This volume contains the proceedings of ICIDS 2015: The 8th International Conference
on Interactive Digital Storytelling. ICIDS is the premier annual venue that gathers
researchers, developers, practitioners, and theorists to present and share the latest
innovations, insights, and techniques in the expanding field of interactive storytelling
and the technologies that support it.
The field regroups a highly dynamic and interdisciplinary community, in which
narrative studies, computer science, interactive and immersive technologies, the arts,
and creativity converge to develop new expressive forms in a myriad of domains that
include artistic projects, interactive documentaries, cinematic games, serious games,
assistive technologies, edutainment, pedagogy, museum science, advertising, and
entertainment, to mention a few. The conference has a long-standing tradition of
bringing together academia, industry, designers, developers, and artists into an interdisciplinary
dialogue through a mix of keynote lectures, long and short article presentations,
posters, workshops, and very lively demo sessions. Additionally, since
2010, ICIDS has been hosting an international art exhibition open to the general public.
In 2015, ICIDS took place in Copenhagen at Aalborg University in Copenhagen,
marking the conference’s return to Europe.
This year the review process was extremely selective and many good papers could
not be accepted for the final program. Altogether, we received 80 submissions in all the
categories. Out of the 48 full-paper submissions, the Program Committee selected only
18 submissions for presentation and publication as full papers, which corresponds to an
acceptance rate of less than 38 % for full papers. In addition, we accepted 13 submissions
as short papers, nine submissions as posters, and three submissions as
demonstrations, including some long papers that qualified for participation in one
of these categories. The ICIDS 2015 program featured contributions from 48 different
institutions in 18 different countries worldwide.
The conference program also hosted two invited speakers: Chris Crawford, Game
Design veteran, Interactive Storytelling pioneer and designer of Siboot; and Paul
Mulholland from the Knowledge Media Institute (The Open University, UK), forerunner
in the use and development of interactive narrative tools for enhancing learning
and museum experience.

The titles of their talks were:
• Chris Crawford:
“The Siren Song of Interactive Storytelling”
• Paul Mulholland:
“Interactive Narrative and Museums”

In addition to paper and poster presentations, ICIDS 2015 featured a very rich
pre-conference workshop day with 13 workshops: (1) Building IDS Research and
Development Bridges, (2) The Ontology Project for Interactive Digital Narrative,
(3) Inspired Models for Interactive Narrative, (4) Managing the Stage: Challenges of
Participatory Storytelling, (5) Storytelling Lighting Design, (6) The Overlap and Joint
Potential Between Theater and IDS, (7) RPGs, Edularp and Blackbox: A Theoretical
and Practical Primer on Role-Playing Games and Their Relevance for IDS, (8) When
Our Destinies Meet: Design and Play a Blackbox Larp, (9) Storytelling, Digital Media,
Museums and Beuys, (10) Creating Video Content for Oculus Rift - Scriptwriting for
360 Interactive Video Productions, (11) Wish Game Workshop, (12) Mobile Storytelling
3.0: How to Create Mobile and Digital Location-Based Stories, and finally
(13) Social Media Fiction: Designing Stories for Social Media.

In conjunction with the academic conference, the interactive narratives art exhibition
was held at the industrial era museum Diesel House in Copenhagen. The art exhibition
featured a selection of 14 artworks selected from 30 submissions by an international
jury.

We would like to express our gratitude and sincere appreciation to all the authors
included in this volume for their effort in preparing their submissions and for their
participation in the conference. Equally we want to heartily thank our Program
Committee and art exhibition jurors for their accurateness and diligence in the review
process, our invited speakers for their insightful and inspirational talks, and the
workshops organizers for the dynamism and creativity that they brought into the
conference. A special thanks goes to the Danish Council for Independent Research
for their financial support, to the Diesel House Museum, Copenhagen (Denmark), for
hosting our International Art Exhibition, and to the ICIDS Steering Committee for
granting us the opportunity to host ICIDS 2015 In Copenhagen. Thanks to you all!

November 2015
Henrik Schoenau-Fog
Luis Emilio Bruni
Sandy Louchart
Sarune Baceviciute