Supporting the Development of Interactive Storytelling Skills in Teenagers Judy Robertson1 and Judith Good2 1

School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, 70 Cowcaddens Rd, Glasgow, G4 0BA, UK [email protected] 2 Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK [email protected]

Abstract. In this paper, we discuss the development of young people’s interactive storytelling skills within a game creation environment. We describe the Gamemaker workshop series, in which young people learn to use a commercial game creation environment to develop interactive, branching stories within a 3D virtual reality role-playing environment. Given this new medium for story expression, we sought to better understand the ways in which the young people choose to express their story ideas, in an attempt to provide further support and scaffolding for their developing narrative skills. In particular, we looked at the plot themes they chose to explore, the ways in which they included interactivity in the story, and their use of characters to tell their stories.

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Introduction

Stories have a central part to play in all our lives. As a character in Alexander McCall Smith’s popular novel “In The Company of Cheerful Ladies” reflects: “A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?” [3, p.187]. Storytelling is a route to self discovery, a mirror for the mind. Adolescents in particular may find storytelling helpful as a way to make sense of their emerging adult identity. In a therapeutic context for example, telling and retelling stories (in the form of solution focused therapy) helps young people come to terms with their mental health difficulties [10]. In an educational setting, role-play [11] and story drama activities [1] can be used within the classroom to give students an insight into other points of view and experience events from a new angle. Collaborative virtual environments and computer games have been used to enable participants to experience a story world as a character [9, 8]. At the heart of these approaches is the notion of agency – the participant in the experience can influence the outcome. The participant realises that his decisions are important and that his choices carry weight. He is experimenting with possible worlds and his role within them. This paper is concerned with a structured way of experimenting with possibilities within a story world – interactive story creation in which the author specifies choices and consequences for Z. Pan et al. (Eds.): Edutainment 2006, LNCS 3942, pp. 348–357, 2006. c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006


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the player of a 3D computer game. We have chosen the medium of computer games because this medium is greatly valued by teenagers and they particularly enjoy expressing their story ideas in this format. Interactive narrative, particularly in virtual environments, has been explored extensively by previous authors including [2], [4], [7], [6]. In this article, however, we are concerned with the practical and pedagogical issues relating to supporting the development of interactive storytelling skills in teenagers, rather than on the theoretical basis of the medium. In order to develop young people’s storytelling skills, we require a further understanding of the sorts of stories that they wish to tell. The aim of this work is to better equip ourselves to support and foster adolescents in telling the stories which are important to them in a medium which they value.

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Developing Interactive Storytelling Skills During the Gamemaker Workshops

Over the last three years, we have explored the potential educational benefits of computer game authoring for young people using a design based research methodology in a series of young people’s game authoring workshops. Our aim was to discover the sorts of storytelling, cognitive and meta-cognitive skills which children learn during the creative process of game authoring. This paper focuses on the storytelling aspects of the young people’s learning. To date, we have offered Gamemaker workshops for a total of 250 10-16 year old children. These workshops were run in conjunction with educational organizations such as Edinburgh City Council’s community education department and the Museum of Scotland’s education service. Some of the workshops were three hour, one off sessions, while others involved the participants over a five day period. Participants were accepted by the educational organizations on a first come, first served basis and there were often long waiting lists for places. In the three hour workshops, around 19% of the participants were female, whereas only one of the thirty seven participants in the longer workshops was female. The longer workshops were open to older participants (13-16 years) while the shorter workshops were advertised for children aged 10 and above. During the workshops children used a computer game authoring tool called the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset to implement their own games. Neverwinter Nights is a low cost commercially available role-play game, created by Bioware in 2002. It is released with a game authoring toolset which enables novices to create their own games using the Neverwinter Nights engine. Through simple wizards and drag and drop menus, users can create and decorate 3D environments, and include characters and props. It is also possible to configure lighting and visual effects, specify environmental sounds cues or music, and trigger numerous actions depending on the player’s behaviour in the game. Figure 1 shows the interface to the authoring tool. One of the most interesting aspects from the point of view of developing storymaking skills is the support for

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Fig. 1. The interface to the Aurora Toolset

creating interactive dialogues in which the player can take part with non-player characters (NPCs). The user can specify a conversation with player choices at each dialogue turn. It is also possible to specify different utterances for the NPC depending on conditions such as whether the player has succeeded in a task. Under some circumstances it is desirable to trigger events at particular points in the dialogue, such as an exchange of money or items, the unlocking of a door, or an attack by the NPC. Figure 2 illustrates what a game looks like from the player’s point of view. The player is in the bedroom (shown at the bottom right of the bird’s eye view in Figure 1) talking to a chicken. The conversation is shown at the top left of Figure 2. When using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora toolset to create their own games during the workshop, the participants generally found it to be an extremely positive experience. One participant commented that it was, “Really fun. Meeting new big gamer fans was quite good. I was sort of doing my number one dream”. Another said that it was “really good and helpful, and if we were going to become a games designer it would probably help us with the storyline”. They also identified a wide variety of skills which they learned from the workshop: “I’ve learnt how to script. definitely because I didn’t have any idea how to script before and how design comes into a part of creating games”; “making good atmospheres and environments”; and ”how to create a good conversation, make it funny and how to do level design”. An experienced English teacher and national literacy advisor who visited the workshops was asked what she thought the children learn from the experience. She replied: “They’re learning an enormous amount about storytelling, about character development, the importance of dialogue and how it can be used, the importance of setting and how it can influence how a story unfolds. And it’s a very purposeful way of creating a story because when they come to test

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Fig. 2. A screenshot of a game in progress

their games they find they don’t work as well as they want and they go back and move things around, move characters around, move objects around and I think there is a level of sophistication involved in the storytelling here that goes beyond what you can easily get on paper. So I would hope that some of children’s written work would benefit from the experiences of building character and setting”. In order to examine the potential benefits of game authoring by young people, we gathered data from a variety of sources, including the game products created by children, observations of the authoring process, interviews with children, teachers, game designers and youth workers, design journals kept by children, and reflective discussions between the researchers during the workshop. The story analysis in the following section has been derived from these data sources and from the experience of facilitating these workshops. 2.1

Story Analysis

The games created by the young people during the Gamemaker workshops provide a snapshot of the range of features which occur in the stories of ten to sixteen year olds working with this medium. In the following sections, the stories are analysed in terms of theme, interactivity, and characterisation. The purpose here is not to critique the stories, or to compare them to some gold standard of artistic creativity. Rather, it is to better understand the stages of personal creativity which authors in this age group may be at, in order that we are better equipped to support young people in developing such skills in the future. 2.2

Story Themes

Telling stories can be used as a way to experiment with self identity and explore one’s place in the world. “Through the stories we tell, especially the stories

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we tell about ourselves, we construct ourselves” (Engel, 1999; p. 55). It is a particularly powerful tool for adolescents to come to terms with the changes in their lives and their place within their environment. In examining the young people’s stories then, a central focus of interest is the theme: what sorts of issues are the authors grappling with, and how is this expressed in the game medium? The story theme which is most frequently expressed by the young people is that of revenge, particularly plots in which the player must avenge the death of parents. As an illustration of the prevalence of this idea, of the thirty seven games created at the week long workshop, eleven of the plots as described by their authors had this type of story line. A representative example is described by the author as follows: “well it’s about this guy and his mother and father are killed by, like, this gang person and he’s just trying to seek revenge and at the end he eventually kills them.” (Aaron1 , 13). A further three plots involved family members, but as adversaries rather than characters to avenge. There are various possible explanations for the young people’s interest in stories in which they are responsible for avenging the death of family members. Firstly, although it could be the result of sharing story ideas in during group discussions at the workshop, even if the young people did not think of the idea initially, they must have found it sufficiently appealing to want to imitate it. It could be the case that revenge plots can serve as some explanation, perhaps even a justification, for the violent acts committed by the player throughout the game. The strong involvement of parents, however, is likely to have some significance. At this stage in the young people’s lives, their relationships with their parents are often in flux as they try to gain more independence. In these games, the young people, in role of the player, take on the world in the absence of, in fact on behalf of, their parents. Another common theme which emerges from the games is that of a single hero saving the world from a dreadful disaster. In Gerald’s game, for example, he told an interviewer: “I play someone called Gerald who’s an agent of MI6. The people that he’s got to save are his best friend Vinnie and his girlfriend Kerry who are captured by Bin-Laden and taken into a dungeon with a dragon protecting it.” It is not hard to explain why a thirteen year old would make a game in which the protagonist (his namesake) possesses such extraordinary skill. Themes of this sort are well established in popular culture, particularly in first-person shooter (FPS) computer games which this author enjoyed. Far fewer of the games have romantic plot lines, which are perhaps of less interest to the teenage boys who attended the workshop. There are notable exceptions: one author (aged 14) explained that his story “answers the fundamental question: can a mortal fall in love with an angel?” The player is attracted to the angel and eventually they fall in love. In discussion with a researcher later in the workshop however, he commented that he found it hard to portray the relationship between the angel and the player in Neverwinter Nights. He suggested he might do this with a cut scene: “The sort of, the twist at the end is the devil banishes her to hell. That’s in the cut scene. If you want you can go and lead the army of badgers 1

All the authors’ real names have been substituted in this paper.

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and occasionally a couple of penguins to save her from hell”. In another romantic plot, Ralph (aged 13) motivates the player’s vengeful acts by an initial cut scene in which the player’s fianc´e is murdered during the wedding ceremony. An interesting theme of some stories is an exploration of spiritual or moral values. In the game mentioned above in which the player falls in love with an angel, the player “goes on a journey to the after life” and is asked “to do a favour by God”. If the player succeeds, he is told: “you will not only go to the after life but you will be getting to go to God’s own place in the clouds” In heaven he can meet his dog again, beside God. When asked whether he is a church goer, the author replied that he was not but that as the player died in the prequel game, he needed to figure out a way to bring him back. In an unusual twist, God is a magical badger. In another game, the character explores a moral dilemma about whether violent means are justified by a peaceful end: “Well there was a war ages ago and obviously you won and you are the great hero and you hated this idea of fighting now and just wanted to live peacefully. But then this army has come back and everyone is calling on you to defend them and you don’t want to so you kind of have to. It’s against your will.” In a similar vein, the player in another story goes on a journey to recover his memory only to discover that his amnesia is self inflicted “because he didn’t want to be a fighter”. At the end of this game, the player chooses to become a fighter once more and is attacked again. In this story the player character is given a chance to reverse a previous decision, to revaluate his attitude. A twist on this theme can be found in Edgar’s (age 14) game. The player is informed: “You were the Emperor, ruler of the land. You were brought down from power when it was thought you were gaining too much power by an unknown source. This was not meant to happen, it was not written on the wheels of fate. You must regain power, regain your servants and great balance again” Interestingly, the player gradually discovers that he was previously evil, implying that evil is required to balance out good. The final theme which we shall consider here is that of satirical commentary, in which the author expresses an opinion on aspects of modern life or the game genre itself. In a discussion with a visiting game designer, Steve (aged 13) described his plot “It’s not anything like saving anyone or killing anything. It’s just to find your wallet. The background is you’re just some person who lives in the present day. You’re walking to Blockbusters and some zombies come and nick your wallet. You accidentally get hit by a car and you find yourself in hell. Instead of a great fiery pit it’s a snowy icy place. There’s signs saying “welcome to hell”. It’s a very commercial place. It’s strange. You get people like John F Kennedy and Johnny Cash and stuff”. Steve has deliberately chosen not to use a common theme such as saving the world, and has subverted the normal expectation of hell. Anthony (aged 13) tried his hand at political satire by creating a game in which the player is an ex-FBI agent who must rescue the American President, who has been kidnapped by John Kerry. During the game he meets political characters including Jacques Chirac, who challenges him to a duel.

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Examination of the themes of the stories that young people choose tell in the game medium suggests that the authors are exploring issues which are important to them. Whether by re-casting his role as someone who acts on the behalf of the family, or by becoming a heroic character who can save the world, the author has an opportunity to become someone different. There is also a sense in which the authors are expressing their values or attitudes to life either within the moral message of the story, or by making meta-comments about their attitudes to society through the game. 2.3

Interactivity

Considerable skill is required to create an interactive plot: the task is more complex than imagining a linear story with a single beginning, middle and end. Often the Gamemaker authors struggled with this complexity, and interactivity in their stories tended to be localised to individual interactions rather than as a feature of the plot as a whole. During localised interactions, the player may examine objects, enter combat or take part in interactive dialogues. Within a single level these interactions may be related, but continuity between levels is often lacking. As the main technique authors employ to introduce an interactive element into their stories is dialogue, descriptive statistics of the dialogue complexity of the 2005 authors’ games are presented in Table 1. The number of dialogues in the game and the total word count for each author’s game illustrates the effort the young people devoted to this aspect of game design. For example, Steve spent a good deal of time writing conversations with incidental characters (54 dialogues in total). Greg wrote a lengthy 3499 words of dialogue, comparable to the length of a substantial school essay. In contrast, Alastair wrote no dialogue at all. During an interview he explained that he had tried writing conversations but had not yet put them in his game. His favourite style of game involved heavy combat. From the point of view of interactivity, the columns illustrating the average dialogue depth and number of choices are important. Dialogue depth is the number of conversational turns between player and NPC. Dialogue choice refers the number of occasions where the player has a choice of more than one possible line of dialogue at a given conversational turn. Most of the authors from this workshop wrote genuine dialogues (rather than monologues), although this is not always the case with younger children. Those who wrote dialogues included interactivity for the players in the form of a decision about what to say in response to an NPC. Some authors included many dialogue choice points for their players throughout the game – once again Steve and Greg stand out in this respect. Anthony however, preferred not to give the player choice in conversations, although he did enjoy writing lengthy comic dialogue. The other authors chose to incorporate interactivity in varying extents; it is however, fair to say that most of them understood the concept and were able to apply it. An interesting issue relating to interactivity is the temporal ordering of plot episodes. If the player has the freedom to explore the game environment, interacting with characters and artefacts, the author must consider whether there are dependencies between interactions. The concept that there can be different

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Table 1. Dialogue Complexity in 2005 Workshop Games Author Number of Total word Average depth Total dialogue dialogues count of dialogue choices Alastair 0 0 0 0 Anthony 18 627 5 0 Aaron 2 141 10 2 Chris 10 324 5 9 Greg 10 3499 58 98 Edmund 9 909 13 9 Simon 11 591 6 9 Steve 54 2601 6 47 Josh 14 1002 7 19 Julian 5 278 8 7

outcomes to an interaction depending on the player’s history in the environment is often first introduced to authors when they write dialogue. They realise that a character should say something different on the first and subsequent occasions when they talk to the player. This is particularly evident in quest plot structures where the NPC first requests the player to bring back an item, and then refuses to help the player until he brings back that item. By considering these possibilities, the authors start to think about both temporal ordering and conditionality based on the player’s current and previous states. A more sophisticated issue emerges when the author must consider the relationship between time and space. If the game has a cycle of events which occur at regular intervals, then the author must consider the player’s experience at different phases of the cycle. In the NWN toolset, it is possible to specify a set of actions which an NPC will repeat. For example, Edmund created a level in which some elf guards patrolled a building. He also wrote important plot information into a dialogue with one of these elves. As his tester discovered, it is possible for the player to miss out on that information because his path through the level happens not to coincide with the timing of the guard patrol and he is not aware that he should wait for the guards. Edmund considered how to address this: “I’ll make sure you know that they’re patrolling the area. I’ll tell you that they’re on patrol so you don’t walk off. It’s all been timed and you have to talk to them at the right point”. 2.4

Characterisation

Firstly, what sort of player characters do the children create? Who does the player get to be in their games? The player character is usually a fighter of some kind, some heroic (a secret agent, a policeman or a knight), and others less noble such as mercenaries or assassins. A number of other player characters are princes or kings, and some player characters are involved in the supernatural as sorcerers or vampires. None of the boys decided to include female player characters.

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What sorts of characters populate the game worlds? Notably, there are very few female characters in the games. The significant female characters who do appear are an angel, two girl friends (who need rescued), a fianc´e and a mother. The attitudes towards women could not be described as politically correct as this excerpt from an interview with Ronald (aged 14) suggests: “Lindsay who is one of the kidnap [victims] is em,. the player slays the dragon for her and she says what do you want, my hand in marriage, gold, or XP (experience points)? And then she follows you around if she gets married. I might put in some nagging though”. Endearingly, mother figures are treated with more reverence. At the beginning of Simon’s game (aged 14) the player feels the need to tell his mum that the village is under attack. “You see that your village is under attack. So then you go to your maw [mother] and tell her about it. Then you suit up for the fights outside”. Later in the game, the player travels back in time and meets his mother and the younger version of himself in an effort to save them from being killed. The authors often create helper characters who are side kicks for the player. This may be an artifact of the NWN toolset in which it is relatively easy to write a script which causes an NPC to follow the player under certain conditions. The NPC will also then fight on behalf of the player. The idea of having a familiar of this sort seems particularly appealing to the young people. The helpers are generally large powerful creatures such as dragons or giants, but in other cases they are more common pets such as dogs. The young peoples’ games are populated with hosts of characters. The majority of the characters have “walk-on parts” in the sense that that they are not central figures in the plot line. However, they do play a role in the story by building up a sense of place; the player feels that the environment is more real because it is populated by characters who appear to be going about their business. In many cases this business is related to fighting and killing the player, but in other stories the minor characters have lines of dialogue. In Steve’s game, in which there is a level set in Hell, there are a number of souls who have short dialogues such as “You must check out the souvenir shop. Great stuff!” or “And in Harry Potter, I’m a SNAKE! How lame is that?!” Individually these dialogues don’t contribute to the plot; they do however contribute greatly to the player’s sense of Hell as a place and portray the author’s desire to take a satirical view of the game genre and of much of popular culture.

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Discussion and Conclusions

Working with the young people during the Gamemaker workshops has given us an insight into the sorts of stories which are important to them. We have summarised some features of their stories in the previous section in order to further an understanding of the young people’s aspirations and abilities in interactive storytelling. Evidence collected from interviews with the young people and games experts builds up a picture of the teenagers exploring the boundaries of the new medium while exploring themes which have personal resonance for them. Naturally, the workshop participants displayed a range of storytelling and

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game authoring skills. At one end of the spectrum, the less accomplished authors work well within the boundaries of the medium, not exploiting the full feature set of the authoring tool. They express simple, linear, combat heavy stories but tend not to experiment with interactive forms of narrative. By contrast, the more skilled authors experiment with more sophisticated techniques for interactive narrative and encounter the complex problems which are inherent to that narrative form. These authors also enjoy commenting on the game genre in a satirical fashion: it is a genre which they know well enough to imitate with irony. At this end of the spectrum, the authors are purposeful and in control of portraying story ideas which express personally important messages. Commenting on a particularly good example of a game, the game designer noted: “He really did have a plan. He wanted to do something and he had an idea which he wanted to get across... He’s managed to put his own mark on it. Even within the framework, with the dungeons and dragons theme he’s really managed to show his own character through it.” On the basis of a deeper understanding of the interactive stories which young people want to tell, and the challenges they encounter in expressing their ideas in this medium, we are in a better position to consider how to teach interactive storytelling skills effectively.

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