Links are the most important new punctuation mark since the invention of the comma, but it has been years since the last in-depth discussions of link poetics. Taking inspiration Raymond Queneau's Exercices De Style, we explore the poetics of contemporary link usage by offering exercises in which the same piece of text is divided and linked in different ways. We present three different exercises-varying the division of a text into lexia, varying links among lexia, and varying links within lexia-while pointing toward potential aesthetic considerations of each variation. Our exercises are intended descriptively, not prescriptively, as a conversational starting point for analysis and as a compendium of useful techniques upon which artists might build.

Procedural storytelling offers immense promise for games to offer more reactive narrative experiences that feel more deeply tailored to players' decisions. To date, interactive narrative systems have tended toward either a large emergent possibility space with less focus on narrative structure, or toward greater structure with smaller possibility spaces. In this paper, we introduce Lume, a system for procedural narrative generation that combines the best of these two approaches through a novel combinatorial scene architecture in which storylet scenes are comprised of parameterized node-trees. We detail how the system works and discuss how it moves toward creating reactive interactive narratives that are both dynamic and coherent.

This paper presents a case study in the experience-first prototyping of a generative game. Our goal in this process was to create a PCG-based mystery story construction game ncentered on a social simulation of characters and their motivations, and driven by a set of core themes and experiences we wanted players to encounter. In pursuit of this goal, we created a series of prototypes to test how a variety of generative and AI-based techniques---including character generation, character action suggestion based on game state, story sifting, and social simulation---may be used in support of collaborative storytelling. In this paper we catalogue these prototypes and what we have learned by creating them, detailing design elements we found to be successful in supporting player creativity and that may be useful to the developers of similar games and experiences going forward.

Visualization of interactive narrative structures remains a difficult problem: while authoring systems have developed robust ways to visually communicate narrative structures, comparatively little work has been done towards visualizing the output of playthroughs, namely story metrics and redundant content paths. This paper explores an interactive visualization that quickly helps authors spot redundant paths in interactive narratives made with the Twine authoring tool. By treating branching narratives as directed graphs and walking the graph of each unique path through a story, the visualization collects all possible paths through a narrative, using force-directed graph layouts to visualize the narrative structure and increasing size of the node thickness of the paths through the narrative to indicate nodes and links visited on different possible paths. The outcome is a clear indication of redundant paths and most-visited nodes.

The opposition between narrative agency—the ability for readers and players to make meaningful choices—and narrative immersion has been an ongoing conflict in the world of interactive storytelling. Some forms, such as games, have been argued to be more successful at balancing the tension between interactivity and immersion than forms like hypertext fiction [16]. Using these two forms as illustration, this paper will argue for the need for more nuanced understandings of “agency” and “immersion” by introducing definitions of diegetic and extra-diegetic agency alongside definitions of narrative and mechanical immersion. Extending the vocabulary of agency and immersion highlights some key differences in how games and hypertexts have been understood.

As multitouch phones and tablets become more popular, multitouch technologies receive increasing attention. The underlying interaction paradigm of such devices is the space on which objects are manipulated by the user's fingertips. It is natural that hypertext narratives find their way from primarily mouse-driven interaction to spatial structures and visually rich presentations. In this article we propose three features for multitouch hypertext narrative applications: (i) Native multitouch support and direct manipulations of fictive objects; (ii) using the space as a structuring mechanism rather than a means for presentation; and (iii) supporting presentation of visually rich objects. Our prototype, TouchStory , is a novel tool specialized for authoring and reading hypertext narratives that integrates these features.

As our attitude toward technology has fluctuated between viewing it as either a benevolent aid or a dangerous threat, the arts have responded with various ways of expressing this anxiety. Glitch art confronts this technological anxiety, and continues the modernist and postmodernist fascination with representation and medium. An extension of remix culture, intentional glitching---or databending---presents an interesting new form for combining narrative and visual art.

Critics of games’ narrative ability fail to recognize that narrative impact in games is established differently than in traditional media. This paper demonstrates how agency and avatar relationships affect game narratives. Understanding these relationships may lead to improved understanding of the medium’s limitations or allow games to take on new types of narratives.