A Liquid Narrative Group System

Virtuoso is a program designed to help people who are not experienced programmers build 3D computer games. Virtuoso’s user interface makes the process of creating a 3D world, populating it with interactive objects and specifying their behaviors much simpler than in typical game development environments. Using Virtuoso, groups of users work together within a 3D world to build games containing many of the conventions of commercial games, such as HUDs, multi-user, networked and team play, end-game conditions, splash screens and more.

Virtuoso was constructed as part of the HI-FIVES project.· Funded by the National Science Foundation, HI-FIVES was a project designed to engage middle and high-school kids in science, technology, engineering and math leveraging the draw of video game creation.· Teachers in North Carolina public schools were trained on the use of Virtuoso and developed curriculum to link their in-class discussions, lectures and content with tasks for students building games.· Game-building assignments required the students to operationalize their ideas learned in the classroom in order to build games that reflected the class curriculum.· As part of the HI-FIVES project, Virtuoso was used by over 1000 students in North Carolina science and math classes.

Team members

• R. Michael Young (faculty contact)
• Oliver Gray (lead developer)
• Nick Darnell
• Rhys Harwell (Art+Design)
• Smith Newnam (Art+Design)
• James Niehaus

virtuoso publications

Gray, Oliver and Young, R. Michael, A New Interface for Non-Professional Game Developers, in Working Notes of the CHI 2007 Workshop on Supporting Non-professional Users in the New Media  Landscape, San Jose, CA, April, 2007.

virtuoso video or image files

Virtuoso sponsors

The US National Science Foundation.