ClueCart: Supporting Game Story Interpretation and Narrative Inference from Fragmented Clues

TL;DR

The paper tackles the challenge of interpreting fragmented, indexical game narratives by introducing a two-level taxonomy of clues and a creativity support tool, ClueCart. It combines formative, qualitative work with a between-subjects experiment, demonstrating that ClueCart improves clue organization efficiency, clue understanding, and narrative quality relative to a baseline tool. Key contributions include an open-source ClueCart implementation, an in-game mod for automatic clue collection, and design guidelines for player-centric narrative analysis with practical implications for fan-created content and cross-media storytelling. The work highlights the potential for tool-assisted, creator-driven interpretation to enrich engagement and broaden access to complex game narratives.

Abstract

Indexical storytelling is gaining popularity in video games, where the narrative unfolds through fragmented clues. This approach fosters player-generated content and discussion, as story interpreters piece together the overarching narrative from these scattered elements. However, the fragmented and non-linear nature of the clues makes systematic categorization and interpretation challenging, potentially hindering efficient story reconstruction and creative engagement. To address these challenges, we first proposed a hierarchical taxonomy to categorize narrative clues, informed by a formative study. Using this taxonomy, we designed ClueCart, a creativity support tool aimed at enhancing creators' ability to organize story clues and facilitate intricate story interpretation. We evaluated ClueCart through a between-subjects study (N=40), using Miro as a baseline. The results showed that ClueCart significantly improved creators' efficiency in organizing and retrieving clues, thereby better supporting their creative processes. Additionally, we offer design insights for future studies focused on player-centric narrative analysis.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: Examples of game story interpretations on (A) Youtube and (B) Reddit.
• Figure 2: Four games adopted in the workshop using indexical storytelling. Ori and the Blind Forest and Hades have relatively straightforward narratives, while Hollow Knight and Elden Ring present more complex and mysterious narratives.
• Figure 3: Formative Study procedure. Literature Review & Application Survey: (1) Conduct a literature review and application survey to gather three narrative modalities in game story interpretation. Workshop Setup: (2) Perform a pilot study to assess appropriateness. (3) Request participants to prepare game clues. Workshop Procedure: (4) Introduce the research background and workshop process to participants. (5) Ask participants to complete a game story interpretation task. (6) Interview each participant to gather feedback.
• Figure 4: The hierarchical taxonomy, exemplified by the game Hollow Knight, is composed of two levels. The first level, Classification, categorizes clues into three groups: Character, Location, and Achievement. The second level, Elements, further classifies these based on in-game attributes into six types: Cut-scene, Related Character, Environment, Artifact, Text, and Dialogue. Each Classification category can include any type of Elements.
• Figure 5: ClueCart Interface. (A) Left panel for Clue Categorization and Retrieval. (B) Right panel for story interpretation.