthroughs potentially yielding different stories. While some work has been done to investigate repeat experiences of interactive stories, the focus has mainly been on simpler linear and branching narrative systems. Recent advances in large language model (LLM) systems such as ChatGPT have sparked renewed interest in how users engage with artificial intelligence systems, and how LLM systems could be used in works of entertainment such as games and interactive stories. In this paper, we detail the findings of a qualitative observational study of 10 participants playing and replaying the interactive text adventure game AI Dungeon which is based upon the natural-language-generating LLMs GPT-3 and GPT-J. The study provides insights into how the player’s mental model of the system shifts from assuming the system is a linear or branching narrative to one with seemingly limitless narrative possibilities. This study also uncovers three related sources of motivations for repeat engagement with an LLM-based interactive story, which are impacted by the player’s shifting mental model of the system: narrative closure, narrative incoherence, and expectations for variation between playthroughs. Finally, this study highlights how uncertainty in terms of both how the system works and what objectives the player has could impact the player’s choice of actions when engaging with an LLM-based interactive story such as AI Dungeon .

Computer-mediated communication platforms provide new ways for people to tell stories together, while at the same time introducing new challenges. In this paper we explore how people coordinate process, content, and direction during text-based online collaborative storytelling. In our study, six pairs of participants were asked to tell a story together using two variations of a chatroom-like system. Both conditions provided direct text-based interaction visible to the audience, whereas one condition also included a “backchannel” interface for private communication that was not visible to the audience. The system also provided basic workspace awareness in the form of persistent story text, coloured based on contributor, and a typing activity indicator. Even with just a partial understanding of the content and direction of the story, most participants felt they were able to successfully tell a story together. In fact, some participants preferred the uncertainty associated with limited communication, seeing this as encouraging creativity. This suggests guidelines for designing collaborative tools, which tend to emphasize shared understanding, may need to take into consideration the role of uncertainty in creative activities such as collaborative storytelling.

There has been growing concern about digital well-being, especially given the emerging adverse impact of technology overuse. While prior studies have developed a variety of stand-alone techniques to combat technology overuse, little work has been done to build interventions directly into technologies to regulate usage. In this study, we designed three interventions that remind players to take a break in a casual mobile game. We explored players' experiences with these interventions through a 4-day deployment study and follow-up interviews (N=16). Findings suggest that while some players had a positive experience with the game that had built-in interventions, others experienced unintended outcomes such as disrupted immersion or longer play sessions. We also found that interventions seemed to be more likely to succeed when players experienced a sense of accomplishment or negative emotions. We discuss the implications of the study and provide preliminary suggestions for designing built-in interventions.

The title of this book is ‘The Authoring Problem: Challenges in Supporting Authoring for Interactive Digital Narrative’. For a reader new to this emerging field, while the title must have been intriguing enough to attract them to start reading this introduction, there may be a number of questions in their mind. What exactly is the ‘authoring problem’? Or more generally, what is ‘authoring’, and what do we mean by ‘interactive digital narrative’? In this introduction, we, as the editors of this volume, will try to provide some preliminary answers to these questions. The rest of the chapters in the book will then proceed to investigate and problematise these answers and raise questions and directions for further research. While many writers’ guides exist for game narrative, hypertext and other formsForm of interactive digital narrative (IDN), guiding authors through solutions to the problems of authorship, that is not the focus of this book. Here we are collecting unsolved research problems—challenges yet to be overcome and questions unanswered which have accumulated over many years in the broad range of research communitiesCommunities connected to IDN.

Human artifacts like technical papers and computer programs often carry the individual styles of their creators. If retrieved properly, such style information from the artifacts can be used to categorize the artifacts, compare the relative “similarities” among artifacts, and may even be used for tracing the authorship of a new artifact. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and its author(s) goes/go by the pseudonym of Satoshi Nakamoto. In this article, we use deep learning to study the styles of two Bitcoin artifacts: the first version of Bitcoin’s source code, v0.1.0, which was released in early 2009, and the original Bitcoin white paper, which is dated Oct. 2008. Both studies use the deep learning technique, which first utilizes extensive computing power to generate a neural network model from labelled training data and then uses the model to predict the authorship of unknown data. For the Bitcoin source code artifact, the data set is a set of cryptography software that were built around 2008/2009 and it has 16 known labels. Our model achieves 89.1% validation accuracy and our prediction results show that the Bitcoin source code is likely produced by multiple authors and Hal Finney is not one of them. For the Bitcoin white paper, we compiled a second data set of financial cryptography papers that are in the same knowledge domain. This data set has 436 known labels. Our model achieves 55.1% validation accuracy and it has identified four technical papers that are “similar” to the Bitcoin white paper.

Counsellors use Motivational Interviewing (MI) to boost intrinsic motivation for healthier lifestyles by supporting 1) the identification of personal values and 2) the linking of these values to personal reasons for change. Research is needed to increase the reach of such interventions through the use of online tools. Thus, we explored the use of defamiliarization and poetic gameplay in a serious game, to make habitual health choices difficult and ‘unfamiliar’ in order to promote players’ contemplation about their personal reasons for health. Our evaluation indicates that the players demonstrated evidence of processes of change such as self-reevaluation, environmental reevaluation, and improving decisional clarity. We observed that these methods could promote dialogic reflection with different points of view, but was less effective at promoting transformative reflection that would lead to change. We conclude with a discussion of promising future directions for research.

Replay of interactive stories is an essential characteristic of the medium, enabling players to both see whether their choices impact the narrative, and work towards an understanding of the story and underlying system. Despite the centrality of replay to the form, little work has been done to investigate what motivates people to replay interactive stories, or when and why they stop replaying. In this paper, we report on the results of an exploratory qualitative observational study of 12 participants (aged 22 to 28) replaying the visual novel The Shadows that Run Alongside Our Car, a short work that presents a post-apocalyptic survival story from the perspective of two different playable characters and involves four dialogue choices leading to one of three possible endings. Unlike previous models of rereading, our observations suggest that players' reasons for deciding whether or not to replay change fluidly as their sense of closure changes, and players are deciding based not just on whether they have reached closure, but also on their estimate of the likelihood of seeing something new or moving closer to closure versus the effort required to replay. This suggests a need to rethink earlier, more simplistic models of rereading in interactive stories.

A life story’s ability to evoke the emotion experienced by a protagonist is crucial to its success. Authors of interactive life stories sometimes strategically alter the interactive feedback loop to help convey this subjective experience. Using Mitchell’s conception of defamiliarizing poetic gameplay, this study identifies poetic gameplay devices, which creatively alter the feedback loop for emotional narrative impact. The article suggests extending the term “poetic gameplay” beyond interactive devices whose primary goal is critical appreciation of aesthetic form, to techniques directed at deepening a player’s narrative involvement, via alterations to interactivity designed to evoke emotions that mirror a protagonist’s experience. Close readings of 19 interactive life stories identified 13 devices, which fall into two categories: alterations to manipulation rules (involving local agency) and alterations to goal rules (involving higher level agency). The findings reveal some of the expressive possibilities of interactivity in digital narrative.

Interactive stories are a kaleidoscopic form that both encourages and rewards repeat experience, allowing players to try out different variations of a story or see the story from different perspectives. This may be one reason for the increasing use of rewind game mechanics, where players are required to repeatedly play a storygame before eventually reaching some form of conclusion. While this seems to be playing to the strengths of the medium, what is not clear is how rewind structures can be explained by current models of repeat experience in interactive stories. Through a close reading of the storygame Elsinore, we explore the impact of rewind game mechanics on repeat play, in terms of the player’s ability both to determine when the end has been reached, and to subsequently replay beyond closure. Our observations suggest that rewind mechanics may frustrate, rather than support, closure and repeat experience of storygames, and may require a revision of current theories of rereading and repeat experience.

Many videogames seek to be story-driven, incorporating story elements such as a hero-driven plotline, dramatic conflict and story structure in order to increase player immersion and engagement. Storygames have been discussed by theorists such as Buckles, Murray and Reed. However, the issue of the integration of dramatic devices with the playable system and operational logics in interactive narratives has not been adequately explored. Through close readings of two storygames, Disco Elysium and Her Story, this paper aims to investigate how narrative logics can be integrated into storygames in the context of Aristotelian drama, and how dramatic narrative units integrate operationally with the playable system. It also proposes a type of storygame, the dramatic storygame, where the playable system is closely tied with the processing and production of dramatic narrative units.

Dynamic difficulty adjustment (DDA) systems can improve the player experience (PX). Allowing the player to make difficulty adjustment decisions can lead to an improved sense of control. However, we hypothesize that shifting the responsibility for making difficulty adjustment decisions from the computational system to the player may be detrimental to the overall PX. We conducted a controlled experiment, analyzing data from 84 participants, to investigate how (1) the way difficulty choices are presented (integrated into game mechanics or direct control) and (2) the frequency of presenting these choices to the player (once, periodically, or constantly) affects the PX. Our findings show that integrated choices lead to an improved PX along some PX dimensions. Presenting choices once or constantly yields poorer PX compared to presenting choices periodically. The results also demonstrate interaction effects between the two experiment factors, suggesting the need for more deliberate design decisions when designing for difficulty adjustment.

The majority of interactive narrative games allow the player to save their progress as the game unfolds. These save game options are either automatically enforced or manual. However, there is an increasing trend for interactive narrative games to be 'irreversible'. In such cases, this makes it difficult for the player to load or access previous save games. As a result, the player's sense of agency changes within the game, as the stakes and consequences of their story decisions are more difficult to reverse, and thus take on a feeling of permanence. Through close readings of The Walking Dead: Season One, Sorcery! and Undertale, this paper aims to provide an initial framework for irreversible storygames by (i) defining the different types of irreversibility by analyzing three games in which the form of irreversibility differs, and (ii) exploring subjective factors of the user experience that may be impacted by the different types of irreversibility.

Comics are a medium distinct from and yet tied to other forms of storytelling. A rich body of theory exists on the nature of the medium, its narrative techniques and the visual language unique to it. In light of the increasing interest in digital interactive technologies, however; there is a need to examine how the current theoretical understanding of comics is complicated by interactivity, as has been studied for other media such as text-based stories and games. This article outlines an exploratory study that introduced interactions, reminiscent of the Quick-Time Events found in games, into a four-panel comic. The results of this study, based on exposure to experimental prototypes, followed by retrospective protocol analysis and qualitative interviews, begin to shed light on various theoretical implications of including interactivity. These include empirical support that the notion of comics as an interconnected multiframe remains valid in the context of interactivity; the relative hierarchy between the iconic image and interactive elements; functions of interactivity within the comic form; the role of challenge; and the role of fluency and learning. These findings highlight possible ways in which the inclusion of interactivity expands current theory regarding the comic form, serving as openings for future theory-building.

This article explores the role of interactivity in a "natively" digital life story. The human-computer interaction is an essential component in these life stories. Phenomenologically, interactivity permeates the user's experience of the life story, potentially integrating the semiotic modes, such as color, text, and sound, into a coherent, unified whole. Whether this unity of experience is achieved so that the life experience is effectively conveyed depends on how interactivity is employed and to what extent it works with other semiotic modes. The article posits that interactivity does not affect all works the same way, but manifests characteristics according to authorial design and the content and form of each work. Through a close reading of three digital life stories which employ interactivity differently-a web comic, a clickable scrapbook, and a narrative video game-this article explores ways interactivity facilitates meaning making. In particular it explores the contribution of interactivity and its relationship with visual and/or auditory elements to convey a lived experience. This article presents an initial enquiry into the role of the interactive feedback loop in digital life stories and suggests further research into multimodality's and interactivity's possibilities in creating compelling life story experiences.

The unreliable narrator is a popular narrative technique employed by game designers, as seen in games such as Dear Esther and The Stanley Parable. However, much of the academic discussion of unreliable narration in video games has focused on games with an omniscient, personified narrator. Through close readings of Tales from the Borderlands Episode 1 and Doki Doki Literature Club, we examine how video games without an omniscient, personified narrator create unreliable narration. Our findings suggest that in these games the auditory, visual and interactive (gameplay) narrative modes work together to create unreliability by setting up players to doubt the meaning of their in-game actions. This draws attention to the presence of an implied player to whom the unreliable narration is directed, and heightens awareness of the “Game Narrator” through metalepsis. We propose this Game Narrator as the set of rules that govern how the three narrative modes (auditory, visual and interactive) are dependent on each other, and how they support meaning-making and the formation of the cognitive construct of the storyworld in the player’s mind.