If you are interested in participating in eXperience Play (XP) remotely, I am going to provide a to-do list of items each week. These to-do lists will include a variety of tasks such as playing games, reflecting, blogging, and portions of game development. If you complete all five to-do lists, you will produce an educational text-based game in five weeks. For more information on this professional development, read this blog post, visit the eXperience Play website, or contact me via Twitter or email. This post corresponds with the final session of XP.
Part 1 – Game Development
1. Finish your game.
As you finish, we recommend adding a credits and citation passage to your game. Credit any collaborators and cite all resources you used to build your game (pictures, etc.).
Additionally, consider the copyright you want associated with your Twine game. This Creative Commons page can help you determine what license might be right for you. At the bottom of that Creative Commons page is an HTML code you copy directly into a Twine passage after you decide what license you want associated with your content. This decision is important because copyright information tells others how they can use your materials without asking for your permission.
2. Publish your game!
Once your game is finished, you need to access your Twine game and “Publish to File:”
This will generate a .html file you can upload to the “Dropittome” box on the Publish Page. (The upload password is “cte” without quotations.) Once I receive your file, I can put your game on the eXperience Play website.
(Note: If you used any media files, you will have to put them in a folder with your .html file and compress the whole folder to a .zip file before you upload to the “Dropittome” box. You can download this game to see an example of a .zip file. If you have questions about this, please ask us.)
Also, you are welcome to publish your game at the following locations:
- Your own web server – More complicated, more control (we use OU Create via Reclaim Hosting)
- Game Jolt or itch.io – indie game repositories, free, html or zip packages
- philome.la – free, easy, html only, requires Twitter
3. Celebrate completing your Twine project!
I’d do two things to celebrate: (1) send your game to your family, friends, colleagues, and/or students, etc. (2) play the games made by other XP faculty:
Part 2 – Professional Development
4. Write a blog post about your participation in eXperience Play using the following prompt:
- Give an overview of your game. I encourage you to include a screenshot of your final product.
- Research and define “Digital Literacy” in your own words.
- Reflect and write about what skills you practiced during your participation in eXperience Play. Which of these would you classify as Digital Literacy skills?
5. Consider running your own eXperience Play session or integrate text-based game development into your curriculum. If you had fun participating in XP, I expect your students would too!
Since XP is licensed as CC-BY-NC-SA, you don’t have to ask for permission to modify, use, or share our materials for any purpose as long as you are within the bounds of the license.
To get you stated, this page outlines each part of XP.
We had a lot of fun making games with you! 🙂 Let us know if you have any questions about running XP, using parts of XP, or participating in XP. You can reached out via Twitter or email.
The featured image is provided CC0 by Alejandro Scaff via Unsplash.