Interactive Fiction in the Humanities Classroom: How to Create Interactive Text Games Using Twine

[walshbr]

The Programming Historian has received the following tutorial on 'Interactive Fiction in the Humanities Classroom: How to Create Interactive Text Games Using Twine' by @gkirilloff. This lesson is now under review and can be read at:

http://programminghistorian.github.io/ph-submissions/en/lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine

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[walshbr]

Thanks for this @gkirilloff! I enjoyed it a lot. I had one substantial genre suggestion that I’d like you to address before I do another read in advance of sending it out to peer review. This strikes me as an excellent start, and I think you hit all of the things that you would want in the final piece. I think building up from the basics in twine to more advanced things makes a lot of sense.

My main thought is that I would like you to bring out the case study a little more. Most of our pieces have some sort of case study at their core, and you do have the beginnings of that. I'd like you to bring it our more. I make some gestures towards this in my note below on p31. I think it would help to think of this less as something that already exists that you’re using as an example and more as a product that the user will build up, from scratch, using the lesson as a guide. And you'll reflect on it together as it comes together in view over the course of the lesson. The outcome is the same, really, but it’s a matter of giving more hand holding, narrativizing the process, and using that step-by-step guide to introduce the concepts you have here. Does that make sense? My sense is that all the material you would want is here - there's plenty of useful stuff here that will give readers a lot to go on. It’s just a matter of rearranging things and stitching them together slightly different to fit the genre we’re working in. I think starting with a discussion of the context, some examples, and some principles is a good idea. But you might think about the various beats in the development of the story that you can use to further introduce concepts as a way of keeping the developing story in focus (the introduction of the various kinds of choices by way of linking passages together is an excellent example of this).


You might also move the example assignments towards the end as a supplement perhaps, rather than listing them out before the case study starts.

Note what version of Twine you’re using

P 7 - vocabular should be vocabulary

P28 - “When using Twine in the browser, avoid Internet Explorer and Safari.” - this might merit another sentence

P29 - it might be good to offer a few sentences on the other formats, why you might choose one or the other, what the key differences are.

P31 - one suggestion I have is to try to literally follow the steps you lay out for people to make sure you aren’t missing any details about how to put the things together. Twine isn’t super complicated, but beginners still might be confused by things like…”I’ve clicked on story+ but now it’s asking me for a title - the lesson didn’t mention that - what do I do?” Besides those technical pieces (are you covering each step or accidentally leaving stuff out based on your own expertise), I think you might just elaborate the thought process a little more. So rather than framing the organization by

Element A Element B Element C

More like:

Our goal is X. Our first step is to do A, which introduces a key element of Twine.

You could say “the first item to consider in a story is A, which will orient your reader. To begin creating our story we will ……” Let me know if that doesn’t make sense? I think I’m just suggesting you narrate the case study a little more rather than lead with the definitions or technical vocabulary of twine. And it’d be good to state out front something like “we will producing a story with five scenes, each linked through a variety of choices. We will then scale up to add some macros to layer complexity. And then css, and so on. Then you follow up on that road map downstream.

p62 - I would point to other resources for css here. Maybe the Mozilla docs? And since some people won’t have any experience with CSS and design.

P63 - as is, the piece just sort of ends. I might offer a concluding moment here. It’s possible that some of the reflections on scaffolding these assignments for others could be a useful coda. Because you sort of start to talk pedagogy but then the product of the lesson is what a student might produce. So you might use this moment to reflect further on how to generate good products like these.

A couple last things:

You'll need to edit this file directly - it exists at this location in the repository - https://github.com/programminghistorian/ph-submissions/blob/gh-pages/en/lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine.md. The images live here, in case you need to upload more. If you're unfamiliar with GitHub don't hesitate to reach out - I'm happy to help. And let me know when you think you'll be able to get a next draft in. I'll do another read through at that time, but I think once the organizational / genre question is taken care of this should be good for sending out for review.

[gkirilloff]

Thanks so much for the quick and helpful feedback @walshbr ! I think I understand these suggestions (and agree that they will make the piece stronger and more accesible). I think I can have the changes accomplished by 2/22 at the latest, though it may be earlier. I will message you once I've made the initial first round of revisions.

Thank you again!

[jenniferisasi]

Oh, Hi @gkirilloff! Very glad to see you here :)

[gkirilloff]

Hi @jenniferisasi, thanks for the message! It's great to hear from you! I hope you have been well :)

[walshbr]

Sounds good!

[gkirilloff]

Hi @walshbr, I hope you are having a good week. I took a first pass at editing the lesson and attempted to incorporate your helpful suggestions. I focused on the following:

1. I've changed the language and some of the organization of the Twine technical tutorial to focus on the case-study. The reader is now given a more direct "walkthrough" of how to build the 5 passage game from scratch.
2. I've added additional screenshots and steps in order to improve clarity of the walkthrough.
3. I've moved and rearranged the sample assignments and resources section at the end of the lesson.
4. I've updated the game (.html) file to reflect the changes in the lesson.

If the edits are not quite what you had in mind, or you'd like me to take them further, please let me know! Thank you again for your feedback.

[walshbr]

Thanks @gkirilloff! I'll try to take a look at this in the next week and get back to you.

[walshbr]

Thanks for this @gkirilloff! I think the lesson is much more in keeping with the other kinds of lessons we have now. I think the case study is clearer, and there is more of a flow set up. I have a few things below that I’d like you to address if you’re able, but I don’t anticipate the bulk of the lesson changing very much. So I’ll plan on going ahead and sending this out to reviewers after you finish them. I’ll get working on finding reviewers now, and then could you just post in the chat here letting us know that the text of the thing is finalized?

The few things:

P2 - “As Krijn Boom, etc. al.” that’s probably et al right? As I was reading through, it might be worth a few sentences, perhaps under context about ethics, power, and representation. I was thinking, in particular, about the audience that PH might draw to this. They’re not all likely to be historians, but a good number of them might be! And so you might offer some questions or guiding advice for avoiding the reproduction of harmful power dynamics when working with historical subjects or historical contexts. You start to get into this a little bit at times, but I think you might got further, and that would help gear it a little more towards the audience. Related, you might offer a couple sentences more on the critical aspect of the game the readers are developing, perhaps at the end. The angle on the effects of being a minority in the office might be brought out a little more. P32 - I noticed that when you paste text into the Twine editor it places bullet points next to each paragraph of text. It might be worth noting that those bullet points won’t become part of the text - I expected the result to be a bulleted, unordered list. P38 - you might want to remind people that they will need to leave the tab where the game opened, return to the tab with the editing interface, and double click the same passage again. P68 - “Your excited, but” - should be “you’re” P74 - are there other baked in selectors besides tw-story? Is there a list of them or documentation you could point people to?


I think at p83-84 you could perhaps transition to the game assignments a little better. You might talk about pitfalls to watch out for, broad categories of approach, or maybe bringing in the question of history and ethics above. Those are just some ideas though!

[gkirilloff]

Hi @walshbr! Thank you for these helpful comments--I believe I have addressed all of the suggested edits.

Looking forward to additional feedback from you and the reviewers. Please let me know if you need anything in the meantime.

[walshbr]

Great thanks! I'll get to work on finding reviewers for you @gkirilloff.

[walshbr]

Good news! I've got two reviewers that are willing to take the piece on - @bdeaster and @shawngraham are going to work on this and aim to get their reviews in by mid-April or so. Let me know if you have any questions as things go along!

[gkirilloff]

Thanks @walshbr, this is great news! Thanks @bdeaster and @shawngraham for your willingness to look at the piece, I look forward to working with you!

I can't remember if I already mentioned this or not when I submitted the piece, but I am expecting a baby April 14th. I just wanted to give you and the reviewers a heads up--I'll try to be as transparent and communicative during the end of April and beginning of May as possible, but I may be less responsive than usual (apologies in advance).

[walshbr]

Ah congratulations! Yes please take time to rest and recover! Your health is more important than sticking to a particular publishing timeline on our end - so we can do whatever you need to make things workable for you. Why don't we aim to get reviews in and then try to touch base sometime towards the end of May for next steps? There's no need on my end to rush through things, so we can give you as much time as you want.

[gkirilloff]

Touching base at the end of May sounds perfect @walshbr! Thank you for the flexibility.

[shawngraham]

Review, Twine Lesson, Programming Historian

This is a great introduction to Twine for historians and I'm very excited to see it at the Programming Historian! It is going to make a great addition to the lessons. I like how the focus is not so much on the technical aspects of twine, but on the craft of building a meaningful interaction (and the dangers that might result when we do not approach game making with the same critical intensity). It might be beyond the remit of the current piece to explain how twine enables different kinds of experiences than say Ink (and perhaps in due course there will be an Ink tutorial for proghist), but if the author felt like it, perhaps something could be said in the 'going further' section. Anyway: here's to more games by historians that ask the hard questions of the reader/player! This tutorial will spark a lot of creativity. It's tightly written, the code all works, and it will empower a lot of beginners to get crafting.

My comments below are therefore mostly in the vein of 'ooh, that triggered a thought' and the author can take 'em or leave 'em.

p1&p2 - maybe the lede is a bit buried here -'Playing and making games in the classroom offers us a powerful opportunity to critique cultural narratives and create new narratives of our own.' That's really important. Anyway, maybe start with that, hit 'em between the eyes?

p3&4 I like the 1.2.3. here.

p5 Perhaps even earlier - https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=videogames+classroom&sd=1960&ed=1990

p8 William Urrichio in 2005, in the Handbook of Computer Game studies, argues that the rules of games are historiographical arguments (presaging Bogost's more famous 'procedural rhetoric').

p10 have you seen this? Aaron A. Reed has been writing a series on '50 Years of Text Games' and he says the term 'interactive fiction' was coined by Robert Lafore (https://if50.substack.com/p/1981-his-majestys-ship-impetuous) for a game that was more like Eliza than CYOA! It's a really good series, I'm very much enjoying it.

p11 seems like a good place to cite Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, http://triple-a-games.biz/books/videogame-zinesters/ and the impact of LGTBQ+ indie game makers like Porpentine in the rise of Twine more generally, speaking of games and representation... (Also, a recent treatment of the history of Twine may be of interest - https://www.theverge.com/22321816/twine-games-history-legacy-art?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4 ).

p12 ... 'with radically different experiences playing games.' I would suggest to amend, 'with radically different experiences/expectations playing games, and levels of digital literacy.'

p14 just to say, I did a class on game design for historians, and playing Depression Quest completely transformed the dialog in the class.

p17 these are great questions

p18 'Games can emotionally move us, but they do not necessarily change our actions.' great point, and a hard one to get students to see. Makes me think of Sicard's game ethics book too.

p20 speaking of gamergate, is this a good point to remind instructors who use the building of games in the classroom that they ought to be mindful of their students' security, especially if there is any public-facing work? There's a lot of toxicity out there...

p21 these q's about games are the same questions about writing history more generally, so there are productive connections here with what might occur in a more 'traditional' history theory class.

p27 worth mentioning here that the game etc is stored in the browser's cache, so if you clear your cache, you lose everything? ah, I see you mention it below in p82.

p36 add a screenshot of what it looks like to edit an actual passage, as harlowe 3.2 also has a lot of gui elements for editing, adding macros, variables etc that don't appear in other story formats.

p41 the double square brackets is a convention of wikis, which is of course Twine's ur-code.

p49 I first read 'Say that clicking "work with Brad"' in the same voice as in the game ('Say you would love to work with')... 'Imagine that clicking...'? This comment probably says more about me than I'd care to admit.

p58 a screenshot of the 'beginning' passage with the set macro in it would be helpful, since twine color-codes the various elements and it would reassure the reader that everything is going according to plan

p63 note that you do not want the reader to add this to the game at the moment

p70 introducing the different potential variables. maybe one more if-else statement to reinforce how those work, maybe a slightly more complicated example? Just a thought.

p71 incorporating sound, images and so on is often tricky for folks, because they have to figure out where to put the various files (if working in the downloaded version of twine) or online, and the loading/behaviour consequences of that. Maybe a paragraph or two about where and how to integrate graphics, sound?

p73 text turned colour for me, but the fidget was a bit delayed, maybe warn of that? I wonder, is there a way to dial up the fidgetyness?

p83 maybe mention something about serving the game, point to some basic help about github pages maybe, or other solutions? Too bad that philome.la went offline. Also worth mentioning that since you can load twine html into the editor, it's a great way to study other people's games, see how they achieved different effects etc?

p88 YES! Loved to see this here.

p96, under twine resources, might also include the Twine Cookbook http://twinery.org/cookbook/index.html Dan Cox has a lot of videos too. Of course, the twine cookbook shows its examples in twee, and I find i have to download the html examples then load up in the editor. So not the easiest thing.

[walshbr]

Thanks @shawngraham! This is really helpful.

@gkirilloff - I know we said we would circle back, but just to make sure: we usually ask that authors don't make any edits to the lesson until both reviews come in so as to prevent the text of the thing from changing underneath the other author.

[gkirilloff]

Thanks for these incredibly helpful comments @shawngraham!

Thanks also for the reminder @walshbr--I will definitely wait until both reviewers have commented. I'm still hoping to be able to revisit the piece in May, but will let everyone know if anything changes and will let everyone know before I begin edits.

Hope you both have a wonderful weekend!

[bdeaster]

Hi @gkirilloff -- It was a joy to read and play through this lesson on Twine. Though I haven’t taught with Twine in a few terms, this piece made me feel newly excited about the platform, and I’m looking forward to using this lesson in my future courses in writing and rhetorical studies.

There are two main strengths that excite me about this piece. The first is that it explores technical techniques in Twine as choices about stories. Often, because of the complexity of Twine, it can be easy to create an artificial separation of the “technical” from the “narrative” choices when first introducing the platform. Because of this, I thought this was one of the clearest explanations of why learning macros is worth getting through the technical threshold. Overall, your focus on story as a major driver for, not accessory to or distinction from, technical choices is a huge asset for making teaching with Twine accessible for a range of humanities scholars. This is more than a lesson on the “how” of Twine. It’s also a lesson on the “why.”

Secondly, I think that this lesson does a great job showcasing the range of humanities courses and topics that might benefit from considering games. As a reader, it was easy to imagine how Twine might fit into a number of different courses I teach because you’ve given examples both specifically in the Game Assignments section and in the scholarship you cite.

I am excited to see this piece in Programming Historian, and my suggestions for revision are largely contained to the paragraph level, which I’ve included below. Thanks @walshbr for the invitation to review this fantastic lesson! And all best wishes for you and your new little one @gkirilloff!

p1&2 - Agree with @shawngraham completely. I think you can move this quicker and start with how games offer a unique learning opportunity upfront. Could you make the last sentence of para 2 the first sentence of the entire piece?

P8 - Fascinating case study! I love that Twine often hosts games that are so of the moment because the entry barrier is so low that games can be created quickly. I also notice this is the first of a few mentions of the possibility of emotions in games. Couple of citations you might be interested in here? Aubrey Anable’s Playing with Feelings: https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/playing-with-feelings Anastasia Salter’s “Playing at empathy”: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7586272

P10-11 - I am glad that you’ve taken time to talk about the accessibility limits of teaching games. Could you add a paragraph here that is sort of a “required materials” section for this lesson that takes accessibility in mind? I wonder if bringing p27-28 to this section in some form could actually do this, explaining that while Twine (and most games) is free, students need access to a computer with internet (and that while a smartphone technically works, it is very clunky)? I think this would help readers get a better idea upfront about materials and helps your tutorial get into the case study more quickly. (Also, not that you should do this because it’s a totally different lesson, but could you imagine that this lesson could be adapted to paper and pencil? Is there still value in this kind of procedural thinking and creating on paper?)

P26 - I would have a loved a sentence more about what the prompt for this game was. What do you ask students to do that gets them to write about these topics?

P35 - I like how you’ve included the text of the game so that I could copy/paste and easily build this game along with the lesson. I think this would be a great class activity!

P48 - I thought this was a really important paragraph that kind of gets lost at the end of that section and beneath two pictures. Is there a way to set this off, such as moving it under a different heading? Or actually, could you move it up ~p26 where you introduce your game? This could be a sort of roadmap statement for where you’ll be going as you create your game. Just a thought.

P88 - The focus on non-technical troubleshooting here is fantastic and such a wonderful insight for teachers. I would feel a lot more confident trying this for the first time having these ideas about what problems I might run into.

--Brandee Easter

[walshbr]

Thanks so much @bdeaster for this helpful review!

The comments in the reviews here feel pretty straightforward to address to my end. @gkirilloff I'll plan on circling back with you sometime later in May but do please take time to rest! No rush on our end. We typically aim for revisions back in about a month, but we can set the deadline for whatever works for you when you decide you're ready to start turning attention to this again.

[shawngraham]

Looking forward to pointing my students to this lesson!

[gkirilloff]

Thank you again @bdeaster @shawngraham and @walshbr for the incredibly helpful comments! I've attempted to integrate your suggestions throughout the lesson.

In addition to edits at the paragraph level and the inclusion of additional citations, I have added another example of a if/else statement. Hopefully this helps make the conditionals clearer!

There were a few suggestions that I responded to pretty briefly because I was concerned about making the tutorial too cumbersome. For example, I chose to briefly comment on images and sound, but did not introduce a full walkthrough on sound. I do point to preexisting tutorials on sound.

If however, you see places were you'd like me to elaborate more, please let me know!

@shawngraham I think it would be wonderful to see tutorials about other game creation tools and languages! I've pointed to a list of different tools and their pros/cons in the What's Next section; hopefully this is enough to get people started! @bdeaster, I enjoyed thinking through your question about the usefulness of game creation without technology (just pen and paper). I do not have a lot of experience with this myself, but I think that there is a benefit to teaching students to think procedurally, even without relying on tech--it emphasizes cause and effect as well as audience. I have asked my students to create hypothetical games, just verbally as groups, and I've found that this gets them thinking about audience in an interesting way. I've heard of a few colleagues teaching board games in their classes and this is something I would like to learn more about.

Thank you all again! I look forward to any additional feedback.

[walshbr]

Thanks @gkirilloff! I'll take a look at this shortly and let you know about next steps.

[walshbr]

This looks good to me @gkirilloff - thanks for all your work on it! The next step should be copyediting, which means that I'll be handing you off to @svmelton. @svmelton, the relevant files are here:

assets/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - asset files images/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - images files lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine.md - the lesson file gallery/interactive-text-games-using-twine.png - the modified avatar gallery/originals/interactive-text-games-using-twine-original.png - the original avatar

@gkirilloff - we will need a bio from you in this format as well as a 1-3 sentence abstract. Could you put these together? You can just drop both of them in a comment to this thread, and for the bio we'll need a one-sentence bio as well as an orcid if you have one. e.g. -

- name: Jim Clifford
  team: false
  orcid: 0000-0000-1111-1111
  bio:
      en: |
          Jim Clifford is an assistant professor in the Department of History
          at the University of Saskatchewan.

I think that should be everything but let me know if I'm missing anything @svmelton!

[gkirilloff]

Thanks @shawngraham !

name: Gabi Kirilloff team: false orcid: 0000-0003-2696-1419 bio: en: | Gabi Kirilloff is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas Christian University.

Abstract: This lesson provides strategies for incorporating game creation into the classroom. The first half of the lesson discusses the challenges and benefits of teaching game creation while the second half includes a technical tutorial for Twine, an open source game creation tool.

[svmelton]

Thanks all! @Anisa-ProgHist, we've got another lesson ready for copyediting! Let me know if you need anything from me.

[anisa-hawes]

Thank you, @svmelton! Looking forward to working on this.

[anisa-hawes]

Hello @gkirilloff and @walshbr,

I have copyedited this lesson, and my comments/suggested revisions are now ready for your review.

I've applied my suggested revisions directly to the markdown file in our Submissions Repository, where you be able to view the additions and subtractions I’ve made in the Commit History.

I'll also paste a list of my comments and suggested revisions here, so that the copyediting process is transparent and can invite discussion.

I've formatted my comments/suggested revisions as a list of tasks. You will notice that many of these tasks are ‘checked’, because I have made the changes directly. A small number remain ‘unchecked’ because they ask questions.

I hope you'll find my comments and suggestions useful. Please let me know if you'd like to talk through anything through. Be assured that I won't be offended if you choose not to take on my suggestions!

--

• [x] Para. 23. Suggested revision: add comma after: classroom,

• [x] Para. 25. Suggested revision: add 'with', 'engaging with'

• [x] Para. 25. Suggested revision: 'in accurate or thoughtful ways'

• [x] Para. 27. Suggested revision: 'studies, then moves'

• [x] Para. 27. Spell out numbers from one to nine: 'six sections'

• [x] Para. 27. Suggested revision: replace 'add' with 'incorporate'

• [x] Para. 27. Suggested revision: replace 'to' with 'into your game'

• [x] List Lines 31-33. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [x] Para. 36. Suggested revision: 'is that you will need to download and save your game to your desktop, then upload it to the browser again each time you begin a new working session.'

• [ ] Para. 36. In your original sentence, Q: reupload or re-upload?

• [x] Para. 36. Suggested revision: 'browser-based'

• [x] Para. 40. Suggested revision: add link to Harlowe 3.2 manual: Harlowe 3.2.

• [x] Para. 40. Suggested revision: 'To follow along with this lesson'

• [x] Para. 40. Suggested revision: add comma after: e.g.,

• [ ] Para. 45. Q: Cultural artifacts? 'products' sounds as though it should be preceded by 'commercial' rather than cultural. See also 61.

• [x] Para. 45. Suggested revision: add comma after: 'In recent years,'

• [x] Para. 45. Suggested revision: add comma between 'source material, historical settings'

• [x] List Lines 50-52. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [x] Para. 54. Suggested revision: add link to Oneida

• [x] Para. 54. Suggested revision:: 'a collaboration between'

• [x] Para. 54. Suggested revision: hyphen, elementary-aged

• [x] Para. 54. Suggested revision: hyphen, wide-reaching

• [x] Para. 59. Suggested revision: add comma after e.g.,

• [x] List Lines 61-64. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [ ] Line 61. Q: cultural artifacts? 'products' sounds as though it should be preceded by 'commercial' rather than cultural. See also 45.

• [x] Para. 66. Suggested revision: add comma after as texts,

• [ ] Para. 68. Q: computer-science-related ? If the subject was not already hyphenated, I would have suggested a hyphen between [subject]-related, but this is up to you.

• [x] Para. 68. Suggested revision: and develop meaningful arguments.

• [x] Para. 71. Suggested revision: add link scaffold

• [x] List Lines 76-79. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [x] Line 78. Who are 'they'? Students? Suggest revise: Only certain types of people play games (students may feel that the games they play

• [ ] Line 79. Q: Is this a misconception?

• [x] Para. 95. Suggested revision: the player is presented with seemingly positive options (as is shown in Figure 1.) some of which they cannot choose.

• [ ] Para. 95. Q: harmful misconception?

• [ ] Para. 102. Q: capitalise Black?

• [x] List Lines 110-112. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [x] Line 112. Suggest add comma after: e.g.,

• [x] Para. 116. Suggest add comma after: e.g.,

• [x] Para. 121. Spell out numbers from one to nine: 'six sections'

• [ ] Para. 123. Q: past tense? or present continuous? chose or choose?

• [ ] Para. 128. Q: quotation marks around "story"?

• [x] Para. 128. Suggest add comma: At first, this area

• [ ] Para. 134. Q: quotation marks around "passage"?

• [x] Para. 139. Suggest add colon: Add the following text to the body of the passage:

• [x] Para. 162. Suggested revision: double square brackets

• [x] Line 216. Spell out numbers from one to nine: five passages

• [ ] Para 225. Add link to definition of macros in the context of game design?

• [x] Para. 243. Spell out numbers from one to nine: equal to four

• [x] Para. 254. Suggested revision: a lot

• [x] Para. 258. Suggested revision: add quotation marks around second mention of "if" macro. 'x then y'. Spell out numbers from one to nine (less than five).

• [ ] Para. 258. Q: quotation marks around "hook"?

• [ ] Line 297. Q: quotation marks around "if"?

• [ ] Para. 308. Q: quotation marks around "if"?

• [x] Para. 308. Spell out numbers from one to nine: less than five and isolation being more than zero.

• [x] Para. 315. Suggested revision: Using "-->" within a link makes the text on the left visible to the player, while the text on the right is not displayed, but determines the passage of the game the player will travel to.

• [ ] Para. 317. Q: tradeoff or trade-off?

• [ ] Para 320. Suggest incorporating the special characters into this sentence. Personally, I'm not sure what a "double single quotation mark" would look like – ''? And I'm not sure how many people are familiar with the term tildes ~

• [x] Para. 345. Suggested revision: 'browser-based'

• [x] Para. 349. Suggested revision: This means the url should end with an image file extension, such as .jpg

• [x] Para. 354. Spell out numbers from one to nine: six passages long, involves three variables, and can result in three endings

• [x] Para. 356. Suggested revision: It only caches your progress

• [x] Para, 371. Suggested revision: attempt without 's'

• [x] Line 372. Delete extra white space.

• [x] List lines 375-378. Full stops / periods are not required after each list item

• [x] Para. 388. Suggested revision: capitalise History classroom. In paragraph 45, you capitalise disciplines.

• [x] Para. 388. Suggest add comma: For this assignment,

• [x] Para. 397. Suggest add comma: In this class,

[walshbr]

Thanks @Anisa-ProgHist! @gkirilloff - it seems like you should just go through and check things off and let us know here if you don't agree with any. Since they've already been applied to the markdown file we can move to the next phase if you're good. If you have objections you'll just need to edit the markdown file directly.

[gkirilloff]

Thanks so much @Anisa-ProgHist and @walshbr ! I agree with all of the suggestions.

I wasn't sure of the best way to answer the questions, so I've just answered them below. Please let me know if you'd like me to convey the information some other way.

Para. 36. reupload

Para. 45 and Line 61. Cultural artifacts sounds good

Para. 68. let's go with the additional hyphen: computer-science-related

Line 79. I do think this is a misconception because it is assumed to be automatic (and often it is assumed that empathy encourages social action/change). But, I think you're right that this needs clarification. How about change to: "That games easily create social change by automatically sparking empathy"

Para. 95. Yes, should be changed to harmful misconception

Para. 102. Yes, capitalise Black

Para. 123. choose seems like a better fit to me (because I regularly teach the class)

Para. 128. Yes, quotation marks around "story"

Para. 134. Yes, quotation marks around "passage"

Para 225. Perhaps a link to the Twine Cookbook entry on macros? https://twinery.org/cookbook/terms/terms_macros.html

Para. 258. Yes, quotation marks around "hook"

Line 297. Yes, quotation marks around "if"

Para. 308. Yes, quotation marks around "if"

Para. 317. tradeoff

Para 320. Yes, agree on incorporating special characters. How about:

Basic textual styling, like italicizing, bolding, and adding a strikethrough can be accomplished by wrapping text in special characters: double forward slashes are used for italics (//text//), double tildes for strikethroughs (text), and double single quotation marks for bold (''text''). Harlowe 3.2 now also includes a toolbar directly in each passage that will allow you to automatically style selected text.

[anisa-hawes]

Thank you, @gkirilloff! I really appreciate the time you have taken to respond to each of these points.

One thought, re: your suggestion for incorporating the special characters in para. 320. For both double forward slashes and double single quotation marks, this works well. However, Markdown is reading the double tildes to strike the word through. I think we need to devise a way to reveal the ~~ if we can.

I am meeting with @svmelton this Friday so, if it's okay, I will confirm our next steps after that conversation.

I'm looking forward to supporting this process.

Very best for now, Anisa

[walshbr]

You could probably treat that sentence like a code block and wrap it in {% raw %} {% endraw %} to keep it from processing the tildes and other special characters you want to avoid rendering as markdown @Anisa-ProgHist

[anisa-hawes]

Ah! Super! Thank you, @walshbr!

[anisa-hawes]

Hello again, @gkirilloff.

I have made the following changes, as discussed above.

• [ ] Para. 36. If you are happy with my suggested revision: 'is that you will need to download and save your game to your desktop, then upload it to the browser again each time you begin a new working session', then we do not need to worry about the Q: reupload or re-upload. You used the word in your original sentence, but it does not feature in my revision.
• [x] Para. 45 and 61. I have replaced 'cultural products' with 'cultural artifacts'
• [x] Para. 68 I have added a hyphen: computer-science-related
• [x] Para. 79 I have adjusted the bullet point with your suggestion. It now reads: That games easily create social change by automatically sparking empathy
• [x] Para. 95 revised: harmful misconception
• [x] Para. 102 capitalised Black
• [x] Para. 128. I have added quotation marks around "story"
• [x] Para. 134. I have added quotation marks around "passage"
• [x] Para 225. I have added a link to the Twine Cookbook entry on macros https://twinery.org/cookbook/terms/terms_macros.html
• [x] Para. 258. I have added quotation marks around "hook"
• [x] Line 297. I have added quotation marks around "if"
• [x] Para. 308. I have added quotation marks around "if"
• [ ] Para 320. I've used the {% raw %} {% endraw %} and added in the sentence you've written which incorporates the special characters.

My next task will be to generate perma.cc links to replace live links in this lesson. This will help us to ensure its sustainability as a teaching and learning resource into the future. I'm aware that there are a few places where an archived page will not be suitable, i.e., in paragraph 129 where you write, 'go to Twine and click "Use it online"' this link needs to direct to the live web.

I've just had a quick look at a couple of the other links you've included, and I've noted that links to the Twinery Wiki are now re-routing to https://twinery.org/cookbook/.

https://twinery.org/wiki/browser_support (paragraph 38) https://twinery.org/wiki/twine2:how_to_choose_a_story_format (paragraph 40) https://twinery.org/wiki/ (line 413) https://twinery.org/wiki/twine:education (line 421)

I'd like to ask if you have time to check these, and provide alternative links?

Thank you, Anisa

[anisa-hawes]

Apologies, @gkirilloff. The {% raw %} {% endraw %} syntax is displaying in the preview so I have made a mistake here. I will double check how this needs to be formatted and get back to you asap.

[anisa-hawes]

Hello again @gkirilloff! Quick note to say that the special characters are all parsing correctly now (special thanks to @walshbr!✨ )

Also: one final thing I noticed is that the abstract is still needed. This can be very simple, 1-2 sentences. It will form the summary available beneath the lesson title in our Lesson Index and will also be included in the lesson header on our site. You can see an example here. Let me know if you would like me to take a look at your draft, or if you're happy to add it directly to the md file.

Wishing you a restful weekend. All best, Anisa

[gkirilloff]

Thanks for this @Anisa-ProgHist! I really appreciate all of the time you are putting into this.

I am so disappointed to see that the Twine wiki has been retired. Sorry about not catching that! Below are my thoughts on the link replacements as well as an abstract. Thanks!

Links browser support link: https://twinery.org/cookbook/twine1/editor/browser_support.html (para 38) story format link: https://twinery.org/cookbook/introduction/story_formats.html (para 40) wiki link: remove, the wiki has been retired and incorporated into the cookbook (line 413) twine education: remove, it doesn't look like they migrated the page to the cookbook and I can't find an equivalent resource. (line 421)

Abstract This lesson provides strategies for incorporating game creation into the classroom. The first half of the lesson discusses the challenges and benefits of teaching game creation while the second half includes a technical tutorial for Twine, an open source game creation tool.

[anisa-hawes]

Super! Thank you for providing the abstract and identifying the replacement links @gkirilloff! Apologies for the delay in replying to you. I've made these link changes/removals and have added in your abstract.

I'm afraid, I found one more broken link: Paragraph 23, https://www.theesa.com/esa-research/2019-essential-facts-about-the-computer-and-video-game-industry/. What do you think about replacing it with the ESA’s 2020 Essential Facts About the Video Game Industry https://www.theesa.com/resource/2020-essential-facts/? Some earlier reports do seem to be available, I can see those for 2018, and 2017 but (strangely) I can't locate the 2019 report page on their website....

I've also worked through the links, replacing them with archived linked generated by perma.cc (where appropriate).

As I mentioned above at certain places, I have omitted links from the perma.cc list, because it is appropriate in those contexts that the links direct to the live web.

• at Para. 129 go to Twine and click "Use it online."
• at Para. 350 Wikimedia is a helpful place to find jpgs

Additionally, after some experimentation, I think it may also be best to omit the links to the interactive games which are currently playable on the live web. Perma.cc cannot effectively render this kind of complex content, so upon following the link I think readers would be dissatisfied. They could however, choose to either click through the to ‘See the Screenshot View’ to see a page that looks like the original webpage, or click through to ‘View the Live Page’ from where they will be able to get started playing the game(s) for as long as it/they exist(s) on the web. What do you think @gkirilloff and @walshbr (I think you are still watching this Issue)?

Those instances are as follows:

• Para. 81 + Line 406 Depression Quest where the Perma page generated would look/function like this
• Para. 123 a more fleshed out version of this game where the Perma page generated would look/function like this
• Line 405 A Witch’s Word where the Perma page generated would look/function like this
• Line 407 Queers in Love at the End of the World where the Perma page generated would look/function like this
• Line 409 The Uncle Who Works for Nintendo where the Perma page generated would look/function like this

Interestingly,

• Line 408 September 7th, 2020 is an example of where perma.cc has achieved a successful capture, which you can interact with here so I have included this in the archived set.

Links to YouTube videos are also problematic. The page ‘looks’ right, but each individual video has a unique URL (in fact, they have a number of URLs, depending upon whether the Playlist is played through start to finish, or if a video is selected individually) so the performance of the archived page is quite dissatisfying here:

• Line 415 Dan Cox Youtube Twine Tutorials where the Perma page generated would look/function like this

Finally, I have suggested that we swap the link at Line 427 to the article’s doi https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444811410394

You'll be able to see all the updates I’ve made in the Commit History. I think we are almost there!

[walshbr]

Oh that's interesting @Anisa-ProgHist. I think I'd be inclined to stick with the perma.cc links but maybe add a parenthetical to the first instance that explains the reader should click X to find the live link? That'd be for the Twine games, though. For the youtube playlist it might make sense to just link to the playlist with a non-perma.cc link. Is current editorial policy to replace all links with perma.cc links, or just the ones that don't present these technical challenges?

[gkirilloff]

Thanks for this @Anisa-ProgHist. I think that the ESA’s 2020 Essential Facts About the Video Game Industry works as a replacement.

I'm not sure about the best solution for the games. I like @walshbr's idea of adding a parenthetical to the first instance to explain the situation. Would it make sense to give footnotes next to the games in the body of the lesson (no links) and then put both links and a brief explanation in the footnote? I feel like the perma links are confusing but online games are not super stable.

I think for the playlist it would be ideal to just link to the playlist if possible.

Thanks again!

[gkirilloff]

Hi @anisa-hawes and @walshbr--I just wanted to check in and make sure I didn't miss anything/there wasn't anything else you wanted me to do in terms of the perma links. No rush whatsoever. Hope you are both well!

[walshbr]

@gkirilloff - thanks for writing! i believe @anisa-hawes is working on getting it finalized.

[anisa-hawes]

Hello @gkirilloff. Thank you for your patience.

Some happy news: I have successfully archived your Twine narrative, as well as the Dan Cox YouTube Playlist you included in your endnotes. I used Webrecorder's tools to do this. I experienced some unexpected difficulties with attaining solid playback of the interactive narrative, but with the support of Webrecorder’s Lead Developer, these issues have been fixed in the latest release. You can experience my capture of the Twine game you created here, and you can explore the YouTube Playlist here.

What remains unresolved is the question of how we (here at PH) can host source files like these (the format is .warc or .wacz) on our own server for ReplayWeb.Page to parse, load and replay. At the moment, these two files are hosted within cloud storage spaces I manage personally. I've spoken with a few colleagues about our options, but we haven't found a solution yet. I don't want to cause any further delay to the publication of this wonderful lesson so, for now, I think it is best that we move forwards to publish, leaving the handful of links I've identified above as links to the live web. When we have a solution, I can contact you again, and we can update the lesson with the remaining archived links. I would be very happy (in my own time, and for my own interest) to archive the other narratives you refer to. I haven't mapped them, but can certainly investigate their extent and see what's possible. As I was experimenting, I felt it was most important to capture your piece. If the two archives I've created are useful for your personal practice archive, I would be delighted to send them to you. Just let me know.

What is clear is that your lesson is an excellently thought-provoking example of the kinds of complex online content (interactives, 3D models, etc.) we are likely to encounter within new lessons going forwards. As a team, we'll need to think carefully about how we stabilise those resources to ensure their sustainability.

Finally, I have updated the broken link at paragraph 23, replacing https://www.theesa.com/esa-research/2019-essential-facts-about-the-computer-and-video-game-industry/ with https://www.theesa.com/resource/2020-essential-facts/. And I have exchanged that new link with its archival URL.

[anisa-hawes]

Hello @svmelton,

In Brandon's absence, I'm re-posting the list he collated of all the relevant files:

assets/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - asset files images/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - images files lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine.md - the lesson file gallery/interactive-text-games-using-twine.png - the modified avatar gallery/originals/interactive-text-games-using-twine-original.png - the original avatar

Author bio:

name: Gabi Kirilloff   
team: false   
orcid: 0000-0003-2696-1419   
bio:   
en: |   
Gabi Kirilloff is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas Christian University.

This lesson is ready.

[walshbr]

Thanks for all your work @anisa-hawes! I'm still lurking on this ticket in case anything needs me, and I'll definitely help promote it when it's live! So please do let us know here when it's published so I can get tweeting.

[gkirilloff]

Hi @walshbr and @anisa-hawes! I can't thank you both enough for all of your thoughtfulness and work on this tutorial. I really appreciate it (and I have to say, this has been my most pleasant publication experience to date!) @walshbr, yes, it would be great if you could send me the two archives you've created! Thank you.

I've been frustrated in the past when a game that I enjoy teaching (like Mattie Brice's Mainichi] is no longer playable on updated browsers. I'm sorry my tutorial has caused added work around this issue, but excited to see what the Programming Historian comes up with in the long run.

If folks are enjoying the tutorial once it is live, I'd be interested in seeing/collaborating on a collection of game related tutorials (maybe for Inform7 or Pygame?) if this is something you all are interested in. I'm always reassessing which tools to teach in my game classes.

Looking forward to seeing this tutorial on the live site! Thanks again so much for everything :)

[anisa-hawes]

Super! Thank you, @gkirilloff! I'd be delighted to share the two archives with you. I've found your details via your website, so I will share the files with you now. If it's helpful, I can help you to configure the settings to share the files from an S3-compatible cloud server in the same way I have done (if you have your own space). Alternatively, you could experiment with embedding the archives on your website. There is some more information here, if you're interested.

And please don't apologise — it has been enormously interesting to think through these challenges in this context.

[svmelton]

Hello @svmelton,

In Brandon's absence, I'm re-posting the list he collated of all the relevant files:

assets/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - asset files images/interactive-text-games-using-twine/ - images files lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine.md - the lesson file gallery/interactive-text-games-using-twine.png - the modified avatar gallery/originals/interactive-text-games-using-twine-original.png - the original avatar

Author bio:

name: Gabi Kirilloff   
team: false   
orcid: 0000-0003-2696-1419   
bio:   
en: |   
Gabi Kirilloff is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas Christian University.

This lesson is ready.

Excellent! I can work on this next week.

[svmelton]

Hi all! Just a note that the lesson is published https://programminghistorian.org/en/lessons/interactive-text-games-using-twine

I've added it to the twitter bot and will publicize once the DOI has been updated on the vendor's end.

[anisa-hawes]

Hooray! Congratulations @gkirilloff! ✨