Preface
The Creating Playable Stories Series comprises online, open access guides to using the markup, scripting, and programming languages—as well as the software and authoring platforms associated with these languages—that are designed for creating interactive or playable digital stories.
Storytelling is a pervasive cultural practice that makes use of many expressive modes and communication technologies. In institutions of learning, a wide range of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and applied and technical arts have useful and important knowledge and methods to contribute to the study and development of storytelling, including digital storytelling. The impetus for the Creating Playable Stories Series arises from the conviction that interactive digital stories and storytelling needs to be incorporated into any scholarly discipline in which stories and storytelling is a key component. Some of the more traditional disciplines, however, such as literary studies, are currently less well equipped to study playable stories and procedural creativity—that is, the use of rule-based or procedural systems like computing technologies for creative purposes.
Another fundamental conviction behind this series is that the effective study of playable stories, as well as making the study of playable stories more widespread, requires developing some experience of the creative processes (or procedural creativity) that enable digital storytelling. For secondary and post-secondary courses that are not primarily focused on digital storytelling, incorporating a hands-on module or assignment involving procedural creativity, can be daunting for instructors and students alike.
The textbooks in this series are aimed at instructors and students who want to engage in an hands-on experience of procedural creativity within the parameters and limitations of a semester-long course that may be focused on a range of subjects beside digital storytelling in a range of disciplines. Much of the instructional material available for the particular digital authoring languages and platforms on which the textbooks in this series focus are either too cursory and basic or too extensive and complex. This series aims for the middle ground, giving readers not just the basics but enough (and not too much) of the more advanced functionalities to enable the creation of sophisticated and interesting playable stories that would be appropriate for a course module and/or assignment.
The series has decided to make available its volumes as an open educational resource (OER) in order to respond in a more efficient manner to the expected changes in the digital authoring platforms on which it focuses.
Jason Boyd
General Editor
