![]() And I include some of what I have worked on in the past in that statement. However, if you play a few visual novels it soon becomes clear how shallow some eLearning branching is. However, today, the basics of branching is relatively straightforward in many eLearning tools. In the past I have worked for organisations that have outsourced such storytelling into bespoke eLearning. Such games are, of course, complex – at least with regards to the branching and storytelling. Interestingly, this directory does give you the word count of the game (something I have previously suggested would be possible for the wider gaming industry). One authoring tool, Ren.Py, has a seperate directory of free games you can try. How often have ‘click next’ eLearning courses ever really surprised you? However, reviews on Steam are an interesting read for learning professionals – for example people fearing “click-fest type” games are instead “genuinely surprised” thanks, again, to the storytelling. Reading this, you might presume these games, often free-to-play or low cost, are terrible. The quality of these graphics of course impact the experience but at the same time it was nice for me to play a few things with real character development – rather than the stock Microsoft, Articulate and other cut out “characters” we see in so many webinars, eLearning modules, etc. There are also the usual visual gaming splits between anime style graphics, more western style cartoon, more realistic 3D models, etc. Perhaps inevitably a large subsection of these are tagged as “dating” sims or even “adult”. However, games categorised as such amount to 4,588 items on the hugely popular Steam Store. Scale of visual novels as a mediumĪs with most categorisations in gaming, what makes a ‘visual novel’ is debatable. There are though a few articles discussing the attempts to use visual novels, for example this one on an example use case in education. This is of course nothing new in so much as video based and drama based learning have long played on the benefits of storytelling and emotional response. The other half of the puzzle here really is the storytelling element which has also had a lot of interest in L&D ( see here for an example article). Gamification has, of course, been a bit of a buzz term but I would agree with quite a lot of this post regarding explaining that the real reason that gamification has become a focus is because of concerns around motivation. If a quick Google is anything to go by, there has been relatively limited interest in visual novels (specifically) within the wider interest of gamification and how games may, or may not, educate. An example Assassins Creed Valhalla narrative choice from a EuroGamer article. ![]() It is not obvious to the player of Valhalla which conversations impact things either, hence a number of explainer articles online such as this one. Valhalla, for example, gives you choices for the conversations of your character but few actually impact outcomes or the game’s story. Where traditional games, and particularly rich 3D open worlds like Valhalla, struggle is how much narrative choices can impact the game. ![]() For example, I am currently playing Assassins Creed Valhalla (as mentioned in a previous post) and this game has strong character development and a compelling story to keep you playing – it even specifically separates the game into “story arcs” (effectively chapters in traditional written storytelling). These attributes are of course not unique to visual novels (aka ‘narrative games’). (3) Motivation for the player to continue due to cliff-hangers and other drama devices, managing to create a desire to find out “what is going to happen next”. (2) Narrative choices for the player that really impact on the story and resulting scenes (albeit that this is not always obvious until you play through multiple times, look online for the different options, etc.). ![]() (1) Strong character development through storytelling. The games I played noticeably achieved a few things, including: A 2020 paper describing this thus “there are genres with untapped potential for teaching, such as narratively driven…visual novel games” ( Oygardslia et al, 2020). From a little bit of research online, it is clear that there is an identified gap here between current visual novel markets and their potential use. I recently played a couple of ‘visual novel’ games and they immediately made me think about branching eLearning scenarios. This will likely not develop into a series but I am being brave and adding a #1 to this post.
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