Elsewise: Authoring AI-Based Interactive Narrative with Possibility Space Visualization

TL;DR

Elsewise is an authoring tool that visualizes narrative possibility spaces in AI-driven interactive stories, helping authors better anticipate and control player experiences through a novel Bundled Storyline concept.

Contribution

The paper introduces Elsewise, a new authoring tool with a Bundled Storyline concept that enhances understanding of narrative possibilities in AI-based interactive narratives.

Findings

Improves authors' anticipation of player experiences.

Enables more effective exploration of narrative spaces.

User study shows increased author control and understanding.

Abstract

Interactive narrative (IN) authors craft spaces of divergent narrative possibilities for players to explore, with the player's input determining which narrative possibilities they actually experience. Generative AI can enable new forms of IN by improvisationally expanding on pre-authored content in response to open-ended player input. However, this extrapolation risks widening the gap between author-envisioned and player-experienced stories, potentially limiting the strength of plot progression and the communication of the author's narrative intent. To bridge the gap, we introduce Elsewise: an authoring tool for AI-based INs that implements a novel Bundled Storyline concept to enhance author's perception and understanding of the narrative possibility space, allowing authors to explore similarities and differences between possible playthroughs of their IN in terms of open-ended, user-configurable narrative dimensions. A user study (n=12) shows that our approach improves author anticipation of player-experienced narrative, leading to more effective control and exploration of the narrative possibility spaces.