Immersion in a Virtual World: Interactive Drama and Affective Sciences

Interactive drama is more than just a new breed of entertainment software. As different research projects have shown, these systems can also be used for pedagogical and therapeutic purposes. The goal of these systems is to teach sophisticated problem solving skills by allowing the user to interact with compelling stories that have didactic purpose.One of the main attractions of narratives, independent of the medium in which they are presented, is that they elicit emotional response in their audiences. They have an affective impact and only engineers and authors who understand how the emotion system works can create an engaging story world. This work proposes that an interactive drama based on a model of the user’s affective state should be able to provide a truly immersive user experience.It becomes evident that research on interactive drama technology, especially with emphasis on affective modelling, is a highly interdisciplinary endeavour that draws - and has to draw - from many different disciplines.



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Chapter 3, Affective sciences and narrative studies:

Emotions are often regarded as an involuntary mental and bodily response to a specific object, whereas the term affect refers to a larger set of states. While actual emotions like anger and disgust are important topics of research within the affective sciences, broader concepts like differing mood states are equally relevant to this field of research. With interactive drama, as with other forms of narrative, a somewhat capable author will find it rather easy to elicit emotional response in their audience. A character acting unfairly or aggressively towards the main character can elicit an emotion of anger which is directed at this character. A detailed description of a rotten corpse usually elicits disgust, and a tragic loss elicits sadness. The common denominator of emotions is their ‘aboutness’, they are directed at a specific object. Both the user and the author understand how these emotions are elicited. On the other hand, creating a desired mood, often defined as an ‘intrinsically objectless experience’, and sustaining that mood during the whole course of the narrative is a much more demanding task. The emotional stimuli created have to be both strong and frequent enough, because otherwise the consumer of the narrative may end up experiencing mood states least intended by the author: boredom and frustration.

Considering the user’s affective state is essential for creating an engaging player experience. While, as I will show, all forms of narrative aim at eliciting emotions and creating moods, which, according to the author’s belief, fit the presented content, interactive drama provides an exciting new possibility: to adjust the presented content and the interaction options offered, to the user’s mood. To do so, the system has to be capable to draw conclusions about the user’s affective state from what they experienced so far and the way they interact with the system.

During the 20th century anthropologists and sociologists turned their research interest to observable behaviours such as language, socialisation or ritual behavior, and in psychology, with the rise of behaviourism, research on emotions was omitted from the realm of scientific research. With the cognitive turn one would assume that the focus of research would have also returned to emotions, because no one will doubt that they play an important role in human existence. But that was not the case. The problem was, as Greg Smith explains in his book Film Structure and the Emotion System, that ‘[e]motions, unlike memory or perceptual tasks, could not be simulated on computers, and so emotions were often considered to be ’noise’ unique to the human hardware, a possible source of inference with cognitive processes.’ Smith, who holds a PhD in communication arts and who is also graduate director of the Moving Image Studies program at Georgia State University, attaches great importance to the role emotions play in film, as well as in all other forms of narrative.

‘[F]ilm theory has historically paid only spotty attention to emotional affects, although almost everyone agrees that eliciting emotions is a primary concern for most films. In the modern world’s emotional landscape, the movie theatre occupies a central place: it is one of the predominant spaces where many societies gather to express and experience emotion. The cinema offers complex and varied experiences; for most people, however, it is a place to feel something. The dependability of movies to provide emotional experiences for diverse audiences lies at the center of the mediums appeal and power.’

Before we dive head first into a discussion of the intersection between different forms of narrative and emotion, a short history of emotion theories seems to be advisable. Emotions can be described as a combination of physiological arousal, expressive behaviours, and consciously experienced thoughts. There is a long tradition of research on the interplay between these aspects, especially on the question whether physiological or emotional experience comes first. In the next section I will provide a brief overview of early emotion research to contrast some basic, yet often counter-intuitive, position and will then focus on current models of emotions and affect.



Simon Mayr (born September 16, 1982) is an Austrian researcher specialised in developing interactive tools and serious games for psychotherapy. After earning his master’s degree in Cognitive Science, he continued his doctoral research at the Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna, working on a serious game to support the treatment of children suffering from trauma. He is an external lecturer at the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna and co-founder and head of research of ISGinnovations, a company that brings together excellent researchers and developers to accelerate progress in serious games and related fields. To find out more about his work visit www.isginnovations.com.