UC Santa Cruz

Simulationist interactive narrative systems allow game makers to craft reactive stories driven by simulated characters and their social dynamics. These systems produce narrative experiences that feel more emergent but may lack a coherent plot structure. We explored how to combine the emergent possibilities of social simulation with a procedural narrative system that affords writers strong authorial control over the plot. We did this by developing a Unity extension called Anansi that helps people create social simulation-driven visual novels. It enables users to inject simulation data into their story dialogue using logical queries and parameterized storylets written using Ink. The paper describes an overview of our extension and how we empower writers to drive narrative progression using cascading social effects from player choices.