I’ve just been bitten by a shark,” the reporter said to her sceptical colleagues, “and it’s all the fault of a researcher at Edinburgh University’s division of informatics. The moat turned red and everything.

“Thankfully there was a restorative plant on hand. I’m fine now.”

The researcher in question is Judy Robertson, who has devised Ghostwriter, a computer game designed to support storywriting skills among 11 and 12-year-olds. She based the game on one made by Epic Megagames called Unreal, but removed most of the monsters and all the guns, gave the plot depth and retained the fabulous film-quality sound effects and graphics.

The highlight isn’t the shark; it’s the sorceress, Lady Searle, who was brought to life using motion capture, a technique that measures the exact movements of a person, in this case the actress Mary Seymour, to create a realistic expressive character. Lady Searle, with her plumy English accent, is pretty scary, sashaying where mortals quake.

The children’s characters were also applied using motion capture so that children would respond to them more than the flat figures which typically appear in computer games.

Ghostwriter is set in a haunted castle that is protected from the evil Lady Searle by a goblin named Fred, who is befriended in the outside world by a granny. Longing for a visit from her pal, Granny sends her two grandchildren, Jenny and Daniel, to the castle to find out what is going on. Split up by defensive magic, Daniel meets Lady Searle in the form of a magical book, while Jenny, under Fred’s guidance, must find Daniel and warn him against the villainess’s propaganda.

Unlike conventional computer games, Ghostwriter is an improvised drama with a role-play leader, usually a teacher. It requires minimal computer skills. Two children assume the characters of Daniel and Jenny and play on networked computers so that they can write messages to each other via an intranet.

Part of Ghostwriter’s strength lies in its ability to confound its players. Fred, instead of being an old man, the friend children would expect a granny to have, is a goblin. Senga Munro, the storyteller and teacher who participated in the game’s pilot study, had advised that children naturally expect allies to be smaller than adult figures.

Conventional computer games require fast problem solving and object harvesting skills. In Ghostwriter, the children are also faced with moral dilemmas, so as they play they are practising important social and personal skills, such as negotiation and decision making. This makes the program suitable for personal and social education work.

Mrs Munro says that a discussion on a serious topic such as crime and punishment is often difficult to initiate because children tend to agree with the teacher. The absence of an authority figure in the game encourages them to justify their own beliefs, such as why Lady Searle should be punished for her crimes.

The children control their avatar or character by choosing actions from a set that range from the realistic, such as walking and talking, to unrealistic, activating a magic force field or becoming invisible.

The role-play leader can call on a bank of pre-recorded samples for the main characters, but such is the sophistication of the package that the voice tone can be subtly altered, depending on the actions the children take to move the plot forward. The leader can also add in sounds and atmospheric music and interject written comments between the children’s messages to help them or advance the story.

Ghostwriter was piloted among 60 P6 and P7 pupils at Sinclairtown Primary in Fife. Some were taken in by Lady Searle’s plausibility, while others were immediately suspicious.

They were ultimately asked whether Lady Searle should die and why. Their various answers included: “She deserves to die for lying.” Harsh punishment, and a judgment that could be discussed further in class.

The pilot study found that the children most enjoyed being able to type messages to other characters and that they were willing to wait while their partner took decisions and responded. This gave them an insight to other people’s emotions and the experience helped them in their own written stories. Their characters’ relationships were more fully developed, particularly through dialogue, than before the study took place.

Mrs Munro says the children with poor literacy skills and attention problems benefited particularly from the program. They were able to apply other skills, such as using the computer and judging character, and enjoyed playing the game and being involved in developing the plot and characters. This later motivated them to produce good pieces of writing.

Ms Robertson is seeking funding from Learning and Teaching Scotland to develop Ghostwriter further. Meanwhile, beware when you take a refreshing dip in the moat: you don’t want to be Lady Searle’s next victim.

For more about Ghostwriter contact Judy Robertson, Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, tel 0131 650 4450 e-mail judyr@cogsci.ed.ac.uk