Prom Week: social physics as gameplay
Abstract
In this paper, we present Prom Week, a social simulation game about the interpersonal lives of a group of high school students in the week leading up to their prom. By starting the design of the game with a theory of social interaction, Prom Week is able to present satisfying stories that reflect the player's choices in a wide possibility space -- two features that rarely accompany one another. This paper reports the design details of how Prom Week utilizes social physics to achieve rich character specificity while maintaining a highly dynamic story space.
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PromWeek explores the complex social dynamics surrounding a high school prom.
“PromWeek (McCoy et al., 2011) explores the complex social dynamics surrounding a high school prom.”
From Interactive digital narrative (IDN)—new ways to represent complexity and facilitate digitally empowered citizens (2022) · cites this paper as McCoy et al., 2011
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Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Park, J. S., O'Brien, J., Cai, C. J., Morris, M. R., Liang, P., & Bernstein, M. S. (2023) · Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology · doi:10.1145/3586183.3606763 · Cited by 2,187 · see citing works
“In doing so, this work reopens the door to examining foundational human-computer interaction questions around cognitive models such as GOMS and Keystroke-LevelModel(KLM)[22,23],aroundprototypingtools[80], andaroundubiquitouscomputingapplications[26,31,101].”
BackgroundKoenitz, H., Barbara, J., & Eladhari, M. P. (2022) · New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia · doi:10.1080/13614568.2023.2181503 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
“The interactive drama Façade (Mateas & Stern, 2005) explores the complexity of a relationship at the breaking point, essentially putting the interactor into the role of a therapist, while PromWeek (McCoy et al., 2011) explores the complex social dynamics surrounding a high school prom.”
BackgroundPlayer interaction in narrative games: structure and narrative progression mechanics
Carstensdottir, E., Kleinman, E., & El-Nasr, M. S. (2019) · Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games · doi:10.1145/3337722.3337730 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Optimists at Heart: Why Do We Research Game AI?
Cook, M. (2022) · 2022 IEEE Conference on Games (CoG) · doi:10.1109/cog51982.2022.9893607 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- McCoy, J., Treanor, M., Samuel, B., Mateas, M., & Wardrip-Fruin, N.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Santa Cruz (US)
- University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2011-06-29
- Pages
- 319-321
- OpenAlex
- W2057575230
- Cited by
- 67
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 7
- FWCI
- 2.50
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence in Games
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Keywords
- high school students, ProM, social interaction theory, social physics, player choice, game design
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