March 30, 2023 at 4pm MT
PTAB 109

This talk gives an overview of the history and future of strongly-authored (no language models) automated interactive story generation and presentation, through the lens of the speaker’s past, ongoing, and upcoming research projects. These projects are in the areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, narrative, video games, esports, and automated training. We will discuss how these algorithms are built, the core problems they address, how they are evaluated, and what challenges lay on the horizon between us and an automated, interactive storyteller, capable of balancing player choice with narrative quality and controlling non-player characters in real-time.

Bio: Dr. Justus Robertson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Games and Media at Rochester Institute of Technology. Prior to joining RIT, Justus received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University, was a postdoc in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media at the University of York in the UK, and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Software Engineering and Game Design and Development at Kennesaw State University.