Extensible Generator
Conflict management and the development of ethical awareness
through online narrative scenarios
An online extensible narrative generator will allow educators and students alike to produce and upload media to develop online collaborative narratives. Underlying these real-time narrative scenarios will be the use of systems such as Game Theory Economics to help promote collaboration and team work.
Game Theory
Game Theory is used to study the optimum economic outcome for a group of individuals; the concept of Reciprocal Altruism is a complex regulating theory applied to biological systems; they could be described as processes to find the best/most efficient result for the individual and the group.
How can we apply such abstract principles to an educational format to engage users for the promotion of collaboration and team work?
Characters and Plot
Through narrative, we naturally identify characters and plot rather than the abstract mechanism of reciprocation and evolutionary game theory. Therefore the proposed Narrative Generator will allow scenarios to help form an understanding of ethical choices in social situations. The principles of Game Theory, Markov Modeling and reciprocal altruism are implicit within the narrative architecture, the narrative story and interaction is explicit for the user/player.
Other on-line games
This project is different to other Moog's, Morphs, and on line games. Using a unique combination of digital puppets, a social network system inspired by biology, and Markov modelling, this project enables users to explore group dynamics that underlie all social interaction. The network skeleton is a blank canvas enabling all cultures to participate without pre-determined bias or stereotype.
Simple Flash based interface
Initially, the Digital Puppet Theatre has a simple Flash based graphical interface; each user's objective is to navigate from one end of the network to the other. Through competition, negotiation and collaboration, users from different geographical locations and cultures interact on-line, communicating, socialising, and bargaining across this abstract network arena.
This network is in fact a complex nodal environment that is inspired by biological systems, such as protein and cell interaction, and uses a theory devised by Andrei Markov. Users make choices, barter and exchange as they navigate using strategies such as Game Theory and other bargaining techniques to progress through the system. This can be described as a process to find the best/most efficient result for the individual and for groups.
Suppling the flesh to the narrative skeleton
This process is visualised by an interface inspired by cellular/protein interaction showing a network of nodes which represents the narrative choices. To construct and customise a narrative for themselves or others, an educator can combine nodes in different ways and also re-write the behaviours of the nodes. This will allow the user to set up a proliferating 3d dimensional online narrative system. Media such as text, image, animation and video can created and uploaded as a growing database of components. This media can be applied to these nodes to supply the flesh to the narrative skeleton. Users can operate within the nodal environment or they could use the Generator as they would any other online game. The point is that at its core is an extensible graphical system which can be easily constructed and modeled with the minimum of technical know how.
Further possibilities
Other possibilities through an R/D program could allow RSS and hand-held technology to create real world feedback into the generator. For example the news or weather RSS could contribute to how the game is played. Alternatively how well students are working in a class-room environment could contribute to the efficiency or playability of the game.
Traditional Narratives
However dynamic and interactive, at the core are the use of narratives to help the users identify with the simulation; traditional narratives can be applied to this narrative architecture as well as new and unique stories. Therefore this project will model real-life and fantastical scenarios in real-time for users to develop the most effective outcome for all those involved.
No Moral Agenda
Whilst the use of narrative is the principle identifier to the user, there is no attempt to quantify the use of narratives or limit the nuances of the artistic form; as this project doesn't attempt to use mathematics and computer simulation to represent the subtleties and subjectivities of narrative and plot. Instead, it uses established game theory principles, which arbitrary narratives are applied to. Therefore this project ignores the limitations of social/political or religious subjectivity. The program is designed not to have any predetermined moral agenda and therefore can it can be potentially applied to any culture or social group
Research and Development
Through research and development, the Extensible Narrative Generator can be used to construct online scenarios for educational social and business use. Players can work in real time to build skills in narrative theory, mythology, teamwork, collaboration and citizenship.
-
Through the use of this gaming architecture, over a period of time certain patterns and rules could be identified. Can we describe these rules as moral principles?
-
Could these rules then be used to analyse and comprehend commercial open ended narrative games which aren;t restricted to education and moral outcomes?