Augmented Reality: Using a Simplified Game Editor to Spark Imaginations

Josh Sheldon · Bob Coulter · Eric Klopfer

Thu., June 11, 2:00–3:00, Class of ’24 (4th floor, East Central)

In this interactive workshop, participants will have the opportunity to experience a hands-on introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) from the perspective of a novice user. During the session, they will first “thumb through” a simple game to become acquainted with the software, hardware, and a game format. Then, they will have the opportunity to use a feature-limited game editor to build a simple game as they play the role of a student learning game design. Next, participants will go outside to test the games they build. Finally, as time allows, they will see a demonstration of some of the more advanced features of this AR toolkit.

The original editor that is part of the AR toolkit developed by the Scheller Teacher Education Program (STEP) allows sophisticated game designers to choose from a variety of game features to build rich interactive experiences for players. However, the complexity of the editor presents several challenges to beginning users, particularly those younger users learning about game design. First, while the toolkit is robust and does well at presenting a reasonable user interface for editing game features, finding more obscure parts of the interface can be a challenge, as hinted at by the more than 70 pages of manual devoted to explaining the editor. Just learning the software can take attention away from the conceptual task of building a game. Second, games built by novice designers with the original editor show “featuritis”; they rely on the many different features that the editor affords to make the game complex and “interesting,” rather than relying on compelling game narrative and design.

These two phenomena suggest that a simplified game editor could be an important tool for teaching AR game design to new users, in particular student users. To that end, a team at STEP has developed Game Builder, an AR game editor that presents the most commonly used game features in a very intuitive, “wizardized” manner. Successful initial trials with Game Builder were run with several groups of students as part of the LIONS after-school and summer program led by the Missouri Botanical Garden. These trials showed that Game Builder was a sufficient tool to build AR games, have led to several design changes in Game Builder, and suggested several more changes that will be implemented moving forward.