An interactive narrative in a virtual environment is created through player and system interaction, often through an experience manager controlling the actions of all non-player characters (NPCs). Thus, the narrative (and its quality) is entirely dependent on a conflicting combination of unpredictability from the player and a controlled environment that must react to this unpredictability. Ideally, the experience manager should decide NPC actions in a way that never limits player freedom and shows the NPCs acting in believable manners to create a story that can be meaningfully affected by the player and feels organic. One solution to this is to view experience management as a story graph pruning problem. Nodes in the graph represent all the states that the virtual environment could possibly represent. These nodes are then connected by edges, which represent the actions that change one state to another. This graph is then intelligently pruned until NPCs have believable, unambiguous actions to take in every state, while never pruning player actions, with the intention of offering a more meaningful narrative.

Human interaction with technical artifacts is often mediated by treating them as if they are alive. We exclaim "my car doesn't want to start," or "my computer loves to crash." Of increasing cultural importance are software systems designed explicitly to perform tasks and/or exhibit complex behaviors usually deemed as intentional human phenomena, including creating, improvising, and learning. Compared to the instrumental programs (e.g., Adobe Photoshop), these intentional systems (e.g., George Lewis' musical system Voyager) seem to produce output that is "about" certain things in the world rather than the mere execution of algorithmic rules. This dissertation investigates such phenomena with two central research questions: (1) How is system intentionality formed? and (2) What are the design implications for building systems that utilize such intentionality as an expressive resource. In the discourse of artificial intelligence (AI) practice, system intentionality is typically seen as a technical and ontological property of a computer program, emerging from its underlying algorithms and knowledge engineering. Distilling from the areas of hermeneutics, actor-network theory, cognitive semantics theory, and philosophy of mind, this dissertation proposes a humanistic and interpretive framework called the AI hermeneutic network. It accentuates that system intentionality is narrated and interpreted by its human creators and users in their socio-cultural settings. Special attention is paid to system authors' discursive strategies, a constitutive component of AI, embedded in their source code and technical literature. The utility of the framework is demonstrated by a close analytical reading of a full-scale AI system, Copycat. The theoretical discovery leads to new design strategies, namely scale of intentionality and agency play. They provide insights for using system intentionality and agency as expressive resources that can be used to convey meanings and express ideas. The fruits of these insights are illustrated by a stream of consciousness literature inspired interactive narrative project Memory, Reverie Machine, co-developed using Harrell's GRIOT system. It portrays a protagonist whose intentionality and agency vary dynamically in service of narrative needs.

An interactive narrative is a form of digital entertainment in which players can create or influence a dramatic storyline through actions, typically by assuming the role of a character in a fictional virtual world. The interactive narrative systems usually employ a drama manager (DM), an omniscient background agent that monitors the fictional world and determines what will happen next in the players' story experience. Prevailing approaches to drama management choose successive story plot points based on a set of criteria given by the game designers. In other words, the DM is a surrogate for the game designers. In this dissertation, I create a data-driven personalized drama manager that takes into consideration players' preferences. The personalized drama manager is capable of (1) modeling the players' preference over successive plot points from the players' feedback; (2) guiding the players towards selected plot points without sacrificing players' agency; (3) choosing target successive plot points that simultaneously increase the player's story preference ratings and the probability of the players selecting the plot points. To address the first problem, I develop a collaborative filtering algorithm that takes into account the specific sequence (or history) of experienced plot points when modeling players' preferences for future plot points. Unlike the traditional collaborative filtering algorithms that make one-shot recommendations of complete story artifacts (e.g., books, movies), the collaborative filtering algorithm I develop is a sequential recommendation algorithm that makes every successive recommendation based on all previous recommendations. To address the second problem, I create a multi-option branching story graph that allows multiple options to point to each plot point. The personalized DM working in the multi-option branching story graph can influence the players to make choices that coincide with the trajectories selected by the DM, while gives the players the full agency to make any selection that leads to any plot point in their own judgement. To address the third problem, the personalized DM models the probability that the players transitioning to each full-length stories and selects target stories that achieve the highest expected preference ratings at every branching point in the story space. The personalized DM is implemented in an interactive narrative system built with choose-your-own-adventure stories. Human study results show that the personalized DM can achieve significantly higher preference ratings than non-personalized DMs or DMs with pre-defined player types, while preserve the players' sense of agency.

O conhecimento do vocabulário integra o repertório que o leitor utilizará no desvendamento dos sentidos do texto. Parte considerável desse repertório é adquirido em espaços informais, porém a escola tem um papel importante nessa aquisição. Antunes (2012) acredita que o ensino sistemático do léxico pode auxiliar nesse processo, mas que os materiais didáticos pouco se atentam para isso. Paralelamente, o avanço das tecnologias de comunicação modificou todos os espaços sociais, inclusive a escola. Rojo e Moura (2012) alertam para a existência de uma produção cultural híbrida e orientam para que as práticas escolares reconheçam a existência de múltiplos letramentos que variam no tempo e no espaço. Uma vez que a escola precisa atender à diversidade social e cultural, e o ensino de língua, proporcionar a construção de habilidades necessárias aos letramentos do mundo contemporâneo, o trabalho aqui delineado empregou o Role Playing Game (RPG) como suporte para um trabalho de leitura, escrita e ampliação de vocabulário. A sequência de ensino elaborada foi destinada a estudantes do sétimo ano do Ensino Fundamental II e incluiu a leitura do livro infanto-juvenil O Clube dos Sete, de Marconi Leal (2015), o desenvolvimento de um jogo RPG e, finalmente, a aplicação de um conjunto de atividades de reflexão, cujo objetivo principal é propiciar tanto o desenvolvimento de uma leitura crítica e reflexiva quanto das escolhas lexicais na construção de personagens. A aplicação da proposta demonstrou que a inserção de um gênero vernacular e lúdico como a narrativa interativa para o ensino de vocabulário na educação básica é relevante pois propicia a aprendizagem espontânea e a motivação para a troca e o diálogo. / The knowledge of the vocabulary composes the repertoire that the reader uses in the unveiling of the meanings of the text. A considerable part of this repertoire is acquired in informal spaces, but the school also plays an important role in this acquisition. Antunes (2012) believes that the systematic teaching of the lexicon can help in this process, but the didactic materials do not care much about it. At the same time, the advancement of communication technologies has modified all social spaces, including the school. Rojo and Moura (2012) remind on the existence of a hybrid culture and guides school practices to recognize the multiple literacies that have varieties related to time and space. Since school needs to meet demands for social and cultural diversity and language teaching should provide the necessary skills for the literacies of the contemporary world, the work outlined here employs the Role Playing Game (RPG) as a support for a reading assignment, writing and vocabulary expansion. The present teaching sequence was intended for seventh-year students in Middle School and included reading the children\'s book called Clube dos Sete by Marconi Leal\'s (2015), the development of an RPG game, and finally the application of a set of activities whose main objective is to foster the development of a critical and reflexive reading regarding the lexical choices in the construction of characters. The application of the proposal has demonstrated that the insertion of vernacular and playful genre as the interactive narrative for vocabulary teaching in basic education is relevant, as it promotes spontaneous learning and motivation for exchange and dialogue.

This project presents a virtual reality (VR) Interactive Narrative aiming to leave users reflecting on the perspectives one chooses to view life through. The narrative is driven by interactions designed using the concept of procedural rhetoric, which explores how rules and mechanics in games can persuade people about an idea, and Shin's cognitive model, which presents a dynamic view of immersion in VR. The persuasive nature of procedural rhetoric in combination with immersion techniques such as tangible interfaces and first-person elements of VR can effectively work together to immerse users into a compelling narrative experience with an intended emotional response output. The narrative is experienced through a young woman in a state between life and death, who wakes up as her subconscious-self in a limbo-like world consisting of core memories from her life, where the user is tasked with taking photos of the protagonist's memories for her to come back to life. Users primarily interact with and are integrated into the narrative through a photography mechanic, as they have the agency to select "perspective" filters to apply to the protagonist's camera from which to view a core memory through, ultimately choosing which perspectives of her memories become permanent when she comes back to life. This project hopes to provide an example of effectively applying procedural rhetoric to a VR interactive narrative so that future interactive narrative designers can further apply and explore how procedural rhetoric can work with immersion techniques to create compelling and immersive VR experiences.

Background. As video games increase in popularity and more people look to them as their primary source of entertainment, discussions around how they can affect players’ engagement become more important. One such discussion is around player agency, a player’s sense of control over the games that they play. Within this discussion, a new type of thinking regarding player agency has started emerging, where it gets divided into the amount of control a player experiences and the amount of control that they actually have. One way to see the difference between the two types of player agency is to look at linear and branching narratives. In a branching narrative, the player’s choices dictate the flow of the story, while in a linear narrative, the player chooses how to react, but the story itself is unaffected. Objectives. Our objective with this study was to explore how player engagement differs between a linear narrative and a branching narrative, and if there is a difference when going from one to the other. Methods. This was done by creating a game demo that contains both a linear narrative, as well as a branching narrative and conducting a user study where participants played the game and answered a questionnaire on their experience. Results. In our findings, no significant difference in engagement was observed through Pearson’s chi-square tests between the different narratives. However, there was a significant difference based on what order the narratives were presented. Participants that played the linear narrative first had significantly higher engagement levels than the participants that played the branching narrative first. Conclusions. We conclude that more research should be made, but we find there is a positive effect on engagement when both a linear and branching narrative presented in the same experience, and the linear narrative is presented first.

Narrative is expressed in many forms, yet the reading of narrative through books may be unique in its transformative qualities. The medium of books has existed for thousands of years as a primary means of passing down and internalizing narrative from generation to generation. Are books now a dying medium in the face of ever-advancing technology in an increasingly fast-paced and technologically-dependent society? Technology now incorporates narrative into interactive environments in various ways often immersing the user in ever more realistic experiential scenarios. Yet, is something potentially lost with these advancements that can only be afforded through the time-tested method of old-fashioned reading? What makes reading so compelling a medium/activity for personal development? Does experience in these interactive environments offer the same transformative intrinsic experience afforded through the tranquil receptive processing, reflective elaboration and insight offered through the reading of books? This thesis seeks to explore these questions by looking at three major factors that must be considered in furthering our understanding of the potentials and limitations of interactive narrative technologies as they compare to narrative delivered via the established medium of books: 1) theories of self, identity/character, cognitive development and behavior (specifically as these relate to traditional text-based narrative), 2) theory and research associated with narrative transportation and transformation, and 3) current and future efforts to adapt narrative to the medium of interactive technology.

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2018-02-06T18:48:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 SOFIA CREATO BONFATTI.pdf: 2854097 bytes, checksum: b8fc8b68d95934d397d2f3fda24bbbf7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-02-06T18:48:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SOFIA CREATO BONFATTI.pdf: 2854097 bytes, checksum: b8fc8b68d95934d397d2f3fda24bbbf7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-12-05 / Within the context of the researches about institutional sheltering, we can observe little emphasis on the adolescent?s departure from the shelter home, even in studies which focus on the emotional experience of the sheltered young people. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to investigate the emotional-affective sense attributed by sheltered adolescents to the moment of departure from the institutional shelter, having as its guiding principle the story of sheltering and departing from the shelter home. As methodological resource, we used an Interactive Narrative (IN) which consisted of a fictitious tale designed by the researcher so that the participants would create an ending for the drama presented by two adolescents that see themselves facing the possibility of one of them leaving the shelter home. Fourteen adolescents participated of this study whose frame has configured as one collective interview with 10 girls, one collective interview with 3 boys and one individual interview with 1 girl. The account of the three encounters was registered in the shape of the Transferential Narratives and, subsequently, taken for psychoanalytical analysis concurrently with the data from the IN. From this interpretation, three fields of emotional-affective sense which were able to translate dramatically the participants? experience: the field ?It?s too much for one person to handle by herself?, which presents the insufficient environment that preceded the institutionalization; ?I want to move back in with my mother?, which alludes to the desire of returning to the family of origin, usually accompanied by the idealization of the parental figures; and ?A cradle that stood in for a mother?, which reveals the ambivalence of the participants when facing the affection from their home in opposition to the safety of the shelter home. We conclude that the departure from the institutional shelter as a dislodging experience calls for the psychic elaboration of the previously experienced dislodgments, which have resulted in the aforementioned feeling of unpreparedness to leave the institution. In this context of abandonment and neglect always relived, the participants demand a tender care which combined the technical care to the affective so as to overcome the dissociations and to strengthen themselves for the future departure to the world. / No horizonte das pesquisas sobre o acolhimento institucional observa-se pouca ?nfase ? sa?da do adolescente do abrigo, mesmo naqueles estudos que se debru?am sobre a experi?ncia emocional dos jovens abrigados. Desse modo, o objetivo deste trabalho consiste em compreender a experi?ncia emocional de adolescentes institucionalizados frente ? futura sa?da do abrigo, tendo como fio condutor a hist?ria de abrigamento e desabrigamento desses jovens. Como recurso metodol?gico foi utilizada uma Narrativa Interativa (NI) que consiste em uma hist?ria fict?cia elaborada pela pesquisadora para que os participantes criem um desfecho para o drama apresentado por dois personagens adolescentes que se veem diante da possibilidade de um deles sair do abrigo. Catorze adolescentes participaram do estudo cujo enquadre se configurou como uma entrevista coletiva com 10 meninas, uma entrevista coletiva com 3 meninos e uma entrevista individual com 1 menina. O relato dos tr?s encontros foi registrado na forma de Narrativas Tranferenciais e, posteriormente, tomado para an?lise psicanal?tica em conjunto com o material das NI. Dessa interpreta??o resultaram tr?s campos de sentido afetivo-emocional que traduzem dramaticamente a experi?ncia dos participantes: o campo ?? muito peso para uma pessoa s??, que apresenta o ambiente insuficiente que antecedeu a institucionaliza??o; ?Quero morar com a minha m?e?, que alude ao desejo de retornar ? fam?lia de origem, usualmente acompanhado pela idealiza??o das figuras parentais; e ?Um ber?o que lhe serviu de m?e?, que revela a ambival?ncia dos participantes frente ao afeto do lar colocado em oposi??o ? seguran?a do abrigo. Conclu?mos que a sa?da do abrigo como experi?ncia de desalojamento convoca a elabora??o ps?quica dos desabrigamentos anteriormente vividos, os quais resultam no mencionado sentimento de despreparo do jovem para a sa?da da institui??o. Nesse contexto de desamparo e neglig?ncia sempre revividos, os participantes reivindicam um cuidado sens?vel que alie o cuidado t?cnico ao afetivo de modo a superar dissocia??es e fortalecer-se para a futura sa?da para o mundo.

Submitted by SBI Biblioteca Digital (sbi.bibliotecadigital@puc-campinas.edu.br) on 2018-03-21T13:46:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 VIVIAN MAZZINI PEKNY.pdf: 1588603 bytes, checksum: 56e1a0fd204b4cf574d85089f7f819b0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-21T13:46:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 VIVIAN MAZZINI PEKNY.pdf: 1588603 bytes, checksum: 56e1a0fd204b4cf574d85089f7f819b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-06 / CNPQ / The many senses attributed to adoption throughout the years, as the different legislations and processes that have emerged and changed, affect the societies and the future foster parents? imaginary, constituting a part of the way these parents consider their children and their parental roles. The consideration and the meaning these parents attribute to their adoptive families will structure the relation built with the child. In this way, the objective of this dissertation was to understand the affective-emotional senses about adoption and the foster family for couples that go through the process of adoption for the first time. Five couples participated of this research, having been invited by the researcher who was present in the adoption support groups they attend. The meetings were held in each couple?s residence, using the Interactive Narrative as a methodological procedure of access to the emotional experience according to the psychoanalytic perspective. The interpretative analyses of the narrative material has allowed the configuration of the following field of affective-emotional meanings shared by the participants: Pending time: endless pregnancy; The weight of responsibility: will love be enough?; and The multiple aspects of the adoption process: training or preparation?; These fields, which articulate the participants? collective experience, when discussed according to the scientific literature and Donald Winnicott?s ideas, allow us to understand not only the complexity of the process that measures the proximity between parents without children and children without parents, but also the perversity by proposing a role model of parenthood that rather distances than approximates the adoptive family from a real experience. / Os diversos sentidos atribu?dos ? ado??o ao longo dos anos, assim como as diferentes legisla??es e processos que foram nascendo e se modificando, repercutem no imagin?rio da sociedade e dos futuros pais adotivos, participando do olhar desses pais sobre o filho e seu papel parental. O olhar e as expectativas dos pais sobre sua fam?lia adotiva podem contribuir ou dificultar a rela??o constru?da com a crian?a. Assim, o objetivo deste trabalho foi compreender os sentidos afetivo-emocionais sobre a ado??o e a fam?lia adotiva para casais que est?o passando pelo processo de ado??o pela primeira vez. Participaram dessa pesquisa cinco casais, convidados pela pesquisadora em grupos de apoio ? ado??o os quais frequentavam. Os encontros foram realizados na resid?ncia de cada casal, utilizando-se a Narrativa Interativa como procedimento metodol?gico de acesso ? experi?ncia emocional de acordo com a perspectiva psicanal?tica. A an?lise interpretativa do material narrativo permitiu a configura??o dos seguintes campos de sentidos compartilhados pelos participantes: Tempo de espera: a gesta??o eterna; O peso da responsabilidade: o amor ser? suficiente?; e As m?ltiplas faces do processo de ado??o: prepara??o ou treinamento? Esses campos que articulam a experi?ncia coletiva dos participantes, quando discutidos ? luz da literatura cient?fica e das ideias de Donald Winnicott nos permitem compreender n?o somente a complexidade do processo que media a aproxima??o entre pais sem filhos e filhos sem pais, mas tamb?m toda a sua perversidade ao propor um modelo de parentalidade exemplar que mais distancia que aproxima a fam?lia adotiva de uma experi?ncia viva e real.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:28:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Thiago Jurado.pdf: 1551172 bytes, checksum: 5676c40f70a0bbf3ea2091d44f8b2a75 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-20 / Profound changes have occurred in the familiar composition, forming then, new family configurations, but none of these news models is so controversial like the homoparental model. In our country this new model has caused prejudices and questions about the ability to provide a family beyond the traditional standards and be able to develop healthy people. This work aims to investigate the collective imagination of the Psychology students about the gay parenting, since Homoparenthood challenges the psychologist whose theoretical and methodological assumptions has proved inadequate to meet the demands of contemporary parenting. We emphasize the relevance of research about the imaginary, because it guides social and professional behaviors, creation of the public policies and laws for the society in general. The use of Interactive Narratives, inserted in a psychoanalytic and qualitative research proposal, aims to restore the dialogue on research, inviting participants to complete a short fictional story previously prepared by researcher. This proceeding is intended to facilitate the associative movement of these participants and identifies the fields of affective-emotional meaning that are the laws governing the production of them. The four fields of meaning fund communicate affective-emocional prejudice against homosexuals and their supposed healing through love, the issue of normalization of the conduct and your perverse effect on clinical, the desire to have children in contemporary times and the role of psychologists meet the demands of happiness and rapid relief of suffering. We hope that this study contributes to a social debate about the Homoparenthood and also the homosexual issue which is implicit and resumes the problem of prejudice in our society. / Profundas transforma??es ocorreram na composi??o familiar, dando origem a novas configura??es familiares, por?m nenhum dos novos modelos ? t?o controverso quanto o modelo homoparental. Em nosso pa?s esse novo arranjo tem suscitado preconceito e questionamentos sobre a capacidade de uma fam?lia se constituir fora dos padr?es tradicionais e ainda assim ser capaz de criar indiv?duos saud?veis. Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar o imagin?rio coletivo de estudantes de Psicologia a respeito da parentalidade homossexual, uma vez que a homoparentalidade desafia o psic?logo cujos pressupostos te?rico-metodol?gicos tem se mostrado inadequados para atender as demandas da parentalidade contempor?nea. Enfatizamos a relev?ncia das pesquisas sobre o imagin?rio, uma vez que este orienta condutas sociais, profissionais, pol?ticas p?blicas e leis para a sociedade em geral. O uso das Narrativas Interativas pretende dentro desta proposta de pesquisa qualitativa de orienta??o psicanal?tica restaurar o di?logo na pesquisa, convidando os participantes para que completem uma pequena hist?ria fict?cia previamente preparada pelo pesquisador. Esse procedimento visa facilitar o movimento associativo dos participantes, a partir do qual s?o identificados campos de sentido afetivo-emocional que organizam as produ??es narrativas, a partir da interlocu??o entre o pesquisador, seu grupo de pesquisa e a literatura cient?fica consultada. Os quatro campos de sentido afetivo-emocional encontrados comunicam o preconceito contra o homossexual e sua suposta cura pelo amor, a quest?o da normatiza??o das condutas e seu efeito perverso na cl?nica, o desejo de ter filhos em tempos que pouco tempo temos para eles, al?m do papel do psic?logo frente ?s demandas de felicidade e al?vio r?pido do sofrimento. Esperamos ainda que este estudo contribua para o debate social sobre a homoparentalidade, al?m da quest?o homossexual que lhe ? impl?cita e retoma o problema do preconceito em nossa sociedade.