Instinct-Based Decision-Making in Interactive Narratives

This paper examines the expressive potential of instinct-based decision-making as a method to enhance narrative immersion in interactive storytelling. One of the key challenges to propose leaned-back interactive narratives lies in the methods through which users and system exchange inputs and outputs. While explicit interfaces tend to disrupt leaned-back participation – demanding a leaned-forward type of agency – and, thus, immersion in the narrative environment, this model proposes interactions based on diegetic stimuli that avoid interfaces and encourage instinctive and immediate reactions from the user in order to navigate a narrative immersive environment. The notion of instinct-based decision-making has been observed in three stages: (1) Conceptualization through previous practices and literature review, (2) Design and production of a Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR) interactive prototype, and (3) system-testing of the model’s key functional aspects.