Home // COLLA 2016, The Sixth International Conference on Advanced Collaborative Networks, Systems and Applications // View article

We Built Our Own Worlds - Story Canonicity and Indirect Collaboration in a Shared Story World

Authors:
Alan Tapscott
Joaquim Colás
Valeria Righi
Carlos León
Josep Blat

Keywords: collaborative story worlds, story canonicity, indirect collaboration

Abstract:
In this work, we attempt to understand better how authors collaborate to build shared story worlds. To accomplish this goal we deployed Chronoverse, a tool meant to support the collaborative construction of shared story worlds, mainly through the usage of a common timeline and character faction tags. We conducted a longitudinal study with three distinct phases. In the first phase, undergraduate students (the authors we study) used Chronoverse to develop their stories in a common context during a lab that lasted four weeks. In the second phase, a jury rated the author's contributions in terms of coherence and consistency, attempting to measure the integrity of the shared story world. In the third phase, a larger crowd of readers rated the stories according to their preference and share their opinion of what stories belong to a common overarching story. Our results suggest the initial story, introduced by the researchers, was given priority and considered more canonical or ``official'' by the authors, jury and readers. Author groups did not reference each other's contributions directly, but achieved consistent and coherent results indirectly by adhering to the initial story in terms of plot and tone. The results also suggest that the usage of tags in the design of Chronoverse was positively received by authors and enhanced the plot and tone consistency perceived by readers.

Pages: 30 to 38

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2016

Publication date: November 13, 2016

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4227

ISBN: 978-1-61208-517-3

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from November 13, 2016 to November 17, 2016