Games, Organizing, & Motivation: ID Links 10/25/22

Curated links on games built in Twine, storytelling, organization, useful tools, motivation, and transitioning from teaching to ID.

As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links periodically here on my blog. This post includes links on games built in Twine, storytelling, organization, useful tools, motivation, and transitioning from teaching to ID.

Games built in Twine

Top games made with Twine – itch.io

All of the top games made with Twine on the hosting platform itch.io. This is a great place to look for some inspiration with interactive fiction. These aren’t learning or training games, but it’s useful to look at games outside of L&D for ideas on game mechanics, look and feel, choice writing, and other elements of games.

Great Twine Games – Collection by Chapel – itch.io

Examples of games built in Twine, collected by Chapel

Storytelling and CYOA books

Random Plot Generator

A writing prompt tool to generate two characters, a setting, situation, theme, and character action. This could be a fun way to start scenarios if you’re feeling stuck. h/t Jean Marrapodi

5-step DnD story framework

A 5-part story structure for elearning based on DnD campaigns, with an example of a conflict management scenario. Read the whole thread on Twitter.

The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books | The New Yorker

The history of the Choose Your Own Adventure series and how it evolved over time. Branching scenario training even gets a brief mention (as “Branching Path Simulations” for training nurses). If you’re looking for practical tips for creating branching narratives, this isn’t that article. However, if you loved the original books and are curious about the history, it is interesting.

You didn’t necessarily identify with the unnamed “you” who starred in each book. It was more that each protagonist offered you an alternative to yourself, or forty alternatives to yourself. The second person was less like a mirror and more like a costume.

The fact of multiple endings offers a sense of freedom and safety at once, reconciling two conflicting desires of childhood: autonomy and protection.

Randomness was never part of his compositional strategy. “My philosophy was that it should be like life,” he tells you. Smart decisions were more likely to result in a better outcome but wouldn’t always guarantee it. Virtuous choices didn’t always pay off.

Anson always writes one “Golden Ticket” ending where you get exactly what you want, and a few “Golden Ticket minus one” paths where you get almost everything, but not quite.

-Leslie Jamison

Organizing information, files, and procedures

The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information – Forte Labs

This is outside my usual learning-related resource, but I think it’s relevant to IDs and elearning developers because we tend to generate loads of digital files. We also frequently have multiple projects happening simultaneously (and if you do freelance or consulting work, those projects are on different systems). This article is about a method for both clearly identifying your projects and tasks as well as organizing the resources to support them.

Standard Operating Procedures: The Foundation of a Freelancing or Consulting Business • Kai Davis

Free Google Doc template for creating SOPs for freelancers. For a one-person business, this documentation doesn’t have to be very fancy–but it does help to document processes to improve your efficiency. You don’t have to keep making the same decisions over and over about what comes next if you write down some processes, even for yourself.

Tools for CSS and interactive video

Bubbly — CSS speech bubbles made easy

A free tool for generating speech bubbles in CSS. Something like this might be usable in Twine with some tweaking to assign this formatting based on tags.

FreeFuse | Interactive Streaming

FreeFuse is a tool for interactive video. They advertise that they use AI to convert video into interactive content. I haven’t tried it, but it might be interesting to test for creating branching video scenarios.

Motivation

Content Theories Of Motivation

An overview of different motivation theories, including Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ERG theory, self-determination theory, and Herzberg’s two-factor theory. This is part of a larger resource on gamification.

Transitioning from teaching to ID

Transitioning from education to instructional design

Melanie Knight has been doing some great posts sharing her notes and reflections as she learns about instructional design and transitions her career. This article is a reflection on her journey so far and the ways she has been learning and sharing. She also includes a list of resources that she has learned from.

Additional resources

Check out my complete library of links or my previous bookmarks posts.

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