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Gloom is a story crafting game that uses limited pre-defined narrative, relying on the player to provide narrative connection. Gloom also uses transparent cards to layer events and their consequences.
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Narrative-centric analog games ¹ have emerged from a hybridization of genres: they borrow conventions from pen and paper-based role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the foundations of eurogames and war games. Historically, board game narratives and themes have primarily been imposed through design elements rather than mechanic...
Citations
... This could be considered a contextualist or critical realist mindset, sitting between essentialism (the reality of the participants) and constructionism (their experiences as shaped by society). A close reading, or "close play" was conducted of Duolingo [16] by the first author following the methods described by Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum [12] and later applied by Sullivan and Salter [17]. This qualitative method allows a researcher to deeply examine a work both as a consumer of that media (in this case, a game player) and as a researcher contextualizing the player's experience analytically. ...
Despite the prevalence of game-based learning (GBL), most applications of GBL focus on teaching routine skills that are easily teachable, drill-able, and testable. Much less work has examined complex cognitive skills such as computational thinking, and even fewer are projects that have demonstrated commercial or critical success with complex learning in game contexts. Yet, recent successes in the games industry have provided examples of success in game-based complex learning. This article represents a series of case studies on those successes. We interviewed game designers Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger, creators of Good Sudoku, and Zach Barth, creator of Zachtronics games, using reflexive thematic analysis to thematize findings. We additionally conducted a close play of Duolingo following Bizzocchi and Tanenbaum’s adaptation of close reading. Several insights result from these case studies, including the practice of game design as instructional design, the use of constructionist environments, the tensions between formal education and informal learning, and the importance of entrepreneurialism. Specific recommendations for GBL designers are provided.
... For example, Knizia [26] analyses dice games and their variations including the mechanics and rules adopted in these games; and Cooper and Klein [27] analyse aspects of war themed board games identifying characteristics of decision making and control. Other researches have also explored dynamics and mechanics of cooperative board games [28], narrative-centric board games [29] and card games [30]. The BGG database has been the foundation of several studies into board games, such as [31] and [32] although they have not specifically focused on individual mechanics and their interactions. ...
Board games have often been recognised as a tool to model complex concepts in abstract environments for entertainment, education, and research in fields such as military and artificial intelligence. With more board games being designed and published, it is timely to draw attention towards board game design strategies and mechanics which capture the attributes that drive game play. The game design and the mechanics used define the structure, functionality and play experience of these games. Towards this end, this paper presents a data driven review of board game mechanics and play-related attributes, their interactions and relationships. The analysis expects to draw insights into how board games can be utilised across diverse domains as a tool to understand and explore complex concepts through abstract models. The investigations focus on identifying the trends and patterns of board games being published and their individual mechanics over time. Moreover, the correlation between mechanics and play-related attributes such as game complexity, rating and duration are explored. The interactions and similarities between individual mechanics based on co-occurrence, mutual information and clustering based approaches are also illustrated. The results show that the level of complexity and engagement of a game is not a simple function of the set of mechanics used, but rather the interactions that exist between mechanics, and the nature of their specific implementation are the critical factors in determining play experience of a board game.
... A playable prototype of the above described game design was constructed, in order to enable an evaluation of it. The design was firstly implemented as a board game, which can be classified close to the Story Exploration games category, according to Sullivan's et al. (2017) taxonomy of narrative-driven board games 11 . Because of the spatial dimension of the game, the ...
The subject area of the present thesis concerns the use of serious games in the domain of cultural heritage. In particular, its basic scope was the creation and evaluation of a collaborative narrative-based game, which can communicate cultural content, in formal and non-formal educational settings.
First, the notions of play and games, which constitute overarching concepts in this thesis,
are defined. Afterwards, current approaches integrating games with learning purposes are
presented. Their application in the field of cultural heritage has been examined in literature reviews preceding the thesis. However, to better understand the function of games regarding cultural sites, a systematic literature review, focusing on this narrower area, was conducted. The review investigated: a) how different game genres handle cultural content, b) the relationship between gameplay, exploration and narrative, c) the games context of use, d) the social relationships they enable and e) their reported outcomes.
One conclusion of the aforementioned review was that storytelling is used in games
regarding cultural places, but often in a simple form. Using a narrative-based design for educational purposes is supported by several researchers, however results on the effectiveness of this approach are contradictory and further empirical data are still needed. Moreover, a combined use of cooperation and competition was found only in a few location-based games, an observation which aligns with researchers indicating this shortage and advocating this approach for learning purposes.
Based on the above observations, the next aim of the thesis was the design of the story-driven game Tracers of the Past. This is based on the incorporation of scientific information—regarding tangible/intangible cultural heritage and history—into fictional narratives, additionally taking advantage of endogenous cooperation and competition.
The design was implemented first as a paper-based board game and next as an interactive fiction game. The latter was developed with the authoring tool Twine and uses features of Classroom Multiplayer Presential Games, a model previously applied in games dealing with STEM subjects. Both versions of the game were evaluated, in regard to playability, learning outcomes, enjoyment, engagement and social interaction, with teenage and adult participants (n = 119) in formal and non-formal educational settings, following a multiple case research design. The evaluation included initially an exploratory study following a qualitative research methodology and next, a main study following a mixed research methodology.
Apart from the individual results of the interventions with both versions of the game, which are analytically presented, an overall discussion of all the conducted interventions is attempted.
These confirmed the playability of the analogue and the digital implementation of the design and its potential to offer enjoyment while facilitating collaboration and argumentation between teammates. Furthermore, the outcomes of the interventions can be considered positive in respect to the potential of the game to offer learning gains and mostly to motivate participants towards its cultural content, and to enhance engagement. These conclusions, although limited, are consistent with previous studies supporting the effectiveness of narrative-based serious games on learning, motivation and engagement.
... In accordance with the taxonomy of narrative-centric board games by Sullivan and Salter [36], the proposal presented here fits into the category of Ordered Story Games. Additional elements of Story Crafting were added in the last stage of the game, when children were encouraged to change the last part of the game narrative and create their own track modifications. ...
Telling stories and playing games are important for the development of children language, cognitive and social skills. Using robots as characters of digital stories and agents of embodied cognition will further advance children’s creativity, teamwork and other 21st century skills. Additional use of gamification techniques improves emotional engagement and helps young children more easily grasp abstract concepts. In this study we describe a general framework for designing robotics-based board games for primary school students, aiming at the assimilation of abstract concepts. The purpose of such games is to provide additional environments promoting children’s personal development and improving their socialization skills. The case study in this paper specifically relates to human rights, both as a general concept and as a set of principles helping to prevent inappropriate behavior in different social situations. In this case, having a general framework simplifies the board game design procedure, allowing focusing on a particular set of human rights (or more generally, any other abstract concepts) in everyday life situations. Field-testing observation indicates that students enjoy this way of learning. Use of robots as their embodied external agents helped students to learn behavior principles. We propose that further field studies should assess and measure long term learning benefits, compared to appropriate control groups.
... In accordance with the taxonomy of narrative-centric board games by Sullivan and Salter [36], the proposal presented here fits into the category of Ordered Story Games. Additional elements of Story Crafting were added in the last stage of the game, when children were encouraged to change the last part of the game narrative and create their own track modifications. ...
Telling stories and playing games are important for the development of children language, cognitive and social skills. Using robots as characters of digital stories and agents of embodied cognition will further advance children's creativity, teamwork and other 21st century skills. Additional use of gamification techniques improves emotional engagement and helps young children more easily grasp abstract concepts. In this study we describe a general framework for designing robotics-based board games for primary school students, aiming at the assimilation of abstract concepts. The purpose of such games is to provide additional environments promoting children's personal development and improving their socialization skills. The case study in this paper specifically relates to human rights, both as a general concept and as a set of principles helping to prevent inappropriate behavior in different social situations. In this case, having a general framework simplifies the board game design procedure, allowing focusing on a particular set of human rights (or more generally, any other abstract concepts) in everyday life situations. Field-testing observation indicates that students enjoy this way of learning. Use of robots as their embodied external agents helped students to learn behavior principles. We propose that further field studies should assess and measure long term learning benefits, compared to appropriate control groups.
... Other studies include using Dixit as part of board game training to make people smarter (Bartolucci, Mattioli, and Batini 2019); analyzing Dixit within a taxonomy of narrative board and card games (Sullivan and Salter 2017); discussing Dixit as an adaptation of Rorschach tests (Rogerson and Cocks 2017); using Dixit cards to spur ideation for game design (Wetzel, Rodden, and Benford 2017); using Dixit cards as a method for language sampling in children that elicits more lexical diversity than traditional methods (Smith 2018); Dixit as edutainment (Novikova and Beskrovnaya 2015); how Dixit can be used to teach complex concepts like ethics (Mazurkiewicz 2013); discussions of the shared narrative experience among players of games like Dixit (Montanarini 2019); and using Dixit for therapy (Ikiz and Béziat 2020). ...
We propose a new class of "grand challenge" AI problems that we call creative captioning---generating clever, interesting, or abstract captions for images, as well as understanding such captions. Creative captioning draws on core AI research areas of vision, natural language processing, narrative reasoning, and social reasoning, and across all these areas, it requires sophisticated uses of common sense and cultural knowledge. In this paper, we analyze several specific research problems that fall under creative captioning, using the popular board game Dixit as both inspiration and proposed testing ground. We expect that Dixit could serve as an engaging and motivating benchmark for creative captioning across numerous AI research communities for the coming 1-2 decades.
... Modern narrative-centric board games demonstrate new levels of unity between play and story, integrating players into the narrative as meaningful actors and borrowing conventions from video games to build nonlinear play [45]. Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. ...
... Modern narrative-centric board games demonstrate new levels of unity between play and story, integrating players into the narrative as meaningful actors and borrowing conventions from video games to build nonlinear play [45]. Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. They point out that physical games are often ignored in conversations about design principles, particularly where narrative is concerned [45]. ...
... Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. They point out that physical games are often ignored in conversations about design principles, particularly where narrative is concerned [45]. However, story-centric board and card games offer far more potential in the emergent and co-created narrative category than most genres of digital games currently exploit [45]. ...
Digital transformation (DT) is a current and ongoing process of change that not only affects individual enterprises, modern administrations, and other organizations but is also having an increasing impact on our entire (knowledge) society and on all humankind. On the one hand, a more systemic view of software is needed to assess the impact of digitization and code development on society and social life. On the other, thought needs to be given to the security of ICT systems, which is primarily determined by the vulnerabilities of the software used. Not only should the lack of digital skills and competencies be remedied but, more importantly, levels of information security awareness (ISA) about the vulnerabilities and risks involved must be addressed. Our life is analog, even in a digital world. We cannot see and feel the bits and bytes directly. We cannot touch and eat them. Game-based teaching with touchable analog material as a means to emotionalize the subject, combined with reality-based learning methods and the exchange of individual experience, promises to be a suitable way of promoting ISA. Moreover, ISA should improve the corresponding knowledge and skills so that they can be called to mind at the appropriate moment and correctly applied in practice.
Digital transformation (DT); information security (IS); IS knowledge, skills and behavior; information security awareness (ISA); security sensitization, emotionalizing and motivation; cyberattacks; social engineering; game-based learning scenarios; authentic scenarios; analog/digital serious games (key words)
ISSN:2251-2195
Pages: 39-46
Language: English
Document status: Published
URL: http://cseducation.org
... Modern narrative-centric board games demonstrate new levels of unity between play and story, integrating players into the narrative as meaningful actors and borrowing conventions from video games to build nonlinear play [45]. Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. ...
... Modern narrative-centric board games demonstrate new levels of unity between play and story, integrating players into the narrative as meaningful actors and borrowing conventions from video games to build nonlinear play [45]. Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. They point out that physical games are often ignored in conversations about design principles, particularly where narrative is concerned [45]. ...
... Sullivan & Salter (2017) examine and compare some examples of the narrative-centric board games genre and, using these as a lens, they propose a taxonomy of narrative-based physical games and suggest new possibilities for digital game narratives [45]. They point out that physical games are often ignored in conversations about design principles, particularly where narrative is concerned [45]. However, story-centric board and card games offer far more potential in the emergent and co-created narrative category than most genres of digital games currently exploit [45]. ...
Information technology and digitization increasingly permeate all aspects of today’s society. Diverse perspectives and skills are needed to shape these changes in a secure and socially responsible manner. Computing, information security, and data protection are promising fields for working in this context. But how can we succeed in attracting more (young) women to these career paths and thus ensure that they play an equal part in shaping the future? The paper presents a project that sets out to raise the interest of girls and young women in the job of security specialist in particular, and computing degrees and vocational trainings in general, by means of four experience-driven measures: game-based learning scenarios to increase sensitization, the presentation of the occupational profiles of security experts as a means to enhance motivation, the setting up of role model portraits to make women working in infor-mation security more visible, and informative events for multipliers.
... Tarot has been used as a story-telling device since the 18th century [14] and has gone on to inspire a number of story-telling based card games in the modern era. These games, as well as tarot cards, are considered story-crafting games in the narrative games taxonomy proposed by Sullivan and Salter [33], based on their mechanics being about crafting a story throughout play. Story-crafting games, specifically, are those in which the games provide a general narrative structure and evocative elements, almost always in the form of cards or dice, and the player is then tasked with constructing a greater sense of meaning. ...
Tarot has been used for centuries as a method to give structure to storytelling, both in game and fortune-telling settings. As such, tarot cards have developed over time, expanding the symbolism and depth of meaning associated with each card. This provides a corpus for a large number of possible stories, making tarot a rich area of exploration for story generation. Therefore, we have created a tarot-based narrative generation system that creates short movie-like story synopses, along with a tagline one might see on a movie poster. This project is in early development; we have created a prototype as a proof of concept. The project exists as a webpage that an interactor can use to draw new tarot cards for the story spread (card layout) and generate new stories from them. In this paper we discuss the details of our system and describe more details about the tarot as a corpus. We also discuss future areas of exploration based on our proof of concept.
... While recent writings on play theory are heavily influenced by the digital, it is also true that evidence from pre-digital studies of play underpins much of the current thinking around digital games, in particular that concerning adult play. Huizinga (1970), Suits (2014 and Caillois (2001), all derive their sense of the playful from physical games, sport, toys and traditional card and tabletop games. ...
In this article, we argue that tabletop games provide a helpful means of rethinking the affordances of digital games in pedagogy. We argue that tabletop games offer a distinctive technology from digital games in exploring the idea of play as experience, providing a sociable, accessible and tactile platform that can easily be adapted by players to suit their needs. At a workshop session at an international conference on play in education, we used tabletop games to enable discussion and observation of play. This workshop suggested that, rather than a singular definition, tabletop play means different things to different people, and what is ‘counted as’ play depends upon both individual and group interactions. Building upon this discussion, in this article, we return to both tabletop and digital games to discuss the idea of play as experience, especially with regard to the use of technology in educational settings, and how games might be seen as less ‘predictable’ than other technologies. We hope that this discussion provides future inspiration to other scholars who are considering the use of tabletop games in both pedagogical and technological research.
