TC 848: Interactive Narrative

Instructor: Dr. Brian Magerko

Meeting: T, Th 10:20-11:40, CAS 155

Email: magerko at msu.edu

Office hours: Th 1-4pm, CAS 417

The class is designed to be a lens for focusing various disciplines (e.g. natural language understanding, narrative theory, dramatic improvisation, narrative and cognition, computer-generated music, etc.) on approaches to computational drama. 

The class will involve students taking turns presenting academic papers, book chapters, case studies, etc. from the syllabus and leading discussion. 

The second part of the course involves student-proposed  research projects that hopefully will advance their individual research interests, as well as give them the opportunity to explore research in this interdisciplinary domain.

Projects for this course will vary with the students' interests. Possible projects could include:

• identifying dramatic situations and generating appropriate (music / dialogue / character behaviors)
• narrative / character behavior logics
• automated camera control
• natural language generation in a dramatic domain
• story direction or generation for MMOs
• an ethnographic study of improvisation in LARP players
• etc.

Reading Schedule

An in-class proposal is expected from each student.  Expect to take 5 minutes, including any questions from the class.  If you have the desire for a collaborator, use this chance to excite people about your idea and show that you have a clear path towards achieving it in two months.

Papers without an accompanying implementation will be 6-8 pages in length.  Papers with an implementation will be 3-5 pages in length.  They will be formatted according to the AAAI guidelines, which can be found as a template in the authoring kit here: http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/author.php

A paper should communicate a clear thesis, understanding of previous work, and support from that thesis.  A minimum of 12 academic references should be used.  Your literature search should include related works outside of the course syllabus and articles in fields related to your paper. 

Each project will be presented in class during the assigned finals period (TBA).  Be prepared to present your thesis and findings.  Assignments will be turned in by email before the presentations (papers in .doc or .pdf format, applications as compiled binaries if necessary). 

Presentations should take no more than 8 minutes, including questions, so be concise and to the point.  Present the problem you attacked, what you did, and what was good and bad about our approach.  There should be one slide devoted to "future work" to indicate critical thinking about the next steps in this research project.

The biggest challenges in this work will be to adequately scope it to be accomplished in 2 months and to show how your ideas advance current interactive narrative theory and practices.  I encourage everyone to speak with me about their project topics before the proposal date.

The purpose of this paper is to show you can critically discuss your work in the context of this field. You will be graded on:
- presentation (Do you introduce the topic well?  Do you cover the various related fields to this work?)
- innovation (Do you present a new idea in detail?)
- justification (Do you reasonably argue why your approach has merit compared to other related works?)
- forethought (What are the next steps for your project?)
- grammar and rhetorical structure (Do you present your ideas clearly and concisely?)

Please note: If you turn in a paper that has not been edited for structure, content, rhetoric, and grammar, you are unlikely going to receive a good grade.  Review your paper throroughly before submission.