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Author Archives: Aaron A. Reed

Aaron Reed

Aaron A. Reed is a PhD student at the Expressive Intelligence Studio working at the intersection between computation and literature. He has previously received an MFA degree in Digital Arts & New Media from UC Santa Cruz.

18 Cadence and Processes of Expression

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: April 4, 2013

18 Cadence is a new piece of electronic literature that’s almost definitely not a game, something less than a book, and explores a rarely tackled corner of interactivity in interactive narrative: the choices and decisions of how to tell a story, what bits to include, what to leave out, how to arrange them. It’s available […]

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Almost Goodbye: Minimalist Procedural Content Generation in Interactive Storytelling

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: May 4, 2012

Last quarter I took a graduate seminar here at UCSC in procedural content generation, taught by Jim Whitehead. I’ve long been intrigued by the possibilities of PCG for interactive storytelling, but my past work hasn’t explored this terrain. The course inspired the short piece I’m posting today, Almost Goodbye, a parserless, browser-based, short-form experiment in […]

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Emily Short on Playable Narrative Systems

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: February 17, 2012

Interactive story author Emily Short spoke at UC Santa Cruz on Wednesday, as part of the ongoing Inventing the Future of Games speaker series. Emily, best known for her work on groundbreaking interactive fictions such as Galatea and Savoir-Faire, spoke about her recent work with Richard Evans (AI Lead on The Sims 3) developing an […]

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Prom Week Authoring: Crafting Procedurally-Driven Narratives

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: February 9, 2012

Hello! I’m Aaron A. Reed, lead writer on Prom Week, and I wanted to talk a bit about the challenges the writing team faced bringing eighteen characters to life during the most exciting week of their lives. (So far, at least… I’m pretty sure Lil is going to go on to do great things.) I’ve […]

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“Games” for Grief, Mourning, and Anger

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: October 7, 2011

maybe make some change, my new interactive story , does not have achievements, leaderboards, or co-op play. Many definitions of “game” might exclude it. Underneath the multimedia components it’s a parser-based interactive fiction, but there’s no space to explore, no objects to take. It’s inspired by a true story about war crimes in Afghanistan. It’s […]

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Emily Short speaking at UCSC

By Aaron A. Reed | Published: February 24, 2011

UC Santa Cruz and the Expressive Intelligence Studio are pleased to welcome Emily Short for a talk and visit this Friday, February 25th. Emily is one of the most respected authors of interactive fiction worldwide, being a co-creator of Inform 7 and the author of many acclaimed works including Galatea, Best of Three, Savoir Faire, City […]

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