Authoring of Serious Adventure Games in StoryTec

Adventure games, being characterized by a strong focus on narrative, interaction with virtual characters and solving puzzles, are a genre that can be used for Serious Games, especially those in the domain of educational games. However, the creation of a serious adventure game, similar to other game genres when being used for serious purposes, leads to a set of new problems. As new team members (such as domain experts and pedagogues) are added to teams, the common vision of the game can get lost, communication overhead is added and collaboration is harder to achieve. We propose that an authoring tool that integrates the tasks of the various groups found in serious adventure game development into one tool can help in mitigating these problems. We demonstrate this with the authoring Tool StoryTec that was used in re-authoring an existing commercial educational adventure game in StoryTec. Additionally, the integration of an open-source engine for third person adventure games in the authoring tool is shown.

In order to achieve this fully integrated authoring tool, we analyze the current game development processes of adventure games and the state of the art of adventure game authoring tools or editors. These processes are mirrored in the workflows that are captured in StoryTec, structuring the interaction and communication especially between game programmers and designers as well as domain experts. Based on a model for game content, the authoring tool StoryTec is described. The results of one usability and one focus group study show the applicability of the presented approach.