Interactive Stories Workshops – Learning the Languages of Literature and Programming

In this article two advocates for video games and literature, media educator Pauliina Hyytiäinen and library officer Saana Mäensivu, present their project Interactive Stories Workshops, which was created to be an easy and fun way to teach creative writing and programming at Vantaa City Libraries, and simple to recreate in libraries across the globe. The aim from the start was to develop a workshop model that teaches about the digital tools available for creative writing and game programming. We argue that when learning to create games, designing and programming them from scratch, one will also learn important skills, which benefit one’s overall skills of literacy. And the games that are the best candidate to teach you about these skills are the ones that focus on stories. Thus, we chose a video game genre that can be described as “stories come alive”, also known as visual novels. In these types of games the reader becomes the player, who can affect the flow of the story and change its course. All the digital tools used were open source programs and the materials created during the project will be made available for download at the end of the project in winter 2017.