Your one stop shop for all things interactive narrative + AI!
Back to the '80s
Date and time: November 9th, 2025 - 09:00 to 17:00 (China Standard Time)
Location: Suzhou, China
Shared task: Official website
Submission website: OpenReview
This workshop focused on exploring the utility of interactive narratives, think everything from classic text-adventures like Zork to modern Twine games, to fill a role as the learning environments of choice for language-based tasks including but not limited to storytelling. A few previous iterations of this workshop took place very successfully with hundreds of attendees, at NeurIPS 2018, NeurIPS 2020, NAACL 2022, and ACL 2024. Since then, the community of people working in this area has rapidly increased. This workshop aims to be a centralized place where all researchers involved across a breadth of fields can interact and learn from each other. Furthermore, it will act as a showcase to the wider NLP/RL/Game communities on interactive narrative’s place as a learning environment. The program will feature a collection of invited talks in addition to contributed talks and posters from each of these sections of the interactive narrative community and the wider NLP and RL communities.
We like all things:
Opening Remarks
Pacific Time 16:55 – 17:00 (Nov 8)
-Sudha Rao-
Pacific Time 17:00 – 17:45 (Nov 8)
In our team at Microsoft Research, we have been exploring how generative AI can transform narrative design games. In the first part of the talk, I will introduce GENEVA, a prototype tool for generating and visualizing branching narratives using large language models (LLMs). This tool allows narrative designers to develop and iterate narratives much faster than traditional tools. In the second part, I will present a case study on how generative AI can evolve game narratives in real-time based on player feedback. The goal of this work is to understand how players, game creators and generative AI can collaboratively create and evolve a game’s narrative over time. Learn more about our team’s work on our website – https://msr-emergence.com/.
-Xin (Eric) Wang-
Pacific Time 17:45 – 18:30 (Nov 8)
Coffee Break (30 minutes)
Pacific Time 18:30 – 19:00 (Nov 8)
-Diyi Yang-
Pacific Time 19:00 – 19:45 (Nov 8)
Lightning Talks - Outstanding Papers
Pacific Time 19:45 – 20:00 (Nov 8)
Lunch Break and Posters (75 minutes)
Pacific Time 20:00 – 21:15 (Nov 8)
Lightning Talks - Spotlight Papers
Pacific Time 21:15 – 21:45 (Nov 8)
Common-sense Persona-Grounded Dialogue Challenge (CPDC) 2025
Pacific Time 21:45 – 22:45 (Nov 8)
-Boyang Li-
Pacific Time 22:45 – 23:30 (Nov 8)
Coffee Break (30 minutes)
Pacific Time 23:30 – midnight (Nov 8)
-Jaewoo Ahn-
Pacific Time 00:00 – 00:45
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have showcased their impressive capabilities in various language tasks. However, traditional evaluation methods often fall short in capturing the full spectrum of LLMs’ abilities, particularly in interactive and dynamic contexts. This talk explores the limitations of conventional benchmarks and proposes a shift towards evaluating LLM agents through interactive collaboration and competition. By engaging LLMs in multi-agent environments, we can better assess their adaptability, problem-solving skills, and social intelligence. This approach not only provides a more comprehensive understanding of LLM capabilities but also paves the way for developing more robust and versatile AI systems.
Closing Remarks
Pacific Time 00:45 – 01:00
Outstanding Papers
Spotlight Papers
Poster Papers
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) & Nvidia
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Microsoft Research
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
Sony Group Corporation
University of California, San Diego (UCSD)
Central University of Finance and Economics
Microsoft Research
We are grateful to our sponsors for their generous support of Wordplay 2025. Their commitment helps make this workshop possible and supports the advancement of research in language-based interactive environments.
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We gratefully thank Sony for their support in organizing the Wordplay workshop, especially in organizing the CPDC challenge!
Interested in Sponsoring?
If you’re interested in sponsoring the Wordplay Workshop, please contact us at wordplay.workshop.organizers@gmail.com for more information about sponsorship opportunities.