Challenges in Development and Design of Interactive Narrative Authoring Systems, a Panel

There are several types of interactive narrative systems that have been developed in recent years. Narrative based games and simulations contain stories and interactions that are designed by human authors. AI based intelligent story generation systems have algorithms that construct narratives automatically from domain descriptions and communicative goals provided by human authors. Drama management systems manage user interaction based on strategies provided by human authors. Narrative based simulations have author specified rules for event instantiation and interaction. While a significant amount of research has been carried out in each of these forms of interactive storytelling, the authoring tools and the authoring process has received less attention. This objective of this panel is to motivate discussion on understanding the process of authoring interactive narratives, review state-of-the-art authoring paradigms, and extract practical requirements and common evaluation strategies for authoring tools.