Copyright Online Escape Room – Take 2
By Erica Levi (Digital Repository and Copyright Lead) and Ann Jeffery (Education Technologist) at Coventry University
Following Erica’s blog post in August, we wanted to update you on new episodes of the online copyright escape rooms. The Lord Schism saga is now available on its webpage.
The plot
Erica: In the new episode, I wanted to create interactive fiction—like those choose-your-own-adventure books and games where the story develops by actively choosing an action. I gained experience with my first branching scenario activity, which was to educate creators on licensing their work. Using Twine, I developed an appetite for coding and stretched my skills by learning to build my website using HTML.
The Lord Schism’s second game engages players in a new fantasy adventure in the land of Eryl. As with the previous game, it allows them to choose how to interact with the story and its characters, dictating their success in the mission while enhancing their understanding of copyright. I authored the story, and Ann worked out the tricky bits of coding and accessibility and chipped in with some ideas for the characters.
The plot in the new episode is that the resistance has discovered access to a secret portal to a mystical land, the Land of Eryl. Players are elite members who must secure it from the villain Lord Schism’s attacks. Everything in the game is rich in allegories, alliterations, quirks, and jokes. No spoilers but think of the very word Eryl. Apart from clearly being my names mashed together, it means ‘a place where people look for knowledge,’ and it is of Welsh origin, meaning watcher or lookout. Even the herald of the land is a heather, which is an Ericaceous plant.
While I was keen to keep the game as a single episode, it soon became apparent that the topics were vast, so I had to split the game into three topical parts—no spoilers. It was great fun to plot the story together with Ann.
Accessibility and inclusion
Ann: I was instrumental in adding some features, including diversity, and increasing accessibility by adding alt tags to foster gameplay rather than as a description and improving readability. Narrative games present additional challenges to accessibility and inclusivity. I also reviewed the inclusivity of language: did the game promote an able-bodied experience through its action verbs; did it describe the game world in an accessible way? I looked at narrative game accessibility and captions/audio descriptions for television and film for guidance, as well as broader WebAim guidance and the Player’s Bill of Rights. Accessibility is still a work in progress as I aim to explore Twine screen reader support, which is a problematic area for Twine. I also explored the use of AI to create characters and ALT tags.
Images
Many images resulted from our experimentation with Adobe Firefly and its AI capability (part of Adobe Express), which uses licensed images from its collections. We accessed Adobe Express via our institutional licence via a Jisc agreement. The sounds are mainly Public
Domain from FreeSound.
As a final note, Erica has deepened her appreciation of Adobe Photoshop and Audition, and is grateful for the help provided by media producer colleagues and another as a coding guru. They relieved us of some frustrations.
Now, it is up to you to play the three episodes of the Lord Schism saga. Please tell us if you spot factually incorrect information. Feel free to use the games to teach your audiences about copyright in a fun and unusual way. They work very well as group training; you can find an introductory slide on the website. Watch the space for the third part of the Land of Eryl episode.
Sources
Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation. (2019). Twine accessibility testing report. Accessibility Testing Report (iftechfoundation.org)
Nelson, G. (2010). Player Bill of Rights in the craft of adventure. 2nd ed. https://www.ifarchive.org/if-archive/info/Craft.Of.Adventure.pdf
Qiao, L., Sullivan, A. (2022). Twine Screen Reader: A Browser Extension for Improving the Accessibility of Twine Stories for People with Visual Impairments. In: Vosmeer, M., Holloway-Attaway, L. (eds) Interactive Storytelling. ICIDS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13762. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_37
© Coventry University. CC BY 4.0
Keywords: copyright, gamification, copyright literacy, accessibility, teaching, interactive fiction, Twine