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Part II. Storytelling in the Information Age ] 69
and the group engaged in the joint construction of the branched narrative
using the software (Mott, Taylor, Lee, Rowe, Saleh, Glazewski, Hmelo-Silver
g Lester, 2019). In another experiment, students aged 9-11 programmed
interactive digital stories using Scratch." In addition to animating the character
movements, the students successfully incorporated a narration text panel and
an ask the audience panel (Smith, Mott, Taylor, Hubbard-Cheuoua, Minogue,
Oliver & Ringstaff, 2020). For younger age groups (ie., preschoolers and
toddlers) Mobeybou provides an interactive digital storytelling framework in
which children can place story cubes in a causal order on an electronic table
and simultaneously follow the plot on screen and manipulate the narrative
by rearranging the cubes.” The software includes a prototype story, but the
narrative elements, episodes and paths are created by the children. Each
set of cubes has two protagonists, an antagonist, an animal, a landscape, an
instrument, and an object with magic powers. The students can also choose
from five types of weather, different atmospheres and background sounds
(Sylla & Gil, 2020).
Despite experiments with hybrid environments, most research on IDNs
focuses on the design mechanisms of screen-based, algorithm-driven narrative
structures. Knowledge of the user experience is essential for the design of
IDNs; therefore, research often focuses on the impact on the interactor ¬
especially on their motivation, engagement, satisfaction, and enjoyment.
In a systematic literature review, Revi, Millard, and Liverton (2020)
summarized the results of 20 empirical studies on users’ interactive digital
story engagement. All of the studies found that the sense of agency is enhanced
when the interactor feels capable of doing what he or she wants, can make
autonomous decisions, and sees that his or her decisions and actions influence
the development of the plot. The experience of agency is further enhanced
when the interactor experiences that his or her decisions are unique and
thus the plot is personalized. Important factors were also identified in
connection to cognition, such as whether the interactor perceives the course
of events as logical and whether he or she sees the behavior of the actors as
consistent, as well as the extent to which abstraction or ambiguity affect the
interactor’s ability to follow the plot. Research has concluded that a well¬
constructed interactive narrative can be reconstructed by the player. Perceived
realism is also an important consideration, because the interactor needs to
feel that the storyworld is authentic. The sense of immersion can be related
to the experience of being in the game, where the interactor feels that he
or she has become part of the storyworld. The sense of immersion is also
influenced by the degree of the user’s concentration and identification. The
experience of immersion requires the interactor to experience continuity,
and the experience of immersion is also influenced by whether the interactor
6 http://projects.intellimedia.ncsu.edu/infusecs/
7 https://mobeybou.com/