Adaptive Storyworlds: Utilizing the Space-Time Continuum in Interactive Digital Storytelling

One of the challenges of interactive digital storytelling systems is to support the users’ experience of being able to freely roam open sandbox-like storyworlds, while at the same time maintaining control over the distribution and order of events in the mediated narrative. However, although several investigations into how to address this challenge have been conducted, there seems to be a lack of focused research into the possibilities of using the concept of space-time continuum to organize the mediation of events. This paper will thus describe ideas, concepts and examples of how space-time may be used to organize events while maintaining narrative engagement, by introducing a suggestion for a framework, which exploits the possibilities of space-time.