ABSTRACT
The number and type of computer system using interactive three-dimensional interfaces continue to grow as the processing power of commercial graphics cards increases. Although a significant portion of the most popular virtual world applications are in the $9 billion per year interactive entertainment market, it is now common for users to interact with virtual worlds in applications ranging across simulation, training, education, and social interaction. Many of these environments, especially those focused on entertainment, exploit informal adaptations of narrative techniques drawn from conventional narrative media in their design. Much of that work, however, conflates two central aspects of narrative structure that limit (a) the range of techniques that can be brought to bear on the narrative’s generation, and (b) the range of narrative structures that can be generated for a given environment. These two aspects of narrative are the structure of story and the structure of narrative discourse.
