Story and Simulations for Serious Games: Tales from the Trenches

Studies have shown that the power of storytelling can make learning simulations more memorable, compelling, and effective. Yet it remains difficult to create a learning simulation where participants have a sense of freedom and personal control while still maintaining the structure necessary for an effective story. This book guides you through practical and thought-provoking considerations on building a simulation or serious game that effectively uses storytelling. It also looks at stories as classic ways of teaching and gathering knowledge, and considers other methodologies of interactive narrative design such as synthetic story creation and management and participant-generated story experiences. It discusses enabling technologies such as artificial intelligence, design, and development of synthetic characters, speech recognition, and 3D modeling. The book concludes with a look at the future of story-driven games. Book jacket.

Nick Iuppa currently he is designing story based simulation-training for the U.S. Fire Service Terry Borst taught screenwriting and multimedia design at UCLA, USC, the College of Santa Fe, Moorpark College