OZ Platform

Oz Platform

The Oz Platform consists of a framework and tools for the creation of rich narrative games - games that are primarily driven by an interactive storyline. The Oz technology was used to produce award-winning games such as Sharkworld and Houthoff Buruma: The Game. The platform allows us to harness the power of interactive stories more easily.

Three benefits:

•    The robust architecture enables us to develop richer and more complex story structures, increasing the quality of our products. Powerful and flexible authoring tools provide our customers and us with more control over game direction and content.
•    A set of techniques and methods make optimal use of this technology. This allows us to work more efficiently, lowering the development costs of our products and making the creation of extensive games economically feasible.
•    The platform consists of a number of different modules of engines and tools. These modules can either be employed together or separately.

The Oz Platform currently consists of the following modules:

•    Story Engine & Visual Story Editor for creating complex, non-linear storylines.
•    Dialog Engine & Visual Dialog Editor for creating media-rich dialogs with non-playable characters.
•    Interface components that can be used offtheshelf or that provide a starting point for the user interface of the game.
•    Puppetmaster Engine & Tool for facilitating alternate reality games and human-controlled storylines in blended learning.

More information about the Oz Platform, its benefits and modules can be found in The Oz Platform Whitepaper.

The Oz Metaphor

The Oz Platform took its name from the famous movie The Wizard of Oz (1939). In this movie the three protagonists seek fulfilment of their personal learning objectives: the classical human virtues of wisdom, emotional balance and self-confidence. In their journey to find The Great Wizard they are confronted with a number of obstacles that they have to overcome. In the end, those obstacles turn out to be mere illusions, created by the Wizard. The point is that they were so convincing and realistic, that they actually helped the protagonists to overcome their weaknesses and reach their objectives.

In a similar way, the Oz Platform enables the creation of extremely rich and convincing interactive experiences. These experiences might be illusionary, but they are also authentic enough to create compelling learning opportunities that cause real change.