Max Kreminski
mkremins@ucsc.edu
Education
University of California, Santa Cruz
Advisors: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Michael Mateas
University of California, Santa Cruz
Thesis: Designing to Support Authorship Play in Emergent Narrative Games
University of Southern California
Minor in Game User Research
Conference Papers
- “Improving Undergraduate Attitudes Towards Responsible Conduct of Research Through an Interactive Storytelling Game.” CHI Late-Breaking Work on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW), 2021.
- “Germinate: A Mixed-Initiative Casual Creator for Rhetorical Games.” Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), 2020. Acceptance rate: 25%.
- “Why Are We Like This?: The AI Architecture of a Co-Creative Storytelling Game.” Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), 2020.
- “Getting Academical: A Choice-Based Interactive Storytelling Game for Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research.” Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), 2020. Exceptional paper award.
- “Why Are We Like This?: Exploring Writing Mechanics for an AI-Augmented Storytelling Game.” Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), 2020.
- “Teaching Responsible Conduct of Research Through an Interactive Storytelling Game.” CHI Late-Breaking Work on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW), 2020.
- “Felt: A Simple Story Sifter.” International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), 2019. Acceptance rate: 30%.
- “Evaluating AI-Based Games Through Retellings.” Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), 2019. Acceptance rate: 25%.
- “StoryAssembler: An Engine for Generating Dynamic Choice-Driven Narratives.” Foundations of Digital Games (FDG), 2019. Best paper honorable mention.
- “Immersive Design Fiction: Using VR to Prototype Speculative Interfaces and Interaction Rituals within a Virtual Storyworld.” Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), 2018. Acceptance rate: 22%.
- “Are Game Design and User Research Guidelines Specific to Virtual Reality Effective in Creating a More Optimal Player Experience? Yes: VR PLAY.” Design, User Experience, and Usability (DUXU), 2018.
Workshop Papers
- “Toward Example-Driven Program Synthesis of Story Sifting Patterns.” AIIDE Workshop on Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT), 2020.
- “Tabletop Roleplaying Games as Procedural Content Generators.” FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG Workshop), 2020.
- “Generative Games as Storytelling Partners.” FDG Workshop on the User Experience of Artificial Intelligence in Games (UX of AI Workshop), 2019.
- “Cozy Mystery Construction Kit: Prototyping Toward an AI-Assisted Collaborative Storytelling Mystery Game.” FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG Workshop), 2019.
- “Generators that Read.” FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG Workshop), 2019.
- “Gardening Games: An Alternative Philosophy of PCG in Games.” FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG Workshop), 2018.
Posters and Demos
- “Playable Experiences at the 16th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment.” Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), 2020.
- “Sketching a Map of the Storylets Design Space.” International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), 2018.
- “Throwing Bottles at God: Predictive Text as a Game Mechanic in an AI-Based Narrative Game.” International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS), 2018.
Doctoral Consortia
- “Creativity Support for Story Construction Play Experiences.” Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), 2019.
Invited Talks and Panels
Speaker, “Toward Narrative Instruments.”
Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narratives (ARDIN) 2021.
Panelist, “Murder Mysteries as a Grand Challenge in Computational Storytelling.”
Intelligent Narrative Technologies (INT) 2020.
Speaker, “Synthesizing Story Sifters.”
Roguelike Celebration 2020.
Panelist, “Games as Story Generators.”
Foundations of Digital Games (FDG) 2020.
Speaker, “AI Support for Player Storytelling in Digital Games.”
Animal Crossing AI Workshop (ACAI) 2020.
Speaker, “Sifting Stories to Support Player Storytelling.”
Roguelike Celebration 2019.
Panelist, “Changes over the last 10 years in PCG research and practice.”
FDG Workshop on Procedural Content Generation (PCG) 2019.
Speaker, “Exploring Poemspace Through Procedural Erasure.”
Computational Poetry Workshop 2019.
Speaker, “Procedural Narrative Design with Parametrized Storylets.”
Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019.
(Independent Games Summit microtalks: Tech Toolbox.)
Speaker, “Procedural Narrative Design with Parametrized Storylets.”
Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019.
(AI Summit microtalks: Experimental AI for Games.)
Speaker, “Making blackout poetry with computers!.”
!!Con West 2019.
Speaker, “Gardening as a Mode of Play.”
Roguelike Celebration 2018.
Speaker, “Gardening as a Mode of Play.”
Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon) 2018.
Speaker, “Proceduralizing Character Development with Parametrized Storylets.”
UCSC Games Showcase 2018.
Speaker, “Crafting Compelling Character Arcs for Procedurally Generated Characters.”
Roguelike Celebration 2017.
Art Exhibitions
Why Are We Like This? Melanie Dickinson, Max Kreminski, Michael Mateas, Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Digital game. “(un)continuity” (juried group exhibition). Electronic Literature Organization (ELO). Orlando, Florida. Jul. 16-19, 2020.
Epitaph. Max Kreminski. Digital game. ”QGCon 2018 Arcade” (juried group exhibition). Queerness and Games Conference (QGCon). Montreal, Quebec. Sep. 28-30, 2018.
Teaching Experience
Instructor of Record
Teaching Assistant
Mentoring and Student Advising
* denotes students who contributed to a publication listed above.
Undergraduate Students
High School Students (via the UCSC Science Internship Program)
Employment
Honors, Awards, and Fellowships
Professional Service
Conference and Workshop Organization
Reviewing and Program Committee Membership
Selected Media Coverage
“Why you should trust reindeer to pick stocks over politicians” (Feedback column). New Scientist, January 2021.
“Creative AI newsletter #10 — Art, Design and Music updates from 2020”. Creative AI Newsletter, January 2021.
“Scrabble variant Blabrecs lets you play made-up words - but only if you fool an AI into thinking they’re real”. Dicebreaker, December 2020.
“New AI Scrabble mod only allows words that don’t exist”. The Next Web, December 2020.
“17: Words of the Week of the Year 2020”. Because Language, December 2020.
“Storylets: You Want Them”. Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling, November 2019.
“Survey of Storylets-based Design”. Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling, January 2019.
“IF Only: Apocalypse Eve”. Rock Paper Shotgun, January 2017.