Papers by Stephanie Gillis
Computers & Education, 2008
The unprecedented growth in numbers of children playing computer games has stimulated discussion ... more The unprecedented growth in numbers of children playing computer games has stimulated discussion and research regarding what, if any, educational value these games have for teaching and learning. The research on this topic has primarily focused on children as players of computer games rather than builders/constructors of computer games. Recently, several game companies, such as BioWare Corp. and Bethesda Softworks, have released game story creation tools to the public, along with their games. However, a major obstacle to using these commercial tools is the level of programming experience required to create interactive game stories. In this paper, we demonstrate that a commercial game story construction tool, BioWare Corp.'s Aurora Toolset, can be augmented by our new tool, ScriptEase, to enable students in two grade ten English classes to successfully construct interactive game stories. We present evidence that describes the relationship between interactive story authoring and traditional story authoring, along with a series of factors that can potentially affect success at these activities: gender, creativity, intellectual ability, previous experiences with programming, time playing computer games, and time spent online. Results indicate that students can successfully construct sophisticated interactive stories with very little training. The results also show no gender differences in the quality of these interactive stories, regardless of programming experience or the amount of time per week playing computer games or participating in general online activities, although a subset of female students did show a slightly higher level of performance on interactive story authoring. In the educational context of this study, we show that ScriptEase provides an easy-to-use tool for interactive story authoring in a constructionist learning environment.
Science of Computer Programming, 2007
The traditional approach to implementing interactions between a player character (PC) and objects... more The traditional approach to implementing interactions between a player character (PC) and objects in computer games is to write scripts in a procedural scripting language. These scripts are usually so complex that they must be written by a computer programmer rather than by the author of the game story. This interruption in the game story authoring process has two distinct disadvantages: it increases the cost of game production and it introduces a disconnect between the author's intentions and the interactions produced from the programmer's written scripts. We introduce a mechanism to solve these problems. We show that game authors (nonprogrammers) can generate the necessary scripts for implementing meaningful interactions between the PC and game objects using a three-step process. In the first step, the author uses a generative pattern (concept) to create a high-level description of a commonly occurring game scenario. In the second step, the author uses a standard set of adaptation operations to customize the high-level description to the particular circumstances of the story that is being told. In the third step, the author presses a button that automatically generates scripting code from the adapted pattern. We describe the results of three studies in which a combined total of 56 game story authors used this three-step process to construct Neverwinter Nights game stories, using a tool called ScriptEase. We believe that this generative/adaptive process is the key to future game story scripting. More generally, this paper advocates the development of adaptive programming as an alternative to current constructive programming techniques, as well as the application of adaptive programming in many domains.
Interactive story writing is a new medium for creative expression. The story "writer" uses a comp... more Interactive story writing is a new medium for creative expression. The story "writer" uses a computer game (such as BioWare's Neverwinter Nights) to create an interactive story where the "reader" is an active participant. The state of the art is that the story (plot, character behaviors, character interactions, conversations, etc.) is specified by writing scripts. Unfortunately, scripting is too low level for non-programmers. ScriptEase is a tool for writing interactive stories in roleplaying games that frees the author from doing explicit computer programming. Stories are created by selecting and customizing familiar patterns. From this specification, ScriptEase automatically generates Neverwinter Nights scripting code. To test the usability of ScriptEase, the tool has been used as an aid to help with the short story unit of a Grade 10 Alberta high school English curriculum. This paper describes ScriptEase and reports on our experience in using it in the classroom.
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Papers by Stephanie Gillis