Toward the Design of Interactive Storytelling Games That Teach Computational Thinking
Eric Shadrach Miller • Arts and Technology, School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology
The Thesis
Interactive storytelling games are an emerging genre that requires greater research, especially when they are made to teach subjects like computational thinking. The most promising avenue for development using neural networks will require an understanding of designing procedures at a level that few writers or game designers could train for.
The most likely software architecture for new interactive storytelling games are neural networks and these are not explainable in the same manner that traditional sequential logic-based programs. This leads to challenges in design for educational games and makes informal learning the first likely area for creating them.
This dissertation proposes that to deal with these challenges, game design research needs to incorporate new methodologies that utilize science fiction for speculative design.
What I Found
Four ideas that came out of the research. One of them turned into my actual job.
Pattern-Based Over Sequential
Decision trees break when conversations get complex. Neural networks don't. That was the core argument.
Speculative Design Methodology
Write sci-fi about the system you want to build. It sounds weird, but it works. You catch design problems years before they matter.
Computational Thinking Through Play
When you play against an AI with hidden internal states, you're doing computational thinking without realizing it.
Long-Term Player Identity
A game that might last a decade? That changes how you design it. And it raises real ethical questions about identity.
Chapter Overview
Six chapters, from lit review to the speculative design argument.
Literature Survey
What's already been written about interactive storytelling, play, computational thinking, and sci-fi.
Operational Definition
Making the case that interactive storytelling experiences are games. This matters more than you'd think.
Teaching Computational Thinking
Why these games are uniquely good at teaching computational thinking, and how.
Core Features & Affordances
What specific design features make interactive storytelling games work as teaching tools.
Sequential vs Pattern-Based
The big comparison: branching decision trees vs. neural network architectures. Spoiler: the trees lose.
Science Fiction Methodologies
Why sci-fi deserves a seat at the game design research table. I make the formal case.
Research Keywords
The Dissertation Predicted Axon
In 2021, I wrote that neural networks would change interactive storytelling. By 2022, I was at Axon building exactly that: pattern-based agents for law enforcement de-escalation training.
How to Cite
Miller, Eric Shadrach. (2021). Toward the Design of Interactive Storytelling Games That Teach Computational Thinking [Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Dallas]. UTD Electronic Theses and Dissertations.
https://hdl.handle.net/10735.1/9332