The Development and Evaluation of the Storyline Scaffolding Tool

Abstract

In modern day game development, story is seen as an essential component in a game. However, in many games, gameplay and story are worked on separately, by different teams and separated in time, which can lead to a mismatch between the two. To solve this problem, particularly in the context of educational games, we provide a novel solution that involves establishing of the game story and gameplay simultaneously, and physically linking the two together to see to what extent story information is present in the actual gameplay. A Storyline Scaffolding Tool (SST) is developed to make this possible. Subsequently, the SST's use was assessed, which focused on the effectiveness and usability of this tool. Participants found the tool both useful and usable and it was found that planned story content did not fully match the actual gameplay in an example game, identifying a need for such a tool.