Title: Applying norms and preferences for designing flexible game rules

Authors: Edward Booth; John Thangarajah; Fabio Zambetta

Addresses: RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia ' RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia ' RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, Victoria, 3000, Australia

Abstract: Interactive storytelling is a strength of table-top role playing games as they are facilitated by a game master (GM) who directs the narrative and devises game scenarios. One difficulty with the implementation of a GM in computer games is the large amount of time, effort and specialist skills that can be required for the creation of such an agent. Another issue is that game rules become embedded in the agent implementation and thus may become difficult and time consuming to change. This article aims to address these issues by presenting a method for developers to shape the narrative by defining game behaviour in terms of norms and preferences. The system was evaluated with both a case study and a user experiment. The results showed that the users found out the system to be both user friendly and suitable for development of games with flexible narrative.

Keywords: intelligent game design; norms; preferences; flexible game rules; interactive storytelling; role playing games; flexible narratives; computer games.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOSE.2015.078436

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2015 Vol.5 No.1, pp.69 - 103

Received: 16 Jun 2015
Accepted: 19 May 2016

Published online: 18 Aug 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article