Using Text-to-Speech to Prototype Game Dialog

Engström, Henrik; Östblad, Per Anders

doi:10.1145/3276321

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The accessibility work in FS as well as Marvinter included a large element of tool production that, for example, enabled automatic generation dialog audio in prototypes (Engström and Ö stblad, 2018).…”

Section: Accessibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Marvinter: A case study of an inclusive transmedia storytelling production

Brusk

Engström

2020

Convergence

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This article examines how the unique characteristics of Marvinter, an inclusive transmedia Advent calendar, affected its production and the individual media workers involved in this. In the native transmedia Marvinter project, a radio series and a mobile game were created and released simultaneously. Using ‘partly shared’ resources, the project was developed by two collaborating, non-profit organisations. Each chapter of the digital game had to match the corresponding radio episode. The whole had to be designed to provide a shared cultural experience that included people with hearing or visual impairments. The authors of the present article were part of the game development team and thus directly experienced the complexity of developing a digital game as part of a transmedia project. This article presents the results of a case study with an insider perspective. It is supplemented by semi-structured interviews with key people in the project. The transmedia nature of Marvinter was justified by the need to include people with complementary disabilities. Although sometimes associated with negative connotations of ‘naked commercialisation’ in transmedia contexts, the marketing strategy was here an important element in promoting inclusivity. However, owing to the concurrent work processes, game production became overly complex.

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Section: Accessibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Marvinter: A case study of an inclusive transmedia storytelling production

Brusk

Engström

2020

Convergence

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“…The runtime-module is integrated with a text-to-speech system (Engström and Östblad 2018). This makes it possible for authors to listen instantly to the written dialogue.…”

Section: Playtestingmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘I have a different kind of brain’—a script-centric approach to interactive narratives in games

Engström

2019

Digital Creativity

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To cite this article: Henrik Engström (2019) 'I have a different kind of brain'-a scriptcentric approach to interactive narratives in games, Digital Creativity, 30:1, 1-22, ABSTRACTIn a computer game narrative, a user influences the ordering of events. To model this behaviour, game designers and writers need to use some kind of programming primitives. A computer game script will hence differ from, for instance, a movie screenplay in that traditional dialogue text is complemented with some textual or visual logic formalism. Not all groups involved in production of a game have a programming background and may therefore be unable to easily comprehend such formalisms. This paper presents a novel approach to game dialogue writing where traces from playthroughs are used as the core of the script. Alternative branches are identified and presented in relation to the main trace. The approach has been implemented in a tool that has been used successfully by three professional writers in mobile game production. The results indicate that this is a promising approach to enable non-programmers to work with interactive narratives.

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