Story Creation in VIRTUAL GAME WORLDS

概敘
　　Much of the research examining games in educational settings looks at children playing games designed by professional software developers, with little focus on children creating their own games. Some work investigating this issue (for example [7, 8]), looks at how the process of game creation fosters children’s programming skills as, until very recently, it was impossible to create a game without some knowledge of programming. In the case of 3D virtual environment role-playing games, it has required both advanced programming and mathematical skills.
　　However, technology has reached the point where these skills are no longer always necessary: more commercial games are shipping with game-editing tools to encourage skilled members of their user communities to develop further (free) content. A good example of this phenomenon is Bioware’s role-playing game, Neverwinter Nights, released in 2002 with the Neverwinter Nights toolset that can be used by nonexperts to create characters, settings, and interactive plots. No knowledge of 3D modeling is required, and basic tasks can be accomplished without any programming skills.
　　Given these developments, we can now begin to explore how children use game-creation toolkits to build sophisticated 3D-interactive games that their peers can play. This new ability to produce a finished product of commercial quality is important, as children have high expectations for games in terms of quality of graphics, among other features. If we are to use games in education, and expect them to motivate and interest children, they must be of similarly high quality, otherwise their effect will be lost.
　　Additionally, with the decreasing focus on programming skills, at least for designing games within a game-creation environment, computer games can be integrated more tightly with specific domains within the curriculum, for example, literacy and narrative development, the subject of this article.

What I See

　　這是一篇資訊管理期刊的論文，作者期望用"絕冬城之夜"這款遊戲的編輯器作研究，期望學童借著此軟體來培養創作故事的能力。因此開辦了一個類似工作坊的活動讓學童參加，利用此編輯器創造故事、創作遊戲。而很快的，作者就發現了許多問題，例如遊戲模式、遊戲風格的限制，故事腳本上也難以使用多項式複雜的結局等，這些屬於RPG編輯器上的限制確實也會影響遊戲腳本設定。不過研究的目的是要讓學童能設計故事，能達到引起學生的興趣並讓他們能交流自己的創作就算是一件成功的是吧!
　　回想第一次碰到格鬥遊戲(LF2)的編輯器，它讓我知道遊戲是可以自己製造的、故事是可以自己寫的、我是神也是玩家，這些衝擊讓我狂熱起來，開始第一次接觸電腦繪圖，也開始嘗試理解程式編輯是怎麼回事，無怨無悔砸下了自己的時間與精力，當我分享成果時感到前所未有的自信與滿足。因此認為舉辦這種活動絕對是是好事~ :)