Johnson-Bey, S. (CMPM) – Designing Reusable Tools for Social Simulation-Driven Emergent Storytelling

Narrative sandbox games rely heavily on simulation to produce emergent narrative experiences. Instead of featuring pre-authored central narratives, these games provide a play space, a sandbox, of various systems and mechanics players use to produce interesting narrative moments. This dissertation focuses on social simulation games, a subset of narrative sandbox games that drive the narrative experience by simulating individual characters and their social interactions. The core challenge of social simulation-driven emergent storytelling is complexity. Social simulations are complex to set up and complex to debug/balance. The entire narrative experience hinges on interesting events emerging from the complex interplay between systems. Small changes can have huge emergent effects on the dynamics of the story world. Game makers must constantly test their game to ensure behavior is consistent with their design intentions.

Event Host: Shi Johnson-Bey, PhD Candidate, Computational Media

Advisor: Michael Mateas