Salford learners help steer Textbooks for the Metaverse

by | Feb 4, 2025 | Textbooks for the Metaverse | 0 comments

School play test visit

In November 2024, Flip Computing delivered a session for a Year 10 class of Game Design students at UTC@MediaCityUK. The students play tested our ‘Storytelling with Music‘ Fortnite island, funded by our Innovate UK grant. They provided some fantastic insights that have informed the direction of the prototype island.  

At the play test session the students completed a form answering questions about visual style, user interface, and game mechanics. They also examined the experience from a learning position and documented bugs or glitches they found along the way.  

During the double lesson, students also took part in co-design discussions, dot-voting and naming activities to help guide some of the bigger decisions about the island. 

What did we learn?

We received such a great range of feedback and suggestions. Many comments related to creating a clearer narrative and using cut scenes as a way to move the story forward between the different areas on the island. They noted a need for extra directions in places and a forcefield to keep the player from wandering off and getting lost. It was also suggested that the narrator character be used throughout the island as a way for players to get repeated instructions or extra clues. 

Reward was a recurring theme particularly once the player has completed all the objectives. Suggestions included making the next objective more prominent, adding an ending collectibles game to get people to revisit the different island areas, and using a particle effect to trigger fireworks when the final objective was completed.  

Students commented on the visual style and suggested adding background scenery to immerse the player further into the virtual world. They asked for more characters to be added and noted that it would be great to include the funny characters from Fortnite such as Cobb and Bendy. Students asked for more visual clues to help answer questions as the liked the existing clues and the way the props became relevant to the story.  

The learning objectives for the experience were to recall the term leitmotif and to create a leitmotif for a character. Some students didn’t feel like they had covered the objective as they weren’t used to learning in this way. When we discussed leitmotifs towards the end of the session it was clear that not only had students gained the knowledge but they could also relate how it applied to the wider curriculum such as English Literature and Film Studies. It was suggested that we add an optional knowledge check to be triggered at the end for those who wanted to use traditional methods to check their learning. 

What did we implement?

EVERYTHING!! We loved all the suggestions and could see how each one improved the island for all players. We have created a video playlist for you to watch that shows the new functionality alongside comments from the students. 

Support from UTC@MediaCityUK

We would like to thank all of the students who took part on the day and also Alex, Arif, and Jack for their help arranging the session and making sure everything ran smoothly. 

Have you tried the ‘Storytelling with Music’ Fortnite island? What did you learn about leitmotifs…did it feel like learning? 

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