A visual language for the creation of narrative educational games

This paper presents a DSVL that simplifies educational video game development for educators, who do not have programming backgrounds. Other solutions that reduce the cost and complexity of educational video game development have been proposed, but simple to use approaches tailored to the specific needs of educators are still needed. We use a multidisciplinary approach based on visual language and narrative theory concepts to create an easy to understand and maintain description of games. This language specifically targets games of the adventure point-and-click genre. The resulting DVSL uses an explicit flow representation to help educational game authors (i.e. educators) to design the story-flow of adventure games, while providing specific features for the integration of educational characteristics (e.g. student assessment and content adaptation). These highly visual descriptions can then be automatically transformed into playable educational video games.

► Visual language for the development of adventure point-and-click games.
► Educational features (i.e. assessment and adaptation) as integral parts of the language.
► Straightforward creation recurring structures and education related interactions through specific language elements.