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Research design is challenging to learn, and students have few hands-on experiences to practice it. We explore how StudyCrafter, a platform for creating and running research studies in the form of interactive fiction games, promotes students’ perceived and measured abilities in certain key research skills. Fourteen graduate students in a game design course used StudyCrafter during a 5-week-long unit on designing and conducting experimental research studies. Analyses of pre and posttests, and of students’ written post-unit reflections, showed that students’ confidence and abilities in designing research studies increased, but not their abilities to critique studies. This study contributes an understanding of the opportunities and challenges in using interactive fiction games to support students in developing their experimental research skills. 

Interactivity and player experience are inextricably entwined with the creation of compelling narratives for interactive digital media. Narrative shapes and buttresses many such experiences, and therefore designers must construct compelling narrative arcs while carefully considering the effects of interaction on both the story and the player. As the narrative becomes more structurally complex, due to choice-based branching and other player actions, designers need to employ commensurately capable models and visualizations to keep track of that growing complexity. However, previous models of interactive narrative have failed to fully capture interactive elements with automated, operationalized visualizations. In this paper, we describe an algorithm for automated construction of a framework-driven, graph-based representation of interactive narrative. This representation more fully and transparently models structural and interactive features of the narrative than did prior approaches. We present an initial evaluation of this representation, based on modified cognitive walkthroughs performed by interactive narrative design and research experts from our research team, and we describe the takeaways for future improvement on interactive narrative modeling and analysis. 

Automated feedback has the potential to provide sig- nificant assistance to student game creators. Here, we present a system for generating automated, critique- like feedback for students creating games in the Study- Crafter platform. We implemented a system that builds a personalized feedback report for students based on a templated format. This critique uses automated analysis of structural and interactive aspects of the game narra- tive and recommends alternate games for students to ex- amine as inspiration. To test our system, we conducted a pilot study with 10 student groups developing narrative- based games. A key understanding from the study is that determining the appropriate depth of assessment and critique without overwhelming the student is important.