Abstract. This paper describes the current state of a pedagogical immersive 3D story TBI-SIM and the changes that have been made to it. The system is a narrative simulation in a fully immersive 3D world in which the user controls a character that can interact with non-player characters (NPCs). The users achieve goals and make decisions that have an impact on the course of the story.Keywords: Interactive Drama, Interactive Narrative, Pedagogical Interactive Drama, Pedagogical Narrative Simulations, Educational Games, IDtension, Traumatic Brain Injury.
Context
Traumatic brain injuryChildren and adolescents undergo a dramatic change in their family life if one of their parents has a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Interactions among family members change rapidly and, often, for the worse; and new responsibilities are thrust upon the child or adolescent, who may be overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, anger or helplessness [2,6]. Our research project aims to develop and deliver educational material to youths faced with TBI of a family member. Based on testimonials we obtained through focus groups and interviews with families, we developed scenarios of everyday situations in an imaginary family in which members have to cope with the father's TBI.
Techno-pedagogical environmentThe IDtension interactive drama engine has been used to implement the scenarios [9]. They are then displayed on the Unity game engine [12]. By playing a virtual character involved in short pedagogical stories (with a few goals to achieve), users experience different kinds of behavior. The experience of both usual and unusual situations in a safe simulation environment can be a good basis for further exchange in a real or a virtual focus group, or for therapeutic sessions with a psychologist. The 3D simulation that we developed provides an immersive interactive environment that readily engage users [3,4]. Engagement is reinforced by the narrative nature of the user experience, which focuses on relevant and striking situations, instead of simulating scientifically social relationships within a family. IDtension [9] is the underlying drama engine used to generate narrative actions, which does not rely on any branching or conditional branching mechanism, but generates appropriate actions on the fly, based on narrative rules and algorithms (see [9] for a full description of the engine). As a result, the engine enables a large number of choices, which differentiates the current demonstration from most pedagogical narrative simulations (e.g. Heart Sense [7], Carmen's Bright Ideas [5], FearNot [1] or Scenejo [8]). This larger number of choice aims at providing a greater engagement to the user.The system described in this paper is an improvement over an earlier demonstrated version [10]. Changes covered in this paper are about the scenario, the text-to-speech integration and the end-user interface.