{"686466":{"#nid":"686466","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Professor Earns Test-of-Time Award at AI and Computer Gaming Conference","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EOne of the top conferences for AI and computer games is recognizing a School of Interactive Computing professor with its first-ever test-of-time award.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt its event this week in Alberta, Canada, the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE) is honoring Professor Mark Riedl. The award also honors University of Utah Professor and Division of Games Chair Michael Young, Riedl\u2019s Ph.D. advisor.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERiedl studied under Young at North Carolina State University.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETheir 2005 paper, \u003Cem\u003EFrom Linear Story Generation to Branching Story Graphs\u003C\/em\u003E, highlighted the challenges of using AI to create interactive gaming narratives in which user actions influence the story\u2019s progression.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn 2005, computer game systems that supported linear, non-branching games were widely used. Riedl introduced an innovative mathematical formula for interactive stories ranging from choose-your-own-adventure novels to modern computer games.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe didn\u2019t use the term \u2018generative AI\u2019 back then, but I was working on AI for the generation of creative artifacts,\u201d Riedl said. \u201cThis was before we had practical deep learning or large language models.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOne of the reasons this paper is still relevant 20 years later is that it didn\u2019t just present a technology, it attempted to provide a framework for solving a grand challenge in AI.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThat challenge is still ongoing, Riedl said. Game designers continue to struggle with balancing story coherence against the amount of narrative control afforded to users.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen users exercise a high degree of control within the environment, it is likely that their actions will change the state of the world in ways that may interfere with the causal dependencies between actions as intended within a storyline,\u201d Riedl and Young wrote in the paper.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cNarrative mediation makes linear narratives interactive. The question is: Is the expressive power of narrative mediation at least as powerful as the story graph representation?\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAIIDE is being held this week at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. Riedl will receive the award on Wednesday.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EProfessor Mark Riedl was honored with the first-ever test-of-time award by the AIIDE conference. The award recognizes their influential 2005 paper \u003Cem\u003EFrom Linear Story Generation to Branching Story Graphs\u003C\/em\u003E, which addressed the challenge of using AI to create interactive, non-linear narratives in computer games. The paper introduced a mathematical framework that remains relevant today.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Professor Mark Riedl received the first-ever test-of-time award from the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE)."}],"uid":"36530","created_gmt":"2025-11-14 20:21:03","changed_gmt":"2025-11-14 20:24:32","author":"Nathan Deen","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-11-12T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2025-11-12T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"678638":{"id":"678638","type":"image","title":"Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--Society_86A8505.jpg","body":null,"created":"1763151672","gmt_created":"2025-11-14 20:21:12","changed":"1763151672","gmt_changed":"2025-11-14 20:21:12","alt":"Mark Riedl","file":{"fid":"262696","name":"Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--Society_86A8505.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/11\/14\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--Society_86A8505.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/11\/14\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--Society_86A8505.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":82088,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/11\/14\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--Society_86A8505.jpg?itok=m3SKeUcr"}}},"media_ids":["678638"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"50876","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"194606","name":"Artificial Intelligence"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"}],"keywords":[{"id":"192863","name":"go-ai"},{"id":"187812","name":"artificial intelligence (AI)"},{"id":"170453","name":"Test of Time Award"},{"id":"2356","name":"gaming"},{"id":"2450","name":"computer games"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193655","name":"Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}