Gamifying Literature: An Introduction

Gamifying Literature:  Introduction

My full-fledged love for literature developed when I was a high-schooler, but my love for video games was around from the beginning. Likewise, most of our students love video games, but their love of literature is still developing. I’ve often wondered, is there a way to take kids’ natural love of games and channel it into a love of literature? That is what I’m going to explore over a series of blog posts:  What are some ways to gamify literature?

To begin with, I will examine some techniques I’ve used in my own classroom. Then I will branch out to some of the published works that are available.

Teacher-Written Interactive Fiction:  For years, I have used a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style version of the Myth of Theseus. For everyone born post-1980’s, in Choose-Your-Own-Adventure fiction, you read a portion of the story and then make a choice. This choice determines what happens next in the story. The Theseus game I created used to be hosted online, but, unfortunately, the site I used is no longer in operation. Now I have programmed the whole story into Twine, a free program that allows you to build your own digital branching pathways adventure. Was it a lot of work? You bet. Was it worth it? Of course!

Student-Written Interactive Fiction:  I also give my students the chance to write their own Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style story. They write out each section of the story on notecards with choices that connect one notecard to another. Then I have the students pair up and play each other’s story.

Published Interactive Fiction:  As I research this topic, I will also be reviewing titles such as To Be or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, a gambebook spoof of Hamlet, and  Romeo or Juliet: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, a gamebook spoof of Romeo and Juliet, both by Ryan North and Beowulf Beastslayer: An Ace Gamebook by Jonathan Green. I want to see if they are appropriate for classroom use and whether or not I think students would respond well to them. (Please don’t take this mention as a recommendation because I have not read them yet.) I even recently discovered that To Be or Not To Be is available on the Nintendo Switch and as an iPhone app, which I think is very cool.

But I need your help! Your input can help shape my research. I would love to know what facets of gamifying literature are interesting to you! So here are my questions:

• What types of materials are most interesting to you–physical gamebooks based on classics, web-based interactive fiction, or app-based interactive fiction?
• How would your students most likely interact with interactive fiction–in print or on the web?
• Would you be interested in hearing more about Twine and how your students could use it to write their own interactive fiction?
• Would you like to hear more about my process about creating an interactive story?
• Is there another method of gamifying literature that you have tried?

Feel free to leave a comments below or email me at zachary@creativeneglishteacher.com

Stay creative,

Zachary

Note:  This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.com.