An Autonomous Real-Time Camera Agent for Interactive Narratives and Games

Virtual reality environments provide the possibility to create interactive stories with the audience being an active part of the narrative. This paper presents our work on transferring cinematographic knowledge with respect to dramaturgical means of expressions of cameras to the domain of interactive narratives. Based on this formalisation we developed an autonomous real-time camera agent implementing this cinematographic knowledge with the goal of incorporating the camera as an active part into the storytelling process. The system was integrated into an interactive narrative environment to demonstrate the practicality of the system.