HotSoft

This week Marty Kauhanen successfully defended his MCS (Master of Computer Science) thesis: congratulations, Marty! He has been working at Microsoft in Redmond since July of 2008. Marty’s thesis is entitled “Examining Support Of Narrative Scripting For Serious Games”, and the abstract is as follows:

In this thesis, we explore the support required to build interactive narratives for serious games. Serious games typically are built to support learning, training or persuasion and have different requirements than other types of games, including shorter durations of game-play and much smaller development budgets. In addition, there is a need to support non-programmers in scripting serious games. We believe authoring tools can provide this support.

We examine the literature and techniques for interactive narrative scripting and propose the basis of a pattern language for support. We employ techniques from human-computer interaction (HCI), borrowing from the ap- proach used in Heuristic Evaluation in the application of the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations, to conduct a study to examine a successful commercial game development tool that supports interactive narrative components. We employ other techniques from HCI to conduct studies at a professional game development company. We use the principles of Contextual Design when observing and analyzing the work of the key contributors to the games. We perform both a Cognitive Walkthrough and usability study of the tools they use to integrate narrative content into their serious games. And finally, we present a model of support for scripting interactive narratives for serious games to guide further research.