Interactive Narrative: An Intelligent Systems Approach
Abstract
Interactive narrative is a form of digital interactive experience in which users create or influence a dramatic storyline through their actions. The goal of an interactive narrative system is to immerse users in a virtual world such that they believe that they are an integral part of an unfolding story and that their actions can significantly alter the direction or outcome of the story. In this article we review the ways in which artificial intelligence can be brought to bear on the creation of interactive narrative systems. We lay out the landscape of about 20 years of interactive narrative research and explore the successes as well as open research questions pertaining to the novel use of computational narrative intelligence in the pursuit of entertainment, education, and training.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Formal evaluations of interactive storytelling systems have been scarce.
“While several IS approaches have been proposed in the last forty years, from choose-your-own-adventure books by Edward Packard (Kraft 1981) to modern experience and drama managers (Riedl and Bulitko 2013), formal evaluations of their performance have been scarce.”
From Evaluating Planning-Based Experience Managers for Agency and Fun in Text-Based Interactive Narrative (2013) · cites this paper as Riedl and Bulitko 2013
Cited by
Sorted by citations
TaleBrush: Sketching Stories with Generative Pretrained Language Models
Chung, J. J. Y., Kim, W., Yoo, K. M., Lee, H., Adar, E., & Chang, M. (2022) · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3501819 · Cited by 206 · see citing works
Multiagent Narrative Experience Management as Story Graph Pruning
Ware, S., Garcia, E. T., Fisher, M., Shirvani, A., & Farrell, R. (2023) · IEEE Transactions on Games · doi:10.1109/tg.2022.3177125 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Shelley: A Crowd-sourced Collaborative Horror Writer
Yanardag, P., Cebrian, M., & Rahwan, I. (2021) · Creativity and Cognition · doi:10.1145/3450741.3465251 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
Zheng, S., He, K., Yang, L., & Xiong, J. (2024) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2024.3393485 · Cited by 18 · see citing works
“In the realm of modern games, Non-Player Characters (NPCs) have emerged as critical components, assuming roles as adversaries, allies, and impartial entities that significantly contribute to the intricacies of game dynamics [1].”
BackgroundEvaluating Planning-Based Experience Managers for Agency and Fun in Text-Based Interactive Narrative
Ramirez, A., Bulitko, V., & Spetch, M. (2013) · Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment · doi:10.1609/aiide.v9i1.12684 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Self-citationPersonalized Non-Player Characters: A Framework for Character-Consistent Dialogue Generation
Liu, X., Xie, Z., & Jiang, S. (2025) · AI · doi:10.3390/ai6050093 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Riedl, M. O., & Bulitko, V.
- Affiliations
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Alberta (CA)
- ORCID
- Riedl, Mark O.
- Venue
- AI Magazine
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-03
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 67-77
- ISSN
- 0738-4602 (ISSN-L)
- 2371-9621
- OpenAlex
- W1561304027
- Cited by
- 299
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 28 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 18 · 2016: 28 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 16
- FWCI
- 30.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- AI Magazine (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence in Games
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Narrative Theory and Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI-based Problem Solving and Planning
- Keywords
- interactive storytelling, narrative intelligence, narrative systems, virtual worlds, immersive storytelling, entertainment, educational narratives, training simulation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
