Implementing drama management for improved player agency in interactive storytelling

With increases in complexity of graphics in video games, there exists a need to increase the complexity of game world narratives so that players feel they are an active part of an unfolding story, influenced by their actions and behaviours. Drama Management (DM) systems offer an attempt to facilitate this but are an area in need of further exploration for application in real-time narrative games. The aim of the project is to develop a prototype DM system for a real-time game that improves player agency and to analyse the effectiveness of the chosen techniques. An application was developed consisting of a 3D interactive environment, a possibility space of narrative plot points, and an Intelligent Agent that branches the story based on a Player Model, using Heuristic Search Planning. It was determined that the possibility space design has a major role in the application's effectiveness to invoke agency within players. The sense of agency can also be improved by combining the developed framework with additional extensions. This project determined that Drama Management systems are a viable method of improving the complexity of a narrative's discourse to promote player agency, but also require careful design alongside suitable algorithmic techniques to be fully effective.