Immersion in a Virtual World: Interactive Drama and Affective Sciences

Interactive drama is more than just a new breed of entertainment software. As different research projects have shown, these systems can also be used for pedagogical and therapeutic purposes. The goal of these systems is to teach sophisticated problem solving skills by allowing the user to interact with compelling stories that have didactic purpose.One of the main attractions of narratives, independent of the medium in which they are presented, is that they elicit emotional response in their audiences. They have an affective impact and only engineers and authors who understand how the emotion system works can create an engaging story world. This work proposes that an interactive drama based on a model of the user's affective state should be able to provide a truly immersive user experience.It becomes evident that research on interactive drama technology, especially with emphasis on affective modelling, is a highly interdisciplinary endeavour that draws - and has to draw - from many different disciplines.

Simon Mayr (born September 16, 1982) is an Austrian researcher specialised in developing interactive tools and serious games for psychotherapy. After earning his master's degree in Cognitive Science, he continued his doctoral research at the Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna, working on a serious game to support the treatment of children suffering from trauma. He is an external lecturer at the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna and co-founder and head of research of ISGinnovations, a company that brings together excellent researchers and developers to accelerate progress in serious games and related fields. To find out more about his work visit www.isginnovations.com.