I am an Assistant Professor of Game Design at Illinois State University.
My research interests include electronic literature, digital authoring tools, and digital preservation.
My teaching focuses on narrative game development, production methodologies, and game engines.
Books
Cox, D., Klimas, C., (eds.) (2024). Twine Cookbook. First Edition. Lighting Source. ISBN: 9798988646204
Cox, D. (2021). Hands-On Dynamic Story Scripting with the ink Scripting Language. Packt. ISBN: 9781801819329
Book Chapters
Cox, D. (2022). We Make How We Learn: The Role of Community in Authoring Tool Longevity. Pp. 65-72 in The Authoring Problem, Human-Computer Interaction Series, edited by C. Hargood, D. E. Millard, A. Mitchell, and U. Spierling. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Select Publications and Presentations
- Cox, D. (2025). More History for the "Little Engine": Preserving the History and Works of Bitsy. Electronic Literature Organization 2025. Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 10 - 14 July 2025. https://elo2025.sched.com/event/26Ucb/1a-love-letters-to-the-past-platforms-archival
- Cox, D., Murray, J. and Salter, A. (2025). Routine, Twisty, and Queer: Pasts and Futures of Games Programming Pedagogy with No and Low Code Tools. In International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '25), April 15-18, 2025, Graz, Austria. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3723498.3723817
- Berge, P., Cox, D., Murray, J., & Salter, A. (2022). Adventures in TwineSpace: An Augmented Reality Story Format for Twine. In M. Vosmeer & L. Holloway-Attaway (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling (Vol. 13762, pp. 499-512). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22298-6_32
- Daiute, C., Cox, D., & Murray, J. T. (2021). Imagining the Other for Interactive Digital Narrative Design Learning in Real Time in Sherlock. In A. Mitchell & M. Vosmeer (Eds.), Interactive Storytelling (Vol. 13138, pp. 454-461). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_46
Select Software Projects
- Extwee: A story compilation tool and JavaScript library supporting all past and present Twine-compatible formats.
- Quis: Lightweight DSL for dynamic story sorting written in JavaScript.
- Story Formats Archive: A collection of all known Twine story formats spanning 2015 to the present and a tool to download those previously packaged with Twine releases.
- libtwee: A C# library supporting most past and present Twine-compatible formats.
Community Involvement
I've been highly involved in multiple authoring tool communities including helping create and serving as the editor of the Twine Cookbook for four years, either authoring or co-authoring most of the Twine Specs technical documentation, and writing the first book on the narrative scripting language ink in 2021.