Interactive Story Writing in the Classroom: Using Computer Games

The document presents ScriptEase, a pattern-based authoring tool built for Neverwinter Nights that allows non-programmers to create interactive stories without writing NWScript, a low-level scripting language. Its central argument is that manual scripting is slow, error-prone, and a barrier to wider participation in interactive story writing, a claim supported by the volume of scripting-related help requests in the game's community forums, which reached nearly 150,000 posts. ScriptEase addresses this by offering menu-driven, customizable story patterns, such as a chest-and-door pattern that unlocks a door when a specific book is removed, which automatically generate the underlying script. Students build scenes by selecting and placing these tested patterns and objects in the Aurora toolset, and can visually check results immediately.

The principal empirical evidence comes from a pilot with 21 Grade 10 English students in Alberta, whose graded interactive stories were included in their assessments. Participants were highly motivated, spontaneously collaborated in ways resembling pair programming, and lower-achieving students became notably engaged. Students reported strong satisfaction and a preference for interactive over traditional story-writing assignments.

The authors acknowledge important limitations. Their claim that ScriptEase is easy to use is not yet supported by systematic evaluation, and background character behavior patterns were unavailable during the pilot. The most significant practical constraint was grading time, as the teacher spent several hours play-testing each submission, which prompted plans to require storyboards in future iterations. A follow-up study planned for May 2005 aims to examine correlations between student ability, background, and performance.