Interactive Fiction Games for Mobile Learning?

[Tiffany Taylor Attaway]

Hi,

I'm doing some information-gathering and I'm hoping you all can give me some leads, as the things I'm researching are not necessarily easy to google and come up with concrete answers. Plus I was given this assignment yesterday and my proposal is due Thursday!

My organization wants to create a tool/game for language learning that can be used on a mobile device. One of the ideas under consideration is that of using the interactive fiction game model of a parser that the user "talks" (types) to and gets feedback.

1. Are there any interactive fiction games, or games that use a parser to decipher language input from the user, that are used for educational purposes? We're interested in examining those that teach a language or ESL, but I would like to look at some from other content domains in the research phase.

2. Are there any interactive fiction games, or games that use a parser to decipher language input from the user, that work on a mobile device? 

I'd appreciate any directions that you can point me in. I've got links to some IF sites and a copy of a book on IF, so any suggestions you can give me to narrow my search are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Tiffany Taylor Attaway

jimi...@gmail.com

[martha henson]

Hi Tiffany,

You could look at Quest http://textadventures.co.uk/quest. It's a free and open source text adventure creator that is already being used for educational purposes, in schools and elsewhere. It's built and run by Alex Warren (@alexwarren), who I'm sure would be very happy for you get in touch with any questions (I am both a fan and a friend...). It allows users to add video and audio to IF games as well as just text, so the potential is there to create pretty rich experiences. He's recently been converting some text adventures for mobile as well.

Best,

Martha

--

Freelance digital producer

@marthasadie

---

From: Tiffany Taylor Attaway <jimi...@gmail.com>
To: women in game development list <wome...@igda.org>; gamesfo...@googlegroups.com; games_edu <game...@igda.org>
Sent: Tuesday, 7 May 2013, 12:32
Subject: [G4C] Interactive Fiction Games for Mobile Learning?

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[Kevin Harris]

Hi Tiffany–

> I'm doing some information-gathering and I'm hoping you all can give me some leads, as the things I'm researching are not necessarily easy to google and come up with concrete answers. Plus I was given this assignment yesterday and my proposal is due Thursday!
>
> My organization wants to create a tool/game for language learning that can be used on a mobile device. One of the ideas under consideration is that of using the interactive fiction game model of a parser that the user "talks" (types) to and gets feedback.
>
> 1. Are there any interactive fiction games, or games that use a parser to decipher language input from the user, that are used for educational purposes? We're interested in examining those that teach a language or ESL, but I would like to look at some from other content domains in the research phase.

Yes, many IF games have been used in education. One example I have on hand is discussed in

Neville, D. O., Shelton, B. E., and McInnis, B. (2009). Cybertext redux: Using dgbl to teach l2 vocabulary, reading, and culture. Computer Assisted Language Learning.

which uses Inform for German language education; Neville's blog may also be useful <http://digibahn.blogspot.com/>. See also <http://www.wurb.com/if/genre/7> for more IF developed for education.

> 2. Are there any interactive fiction games, or games that use a parser to decipher language input from the user, that work on a mobile device?

Inform 7 <http://inform7.com/> works on many platforms, including mobile through tools such as iOS Glulxe <https://github.com/erkyrath/iosglulxe/wiki/How-to-Turn-Your-Inform-Game-Into-an-iOS-App>. It also has one of the largest communities of IF developers, one of the best IDEs for programming, and has had many well-received games developed in it. Emily Short's site <https://emshort.wordpress.com/> is a good place to start for all things IF and Inform.

> I'd appreciate any directions that you can point me in. I've got links to some IF sites and a copy of a book on IF, so any suggestions you can give me to narrow my search are greatly appreciated.

One thing you may consider is the problem of the parser in that it implicitly claims to support natural language input but only supports a limited subset. An introduction to the problem is here: <https://emshort.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/so-do-we-need-this-parser-thing-anyway/>. You may also want to investigate choose your own adventure and visual novel games to contrast with IF; there, Twine <http://www.gimcrackd.com/etc/src/> and Ren'Py <http://www.renpy.org/> are two popular engines.

–Kevin