Player Autonomy versus Designer Intent: A Case Study of Interactive Tour Guides

We explore the tradeoff between player autonomy and designer intent by simulating a system of autonomous museum tour guides. Visitors may have different art preferences or may wish to visit different exhibits on multiple visits. Often, these desires conflict. For example, visitors may wish to see the museum’s most popular work, but that could cause congestion, ruining the experience. Thus, our task is to build a set of guides that can satisfy their visitors’ goals while also providing quality experiences for all. We present the results of a case study indicating that there is a space in the design spectrum between fully author-controlled narrative and complete player autonomy that reduces the frequency of bad experiences while allowing visitors to realize their own goals. Introduction In this paper, we describe a system of interactive tour guides that guide visitors through a complex social environment. Our goal is to explore the tradeoff between the autonomy of human participants and the control necessary to ensure designer intent. Curators organize exhibits flow, so museums are well suited for studying designer intent. Additionally, museums are large, with complex layouts, many simultaneous visitors, opportunity for repeat visits, and a variety of visitor goals. As with other cases of interactive entertainment (IE), we are forced to balance competing desires. We want tours that enable visitors to see as much art as possible without overwhelming them. We want visitors to see art of interest, while limiting museum congestion. Finally, we want to allow visitors to exercise autonomy by sometimes ignoring the tour guide, while still ensuring that they benefit from the guide’s insight. These tradeoffs are analogous to those faced by a drama manager that balances authorial intent and player autonomy in IE: a tour is a story (or sequence of plot events) in an interactive drama, and congestion represents undesirable game states.