Inspiration
I joined the ALT Games Lab at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year. The main investigator, Sam Shields, was eager to have me join as Game Writer for an updated version of their project, Academical. As someone who had designed chatbots in the past, I was looking for more opportunities to explore other areas of narrative and conversation design.
What it does
"Academical is a choice-based interactive storytelling game created in the Twine authoring framework for RCR education that enables players to experience a story from multiple perspectives. Each playable scenario in Academical centers on a conversation between two stakeholders in the RCR issue at hand, one of whom is controlled by the player. The game shows how seemingly obvious answers around questions of research ethics can be complicated by factors such as power dynamics and marginalized identities and experiences." -ALT Games Lab
How I built it
My first task in the Academical Lab was to update character sheets for Brad and Ned on our wiki, so that the writers could have a reference to the characters' backstories and personalities thus far. Then each week, I would collaborate with the writers, artists, and investigators to revise the first episode of our new iteration of the game. We would brainstorm ideas of what lesson we were trying to each in this episode, then create Miro boards to build our thread skeleton and gain a sense of the dialogue flow. Then, we would finalize the dialogue on spreadsheets that would then be imported to Twine. We also created a visualization using GPT at the end of our first episode to reflect all our threads so far.
Challenges I ran into
While my fellow writers and I were fortunate enough to be working with a pre-existing game, we ran into several challenges. Firstly, we learned about several pedagogical concepts, and we had to devise new methods of how to integrate them into the game so that it would be a learning experience for our players, rather than just a clickable story. We also needed to it to be a dynamic storytelling experience, which would allow players to navigate the situation our characters were in without feeling railroaded into choosing a particular dialogue choice.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I was able to create the character sheets for Brad and Ned, which was integral to organizational and writing efforts for the team. I also integrated real ethics cases such as the Milgram experiment into the story, which further implemented pedagogy into our game. I also created skeletons for new threads and wrote dialogue for these threads, as well as updated existing content. As a HCI student, I found it really fulfilling to create a fun game experience for players (users), and imagining what sort of narrative routes I might go down as a player. This sort of user empathy motivated me to create an educational yet captivating narrative experience. Visual novels and RPGs are my favorite game genres, so this truly felt like a passion project for me. Collaborating with a team of writers and artists was key to developing a polished product.
What I learned
Through Sam and Alex’s guidance, I was able to learn about the basics of interactive narrative design, dialog trees and fragments, as well as thread switching. These fundamentals were key to building a cohesive and compelling story. I was able to study more regarding research ethics, and devise a way to educate players without making it seem ham-fisted.
What's next for Academical
While I'm currently taking a hiatus for my participation in the ALT Games Lab, I hope to resume my participation in the near future. I'd love for Academical to become a completely fleshed out game, and for it to be widely available to researchers based at UC Santa Cruz as well as the researching world at large.
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