Resources for Comparative Analysis of IDN Authoring Tools

Abstract

Authoring tools are a crucial component in the practice and research of interactive digital narrative design, yet there is no contemporary knowledge base to evaluate and comparatively analyze the great many tools that currently exist. This paper takes on the tasks of constructing a framework for the description and comparison of IDN authoring tools and their defining characteristics and affordances, and of developing this framework into a community resource. We propose a descriptive framework and an online resource meant to facilitate the development of a tool database and curate its properties. Our framework is composed of 30 tool descriptors, addressing (among other factors) the tools’ basic identify, business model, use context, technical information, interface affordances and unique design elements. Values were additionally created to define the answer range for most descriptors and streamline the process of tool-logging via the online form we created. In this paper, we explain and demonstrate our framework and present the online database and examples of the sort of meta-analysis it can generate, testifying to the potential usefulness of our framework to the research and practice community.