IDN Authoring -- a design case

TL;DR

This paper explores the design of authoring tools for interactive digital narratives, proposing an open-source sandbox environment that supports collaborative and goal-oriented creation of IDNs.

Contribution

It introduces a conceptual framework for IDN authoring and presents a detailed vision for an adaptable, collaborative open-source authoring environment tailored to narrative engineers.

Findings

Proposes a collaborative, adaptable authoring environment for IDNs.

Highlights the importance of supporting diverse authoring goals.

Suggests a flexible system that adapts to user skills and aims.

Abstract

In this text, we consider the authoring of interactive digital narratives (IDNs) as a system of interwoven creative processes and look at it as a design process. The aim is to better understand the structural, aesthetic and interactive concepts authoring has to address, how authors think about those and what that means regarding the tools required to support authoring for IDNs. The paper concludes with a detailed vision of an authoring environment that is considered an open-source sandbox system, which provides the technical means to build a functional IDN but adapts the availability of technology based on the narrative engineer's aims, goals and skills. The environment establishes a collaboration between itself and the narrative engineer, who's interaction on one side focusses on the collection of material and its classification and on the other side covers the design of the engine that facilitates the aimed for audience to establish the stories for their information need out of the provided proto-narrative content space.